The learned Huet asserts that, like the rest of the world, he considered as a fiction the story of that indefatigable trifler who is said to have enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and enclosed in the shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the writing can be perfect. A page of this piece of vellum will then contain 7500 verses, and the reverse as much; the whole 15,000 verses of the Iliad. And this he proved by using a piece of paper, and with a common pen. The thing is possible to be effected; and if on any occasion paper should be most excessively rare, it may be useful to know that a volume of matter may be contained in a single leaf.



NUMERICAL FIGURES.

The learned, after many contests, have at length agreed that the numerical figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, usually called Arabic, are of Indian origin. The Arabians do not pretend to have been the inventors of them, but borrowed them from the Indian nations. The numeral characters of the Bramins, the Persians, the Arabians, and other eastern nations, are similar. They appear afterwards to have been introduced into several European nations by their respective travellers, who returned from the East. They were admitted into calendars and chronicles, but they were not introduced into charters, says Mr. Astle, before the sixteenth century. The Spaniards, no doubt, derived their use from the Moors who invaded them. In 1210, the Alphonsean astronomical tables were made by the order of Alphonsus X. by a Jew, and an Arabian; they used these numerals, from whence the Spaniards contend that they were first introduced by them.

They were not generally used in Germany until the beginning of the fourteenth century; but in general the forms of the ciphers were not permanently fixed there till after the year 1531. The Russians were strangers to them, before Peter the Great had finished his travels in the beginning of the last century.

The origin of these useful characters with the Indians and Arabians is attributed to their great skill in the arts of astronomy and of arithmetic, which required more convenient characters than alphabetic letters for the expressing of numbers.

Before the introduction into Europe of these Arabic numerals, they used alphabetical characters, or Roman numerals. The learned authors of the Nouveau Traite Diplomatique, the most valuable work on everything concerning the arts and progress of writing, have given some curious notices on the origin of the Roman numerals. Originally men counted by their fingers; thus, to mark the first four numbers they used an I, which naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The other letters, D for 500, and M for a 1000, were afterwards added. They subsequently abbreviated their characters, by placing one of these figures before another; and the figure of less value before a higher number, denotes that so much may be deducted from a greater number; for instance, IV signifies five less one, that is four; IX ten less one, that is nine; but these abbreviations are not found amongst the ancient monuments.[77] These numerical letters are still continued by us in the accounts of our Exchequer.

That men counted originally by their fingers, is no improbable supposition; it is still naturally practised by the people. In semi-civilized states small stones have been used, and the etymologists derive the words calculate and calculations from calculus, the Latin term for a pebble-stone, and by which they denominated their counters used for arithmetical computations.

Professor Ward, in a learned dissertation on this subject in the Philosophical Transactions, concludes that it is easier to falsify the Arabic ciphers than the Roman alphabetical numerals; when 1375 is dated in Arabic ciphers, if the 3 is only changed into an 0, three centuries are taken away; if the 3 is made into a 9 and take away the 1, four hundred years are lost. Such accidents have assuredly produced much confusion among our ancient manuscripts, and still do in our printed books; which is the reason that Dr. Robertson in his histories has also preferred writing his dates in words, rather than confide them to the care of a negligent printer. Gibbon observes, that some remarkable mistakes have happened by the word mil. in MSS., which is an abbreviation for soldiers, or for thousands; and to this blunder he attributes the incredible numbers of martyrdoms, which cannot otherwise be accounted for by historical records.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 77: A peculiar arrangement of letters was in use by the German and Flemish printers of the 16th century. Thus cI[R 'c'] denoted 1000, and I[R 'c'], 500. The date 1619 would therefore be thus printed:—cI[R 'c']. I[R 'c']cxx.]



ENGLISH ASTROLOGERS.

A belief in judicial astrology can now only exist in the people, who may be said to have no belief at all; for mere traditional sentiments can hardly be said to amount to a belief. But a faith in this ridiculous system in our country is of late existence; and was a favourite superstition with the learned.

When Charles the First was confined, Lilly the astrologer was consulted for the hour which would favour his escape.

A story, which strongly proves how greatly Charles the Second was bigoted to judicial astrology, is recorded is Burnet's History of his Own Times.

The most respectable characters of the age, Sir William Dugdale, Ellas Ashmole, Dr. Grew, and others, were members of an astrological club. Congreve's character of Foresight, in Love for Love, was then no uncommon person, though the humour now is scarcely intelligible.

Dryden cast the nativities of his sons; and, what is remarkable, his prediction relating to his son Charles took place. This incident is of so late a date, one might hope it would have been cleared up.

In 1670, the passion for horoscopes and expounding the stars prevailed in France among the first rank. The new-born child was usually presented naked to the astrologer, who read the first lineaments in his forehead, and the transverse lines in its hand, and thence wrote down its future destiny. Catherine de Medicis brought Henry IV., then a child, to old Nostradamus, whom antiquaries esteem more for his chronicle of Provence than his vaticinating powers. The sight of the reverend seer, with a beard which "streamed like a meteor in the air," terrified the future hero, who dreaded a whipping from so grave a personage. One of these magicians having assured Charles IX. that he would live as many days as he should turn about on his heels in an hour, standing on one leg, his majesty every morning performed that solemn gyration; the principal officers of the court, the judges, the chancellors, and generals, likewise, in compliment, standing on one leg and turning round!

It has been reported of several famous for their astrologic skill, that they have suffered a voluntary death merely to verify their own predictions; this has been reported of Cardan, and Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy.

It is curious to observe the shifts to which astrologers are put when their predictions are not verified. Great winds were predicted, by a famous adept, about the year 1586. No unusual storms, however, happened. Bodin, to save the reputation of the art, applied it as figure to some revolutions in the state, and of which there were instances enough at that moment. Among their lucky and unlucky days, they pretend to give those of various illustrious persons and of families. One is very striking.—Thursday was the unlucky day of our Henry VIII. He, his son Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, all died on a Thursday! This fact had, no doubt, great weight in this controversy of the astrologers with their adversaries.[78]

Lilly, the astrologer, is the Sidrophel of Butler. His Life, written by himself, contains so much artless narrative, and so much palpable imposture, that it is difficult to know when he is speaking what he really believes to be the truth. In a sketch of the state of astrology in his day, those adepts, whose characters he has drawn, were the lowest miscreants of the town. They all speak of each other as rogues and impostors. Such were Booker, Backhouse, Gadbury; men who gained a livelihood by practising on the credulity of even men of learning so late as in 1650, nor were they much out of date in the eighteenth century. In Ashmole's Life an account of these artful impostors may be found. Most of them had taken the air in the pillory, and others had conjured themselves up to the gallows. This seems a true statement of facts. But Lilly informs us, that in his various conferences with angels, their voices resembled that of the Irish!

The work contains anecdotes of the times. The amours of Lilly with his mistress are characteristic. He was a very artful man, and admirably managed matters which required deception and invention.

Astrology greatly flourished in the time of the civil wars. The royalists and the rebels had their astrologers, as well as their soldiers! and the predictions of the former had a great influence over the latter.

On this subject, it may gratify curiosity to notice three or four works, which hear an excessive price. The price cannot entirely be occasioned by their rarity, and I am induced to suppose that we have still adepts, whose faith must be strong, or whose scepticism but weak.

The Chaldean sages were nearly put to the rout by a quarto park of artillery, fired on them by Mr. John Chamber, in 1601. Apollo did not use Marsyas more inhumanly than his scourging pen this mystical race, and his personalities made them feel more sore. However, a Norwich knight, the very Quixote of astrology, arrayed in the enchanted armour of his occult authors, encountered this pagan in a most stately carousal. He came forth with "A Defence of Judiciall Astrologye, in answer to a treatise lately published by Mr. John Chamber. By Sir Christopher Heydon, Knight; printed at Cambridge, 1603." This is a handsome quarto of about 500 pages. Sir Christopher is a learned writer, and a knight worthy to defend a better cause. But his Dulcinea had wrought most wonderfully on his imagination. This defence of this fanciful science, if science it may be called, demonstrates nothing, while it defends everything. It confutes, according to the knight's own ideas: it alleges a few scattered facts in favour of astrological predictions, which may be picked up in that immensity of fabling which disgraces history. He strenuously denies, or ridicules, what the greatest writers have said against this fanciful art, while he lays great stress on some passages from authors of no authority. The most pleasant part is at the close, where he defends the art from the objections of Mr. Chamber by recrimination. Chamber had enriched himself by medical practice; and when he charges the astrologers with merely aiming to gain a few beggarly pence, Sir Christopher catches fire, and shows by his quotations, that if we are to despise an art, by its professors attempting to subsist on it, or for the objections which may be raised against its vital principles, we ought by this argument most heartily to despise the medical science and medical men! He gives here all he can collect against physic and physicians; and from the confessions of Hippocrates and Galen, Avicenna and Agrippa, medicine appears to be a vainer science than even astrology! Sir Christopher is a shrewd and ingenious adversary; but when he says he means only to give Mr. Chamber oil for his vinegar, he has totally mistaken its quality.

The defence was answered by Thomas Vicars, in his "Madnesse of Astrologers."

But the great work is by Lilly; and entirely devoted to the adepts. He defends nothing; for this oracle delivers his dictum, and details every event as matters not questionable. He sits on the tripod; and every page is embellished by a horoscope, which he explains with the utmost facility. This voluminous monument of the folly of the age is a quarto valued at some guineas! It is entitled, "Christian Astrology, modestly treated of in three books, by William Lilly, student in Astrology, 2nd edition, 1659." The most curious part of this work is "a Catalogue of most astrological authors." There is also a portrait of this arch rogue, and astrologer: an admirable illustration for Lavater![79]

Lilly's opinions, and his pretended science, were such favourites with the age, that the learned Gataker wrote professedly against this popular delusion. Lilly, at the head of his star-expounding friends, not only formally replied to, but persecuted Gataker annually in his predictions, and even struck at his ghost, when beyond the grave. Gataker died in July, 1654; and Lilly having written in his almanac of that year for the month of August this barbarous Latin verse:—

Hoc in tumbo jacet presbyter et nebulo! Here in this tomb lies a presbyter and a knave!

he had the impudence to assert that he had predicted Gataker's death! But the truth is, it was an epitaph like lodgings to let; it stood empty ready for the first passenger to inhabit. Had any other of that party of any eminence died in that month, it would have been as appositely applied to him. But Lilly was an exquisite rogue, and never at fault. Having prophesied in his almanac for 1650, that the parliament stood upon a tottering foundation, when taken up by a messenger, during the night he was confined, he contrived to cancel the page, printed off another, and showed his copies before the committee, assuring them that the others were none of his own, but forged by his enemies.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 78: "Day fatality" was especially insisted on by these students, and is curiously noted in a folio tract, published in 1687, particularly devoted to "Remarques on the 14th of October, being the auspicious birth-day of his present Majesty James II.," whose author speaks of having seen in the hands of "that genera scholar, and great astrologer, E. Ashmole," a manuscript in which the following barbarous monkish rhymes were inserted, noting the unlucky days of each month:—

JANUARY Prima dies menses, et septima truncat ut ensis. FEBRUARY Quarta subit mortem, prosternit tertia fortem. MARCH Primus mandentem, disrumpit quarta bibentem. APRIL Denus et undenus est mortis vulnere plenus. MAY Tertius occidit, et septimus ora relidit. JUNE Denus pallescit, quindenus foedra nescit. JULY Ter-decimus mactat, Julii denus labefactat. AUGUST Prima necat fortem prosternit secunda cohortem. SEPTEMBER Tertia Septembris, et denus fert mala membris. OCTOBER Tertius et denus, est sicut mors alienus. NOVEMBER Scorpius est quintus, et tertius e nece cinctus. DECEMBER Septimus exanguis, virosus denus et anguis.

The author of this strange book fortifies his notions on "day fatality" by printing a letter from Sir Winstan Churchill, who says, "I have made great experience of the truth of it, and have set down Fryday as my own lucky day; the day on which I was born, christened, married, and I believe will be the day of my death. The day whereon I have had sundry deliverances from perils by sea and land, perils by false brethren, perils of lawsuits, &c. I was knighted (by chance unexpected of myself) on the same day, and have several good accidents happened to me on that day; and am so superstitious in the belief of its good omen, that I choose to begin any considerable action that concerns me on the same day."]

[Footnote 79: Lilly was at one time a staunch adherent of the Roundheads, and "read in the stars" all kinds of successes for them. His great feat was a prediction made for the month of June, 1645—"If now we fight, a victory stealeth upon us." A fight did occur at Naseby, and concluded the overthrow of the unfortunate Charles the First. The words are sufficiently ambiguous; but not so much so, as many other "prophecies" of the same notable quack, happily constructed to shift with changes in events, and so be made to fit them. Lilly was opposed by Wharton, who saw in the stars as many good signs for the Royal Army; and Lilly himself began to see differently as the power of Cromwell waned. Among the hundreds of pamphlets poured from the press in the excited days of the great civil wars in England, few are more curious than these "strange and remarkable predictions," "Signs in the Sky," and "Warnings to England," the productions of star-gazing knaves, which "terrified our isle from its propriety."]



ALCHYMY.

Mrs. Thomas, the Corinna of Dryden, in her Life, has recorded one of the delusions of alchymy.

An infatuated lover of this delusive art met with one who pretended to have the power of transmuting lead to gold; that is, in their language, the imperfect metals to the perfect one. The hermetic philosopher required only the materials, and time, to perform his golden operations. He was taken, to the country residence of his patroness. A long laboratory was built, and that his labours might not be impeded by any disturbance, no one was permitted to enter into it. His door was contrived to turn on a pivot; so that, unseen and unseeing, his meals were conveyed to him without distracting the sublime meditations of the sage.

During a residence of two years, he never condescended to speak but two or three times in a year to his infatuated patroness. When she was admitted into the laboratory, she saw, with pleasing astonishment, stills, cauldrons, long flues, and three or four Vulcanian fires blazing at different corners of this magical mine; nor did she behold with less reverence the venerable figure of the dusty philosopher. Pale and emaciated with daily operations and nightly vigils, he revealed to her, in unintelligible jargon, his progresses; and having sometimes condescended to explain the mysteries of the arcana, she beheld, or seemed to behold, streams of fluid and heaps of solid ore scattered around the laboratory. Sometimes he required a new still, and sometimes vast quantities of lead. Already this unfortunate lady had expended the half of her fortune in supplying the demands of the philosopher. She began now to lower her imagination to the standard of reason. Two years had now elapsed, vast quantities of lead had gone in, and nothing but lead had come out. She disclosed her sentiments to the philosopher. He candidly confessed he was himself surprised at his tardy processes; but that now he would exert himself to the utmost, and that he would venture to perform a laborious operation, which hitherto he had hoped not to have been necessitated to employ. His patroness retired, and the golden visions resumed all their lustre.

One day, as they sat at dinner, a terrible shriek, and one crack followed by another, loud as the report of cannon, assailed their ears. They hastened to the laboratory; two of the greatest stills had burst, and one part of the laboratory and the house were in flames. We are told that, after another adventure of this kind, this victim to alchymy, after ruining another patron, in despair swallowed poison.

Even more recently we have a history of an alchymist in the life of Romney, the painter. This alchymist, after bestowing much time and money on preparations for the grand projection, and being near the decisive hour, was induced, by the too earnest request of his wife, to quit his furnace one evening, to attend some of her company at the tea-table. While the projector was attending the ladies, his furnace blew up! In consequence of this event, he conceived such an antipathy against his wife, that he could not endure the idea of living with her again.[80]

Henry VI., Evelyn observes in his Numismata, endeavoured to recruit his empty coffers by alchymy. The record of this singular proposition contains "the most solemn and serious account of the feasibility and virtues of the philosopher's stone, encouraging the search after it, and dispensing with all statutes and prohibitions to the contrary." This record was probably communicated by Mr. Selden to his beloved friend Ben Jonson, when the poet was writing his comedy of the Alchymist.

After this patent was published, many promised to answer the king's expectations so effectually, that the next year he published another patent; wherein he tells his subjects, that the happy hour was drawing nigh, and by means of THE STONE, which he should soon be master of, he would pay all the debts of the nation in real gold and silver. The persons picked out for his new operators were as remarkable as the patent itself, being a most "miscellaneous rabble" of friars, grocers, mercers, and fishmongers!

This patent was likewise granted authoritate Parliamenti; and is given by Prynne in his Aurum Reginae, p. 135.

Alchymists were formerly called multipliers, although they never could multiply; as appears from a statute of Henry IV. repealed in the preceding record.

"None from henceforth shall use to multiply gold or silver, or use the craft of multiplication; and if any the same do, he shall incur the pain of felony." Among the articles charged on the Protector Somerset is this extraordinary one:—"You commanded multiplication and alcumestry to be practised, thereby to abate the king's coin." Stowe, p. 601. What are we to understand? Did they believe that alchymy would be so productive of the precious metals as to abate the value of the coin; or does multiplication refer to an arbitrary rise in the currency by order of the government?

Every philosophical mind must be convinced that alchymy is not an art, which some have fancifully traced to the remotest times; it may be rather regarded, when opposed to such a distance of time, as a modern imposture. Caesar commanded the treatises of alchymy to be burnt throughout the Roman dominions: Caesar, who is not less to be admired as a philosopher than as a monarch.

Gibbon has this succinct passage relative to alchymy:—"The ancient books of alchymy, so liberally ascribed to Pythagoras, to Solomon, or to Hermes, were the pious frauds of more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either to the use or the abuse of chemistry. In that immense register where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind, there is not the least mention of the transmutations of metals; and the persecution of Diocletian is the first authentic event in the history of alchymy. The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science over the globe. Congenial to the avarice of the human heart, it was studied in China, as in Europe, with equal eagerness and equal success. The darkness of the middle ages ensured a favourable reception to every tale of wonder; and the revival of learning gave new vigour to hope, and suggested more specious arts to deception. Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry."

Elias Ashmole writes in his diary—"May 13, 1653. My father Backhouse (an astrologer who had adopted him for his son, a common practice with these men) lying sick in Fleet-street, over against St. Dunstan's church, and not knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven of the clock, told me in syllables the true matter of the philosopher's stone, which he bequeathed to me as a legacy." By this we learn that a miserable wretch knew the art of making gold, yet always lived a beggar; and that Ashmole really imagined he was in possession of the syllables of a secret! He has, however, built a curious monument of the learned follies of the last age, in his "Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum." Though Ashmole is rather the historian of this vain science than an adept, it may amuse literary leisure to turn over this quarto volume, in which he has collected the works of several English alchymists, subjoining his commentary. It affords a curious specimen of Rosicrucian mysteries; and Ashmole relates several miraculous stories. Of the philosopher's stone, he says he knows enough to hold his tongue, but not enough to speak. This stone has not only the power of transmuting any imperfect earthy matter into its utmost degree of perfection, and can convert the basest metals into gold, flints into stone, &c.; but it has still more occult virtues, when the arcana have been entered into by the choice fathers of hermetic mysteries. The vegetable stone has power over the natures of man, beast, fowls, fishes, and all kinds of trees and plants, to make them flourish and bear fruit at any time. The magical stone discovers any person wherever he is concealed; while the angelical stone gives the apparitions of angels, and a power of conversing with them. These great mysteries are supported by occasional facts, and illustrated by prints of the most divine and incomprehensible designs, which we would hope were intelligible to the initiated. It may be worth showing, however, how liable even the latter were to blunder on these mysterious hieroglyphics. Ashmole, in one of his chemical works, prefixed a frontispiece, which, in several compartments, exhibited Phoebus on a lion, and opposite to him a lady, who represented Diana, with the moon in one hand and an arrow in the other, sitting on a crab; Mercury on a tripod, with the scheme of the heavens in one hand, and his caduccus in the other. These were intended to express the materials of the stone, and the season for the process. Upon the altar is the bust of a man, his head covered by an astrological scheme dropped from the clouds; and on the altar are these words, "Mercuriophilus Anglicus," i.e., the English lover of hermetic philosophy. There is a tree, and a little creature gnawing the root, a pillar adorned with musical and mathematical instruments, and another with military ensigns. This strange composition created great inquiry among the chemical sages. Deep mysteries were conjectured to be veiled by it. Verses were written in the highest strain of the Rosicrucian language. Ashmole confessed he meant nothing more than a kind of pun on his own name, for the tree was the ash, and the creature was a mole. One pillar tells his love of music and freemasonry, and the other his military preferment and astrological studies! He afterwards regretted that no one added a second volume to his work, from which he himself had been hindered, for the honour of the family of Hermes, and "to show the world what excellent men we had once of our nation, famous for this kind of philosophy, and masters of so transcendant a secret."

Modern chemistry is not without a hope, not to say a certainty, of verifying the golden visions of the alchymists. Dr. Girtanner, of Gottingen, not long ago adventured the following prophecy: "In the nineteenth century the transmutation of metals will be generally known and practised. Every chemist and every artist will make gold; kitchen utensils will be of silver, and even gold, which will contribute more than anything else to prolong life, poisoned at present by the oxides of copper, lead, and iron, which we daily swallow with our food." Phil. Mag. vol. vi., p. 383. This sublime chemist, though he does not venture to predict that universal elixir, which is to prolong life at pleasure, yet approximates to it. A chemical friend writes to me, that "The metals seem to be composite bodies, which nature is perpetually preparing; and it may be reserved for the future researches of science to trace, and perhaps to imitate, some of these curious operations." Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this undiscovered art an impossible thing, but which, should it ever be discovered, would certainly be useless.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 80: He was assisted in the art by one Williamson, a watchmaker, of Dalton, Lancashire, with whom Romney lived in constant companionship. They were partners in a furnace, and had kept the fire burning for nine months, when the contents of the crucible began to assume the yellow hue which excited all their hopes; a few moments of neglect led to the catastrophe narrated above.]



TITLES OF BOOKS.

Were it inquired of an ingenious writer what page of his work had occasioned him most perplexity, he would often point to the title-page. The curiosity which we there would excite, is, however, most fastidious to gratify.

Among those who appear to have felt this irksome situation, are most of our periodical writers. The "Tatler" and the "Spectator," enjoying priority of conception, have adopted titles with characteristic felicity; but perhaps the invention of the authors begins to fail in the "Reader," the "Lover," and the "Theatre!" Succeeding writers were as unfortunate in their titles, as their works; such are the "Universal Spectator," and the "Lay Monastery." The copious mind of Johnson could not discover an appropriate title, and indeed in the first "Idler" acknowledged his despair. The "Rambler" was so little understood, at the time of its appearance, that a French journalist has translated it as "Le Chevalier Errant;" and when it was corrected to L'Errant, a foreigner drank Johnson's health one day, by innocently addressing him by the appellation of Mr. "Vagabond!" The "Adventurer" cannot be considered as a fortunate title; it is not appropriate to those pleasing miscellanies, for any writer is an adventurer. The "Lounger," the "Mirror," and even the "Connoisseur," if examined accurately, present nothing in the titles descriptive of the works. As for the "World," it could only have been given by the fashionable egotism of its authors, who considered the world as merely a circuit round St. James's Street. When the celebrated father of reviews, Le Journal des Scavans, was first published, the very title repulsed the public. The author was obliged in his succeeding volumes to soften it down, by explaining its general tendency. He there assures the curious, that not only men of learning and taste, but the humblest mechanic, may find a profitable amusement. An English novel, published with the title of "The Champion of Virtue," could find no readers; but afterwards passed through several editions under the happier invitation of "The Old English Baron." "The Concubine," a poem by Mickle, could never find purchasers, till it assumed the more delicate title of "Sir Martyn."

As a subject of literary curiosity, some amusement may be gathered from a glance at what has been doing in the world, concerning this important portion of every book.

The Jewish and many oriental authors were fond of allegorical titles, which always indicate the most puerile age of taste. The titles were usually adapted to their obscure works. It might exercise an able enigmatist to explain their allusions; for we must understand by "The Heart of Aaron," that it is a commentary on several of the prophets. "The Bones of Joseph" is an introduction to the Talmud. "The Garden of Nuts," and "The Golden Apples," are theological questions; and "The Pomegranate with its Flower," is a treatise of ceremonies, not any more practised. Jortin gives a title, which he says of all the fantastical titles he can recollect is one of the prettiest. A rabbin published a catalogue of rabbinical writers, and called it Labia Dormientium, from Cantic. vii. 9. "Like the best wine of my beloved that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak." It hath a double meaning, of which he was not aware, for most of his rabbinical brethren talk very much like men in their sleep.

Almost all their works bear such titles as bread—gold—silver—roses—eyes, &c.; in a word, anything that signifies nothing.

Affected title-pages were not peculiar to the orientals: the Greeks and the Romans have shown a finer taste. They had their Cornucopias, or horns of abundance—Limones, or meadows—Pinakidions, or tablets—Pancarpes, or all sorts of fruits; titles not unhappily adapted for the miscellanists. The nine books of Herodotus, and the nine epistles of AEschines, were respectively honoured by the name of a Muse; and three orations of the latter, by those of the Graces.

The modern fanatics have had a most barbarous taste for titles. We could produce numbers from abroad, and at home. Some works have been called, "Matches lighted at the Divine Fire,"—and one "The Gun of Penitence:" a collection of passages from the fathers is called "The Shop of the Spiritual Apothecary:" we have "The Bank of Faith," and "The Sixpennyworth of Divine Spirit:" one of these works bears the following elaborate title: "Some fine Biscuits baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet Swallows of Salvation." Sometimes their quaintness has some humour. Sir Humphrey Lind, a zealous puritan, published a work which a Jesuit answered by another, entitled "A Pair of Spectacles for Sir Humphrey Lind." The doughty knight retorted, by "A Case for Sir Humphrey Lind's Spectacles."

Some of these obscure titles have an entertaining absurdity; as "The Three Daughters of Job," which is a treatise on the three virtues of patience, fortitude, and pain. "The Innocent Love, or the Holy Knight," is a description of the ardours of a saint for the Virgin. "The Sound of the Trumpet," is a work on the day of judgment; and "A Fan to drive away Flies," is a theological treatise on purgatory.

We must not write to the utter neglect of our title; and a fair author should have the literary piety of ever having "the fear of his title-page before his eyes." The following are improper titles. Don Matthews, chief huntsman to Philip IV. of Spain, entitled his book "The Origin and Dignity of the Royal House," but the entire work relates only to hunting. De Chantereine composed several moral essays, which being at a loss how to entitle, he called "The Education of a Prince." He would persuade the reader in his preface, that though they were not composed with a view to this subject, they should not, however, be censured for the title, as they partly related to the education of a prince. The world was too sagacious to be duped, and the author in his second edition acknowledges the absurdity, drops "the magnificent title," and calls his work "Moral Essays." Montaigne's immortal history of his own mind, for such are his "Essays," has assumed perhaps too modest a title, and not sufficiently discriminative. Sorlin equivocally entitled a collection of essays, "The Walks of Richelieu," because they were composed at that place; "The Attic Nights" of Aulus Gellius were so called, because they were written in Attica. Mr. Tooke, in his grammatical "Diversions of Purley," must have deceived many.

A rhodomontade title-page was once a great favourite. There was a time when the republic of letters was over-built with "Palaces of Pleasure," "Palaces of Honour," and "Palaces of Eloquence;" with "Temples of Memory," and "Theatres of Human Life," and "Amphitheatres of Providence;" "Pharoses, Gardens, Pictures, Treasures." The epistles of Guevara dazzled the public eye with their splendid title, for they were called "Golden Epistles;" and the "Golden Legend" of Voragine had been more appropriately entitled leaden.

They were once so fond of novelty, that every book recommended itself by such titles as "A new Method; new Elements of Geometry; the new Letter Writer, and the new Art of Cookery."

To excite the curiosity of the pious, some writers employed artifices of a very ludicrous nature. Some made their titles rhyming echoes; as this one of a father, who has given his works under the title of Scalae Alae animi; and Jesus esus novus Orbis. Some have distributed them according to the measure of time, as one Father Nadasi, the greater part of whose works are years, months, weeks, days, and hours. Some have borrowed their titles from the parts of the body; and others have used quaint expressions, such as—Think before you leap—We must all die—Compel them to enter. Some of our pious authors appear not to have been aware that they were burlesquing religion. One Massieu having written a moral explanation of the solemn anthems sung in Advent, which begin with the letter O, published this work under the punning title of La douce Moelle, et la Sauce friande des os Savoureux de l'Avent.[81]

The Marquis of Carraccioli assumed the ambiguous title of La Jouissance de soi-meme. Seduced by the epicurean title of self-enjoyment, the sale of the work was continual with the libertines, who, however, found nothing but very tedious essays on religion and morality. In the sixth edition the marquis greatly exults in his successful contrivance; by which means he had punished the vicious curiosity of certain persons, and perhaps had persuaded some, whom otherwise his book might never have reached.

If a title be obscure, it raises a prejudice against the author; we are apt to suppose that an ambiguous title is the effect of an intricate or confused mind. Baillet censures the Ocean Macromicrocosmic of one Sachs. To understand this title, a grammarian would send an inquirer to a geographer, and he to a natural philosopher; neither would probably think of recurring to a physician, to inform one that this ambiguous title signifies the connexion which exists between the motion of the waters with that of the blood. He censures Leo Allatius for a title which appears to me not inelegantly conceived. This writer has entitled one of his books the Urban Bees; it is an account of those illustrious writers who flourished during the pontificate of one of the Barberinis. The allusion refers to the bees which were the arms of this family, and Urban VIII. is the Pope designed.

The false idea which a title conveys is alike prejudicial to the author and the reader. Titles are generally too prodigal of their promises, and their authors are contemned; but the works of modest authors, though they present more than they promise, may fail of attracting notice by their extreme simplicity. In either case, a collector of books is prejudiced; he is induced to collect what merits no attention, or he passes over those valuable works whose titles may not happen to be interesting. It is related of Pinelli, the celebrated collector of books, that the booksellers permitted him to remain hours, and sometimes days, in their shops to examine books before he purchased. He was desirous of not injuring his precious collection by useless acquisitions; but he confessed that he sometimes could not help being dazzled by magnificent titles, nor being mistaken by the simplicity of others, which had been chosen by the modesty of their authors. After all, many authors are really neither so vain, nor so honest, as they appear; for magnificent, or simple titles, have often been given from the difficulty of forming any others.

It is too often with the Titles of Books, as with those painted representations exhibited by the keepers of wild beasts; where, in general, the picture itself is made more striking and inviting to the eye, than the inclosed animal is always found to be.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 81: Religious parody seems to have carried no sense of impropriety with it to the minds of the men of the 15th and 16th centuries. Luther was an adept in this art, and the preachers who followed him continued the practice. The sermons of divines in the following century often sought an attraction by quaint titles, such as—"Heaven ravished"—"The Blacksmith, a sermon preached at Whitehall before the King," 1606. Beloe, in his Anecdotes of Literature, vol. 6, has recorded many of these quaint titles, among them the following:—"The Nail hit on the head, and driven into the city and cathedral wall of Norwich. By John Carter, 1644." "The Wheel turned by a voice from the throne of glory. By John Carter, 1647." "Two Sticks made one, or the excellence of Unity. By Matthew Mead, 1691." "Peter's Net let downe, or the Fisher and the Fish, both prepared towards a blessed haven. By R. Matthew, 1634." In the middle of the last century two religious tracts were published, one bearing the alarming title, "Die and be Damned," the other being termed, "A sure Guide to Hell." The first was levelled against the preaching of the Methodists, and the title obtained from what the author asserts to be the words of condemnation then frequently applied by them to all who differed from their creed. The second is a satirical attack on the prevalent follies and vices of the day, which form the surest "guide," in the opinion of the author, to the bottomless pit.]



LITERARY FOLLIES.

The Greeks composed lipogrammatic works; works in which one letter of the alphabet is omitted. A lipogrammatist is a letter-dropper. In this manner Tryphiodorus wrote his Odyssey; he had not [Greek: alpha] in his first book, nor [Greek: beta] in his second; and so on with the subsequent letters one after another. This Odyssey was an imitation of the lipogrammatic Iliad of Nestor. Among other works of this kind, Athenaeus mentions an ode by Pindar, in which he had purposely omitted the letter S; so that this inept ingenuity appears to have been one of those literary fashions which are sometimes encouraged even by those who should first oppose such progresses into the realms of nonsense.

There is in Latin a little prose work of Fulgentius, which the author divides into twenty-three chapters, according to the order of the twenty-three letters of the Latin alphabet. From A to O are still remaining. The first chapter is with out A; the second without B; the third without C; and so with the rest. There are five novels in prose of Lopes de Vega; the first without A, the second without E, the third without I, &c. Who will attempt to verify them?

The Orientalists are not without this literary folly. A Persian poet read to the celebrated Jami a gazel of his own composition, which Jami did not like: but the writer replied, it was notwithstanding a very curious sonnet, for the letter Aliff was not to be found in any one of the words! Jami sarcastically replied, "You can do a better thing yet; take away all the letters from every word you have written."

To these works may be added the Ecloga de Calvis, by Hugbald the monk. All the words of this silly work begin with a C. It is printed in Dornavius. Pugna Porcorum; all the words beginning with a P, in the Nugae Venales. Canum cum cattis certamen; the words beginning with a C: a performance of the same kind in the same work. Gregorio Leti presented a discourse to the Academy of the Humorists at Rome, throughout which he had purposely omitted the letter R, and he entitled it the exiled R. A friend having requested a copy, as a literary curiosity, for so he considered this idle performance, Leti, to show that this affair was not so difficult, replied by a copious answer of seven pages, in which he had observed the same severe ostracism against the letter R! Lord North, in the court of James, I., has written a set of Sonnets, each of which begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. The Earl of Rivers, in the reign of Edward IV., translated the Moral Proverbs of Christiana of Pisa, a poem of about two hundred lines, the greatest part of which he contrived to conclude with the letter E; an instance of his lordship's hard application, and the bad taste of an age which, Lord Orford observes, had witticisms and whims to struggle with, as well as ignorance.

It has been well observed of these minute triflers, that extreme exactness is the sublime of fools, whose labours may be well called, in the language of Dryden,

Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.

And Martial says,

Turpe est difficiles habere nugas, Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.

Which we may translate,

'Tis a folly to sweat o'er a difficult trifle, And for silly devices invention to rifle.

I shall not dwell on the wits who composed verses in the forms of hearts, wings, altars, and true-love knots; or as Ben Jonson describes their grotesque shapes,

A pair of scissors and a comb in verse.

Tom Nash, who loved to push the ludicrous to its extreme, in his amusing invective against the classical Gabriel Harvey, tells us that "he had writ verses in all kinds; in form of a pair of gloves, a pair of spectacles, and a pair of pot-hooks," &c. They are not less absurd, who expose to public ridicule the name of their mistress by employing it to form their acrostics. I have seen some of the latter where, both sides and crossways, the name of the mistress or the patron has been sent down to posterity with eternal torture. When one name is made out four times in the same acrostic, the great difficulty must have been to have found words by which the letters forming the name should be forced to stand in their particular places. It might be incredible that so great a genius as Boccaccio could have lent himself to these literary fashions; yet one of the most gigantic of acrostics may be seen in his works; it is a poem of fifty cantos! Ginguene has preserved a specimen in his Literary History of Italy, vol. iii. p.54. Puttenham, in "The Art of Poesie," p. 75, gives several odd specimens of poems in the forms of lozenges, rhomboids, pillars, &c. Puttenham has contrived to form a defence for describing and making such trifling devices. He has done more: he has erected two pillars himself to the honour of Queen Elizabeth; every pillar consists of a base of eight syllables, the shaft or middle of four, and the capital is equal with the base. The only difference between the two pillars consists in this; in the one "ye must read upwards," and in the other the reverse. These pillars, notwithstanding this fortunate device and variation, may be fixed as two columns in the porch of the vast temple of literary folly.

It was at this period, when words or verse were tortured into such fantastic forms, that the trees in gardens were twisted and sheared into obelisks and giants, peacocks, or flower-pots. In a copy of verses, "To a hair of my mistress's eye-lash," the merit, next to the choice of the subject, must have been the arrangement, or the disarrangement, of the whole poem into the form of a heart. With a pair of wings many a sonnet fluttered, and a sacred hymn was expressed by the mystical triangle. Acrostics are formed from the initial letters of every verse; but a different conceit regulated chronograms, which were used to describe dates—the numeral letters, in whatever part of the word they stood, were distinguished from other letters by being written in capitals. In the following chronogram from Horace,

—feriam sidera vertice,

by a strange elevation of CAPITALS the chronogrammatist compels even Horace to give the year of our Lord thus,

—feriaM siDera VertIce. MDVI.

The Acrostic and the Chronogram are both ingeniously described in the mock epic of the Scribleriad.[82] The initial letters of the acrostics are thus alluded to in the literary wars:—

Firm and compact, in three fair columns wove, O'er the smooth plain, the bold acrostics move; High o'er the rest, the TOWERING LEADERS rise With limbs gigantic, and superior size.[83]

But the looser character of the chronograms, and the disorder in which they are found, are ingeniously sung thus:—

Not thus the looser chronograms prepare Careless their troops, undisciplined to war; With rank irregular, confused they stand, The CHIEFTAINS MINGLING with the vulgar band.

He afterwards adds others of the illegitimate race of wit:—

To join these squadrons, o'er the champaign came A numerous race of no ignoble name; Riddle and Rebus, Riddle's dearest son, And false Conundrum and insidious Pun. Fustian, who scarcely deigns to tread the ground, And Rondeau, wheeling in repeated round. On their fair standards, by the wind display'd, Eggs, altars, wings, pipes, axes, were pourtray'd.

I find the origin of Bouts-rimes, or "Rhyming Ends," in Goujet's Bib. Fr. xvi. p. 181. One Dulot, a foolish poet, when sonnets were in demand, had a singular custom of preparing the rhymes of these poems to be filled up at his leisure. Having been robbed of his papers, he was regretting most the loss of three hundred sonnets: his friends were astonished that he had written so many which they had never heard. "They were blank sonnets," he replied; and explained the mystery by describing his Bouts-rimes. The idea appeared ridiculously amusing; and it soon became fashionable to collect the most difficult rhymes, and fill up the lines.

The Charade is of recent birth, and I cannot discover the origin of this species of logogriphes. It was not known in France so late as in 1771; in the great Dictionnaire de Trevoux, the term appears only as the name of an Indian sect of a military character. Its mystical conceits have occasionally displayed singular felicity.

Anagrams were another whimsical invention; with the letters of any name they contrived to make out some entire word, descriptive of the character of the person who bore the name. These anagrams, therefore, were either satirical or complimentary. When in fashion, lovers made use of them continually: I have read of one, whose mistress's name was Magdalen, for whom he composed, not only an epic under that name, but as a proof of his passion, one day he sent her three dozen of anagrams all on her lovely name. Scioppius imagined himself fortunate that his adversary Scaliger was perfectly Sacrilege in all the oblique cases of the Latin language; on this principle Sir John Wiat was made out, to his own satisfaction—a wit. They were not always correct when a great compliment was required; the poet John Cleveland was strained hard to make Heliconian dew. This literary trifle has, however, in our own times produced several, equally ingenious and caustic.

Verses of grotesque shapes have sometimes been contrived to convey ingenious thoughts. Pannard, a modern French poet, has tortured his agreeable vein of poetry into such forms. He has made some of his Bacchanalian songs to take the figures of bottles, and others of glasses. These objects are perfectly drawn by the various measures of the verses which form the songs. He has also introduced an echo in his verses which he contrives so as not to injure their sense. This was practised by the old French bards in the age of Marot, and this poetical whim is ridiculed by Butler in his Hudibras, Part I. Canto 3, Verse 190. I give an example of these poetical echoes. The following ones are ingenious, lively, and satirical:—

Pour nous plaire, un plumet

Met

Tout en usage:

Mais on trouve souvent

Vent

Dans son langage.

On y voit des Commis

Mis

Comme des Princes,

Apres etre venus

Nuds

De leurs Provinces.

The poetical whim of Cretin, a French poet, brought into fashion punning or equivocal rhymes. Maret thus addressed him in his own way:—

L'homme, sotart, et non scavant Comme un rotisseur, qui lave oye, La faute d'autrui, nonce avant, Qu'il la cognoisse, ou qu'il la voye, &c.

In these lines of Du Bartas, this poet imagined that he imitated the harmonious notes of the lark: "the sound" is here, however, not "an echo to the sense."

La gentille aloueette, avec son tirelire, Tirelire, a lire, et tireliran, tire Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu, Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu.

The French have an ingenious kind of Nonsense Verses called Amphigouries. This word is composed of a Greek adverb signifying about, and of a substantive signifying a circle. The following is a specimen, elegant in the selection of words, and what the French called richly rhymed, but in fact they are fine verses without any meaning whatever. Pope's Stanzas, said to be written by a person of quality, to ridicule the tuneful nonsense of certain bards, and which Gilbert Wakefield mistook for a serious composition, and wrote two pages of Commentary to prove this song was disjointed, obscure, and absurd, is an excellent specimen of these Amphigouries.

AMPHIGOURIE.

Qu'il est heureux de se defendre Quand le coeur ne s'est pas rendu! Mais qu'il est facheux de se rendre Quand le bonheur est suspendu!

Par un discours sans suite et tendre, Egarez un coeur eperdu; Souvent par un mal-entendu L'amant adroit se fait entendre.

IMITATED.

How happy to defend our heart, When Love has never thrown a dart! But ah! unhappy when it bends, If pleasure her soft bliss suspends! Sweet in a wild disordered strain, A lost and wandering heart to gain! Oft in mistaken language wooed, The skilful lover's understood.

These verses have such a resemblance to meaning, that Fontenelle, having listened to the song, imagined that he had a glimpse of sense, and requested to have it repeated. "Don't you perceive," said Madame Tencin, "that they are nonsense verses?" The malicious wit retorted, "They are so much like the fine verses I have heard here, that it is not surprising I should be for once mistaken."

In the "Scribleriad" we find a good account of the Cento. A Cento primarily signifies a cloak made of patches. In poetry it denotes a work wholly composed of verses, or passages promiscuously taken from other authors, only disposed in a new form or order, so as to compose a new work and a new meaning. Ausonius has laid down the rules to be observed in composing Cento's. The pieces may be taken either from the same poet, or from several; and the verses may be either taken entire, or divided into two; one half to be connected with another half taken elsewhere; but two verses are never to be taken together. Agreeable to these rules, he has made a pleasant nuptial Cento from Virgil.[84]

The Empress Eudoxia wrote the life of Jesus Christ, in centos taken from Homer; Proba Falconia from Virgil. Among these grave triflers may be mentioned Alexander Ross, who published "Virgilius Evangelizans, sive Historia Domini et Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi Virgilianis verbis et versibus descripta." It was republished in 1769.

A more difficult whim is that of "Reciprocal Verses," which give the same words whether read backwards or forwards. The following lines by Sidonius Apollinaris were once infinitely admired:—

Signa te signa temere me tangis et angis. Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.

The reader has only to take the pains of reading the lines backwards, and he will find himself just where he was after all his fatigue.[85]

Capitaine Lasphrise, a French self-taught poet, boasts of his inventions; among other singularities, one has at least the merit of la difficulte vaincue. He asserts this novelty to be entirely his own; the last word of every verse forms the first word of the following verse:

Falloit-il que le ciel me rendit amoureux Amoureux, jouissant d'une beaute craintive, Craintive a recevoir la douceur excessive, Excessive au plaisir qui rend l'amant heureux; Heureux si nous avions quelques paisibles lieux, Lieux ou plus surement l'ami fidele arrive, Arrive sans soupcon de quelque ami attentive, Attentive a vouloir nous surprendre tous deux.

Francis Colonna, an Italian Monk, is the author of a singular book entitled "The Dream of Poliphilus," in which he relates his amours with a lady of the name of Polia. It was considered improper to prefix his name to the work; but being desirous of marking it by some peculiarity, that he might claim it at any distant day, he contrived that the initial letters of every chapter should be formed of those of his name, and of the subject he treats. This strange invention was not discovered till many years afterwards: when the wits employed themselves in deciphering it, unfortunately it became a source of literary altercation, being susceptible of various readings. The correct appears thus:—POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCUS COLUMNA PERAMAVIT. "Brother Francis Colonna passionately loved Polia." This gallant monk, like another Petrarch, made the name of his mistress the subject of his amatorial meditations; and as the first called his Laura, his Laurel, this called his Polia, his Polita.

A few years afterwards, Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus employed a similar artifice in his ZODIACUS VITAE, "The Zodiac of Life:" the initial letters of the first twenty-nine verses of the first book of this poem forming his name, which curious particular was probably unknown to Warton in his account of this work.—The performance is divided into twelve books, but has no reference to astronomy, which we might naturally expect. He distinguished his twelve books by the twelve names of the celestial signs, and probably extended or confined them purposely to that number, to humour his fancy. Warton, however, observes, "This strange pedantic title is not totally without a conceit, as the author was born at Stellada or Stellata, a province of Ferrara, and from whence he called himself Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus." The work itself is a curious satire on the Pope and the Church of Rome. It occasioned Bayle to commit a remarkable literary blunder, which I shall record in its place. Of Italian conceit in those times, of which Petrarch was the father, with his perpetual play on words and on his Laurel, or his mistress Laura, he has himself afforded a remarkable example. Our poet lost his mother, who died in her thirty-eighth year: he has commemorated her death by a sonnet composed of thirty-eight lines. He seems to have conceived that the exactness of the number was equally natural and tender.

Are we not to class among literary follies the strange researches which writers, even of the present day, have made in Antediluvian times? Forgeries of the grossest nature have been alluded to, or quoted as authorities. A Book of Enoch once attracted considerable attention; this curious forgery has been recently translated. The Sabeans pretend they possess a work written by Adam! and this work has been recently appealed to in favour of a visionary theory![86] Astle gravely observes, that "with respect to Writings attributed to the Antediluvians, it seems not only decent but rational to say that we know nothing concerning them." Without alluding to living writers, Dr. Parsons, in his erudite "Remains of Japhet," tracing the origin of the alphabetical character, supposes that letters were known to Adam! Some, too, have noticed astronomical libraries in the Ark of Noah! Such historical memorials are the deliriums of learning, or are founded on forgeries.

Hugh Broughton, a writer of controversy in the reign of James the First, shows us, in a tedious discussion on Scripture chronology, that Rahab was a harlot at ten years of age; and enters into many grave discussions concerning the colour of Aaron's ephod, and the language which Eve first spoke. This writer is ridiculed in Ben Jonson's Comedies:—he is not without rivals even in the present day! Covarruvias, after others of his school, discovers that when male children are born they cry out with an A, being the first vowel of the word Adam, while the female infants prefer the letter E, in allusion to Eve; and we may add that, by the pinch of a negligent nurse, they may probably learn all their vowels. Of the pedantic triflings of commentators, a controversy among the Portuguese on the works of Camoens is not the least. Some of these profound critics, who affected great delicacy in the laws of epic poetry, pretended to be doubtful whether the poet had fixed on the right time for a king's dream; whether, said they, a king should have a propitious dream on his first going to bed or at the dawn of the following morning? No one seemed to be quite certain; they puzzled each other till the controversy closed in this felicitous manner, and satisfied both the night and the dawn critics. Barreto discovered that an accent on one of the words alluded to in the controversy would answer the purpose, and by making king Manuel's dream to take place at the dawn would restore Camoens to their good opinion, and preserve the dignity of the poet.

Chevreau begins his History of the World in these words:—"Several learned men have examined in what season God created the world, though there could hardly be any season then, since there was no sun, no moon, nor stars. But as the world must have been created in one of the four seasons, this question has exercised the talents of the most curious, and opinions are various. Some say it was in the month of Nisan, that is, in the spring: others maintain that it was in the month of Tisri, which begins the civil year of the Jews, and that it was on the sixth day of this month, which answers to our September, that Adam and Eve were created, and that it was on a Friday, a little after four o'clock in the afternoon!" This is according to the Rabbinical notion of the eve of the Sabbath.

The Irish antiquaries mention public libraries that were before the flood; and Paul Christian Ilsker, with profounder erudition, has given an exact catalogue of Adam's. Messieurs O'Flaherty, O'Connor, and O'Halloran, have most gravely recorded as authentic narrations the wildest legendary traditions; and more recently, to make confusion doubly confounded, others have built up what they call theoretical histories on these nursery tales. By which species of black art they contrive to prove that an Irishman is an Indian, and a Peruvian may be a Welshman, from certain emigrations which took place many centuries before Christ, and some about two centuries after the flood! Keating, in his "History of Ireland," starts a favourite hero in the giant Partholanus, who was descended from Japhet, and landed on the coast of Munster 14th May, in the year of the world 1987. This giant succeeded in his enterprise, but a domestic misfortune attended him among his Irish friends:—his wife exposed him to their laughter by her loose behaviour, and provoked him to such a degree that he killed two favourite greyhounds; and this the learned historian assures us was the first instance of female infidelity ever known in Ireland!

The learned, not contented with Homer's poetical pre-eminence, make him the most authentic historian and most accurate geographer of antiquity, besides endowing him with all the arts and sciences to be found in our Encyclopaedia. Even in surgery, a treatise has been written to show, by the variety of the wounds of his heroes, that he was a most scientific anatomist; and a military scholar has lately told us, that from him is derived all the science of the modern adjutant and quarter-master general; all the knowledge of tactics which we now possess; and that Xenophon, Epaminondas, Philip, and Alexander, owed all their warlike reputation to Homer!

To return to pleasanter follies. Des Fontaines, the journalist, who had wit and malice, inserted the fragment of a letter which the poet Rousseau wrote to the younger Racine whilst he was at the Hague. These were the words: "I enjoy the conversation within these few days of my associates in Parnassus. Mr. Piron is an excellent antidote against melancholy; but"—&c. Des Fontaines maliciously stopped at this but. In the letter of Rousseau it was, "but unfortunately he departs soon." Piron was very sensibly affected at this equivocal but, and resolved to revenge himself by composing one hundred epigrams against the malignant critic. He had written sixty before Des Fontaines died: but of these only two attracted any notice.

Towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, Antonio Cornezano wrote a hundred different sonnets on one subject, "the eyes of his mistress!" to which possibly Shakspeare may allude, when Jaques describes a lover, with his

Woeful ballad, Made to his mistress' eyebrow.

Not inferior to this ingenious trifler is Nicholas Franco, well known in Italian literature, who employed himself in writing two hundred and eighteen satiric sonnets, chiefly on the famous Peter Aretin. This lampooner had the honour of being hanged at Rome for his defamatory publications. In the same class are to be placed two other writers. Brebeuf, who wrote one hundred and fifty epigrams against a painted lady. Another wit, desirous of emulating him, and for a literary bravado, continued the same subject, and pointed at this unfortunate fair three hundred more, without once repeating the thoughts of Brebeuf! There is a collection of poems called "La PUCE des grands jours de Poitiers." "The FLEA of the carnival of Poietiers." These poems were begun by the learned Pasquier, who edited the collection, upon a FLEA which was found one morning in the bosom of the famous Catherine des Roches!

Not long ago, a Mr. and Mrs. Bilderdyk, in Flanders, published poems under the whimsical title of "White and Red."—His own poems were called white, from the colour of his hair; and those of his lady red, in allusion to the colour of the rose. The idea must be Flemish!

Gildon, in his "Laws of Poetry," commenting on this line of the Duke of Buckingham's "Essay on Poetry,"

Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well:

very profoundly informs his readers "That what is here said has not the least regard to the penmanship, that is, to the fairness or badness of the handwriting," and proceeds throughout a whole page, with a panegyric on a fine handwriting! The stupidity of dulness seems to have at times great claims to originality!

Littleton, the author of the Latin and English Dictionary, seems to have indulged his favourite propensity to punning so far as even to introduce a pun in the grave and elaborate work of a Lexicon. A story has been raised to account for it, and it has been ascribed to the impatient interjection of the lexicographer to his scribe, who, taking no offence at the peevishness of his master, put it down in the Dictionary. The article alluded to is, "CONCURRO, to run with others; to run together; to come together; to fall foul of one another; to CON-cur, to CON-dog."

Mr. Todd, in his Dictionary, has laboured to show the "inaccuracy of this pretended narrative." Yet a similar blunder appears to have happened to Ash. Johnson, while composing his Dictionary, sent a note to the Gentleman's Magazine to inquire the etymology of the word curmudgeon. Having obtained the information, he records in his work the obligation to an anonymous letter-writer. "Curmudgeon, a vicious way of pronouncing coeur mechant. An unknown correspondent." Ash copied the word into his dictionary in this manner: "Curmudgeon: from the French coeur unknown; and mechant, a correspondent." This singular negligence ought to be placed in the class of our literary blunders; these form a pair of lexicographical anecdotes.

Two singular literary follies have been practised on Milton. There is a prose version of his "Paradise Lost," which was innocently translated from the French version of his epic! One Green published a specimen of a new version of the "Paradise Lost" into blank verse! For this purpose he has utterly ruined the harmony of Milton's cadences, by what he conceived to be "bringing that amazing work somewhat nearer the summit of perfection."

A French author, when his book had been received by the French Academy, had the portrait of Cardinal Richelieu engraved on his title-page, encircled by a crown of forty rays, in each of which was written the name of the celebrated forty academicians.

The self-exaltation frequently employed by injudicious writers, sometimes places them in ridiculous attitudes. A writer of a bad dictionary, which he intended for a Cyclopaedia, formed such an opinion of its extensive sale, that he put on the title-page the words "first edition," a hint to the gentle reader that it would not be the last. Desmarest was so delighted with his "Clovis," an epic poem, that he solemnly concludes his preface with a thanksgiving to God, to whom he attributes all its glory! This is like that conceited member of a French Parliament, who was overheard, after his tedious harangue, muttering most devoutly to himself, "Non nobis Domine."

Several works have been produced from some odd coincidence with the name of their authors. Thus, De Saussay has written a folio volume, consisting of panegyrics of persons of eminence whose Christian names were Andrew; because Andrew was his own name. Two Jesuits made a similar collection of illustrious men whose Christian names were Theophilus and Philip, being their own. Anthony Saunderus has also composed a treatise of illustrious Anthonies! And we have one Buchanan, who has written the lives of those persons who were so fortunate as to have been his namesakes.

Several forgotten writers have frequently been intruded on the public eye, merely through such trifling coincidences as being members of some particular society, or natives of some particular country. Cordeliers have stood forward to revive the writings of Duns Scotus, because he had been a cordelier; and a Jesuit compiled a folio on the antiquities of a province, merely from the circumstance that the founder of his order, Ignatius Loyola, had been born there. Several of the classics are violently extolled above others, merely from the accidental circumstance of their editors having collected a vast number of notes, which they resolved to discharge on the public. County histories have been frequently compiled, and provincial writers have received a temporary existence, from the accident of some obscure individual being an inhabitant of some obscure town.

On such literary follies Malebranche has made this refined observation. The critics, standing in some way connected with the author, their self-love inspires them, and abundantly furnishes eulogiums which the author never merited, that they may thus obliquely reflect some praise on themselves. This is made so adroitly, so delicately, and so concealed, that it is not perceived.

The following are strange inventions, originating in the wilful bad taste of the authors. OTTO VENIUS, the master of Rubens, is the designer of Le Theatre moral de la Vie humaine. In this emblematical history of human life, he has taken his subjects from Horace; but certainly his conceptions are not Horatian. He takes every image in a literal sense. If Horace says, "Misce stultitiam CONSILIIS BREVEM," behold, Venius takes brevis personally, and represents Folly as a little short child! of not above three or four years old! In the emblem which answers Horace's "Raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit PEDE POENA CLAUDO," we find Punishment with a wooden leg.—And for "PULVIS ET UMBRA SUMUS," we have a dark burying vault, with dust sprinkled about the floor, and a shadow walking upright between two ranges of urns. For "Virtus est vitium fugere, et sapientia prima stultitia caruisse," most flatly he gives seven or eight Vices pursuing Virtue, and Folly just at the heels of Wisdom. I saw in an English Bible printed in Holland an instance of the same taste: the artist, to illustrate "Thou seest the mote in thy neighbour's eye, but not the beam in thine own," has actually placed an immense beam which projects from the eye of the cavalier to the ground![87]

As a contrast to the too obvious taste of VENIUS, may be placed CESARE DI RIPA, who is the author of an Italian work, translated into most European languages, the Iconologia; the favourite book of the age, and the fertile parent of the most absurd offspring which Taste has known. Ripa is as darkly subtle as Venius is obvious; and as far-fetched in his conceits as the other is literal. Ripa represents Beauty by a naked lady, with her head in a cloud; because the true idea of beauty is hard to be conceived! Flattery, by a lady with a flute in her hand, and a stag at her feet; because stags are said to love music so much, that they suffer themselves to be taken, if you play to them on a flute. Fraud, with two hearts in one hand, and a mask in the other;—his collection is too numerous to point out more instances. Ripa also describes how the allegorical figures are to be coloured; Hope is to have a sky-blue robe, because she always looks towards heaven. Enough of these capriccios!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 82: The Scribleriad is a poem now scarcely known. It was a partial imitation of the Dunciad written by Richard Owen Cambridge, a scholar and man of fortune, who, in his residence at Twickenham, surrounded by friends of congenial tastes, enjoyed a life of literary ease. The Scribleriad is an attack on pseudo-science, the hero being a virtuoso of the most Quixotic kind, who travels far to discover rarities, loves a lady with the plica Polonica, waits three years at Naples to see the eruption of Vesuvius; and plays all kinds of fantastic tricks, as if in continual ridicule of The Philosophical Transactions, which are especially aimed at in the notes which accompany the poem. It achieved considerable notoriety in its own day, and is not without merit. It was published by Dodsley, in 1751, in a handsome quarto, with some good engravings by Boitard.]

[Footnote 83: Thomas Jordan, a poet of the time of Charles II., has the following specimen of a double acrostic, which must have occupied a large amount of labour. He calls it "a cross acrostick on two crost lovers." The man's name running through from top to bottom, and the female's the contrary way of the poem.

Though crost in our affections, still the flames Of Honour shall secure our noble Names; Nor shall Our fate divorce our faith, Or cause The least Mislike of love's Diviner lawes. Crosses sometimes Are cures, Now let us prove, That no strength Shall Abate the power of love: Honour, wit, beauty, Riches, wise men call Frail fortune's Badges, In true love lies all. Therefore to him we Yield, our Vowes shall be Paid—Read, and written in Eternity: That All may know when men grant no Redress, Much love can sweeten the unhappinesS.]

[Footnote 84: The following example, barbarously made up in this way from passages in the AEneid and the Georgics, is by Stephen de Pleurre, and describes the adoration of the Magi. The references to each half line of the originals are given, the central cross marks the length of each quotation.

Tum Reges—— 7 AE . 98. Externi veniunt x quae cuiq; est copia laeti. 5 AE . 100. 11 AE . 333. Munera portantes x molles sua tura Sabaei. 1 G . 57. 3 AE . 464. Dona dehinc auro gravia x Myrrhaque madentes. 12 AE . 100. 9 AE . 659. Agnovere Deum Regum x Regumque parentum. 6 AE . 548. 1 G . 418. Mutavere vias x perfectis ordine votis. 10 AE . 548.]

[Footnote 85: The old Poet, Gascoigne, composed one of the longest English specimens, which he says gave him infinite trouble. It is as follows:—

"Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel."]

[Footnote 86: We need feel little wonder at this when "The Book of Mormon" could be fabricated in our own time, and, with abundant evidence of that fact, yet become the Gospel of a very large number of persons.]

[Footnote 87: There are several instances of this ludicrous literal representation. Daniel Hopfer, a German engraver of the 16th century, published a large print of this subject; the scene is laid in the interior of a Gothic church, and the beam is a solid squared piece of timber, reaching from the eye of the man to the walls of the building. This peculiar mode of treating the subject may be traced to the earliest picture-books—thus the Ars Memorandi, a block-book of the early part of the 15th century, represents this figure of speech by a piece of timber transfixing a human eye.]



LITERARY CONTROVERSY.

In the article MILTON, I had occasion to give some strictures on the asperity of literary controversy, drawn from his own and Salmasius's writings. If to some the subject has appeared exceptionable, to me, I confess, it seems useful, and I shall therefore add some other particulars; for this topic has many branches. Of the following specimens the grossness and malignity are extreme; yet they were employed by the first scholars in Europe.

Martin Luther was not destitute of genius, of learning, or of eloquence; but his violence disfigured his works with singularities of abuse. The great reformer of superstition had himself all the vulgar ones of his day; he believed that flies were devils; and that he had had a buffeting with Satan, when his left ear felt the prodigious beating. Hear him express himself on the Catholic divines: "The Papists are all asses, and will always remain asses. Put them in whatever sauce you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, skinned, beat, hashed, they are always the same asses."

Gentle and moderate, compared with a salute to his holiness:—"The Pope was born out of the Devil's posteriors. He is full of devils, lies, blasphemies, and idolatries; he is anti-Christ; the robber of churches; the ravisher of virgins; the greatest of pimps; the governor of Sodom, &c. If the Turks lay hold of us, then we shall be in the hands of the Devil; but if we remain with the Pope, we shall be in hell.—What a pleasing sight would it be to see the Pope and the Cardinals hanging on one gallows in exact order, like the seals which dangle from the bulls of the Pope! What an excellent council would they hold under the gallows!"[88]

Sometimes, desirous of catching the attention of the vulgar, Luther attempts to enliven his style by the grossest buffooneries: "Take care, my little Popa! my little ass! Go on slowly: the times are slippery: this year is dangerous: if them fallest, they will exclaim, See! how our little Pope is spoilt!" It was fortunate for the cause of the Reformation that the violence of Luther was softened in a considerable degree by the meek Melancthon, who often poured honey on the sting inflicted by the angry wasp. Luther was no respecter of kings; he was so fortunate, indeed, as to find among his antagonists a crowned head; a great good fortune for an obscure controversialist, and the very punctum saliens of controversy. Our Henry VIII. wrote his book against the new doctrine: then warm from scholastic studies, Henry presented Leo X. with a work highly creditable to his abilities, according to the genius of the age. Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, has analysed the book, and does not ill describe its spirit: "Henry seems superior to his adversary in the vigour and propriety of his style, in the force of his reasoning, and the learning of his citations. It is true he leans too much upon his character, argues in his garter-robes, and writes as 'twere with his sceptre." But Luther in reply abandons his pen to all kinds of railing and abuse. He addresses Henry VIII. in the following style: "It is hard to say if folly can be more foolish, or stupidity more stupid, than is the head of Henry. He has not attacked me with the heart of a king, but with the impudence of a knave. This rotten worm of the earth having blasphemed the majesty of my king, I have a just right to bespatter his English majesty with his own dirt and ordure. This Henry has lied." Some of his original expressions to our Henry VIII. are these: "Stulta, ridicula, et verissime Henricicana et Thomastica sunt haec—Regem Angliae Henricum istum plane mentiri, &c.—Hoc agit inquietus Satan, ut nos a Scripturis avocet per sceleratos Henricos," &c.—He was repaid with capital and interest by an anonymous reply, said to have been written by Sir Thomas More, who concludes his arguments by leaving Luther in language not necessary to translate: "cum suis furiis et furoribus, cum suis merdis et stercoribus cacantem cacatumque." Such were the vigorous elegancies of a controversy on the Seven Sacraments! Long after, the court of Rome had not lost the taste of these "bitter herbs:" for in the bull of the canonization of Ignatius Loyola in August, 1623, Luther is called monstrum teterrimum et detestabilis pestis.

Calvin was less tolerant, for he had no Melancthon! His adversaries are never others than knaves, lunatics, drunkards and assassins! Sometimes they are characterised by the familiar appellatives of bulls, asses, cats, and hogs! By him Catholic and Lutheran are alike hated. Yet, after having given vent to this virulent humour, he frequently boasts of his mildness. When he reads over his writings, he tells us, that he is astonished at his forbearance; but this, he adds, is the duty of every Christian! at the same time, he generally finishes a period with—"Do you hear, you dog?" "Do you hear, madman?"

Beza, the disciple of Calvin, sometimes imitates the luxuriant abuse of his master. When he writes against Tillemont, a Lutheran minister, he bestows on him the following titles of honour:—"Polyphemus; an ape; a great ass, who is distinguished from other asses by wearing a hat; an ass on two feet; a monster composed of part of an ape and wild ass; a villain who merits hanging on the first tree we find." And Beza was, no doubt, desirous of the office of executioner!

The Catholic party is by no means inferior in the felicities of their style. The Jesuit Raynaud calls Erasmus the "Batavian buffoon," and accuses him of nourishing the egg which Luther hatched. These men were alike supposed by their friends to be the inspired regulators of religion![89]

Bishop Bedell, a great and good man, respected even by his adversaries, in an address to his clergy, observes, "Our calling is to deal with errors, not to disgrace the man with scolding words. It is said of Alexander, I think, when he overheard one of his soldiers railing lustily against Darius his enemy, that he reproved him, and added, "Friend, I entertain thee to fight against Darius, not to revile him;" and my sentiments of treating the Catholics," concludes Bedell, "are not conformable to the practice of Luther and Calvin; but they were but men, and perhaps we must confess they suffered themselves to yield to the violence of passion."

The Fathers of the Church were proficients in the art of abuse, and very ingeniously defended it. St. Austin affirms that the most caustic personality may produce a wonderful effect, in opening a man's eyes to his own follies. He illustrates his position with a story, given with great simplicity, of his mother Saint Monica with her maid. Saint Monica certainly would have been a confirmed drunkard, had not her maid timelily and outrageously abused her. The story will amuse.—"My mother had by little and little accustomed herself to relish wine. They used to send her to the cellar, as being one of the soberest in the family: she first sipped from the jug and tasted a few drops, for she abhorred wine, and did not care to drink. However, she gradually accustomed herself, and from sipping it on her lips she swallowed a draught. As people from the smallest faults insensibly increase, she at length liked wine, and drank bumpers. But one day being alone with the maid who usually attended her to the cellar, they quarrelled, and the maid bitterly reproached her with being a drunkard! That single word struck her so poignantly that it opened her understanding; and reflecting on the deformity of the vice, she desisted for ever from its use."

To jeer and play the droll, or, in his own words, de bouffonner, was a mode of controversy the great Arnauld defended, as permitted by the writings of the holy fathers. It is still more singular, when he not only brings forward as an example of this ribaldry, Elijah mocking at the false divinities, but God himself bantering the first man after his fall. He justifies the injurious epithets which he has so liberally bestowed on his adversaries by the example of Jesus Christ and the apostles! It was on these grounds also that the celebrated Pascal apologised for the invectives with which he has occasionally disfigured his Provincial Letters. A Jesuit has collected "An Alphabetical Catalogue of the Names of Beasts by which the Fathers characterised the Heretics!" It may be found in Erotemata de malis ac bonis Libris, p. 93, 4to. 1653, of Father Kaynaud. This list of brutes and insects, among which are a vast variety of serpents, is accompanied by the names of the heretics designated!

Henry Fitzsermon, an Irish Jesuit, was imprisoned for his papistical designs and seditious preaching. During his confinement he proved himself to be a great amateur of controversy. He said, "he felt like a bear tied to a stake, and wanted somebody to bait him." A kind office, zealously undertaken by the learned Usher, then a young man. He engaged to dispute with him once a week on the subject of antichrist! They met several times. It appears that our bear was out-worried, and declined any further dog-baiting. This spread an universal joy through the Protestants in Dublin. At the early period of the Reformation, Dr. Smith of Oxford abjured papistry, with the hope of retaining his professorship, but it was given to Peter Martyr. On this our Doctor recants, and writes several controversial works against Peter Martyr; the most curious part of which is the singular mode adopted of attacking others, as well as Peter Martyr. In his margin he frequently breaks out thus: "Let Hooper read this!"—"Here, Ponet, open your eyes and see your errors!"—"Ergo, Cox, thou art damned!" In this manner, without expressly writing against these persons, the stirring polemic contrived to keep up a sharp bush-fighting in his margins. Such was the spirit of those times, very different from our own. When a modern bishop was just advanced to a mitre, his bookseller begged to re-publish a popular theological tract of his against another bishop, because he might now meet him on equal terms. My lord answered—"Mr.——, no more controversy now!" Our good bishop resembled Baldwin, who from a simple monk, arrived to the honour of the see of Canterbury. The successive honours successively changed his manners. Urban the Second inscribed his brief to him in this concise description—Balduino Monastico ferventissimo, Abbati calido, Episcopo tepido, Archiepiscopo remisso!

On the subject of literary controversies, we cannot pass over the various sects of the scholastics: a volume might be compiled of their ferocious wars, which in more than one instance were accompanied by stones and daggers. The most memorable, on account of the extent, the violence, and duration of their contests, are those of the NOMINALISTS and the REALISTS.

It was a most subtle question assuredly, and the world thought for a long while that their happiness depended on deciding, whether universals, that is genera, have a real essence, and exist independent of particulars, that is species:—whether, for instance, we could form an idea of asses, prior to individual asses? Roscelinus, in the eleventh century, adopted the opinion that universals have no real existence, either before or in individuals, but are mere names and words by which the kind of individuals is expressed; a tenet propagated by Abelard, which produced the sect of Nominalists. But the Realists asserted that universals existed independent of individuals,—though they were somewhat divided between the various opinions of Plato and Aristotle. Of the Realists the most famous were Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The cause of the Nominalists was almost desperate, till Occam in the fourteenth century revived the dying embers. Louis XI. adopted the Nominalists, and the Nominalists flourished at large in France and Germany; but unfortunately Pope John XXIII. patronised the Realists, and throughout Italy it was dangerous for a Nominalist to open his lips. The French King wavered, and the Pope triumphed; his majesty published an edict in 1474, in which he silenced for ever the Nominalists, and ordered their books to be fastened up in their libraries with iron chains, that they might not be read by young students! The leaders of that sect fled into England and Germany, where they united their forces with Luther and the first Reformers.

Nothing could exceed the violence with which these disputes were conducted. Vives himself, who witnessed the contests, says that, "when the contending parties had exhausted their stock of verbal abuse, they often came to blows; and it was not uncommon in these quarrels about universals, to see the combatants engaging not only with their fists, but with clubs and swords, so that many have been wounded and some killed."

On this war of words, and all this terrifying nonsense John of Salisbury observes, "that there had been more time consumed than the Caesars had employed in making themselves masters of the world; that the riches of Croesus were inferior to the treasures that had been exhausted in this controversy; and that the contending parties, after having spent their whole lives in this single point, had neither been so happy as to determine it to their satisfaction, nor to find in the labyrinths of science where they had been groping any discovery that was worth the pains they had taken." It may be added that Ramus having attacked Aristotle, for "teaching us chimeras," all his scholars revolted; the parliament put a stop to his lectures, and at length having brought the matter into a law court, he was declared "to be insolent and daring"—the king proscribed his works, he was ridiculed on the stage, and hissed at by his scholars. When at length, during the plague, he opened again his schools, he drew on himself a fresh storm by reforming the pronunciation of the letter Q, which they then pronounced like K—Kiskis for Quisquis, and Kamkam for Quamquam. This innovation Was once more laid to his charge: a new rebellion! and a new ejection of the Anti-Aristotelian! The brother of that Gabriel Harvey who was the friend of Spenser, and with Gabriel had been the whetstone of the town-wits of his time, distinguished himself by his wrath against the Stagyrite. After having with Gabriel predicted an earthquake, and alarmed the kingdom, which never took place (that is the earthquake, not the alarm), the wits buffeted him. Nash says of him, that "Tarlton at the theatre made jests of him, and Elderton consumed his ale-crammed nose to nothing, in bear-baiting him with whole bundles of ballads." Marlow declared him to be "an ass fit only to preach of the iron age." Stung to madness by this lively nest of hornets, he avenged himself in a very cowardly manner—he attacked Aristotle himself! for he set Aristotle with his heels upwards on the school gates at Cambridge, and with asses' ears on his head!