Adriani, whom his son entitles gentiluomo Fiorentino, the writer of the pleasing dissertation "on the Ancient Painters noticed by Pliny," prefixed to his friend Vasari's biographies, wrote as a continuation of Guicciardini, a history of his own times in twenty-two books, of which Denina gives the highest character for its moderate spirit, and from which De Thou has largely drawn, and commends for its authenticity. Our author, however, did not venture to publish his history during his lifetime: it was after his death that his son became the editor.

Nardi, of a noble family and high in office, famed for a translation of Livy which rivals its original in the pleasure it affords, in his retirement from public affairs wrote a history of Florence, which closes with the loss of the liberty of his country in 1531. It was not published till fifty years after his death; even then the editors suppressed many passages which are found in manuscript in the libraries of Florence and Venice, with other historical documents of this noble and patriotic historian.

About the same time the senator Philip Nerli was writing his "Commentarj de' fatti civili," which had occurred in Florence. He gave them with his dying hand to his nephew, who presented the MSS. to the Grand Duke; yet, although this work is rather an apology than a crimination of the Medici family for their ambitious views and their overgrown power, probably some state-reason interfered to prevent the publication, which did not take place till 150 years after the death of the historian!

Bernardo Segni composed a history of Florence still more valuable, which shared the same fate as that of Nerli. It was only after his death that his relatives accidentally discovered this history of Florence, which the author had carefully concealed during his lifetime. He had abstained from communicating to any one the existence of such a work while he lived, that he might not be induced to check the freedom of his pen, nor compromise the cause and the interests of truth. His heirs presented it to one of the Medici family, who threw it aside. Another copy had been more carefully preserved, from which it was printed in 1713, about 150 years after it had been written. It appears to have excited great curiosity, for Lenglet du Fresnoy observes that the scarcity of this history is owing to the circumstance "of the Grand Duke having bought up the copies." Du Fresnoy, indeed, has noticed more than once this sort of address of the Grand Duke; for he observes on the Florentine history of Bruto that the work was not common, the Grand Duke having bought up the copies to suppress them. The author was even obliged to fly from Italy for having delivered his opinions too freely on the house of the Medici. This honest historian thus expresses himself at the close of his work:—"My design has but one end—that our posterity may learn by these notices the root and the causes of so many troubles which we have suffered, while they expose the malignity of those men who have raised them up or prolonged them, as well as the goodness of those who did all which they could to turn them away."

It was the same motive, the fear of offending the great personages or their families, of whom these historians had so freely written, which deterred Benedetto Varchi from publishing his well-known "Storie Fiorentine," which was not given to the world till 1721, a period which appears to have roused the slumbers of the literary men of Italy to recur to their native historians. Varchi, who wrote with so much zeal the history of his fatherland, is noticed by Nardi as one who never took an active part in the events he records; never having combined with any party, and living merely as a spectator. This historian closes the narrative of a horrid crime of Peter Lewis Farnese with this admirable reflection: "I know well this story, with many others which I have freely exposed, may hereafter prevent the reading of my history; but also I know, that besides what Tacitus has said on this subject, the great duty of an historian is not to be more careful of the reputation of persons than is suitable with truth, which is to be preferred to all things, however detrimental it may be to the writer."[113]

Such was that free manner of thinking and of writing which prevailed in these Italian historians, who, often living in the midst of the ruins of popular freedom, poured forth their injured feelings in their secret pages; without the hope, and perhaps without the wish, of seeing them published in their lifetime: a glorious example of self-denial and lofty patriotism!

Had it been inquired of these writers why they did not publish their histories, they might have answered, in nearly the words of an ancient sage, "Because I am not permitted to write as I would; and I would not write as I am permitted." We cannot imagine that these great men were in the least insensible to the applause they denied themselves; they were not of tempers to be turned aside; and it was the highest motive which can inspire an historian, a stern devotion to truth, which reduced them to silence, but not to inactivity! These Florentine and Venetian historians, ardent with truth, and profound in political sagacity, were writing these legacies of history solely for their countrymen, hopeless of their gratitude! If a Frenchman[114] wrote the English history, that labour was the aliment of his own glory; if Hume and Robertson devoted their pens to history, the motive of the task was less glorious than their work; but here we discover a race of historians, whose patriotism alone instigated their secret labour, and who substituted for fame and fortune that mightier spirit, which, amidst their conflicting passions, has developed the truest principles, and even the errors, of Political Freedom!

None of these historians, we have seen, published their works in their lifetime. I have called them the saints of history, rather than the martyrs. One, however, had the intrepidity to risk this awful responsibility, and he stands forth among the most illustrious and ill-fated examples of HISTORICAL MARTYRDOM!

This great historian is Giannone, whose civil history of the kingdom of Naples is remarkable for its profound inquiries concerning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, the laws and customs of that kingdom. With some interruptions from his professional avocations at the bar, twenty years were consumed in writing this history. Researches on ecclesiastical usurpations, and severe strictures on the clergy, are the chief subjects of his bold and unreserved pen. These passages, curious, grave, and indignant, were afterwards extracted from the history by Vernet, and published in a small volume, under the title of "Anecdotes Ecclesiastiques," 1738. When Giannone consulted with a friend on the propriety of publishing his history, his critic, in admiring the work, predicted the fate of the author. "You have," said he, "placed on your head a crown of thorns, and of very sharp ones." The historian set at nought his own personal repose, and in 1723 this elaborate history saw the light. From that moment the historian never enjoyed a day of quiet! Rome attempted at first to extinguish the author with his work; all the books were seized on; and copies of the first edition are of extreme rarity. To escape the fangs of inquisitorial power, the historian of Naples flew from Naples on the publication of his immortal work. The fugitive and excommunicated author sought an asylum at Vienna, where, though he found no friend in the emperor, Prince Eugene and other nobles became his patrons. Forced to quit Vienna, he retired to Venice, when a new persecution arose from the jealousy of the state-inquisitors, who one night landed him on the borders of the pope's dominions. Escaping unexpectedly with his life to Geneva, he was preparing a supplemental volume to his celebrated history, when, enticed by a treacherous friend to a catholic village, Giannone was arrested by an order of the King of Sardinia; his manuscripts were sent to Rome, and the historian imprisoned in a fort. It is curious that the imprisoned Giannone wrote a vindication of the rights of the King of Sardinia, against the claims of the court of Rome. This powerful appeal to the feelings of this sovereign was at first favourably received; but, under the secret influence of Rome, the Sardinian monarch, on the extraordinary plea that he kept Giannone as a prisoner of state that he might preserve him from the papal power, ordered that the vindicator of his rights should be more closely confined than before; and, for this purpose, transferred his state-prisoner to the citadel of Turin, where, after twelve years of persecution and of agitation, our great historian closed his life!

Such was the fate of this historical martyr, whose work the catholic Haym describes as opera scritta con molto fuoco e troppa liberta. He hints that this history is only paralleled by De Thou's great work. This Italian history will ever be ranked among the most philosophical. But, profound as was the masculine genius of Giannone, such was his love of fame, that he wanted the intrepidity requisite to deny himself the delight of giving his history to the world, though some of his great predecessors had set him a noble and dignified example.

One more observation on these Italian historians. All of them represent man in his darkest colours; their drama is terrific; the actors are monsters of perfidy, of inhumanity, and inventors of crimes which seem to want a name! They were all "princes of darkness;" and the age seemed to afford a triumph of Manicheism! The worst passions were called into play by all parties. But if something is to be ascribed to the manners of the times, much more may be traced to that science of politics, which sought for mastery in an undefinable struggle of ungovernable political power; in the remorseless ambition of the despots, and the hatreds and jealousies of the republics. These Italian historians have formed a perpetual satire on the contemptible simulation and dissimulation, and the inexpiable crimes of that system of politics, which has derived a name from one of themselves—the great, may we add, the calumniated, MACHIAVEL?

FOOTNOTES:

[112] They were printed at Basle in 1569—at London in 1595—in Amsterdam, 1663. How many attempts to echo the voice of suppressed truth—Haym's Bib. Ital. 1803.

[113] My friend, Mr. Merivale, whose critical research is only equalled by the elegance of his taste, has supplied me with a note which proves but too well that even writers who compose uninfluenced by party feelings, may not, however, be sufficiently scrupulous in weighing the evidence of the facts which they collect. Mr. Merivale observes, "The strange and improbable narrative with which Varchi has the misfortune of closing his history, should not have been even hinted at without adding, that it is denounced by other writers as a most impudent forgery, invented years after the occurrence is supposed to have happened, by the 'Apostate' bishop Petrus Paulus Vergerius." See its refutation in Amiani, "Hist. di Fano," ii. 149, et seq. 160.

"Varchi's character as an historian cannot but suffer greatly from his having given it insertion on such authority. The responsibility of an author for the truth of what he relates should render us very cautious of giving credit to the writers of memoirs not intended to see the light till a distant period. The credibility of Vergerius, as an acknowledged libeller of Pope Paul III. and his family, appears still more conclusively from his article in Bayle, note K." It must be added, that the calumny of Vergerius may be found in Wolfius's Lect. Mem. ii. 691, in a tract de Idolo Lauretano, published 1556. Varchi is more particular in his details of this monstrous tale. Vergerius's libels, universally read at the time though they were collected afterwards, are now not to be met with, even in public libraries. Whether there was any truth in the story of Peter Lewis Farnese I know not; but crimes of as monstrous a dye occur in the authentic Guicciardini. The story is not yet forgotten, since in the last edition of Haym's Biblioteca Italiana, the best edition is marked as that which at p. 639 contains "la sceleratezza di Pier Lewis Farnese." I am of opinion that Varchi believed the story, by the solemnity of his proposition. Whatever be its truth, the historian's feeling was elevated and intrepid.

[114] Rapin.



OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS.

Our ministers and court favourites, as well as those on the Continent, practised a very impolitical custom, and one likely to be repeated, although it has never failed to cast a popular odium on their names, exciting even the envy of their equals—in the erection of palaces for themselves, which outvied those of their sovereign; and which, to the eyes of the populace, appeared as a perpetual and insolent exhibition of what they deemed the ill-earned wages of peculation, oppression, and court-favour. We discover the seduction of this passion for ostentation, this haughty sense of their power, and this self-idolatry, even among the most prudent and the wisest of our ministers; and not one but lived to lament over this vain act of imprudence. To these ministers the noble simplicity of Pitt will ever form an admirable contrast; while his personal character, as a statesman, descends to posterity unstained by calumny.

The houses of Cardinal Wolsey appear to have exceeded the palaces of the sovereign in magnificence; and potent as he was in all the pride of pomp, the "great cardinal" found rabid envy pursuing him so close at his heels, that he relinquished one palace after the other, and gave up as gifts to the monarch what, in all his overgrown greatness, he trembled to retain for himself. The state satire of that day was often pointed at this very circumstance, as appears in Skelton's "Why come ye not to Court?" and Roy's "Rede me, and be not wrothe."[115] Skelton's railing rhymes leave their bitter teeth in his purple pride; and the style of both these satirists, if we use our own orthography, shows how little the language of the common people has varied during three centuries.

Set up a wretch on high In a throne triumphantly; Make him a great state And he will play check-mate With royal majesty—— The King's Court Should have the excellence, But Hampton Court Hath the pre-eminence; And Yorke Place[116] With my Lord's grace, To whose magnificence Is all the confluence, Suits, and supplications; Embassies of all nations.

Roy, in contemplating the palace, is maliciously reminded of the butcher's lad, and only gives plain sense in plain words.

Hath the Cardinal any gay mansion? Great palaces without comparison, Most glorious of outward sight, And within decked point-device,[117] More like unto a paradise Than an earthly habitation. He cometh then of some noble stock? His father could match a bullock, A butcher by his occupation.

Whatever we may now think of the structure, and the low apartments of Wolsey's PALACE, it is described not only in his own times, but much later, as of unparalleled magnificence; and indeed Cavendish's narrative of the Cardinal's entertainment of the French ambassadors gives an idea of the ministerial prelate's imperial establishment very puzzling to the comprehension of a modern inspector. Six hundred persons, I think, were banqueted and slept in an abode which appears to us so mean, but which Stowe calls "so stately a palace." To avoid the odium of living in this splendid edifice, Wolsey presented it to the king, who, in recompense, suffered the Cardinal occasionally to inhabit this wonder of England, in the character of keeper of the king's palace;[118] so that Wolsey only dared to live in his own palace by a subterfuge! This perhaps was a tribute which ministerial haughtiness paid to popular feeling, or to the jealousy of a royal master.

I have elsewhere shown the extraordinary elegance and prodigality of expenditure of Buckingham's residences; they were such as to have extorted the wonder even of Bassompierre, and unquestionably excited the indignation of those who lived in a poor court, while our gay and thoughtless minister alone could indulge in the wanton profusion.

But Wolsey and Buckingham were ambitious and adventurous; they rose and shone the comets of the political horizon of Europe. The Roman tiara still haunted the imagination of the Cardinal: and the egotistic pride of having out-rivalled Richelieu and Olivarez, the nominal ministers but the real sovereigns of Europe, kindled the buoyant spirits of the gay, the gallant, and the splendid Villiers. But what "folly of the wise" must account for the conduct of the profound Clarendon, and the sensible Sir Robert Walpole, who, like the other two ministers, equally became the victims of this imprudent passion for the ostentatious pomp of a palace. This magnificence looked like the vaunt of insolence in the eyes of the people, and covered the ministers with a popular odium.

Clarendon House is now only to be viewed in a print; but its story remains to be told. It was built on the site of Grafton-street; and when afterwards purchased by Monk, the Duke of Albemarle, he left his title to that well-known street. It was an edifice of considerable extent and grandeur. Clarendon reproaches himself in his Life for "his weakness and vanity" in the vast expense incurred in this building, which he acknowledges had "more contributed to that gust of envy that had so violently shaken him, than any misdemeanour that he was thought to have been guilty of." It ruined his estate; but he had been encouraged to it by the royal grant of the land, by that passion for building to which he owns "he was naturally too much inclined," and perhaps by other circumstances, among which was the opportunity of purchasing the stones which had been designed for the rebuilding of St. Paul's; but the envy it drew on him, and the excess of the architect's proposed expense, had made his life "very uneasy, and near insupportable." The truth is, that when this palace was finished, it was imputed to him as a state-crime; all the evils in the nation, which were then numerous, pestilence, conflagration, war, and defeats, were discovered to be in some way connected with Clarendon House, or, as it was popularly called, either Dunkirk House, or Tangier Hall, from a notion that it had been erected with the golden bribery which the chancellor had received for the sale of Dunkirk and Tangiers.[119] He was reproached with having profaned the sacred stones dedicated to the use of the church. The great but unfortunate master of this palace, who, from a private lawyer, had raised himself by alliance even to royalty, the father-in-law of the Duke of York, it was maliciously suggested, had persuaded Charles the Second to marry the Infanta of Portugal, knowing (but how Clarendon obtained the knowledge his enemies have not revealed) that the Portuguese princess was not likely to raise any obstacle to the inheritance of his own daughter to the throne. At the Restoration, among other enemies, Clarendon found that the royalists were none of the least active; he was reproached by them for preferring those who had been the cause of their late troubles. The same reproach was incurred on the restoration of the Bourbons. It is perhaps more political to maintain active men, who have obtained power, than to reinstate inferior talents, who at least have not their popularity. This is one of the parallel cases which so frequently strike us in exploring political history; and the ultras of Louis the Eighteenth were only the royalists of Charles the Second. There was a strong popular delusion carried on by the wits and the Misses who formed the court of Charles the Second, that the government was as much shared by the Hydes as the Stuarts. We have in the state-poems, an unsparing lampoon, entitled "Clarendon's House-warming;" but a satire yielding nothing to it in severity I have discovered in manuscript; and it is also remarkable for turning chiefly on a pun of the family name of the Earl of Clarendon. The witty and malicious rhymer, after making Charles the Second demand the Great Seal, and resolve to be his own chancellor, proceeds, reflecting on the great political victim:

Lo! his whole ambition already divides The sceptre between the Stuarts and the Hydes. Behold in the depth of our plague and wars, He built him a palace out-braves the stars; Which house (we Dunkirk, he Clarendon, names) Looks down with shame upon St. James; But 'tis not his golden globe that will save him, Being less than the custom-house farmers gave him; His chapel for consecration calls, Whose sacrilege plundered the stones from Paul's. When Queen Dido landed she bought as much ground As the Hyde of a lusty fat bull would surround; But when the said Hyde was cut into thongs, A city and kingdom to Hyde belongs; So here in court, church, and country, far and wide, Here's nought to be seen but Hyde! Hyde! Hyde! Of old, and where law the kingdom divides, 'Twas our Hydes of land, 'tis now land of Hydes!

Clarendon House was a palace, which had been raised with at least as much fondness as pride; and Evelyn tells us that the garden was planned by himself and his lordship; but the cost, as usual, trebled the calculation, and the noble master grieved in silence amidst this splendid pile of architecture.[120] Even when in his exile the sale was proposed to pay his debts, and secure some provision for his younger children, he honestly tells us that "he remained so infatuated with the delight he had enjoyed, that though he was deprived of it, he hearkened very unwillingly to the advice." In 1683 Clarendon House met its fate, and was abandoned to the brokers, who had purchased it for its materials. An affecting circumstance is recorded by Evelyn on this occasion. In returning to town with the Earl of Clarendon, the son of the great earl, "in passing by the glorious palace his father built but a few years before, which they were now demolishing, being sold to certain undertakers,[121] I turned my head the contrary way till the coach was gone past by, lest I might minister occasion of speaking of it, which must needs have grieved him, that in so short a time this pomp was fallen." A feeling of infinite delicacy, so perfectly characteristic of Evelyn!

And now to bring down this subject to times still nearer. We find that Sir Robert Walpole had placed himself exactly in the situation of the great minister we have noticed; we have his confession to his brother Lord Walpole, and to his friend Sir John Hynde Cotton. The historian of this minister observes, that his magnificent building at Houghton drew on him great obloquy. On seeing his brother's house at Wolterton, Sir Robert expressed his wishes that he had contented himself with a similar structure. In the reign of Anne, Sir Robert, sitting by Sir John Hynde Cotton, alluding to a sumptuous house which was then building by Harley, observed, that to construct a great house was a high act of imprudence in any minister! It was a long time after, when he had become prime minister, that he forgot the whole result of the present article, and pulled down his family mansion at Houghton to build its magnificent edifice; it was then Sir John Hynde Cotton reminded him of the reflection which he had made some years ago: the reply of Sir Robert is remarkable—"Your recollection is too late; I wish you had reminded me of it before I began building, for then it might have been of service to me!"

The statesman and politician then are susceptible of all the seduction of ostentation and the pride of pomp! Who would have credited it? But bewildered with power, in the magnificence and magnitude of the edifices which their colossal greatness inhabits, they seem to contemplate on its image!

Sir Francis Walsingham died and left nothing to pay his debts, as appears by a curious fact noticed in the anonymous life of Sir Philip Sidney prefixed to the Arcadia, and evidently written by one acquainted with the family history of his friend and hero. The chivalric Sidney, though sought after by court beauties, solicited the hand of the daughter of Walsingham, although, as it appears, she could have had no other portion than her own virtues and her father's name. "And herein," observes our anonymous biographer, "he was exemplary to all gentlemen not to carry their love in their purses." On this he notices this secret history of Walsingham:

"This is that Sir Francis who impoverished himself to enrich the state, and indeed made England his heir; and was so far from building up of fortune by the benefit of his place, that he demolished that fine estate left him by his ancestors to purchase dear intelligence from all parts of Christendom. He had a key to unlock the pope's cabinet; and, as if master of some invisible whispering-place, all the secrets of Christian princes met at his closet. Wonder not then if he bequeathed no great wealth to his daughter, being privately interred in the choir of Paul's, as much indebted to his creditors though not so much as our nation is indebted to his memory."

Some curious inquirer may afford us a catalogue of great ministers of state who have voluntarily declined the augmentation of their private fortune, while they devoted their days to the noble pursuits of patriotic glory! The labour of this research will be great, and the volume small!

FOOTNOTES:

[115] Skelton's satire is accessible to the reader in the Rev. Alexander Dyce's edition of the poet's works. Roy's poem was printed abroad about 1525, and is of extreme rarity, as the cardinal spared no labour and expense to purchase and destroy all the copies. A second edition was printed at Wesel in 1546. Its author, who had been a friar, was ultimately burned in Portugal for heresy.

[116] The palace of Wolsey, as Archbishop of York, which he had furnished in the most sumptuous manner; after his disgrace it became a royal residence under the name of Whitehall.—Note in Dyce's ed. of Skelton's Works.

[117] Point-device, a term explained by Mr. Douce. He thinks that it is borrowed from the labours of the needle, as we have point-lace, so point-device, i.e., point, a stitch, and devise, devised or invented; applied to describe anything uncommonly exact, or worked with the nicety and precision of stitches made or devised by the needle.—Illustrations of Shakspeare, i. 93. But Mr. Gifford has since observed that the origin of the expression is, perhaps, yet to be sought for: he derives it from a mathematical phrase, a point devise, or a given point, and hence exact, correct, &c.—Ben Jonson, vol. iv. 170. See, for various examples, Mr. Nares's Glossary, art. Point-devise.

[118] Lyson's "Environs," v. 58

[119] Burnet says, "Others called it Holland House, because he was believed to be no friend to the war: so it was given out that he had money from the Dutch."

[120] At the gateway of the Three Kings Inn, near Dover-street, in Piccadilly, are two pilasters with Corinthian capitals, which belonged to Clarendon House, and are perhaps the only remains of that edifice.

[121] An old term for contractors. Evelyn tells us they were "certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it, and the ground about it, 35,000l." They built streets and houses on the site to their great profit, the ground comprising twenty-four acres of land.



"TAXATION NO TYRANNY!"

Such was the title of a famous political tract, which was issued at a moment when a people, in a state of insurrection, put forth a declaration that taxation was tyranny! It was not against an insignificant tax they protested, but against taxation itself! and in the temper of the moment this abstract proposition appeared an insolent paradox. It was instantly run down by that everlasting party which, so far back as in the laws of our Henry the First, are designated by the odd descriptive term of acephali, a people without heads![122] the strange equality of levellers!

These political monsters in all times have had an association of ideas of taxation and tyranny, and with them one name instantly suggests the other! This happened to one Gigli of Sienna, who published the first part of a dictionary of the Tuscan language,[123] of which only 312 leaves amused the Florentines; these having had the honour of being consigned to the flames by the hands of the hangman for certain popular errors; such as, for instance, under the word Gran Duca we find Vedi Gabelli! (see Taxes!) and the word Gabella was explained by a reference to Gran Duca! Grand-duke and taxes were synonymes, according to this mordacious lexicographer! Such grievances, and the modes of expressing them, are equally ancient. A Roman consul, by levying a tax on salt during the Punic war, was nicknamed Salinator, and condemned by "the majesty" of the people! He had formerly done his duty to the country, but the salter was now his reward! He retired from Rome, let his beard grow, and by his sordid dress and melancholy air evinced his acute sensibility. The Romans at length wanted the salter to command the army—as an injured man, he refused—but he was told that he should bear the caprice of the Roman people with the tenderness of a son for the humours of a parent! He had lost his reputation by a productive tax on salt, though this tax had provided an army and obtained a victory!

Certain it is that Gigli and his numerous adherents are wrong: for were they freed from all restraints as much as if they slept in forests and not in houses; were they inhabitants of wilds and not of cities, so that every man should be his own lawgiver, with a perpetual immunity from all taxation, we could not necessarily infer their political happiness. There are nations where taxation is hardly known, for the people exist in such utter wretchedness, that they are too poor to be taxed; of which the Chinese, among others, exhibit remarkable instances. When Nero would have abolished all taxes, in his excessive passion for popularity, the senate thanked him for his good will to the people, but assured him that this was a certain means not of repairing, but of ruining the commonwealth. Bodin, in his curious work "The Republic," has noticed a class of politicians who are in too great favour with the people. "Many seditious citizens, and desirous of innovations, did of late years promise immunity of taxes and subsidies to our people; but neither could they do it, or if they could have done it, they would not; or if it were done, should we have any commonweal, being the ground and foundation of one."[124]

The undisguised and naked term of "taxation" is, however, so odious to the people, that it may be curious to observe the arts practised by governments, and even by the people themselves, to veil it under some mitigating term. In the first breaking out of the American troubles, they probably would have yielded to the mother-country the right of taxation, modified by the term regulation (of their trade); this I infer from a letter of Dr. Robertson, who observes, that "the distinction between taxation and regulation is mere folly!" Even despotic governments have condescended to disguise the contributions forcibly levied, by some appellative which should partly conceal its real nature. Terms have often influenced circumstances, as names do things; and conquest or oppression, which we may allow to be synonymes, apes benevolence whenever it claims as a gift what it exacts as a tribute.

A sort of philosophical history of taxation appears in the narrative of Wood, in his "Inquiry on Homer." He tells us that "the presents (a term of extensive signification in the East) which are distributed annually by the bashaw of Damascus to the several Arab princes through whose territory he conducts the caravan of pilgrims to Mecca, are, at Constantinople, called a free gift, and considered as an act of the sultan's generosity towards his indigent subjects; while, on the other hand, the Arab Sheikhs deny even a right of passage through the districts of their command, and exact those sums as a tax due for the permission of going through their country. In the frequent bloody contests which the adjustment of these fees produces, the Turks complain of robbery, and the Arabs of invasion."[125]

Here we trace taxation through all its shifting forms, accommodating itself to the feelings of the different people; the same principle regulated the alternate terms proposed by the buccaneers, when they asked what the weaker party was sure to give, or when they levied what the others paid only as a common toll.

When Louis the Eleventh of France beheld his country exhausted by the predatory wars of England, he bought a peace of our Edward the Fourth by an annual sum of fifty thousand crowns, to be paid at London, and likewise granted pensions to the English ministers. Holinshed and all our historians call this a yearly tribute; but Comines, the French memoir-writer, with a national spirit, denies that these gifts were either pensions or tributes. "Yet," says Bodin, a Frenchman also, but affecting a more philosophical indifference, "it must be either the one or the other; though I confess, that those who receive a pension to obtain peace, commonly boast of it as if it were a tribute!"[126] Such are the shades of our feelings in this history of taxation and tribute. But there is another artifice of applying soft names to hard things, by veiling a tyrannical act by a term which presents no disagreeable idea to the imagination. When it was formerly thought desirable, in the relaxation of morals which prevailed in Venice, to institute the office of censor, three magistrates were elected bearing this title; but it seemed so harsh and austere in that dissipated city, that these reformers of manners were compelled to change their title; when they were no longer called censors, but I signori sopra il bon vivere della citta, all agreed on the propriety of the office under the softened term. Father Joseph, the secret agent of Cardinal Richelieu, was the inventor of lettres de cachet, disguising that instrument of despotism by the amusing term of a sealed letter. Expatriation would have been merciful compared with the result of that billet-doux, a sealed letter from his majesty!

Burke reflects with profound truth—"Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favourite point, which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered."[127]

One party clamorously asserts that taxation is their grievance, while another demonstrates that the annihilation of taxes would be their ruin! The interests of a great nation, among themselves, are often contrary to each other, and each seems alternately to predominate and to decline. "The sting of taxation," observes Mr. Hallam, "is wastefulness; but it is difficult to name a limit beyond which taxes will not be borne without impatience when faithfully applied." In plainer words, this only signifies, we presume, that Mr. Hallam's party would tax us without "wastefulness!" Ministerial or opposition, whatever be the administration, it follows that "taxation is no tyranny;" Dr. Johnson then was terribly abused in his day for a vox et praeterea nihil!

Still shall the innocent word be hateful, and the people will turn even on their best friend, who in administration inflicts a new impost; as we have shown by the fate of the Roman Salinator! Among ourselves, our government, in its constitution, if not always in its practice, long had a consideration towards the feelings of the people, and often contrived to hide the nature of its exactions by a name of blandishment. An enormous grievance was long the office of purveyance. A purveyor was an officer who was to furnish every sort of provision for the royal house, and sometimes for great lords, during their progresses or journeys. His oppressive office, by arbitrarily fixing the market prices, and compelling the countrymen to bring their articles to market, would enter into the history of the arts of grinding the labouring class of society; a remnant of feudal tyranny! The very title of this officer became odious; and by a statute of Edward III. the hateful name of purveyor was ordered to be changed into acheteur or buyer![128] A change of name, it was imagined, would conceal its nature! The term often devised, strangely contrasted with the thing itself. Levies of money were long raised under the pathetic appeal of benevolences. When Edward IV. was passing over to France, he obtained, under this gentle demand, money towards "the great journey," and afterwards having "rode about the more part of the lands, and used the people in such fair manner, that they were liberal in their gifts;" old Fabian adds, "the which way of the levying of this money was after-named a benevolence." Edward IV. was courteous in this newly-invented style, and was besides the handsomest tax-gatherer in his kingdom! His royal presence was very dangerous to the purses of his loyal subjects, particularly to those of the females. In his progress, having kissed a widow for having contributed a larger sum than was expected from her estate, she was so overjoyed at the singular honour and delight, that she doubled her benevolence, and a second kiss had ruined her! In the succeeding reign of Richard III. the term had already lost the freshness of its innocence. In the speech which the Duke of Buckingham delivered from the hustings in Guildhall, he explained the term to the satisfaction of his auditors, who even then were as cross-humoured as the livery of this day, in their notions of what now we gently call "supplies." "Under the plausible name of benevolence, as it was held in the time of Edward IV., your goods were taken from you much against your will, as if by that name was understood that every man should pay, not what he pleased, but what the king would have him;" or, as a marginal note in Buck's Life of Richard III. more pointedly has it, that "the name of benevolence signified that every man should pay, not what he of his own good will list, but what the king of his good will list to take."[129] Richard III., whose business, like that of all usurpers, was to be popular, in a statute even condemns this "benevolence" as "a new imposition," and enacts that "none shall be charged with it in future; many families having been ruined under these pretended gifts." His successor, however, found means to levy "a benevolence;" but when Henry VIII. demanded one, the citizens of London appealed to the act of Richard III. Cardinal Wolsey insisted that the law of a murderous usurper should not be enforced. One of the common council courageously replied, that "King Richard, conjointly with parliament, had enacted many good statutes." Even then the citizen seems to have comprehended the spirit of our constitution—that taxes should not be raised without the consent of parliament!

Charles the First, amidst his urgent wants, at first had hoped, by the pathetic appeal to benevolences, that he should have touched the hearts of his unfriendly commoners; but the term of benevolence proved unlucky. The resisters of taxation took full advantage of a significant meaning, which had long been lost in the custom: asserting by this very term that all levies of money were not compulsory, but the voluntary gifts of the people. In that political crisis, when in the fulness of time all the national grievances which had hitherto been kept down started up with one voice, the courteous term strangely contrasted with the rough demand. Lord Digby said "the granting of subsidies, under so preposterous a name as of a benevolence, was a malevolence." And Mr. Grimstone observed, that "they have granted a benevolence, but the nature of the thing agrees not with the name." The nature indeed had so entirely changed from the name, that when James I. had tried to warm the hearts of his "benevolent" people, he got "little money, and lost a great deal of love." "Subsidies," that is grants made by parliament, observes Arthur Wilson, a dispassionate historian, "get more of the people's money, but exactions enslave the mind."

When benevolences had become a grievance, to diminish the odium they invented more inviting phrases. The subject was cautiously informed that the sums demanded were only loans; or he was honoured by a letter under the Privy Seal; a bond which the king engaged to repay at a definite period; but privy seals at length got to be hawked about to persons coming out of church. "Privy Seals," says a manuscript letter, "are flying thick and threefold in sight of all the world, which might surely have been better performed in delivering them to every man privately at home." The general loan, which in fact was a forced loan, was one of the most crying grievances under Charles I. Ingenious in the destruction of his own popularity, the king contrived a new mode of "secret instructions to commissioners."[130] They were to find out persons who could bear the largest rates. How the commissioners were to acquire this secret and inquisitorial knowledge appears in the bungling contrivance. It is one of their orders that after a number of inquiries have been put to a person, concerning others who had spoken against loan-money, and what arguments they had used, this person was to be charged in his majesty's name, and upon his allegiance, not to disclose to any other the answer he had given. A striking instance of that fatuity of the human mind, when a weak government is trying to do what it knows not how to perform: it was seeking to obtain a secret purpose by the most open and general means: a self-destroying principle!

Our ancestors were children in finance; their simplicity has been too often described as tyranny! but from my soul do I believe, on this obscure subject of taxation, that old Burleigh's advice to Elizabeth includes more than all the squabbling pamphlets of our political economists,—"WIN HEARTS, AND YOU HAVE THEIR HANDS AND PURSES!"

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Cowel's "Interpreter," art. Acephali. This by-name we unexpectedly find in a grave antiquarian law-dictionary! probably derived from Pliny's description of a people whom some travellers had reported to have found in this predicament, in their fright and haste in attempting to land on a hostile shore among savages. To account for this fabulous people, it has been conjectured they wore such high coverings, that their heads did not appear above their shoulders, while their eyes seemed to be placed in their breasts. How this name came to be introduced into the laws of Henry the First remains to be told by some profound antiquary; but the allusion was common in the middle ages. Cowel says, "Those are called acephali who were the levellers of that age, and acknowledged no head or superior."

[123] Vocabulario di Santa Caterina e della Lingua Sanese, 1717. This pungent lexicon was prohibited at Rome by desire of the court of Florence. The history of this suppressed work may be found in Il Giornale de' Letterati d' Italia, tomo xxix. 1410. In the last edition of Haym's "Biblioteca Italiana," 1803, it is said to be reprinted at Manilla, nell' Isole Fillippine!—For the book-licensers it is a great way to go for it.

[124] Bodin's "Six Books of a Commonwealth," translated by Richard Knolles, 1606. A work replete with the practical knowledge of politics, and of which Mr. Dugald Stewart has delivered a high opinion. Yet this great politician wrote a volume to anathematise those who doubted the existence of sorcerers and witches, &c., whom he condemns to the flames! See his "Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593.

[125] Wood's "Inquiry on Homer," p. 153.

[126] Bodin's "Commonweal," translated by R. Knolles, p. 148. 1606.

[127] Burke's Works, vol. i. 288.

[128] The modern word cheater is traced by some authors to this term, which soon became odious to the populace.

[129] Daines Barrington, in "Observations on the Statutes," gives the marginal note of Buck as the words of the duke; they certainly served his purpose to amuse, better than the veracious ones; but we expect from a grave antiquary inviolable authenticity. The duke is made by Barrington a sort of wit, but the pithy quaintness is Buck's.

[130] These "Private Instructions to the Commissioners for the General Loan" may be found in Rushworth, i. 418.



THE BOOK OF DEATH.

Montaigne was fond of reading minute accounts of the deaths of remarkable persons; and, in the simplicity of his heart, old Montaigne wished to be learned enough to form a collection of these deaths, to observe "their words, their actions, and what sort of countenance they put upon it." He seems to have been a little over curious about deaths, in reference, no doubt, to his own, in which he was certainly deceived; for we are told that he did not die as he had promised himself,—expiring in the adoration of the mass; or, as his preceptor Buchanan would have called it, in "the act of rank idolatry."

I have been told of a privately printed volume, under the singular title of "The Book of Death," where an amateur has compiled the pious memorials of many of our eminent men in their last moments: and it may form a companion-piece to the little volume on "Les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant." This work, I fear, must be monotonous; the deaths of the righteous must resemble each other; the learned and the eloquent can only receive in silence that hope which awaits "the covenant of the grave." But this volume will not establish any decisive principle, since the just and the religious have not always encountered death with indifference, nor even in a fit composure of mind.

The functions of the mind are connected with those of the body. On a death-bed a fortnight's disease may reduce the firmest to a most wretched state; while, on the contrary, the soul struggles, as it were in torture, in a robust frame. Nani, the Venetian historian, has curiously described the death of Innocent the Tenth, who was a character unblemished by vices, and who died at an advanced age, with too robust a constitution. Dopo lunga e terribile agonia, con dolore e con pena, seperandosi l'anima da quel corpo robusto, egli spiro ai sette di Genuaro, nel ottantesimo primo de suoi anno. "After a long and terrible agony, with great bodily pain and difficulty, his soul separated itself from that robust frame, and expired in his eighty-first year."

Some have composed sermons on death, while they passed many years of anxiety, approaching to madness, in contemplating their own. The certainty of an immediate separation from all our human sympathies may, even on a death-bed suddenly disorder the imagination. The great physician of our times told me of a general, who had often faced the cannon's mouth, dropping down in terror, when informed by him that his disease was rapid and fatal. Some have died of the strong imagination of death. There is a print of a knight brought on the scaffold to suffer; he viewed the headsman; he was blinded, and knelt down to receive the stroke. Having passed through the whole ceremony of a criminal execution, accompanied by all its disgrace, it was ordered that his life should be spared. Instead of the stroke from the sword, they poured cold water over his neck. After this operation the knight remained motionless; they discovered that he had expired in the very imagination of death! Such are among the many causes which may affect the mind in the hour of its last trial. The habitual associations of the natural character are most likely to prevail, though not always. The intrepid Marshal Biron disgraced his exit by womanish tears and raging imbecility; the virtuous Erasmus, with miserable groans, was heard crying out, Domine! Domine! fac finem! fac finem! Bayle having prepared his proof for the printer, pointed to where it lay, when dying. The last words which Lord Chesterfield was heard to speak were, when the valet, opening the curtains of the bed, announced Mr. Dayroles, "Give Dayroles a chair!" "This good breeding," observed the late Dr. Warren, his physician, "only quits him with his life." The last words of Nelson were, "Tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to an anchor." The tranquil grandeur which cast a new majesty over Charles the First on the scaffold, appeared when he declared, "I fear not death! Death is not terrible to me!" And the characteristic pleasantry of Sir Thomas More exhilarated his last moments, when, observing the weakness of the scaffold, he said, in mounting it, "I pray you, see me up safe, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself!" Sir Walter Rawleigh passed a similar jest when going to the scaffold.[131]

My ingenious friend Dr. Sherwen has furnished me with the following anecdotes of death:—In one of the bloody battles fought by the Duke d'Enghien, two French noblemen were left wounded among the dead on the field of battle. One complained loudly of his pains; the other, after long silence, thus offered him consolation: "My friend, whoever you are, remember that our God died on the cross, our king on the scaffold; and if you have strength to look at him who now speaks to you, you will see that both his legs are shot away."

At the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, the royal victim looking at the soldiers, who had pointed their fusees, said, "Grenadiers! lower your arms, otherwise you will miss, or only wound me!" To two of them who proposed to tie a handkerchief over his eyes, he said, "A loyal soldier who has been so often exposed to fire and sword can see the approach of death with naked eyes and without fear."

After a similar caution on the part of Sir George Lisle, or Sir Charles Lucas, when murdered in nearly the same manner at Colchester, by the soldiers of Fairfax, the loyal hero, in answer to their assertions and assurances that they would take care not to miss him, nobly replied, "You have often missed me when I have been nearer to you in the field of battle."

When the governor of Cadiz, the Marquis de Solano, was murdered by the enraged and mistaken citizens, to one of his murderers, who had run a pike through his back, he calmly turned round and said, "Coward, to strike there! Come round—if you dare face—and destroy me!"

Abernethy, in his Physiological Lectures, has ingeniously observed that "Shakspeare has represented Mercutio continuing to jest, though conscious that he was mortally wounded; the expiring Hotspur thinking of nothing but honour; and the dying Falstaff still cracking his jests upon Bardolph's nose. If such facts were duly attended to, they would prompt us to make a more liberal allowance for each other's conduct, under certain circumstances, than we are accustomed to do." The truth seems to be, that whenever the functions of the mind are not disturbed by "the nervous functions of the digestive organs," the personal character predominates even in death, and its habitual associations exist to its last moments. Many religious persons may have died without showing in their last moments any of those exterior acts, or employing those fervent expressions, which the collector of "The Book of Death" would only deign to chronicle; their hope is not gathered in their last hour.

Yet many have delighted to taste of death long before they have died, and have placed before their eyes all the furniture of mortality. The horrors of a charnel-house is the scene of their pleasure. The "Midnight Meditations" of Quarles preceded Young's "Night Thoughts" by a century, and both these poets loved preternatural terror.

If I must die, I'll snatch at everything That may but mind me of my latest breath; DEATH'S-HEADS, GRAVES, KNELLS, BLACKS,[132] TOMBS, all these shall bring Into my soul such useful thoughts of death, That this sable king of fears Shall not catch me unawares.—QUARLES.

But it may be doubtful whether the thoughts of death are useful, whenever they put a man out of the possession of his faculties. Young pursued the scheme of Quarles: he raised about him an artificial emotion of death: he darkened his sepulchral study, placing a skull on his table by lamp-light; as Dr. Donne had his portrait taken, first winding a sheet over his head and closing his eyes; keeping this melancholy picture by his bed-side as long as he lived, to remind him of his mortality[133]. Young, even in his garden, had his conceits of death: at the end of an avenue was viewed a seat of an admirable chiaro-oscuro, which, when approached, presented only a painted surface, with an inscription, alluding to the deception of the things of this world. To be looking at "the mirror which flatters not;" to discover ourselves only as a skeleton with the horrid life of corruption about us, has been among those penitential inventions, which have often ended in shaking the innocent by the pangs which are only natural to the damned.[134] Without adverting to those numerous testimonies, the diaries of fanatics, I shall offer a picture of an accomplished and innocent lady, in a curious and unaffected transcript she has left of a mind of great sensibility, where the preternatural terror of death might perhaps have hastened the premature one she suffered.

From the "Reliquiae Gethinianae,"[135] I quote some of Lady Gethin's ideas on "Death."—"The very thoughts of death disturb one's reason; and though a man may have many excellent qualities, yet he may have the weakness of not commanding his sentiments. Nothing is worse for one's health than to be in fear of death. There are some so wise as neither to hate nor fear it; but for my part I have an aversion for it; and with reason; for it is a rash inconsiderate thing, that always comes before it is looked for; always comes unseasonably, parts friends, ruins beauty, laughs at youth, and draws a dark veil over all the pleasures of life.—This dreadful evil is but the evil of a moment, and what we cannot by any means avoid; and it is that which makes it so terrible to me; for were it uncertain, hope might diminish some part of the fear; but when I think I must die, and that I may die every moment, and that too a thousand several ways, I am in such a fright as you cannot imagine. I see dangers where, perhaps, there never were any. I am persuaded 'tis happy to be somewhat dull of apprehension in this case; and yet the best way to cure the pensiveness of the thoughts of death is to think of it as little as possible." She proceeds by enumerating the terrors of the fearful, who "cannot enjoy themselves in the pleasantest places, and although they are neither on sea, river, or creek, but in good health in their chamber, yet are they so well instructed with the fear of dying, that they do not measure it only by the present dangers that wait on us.—Then is it not best to submit to God? But some people cannot do it as they would; and though they are not destitute of reason, but perceive they are to blame, yet at the same time that their reason condemns them their imagination makes their hearts feel what it pleases."

Such is the picture of an ingenious and a religious mind, drawn by an amiable woman, who, it is evident, lived always in the fear of death. The Gothic skeleton was ever haunting her imagination. In Dr. Johnson the same horror was suggested by the thoughts of death. When Boswell once in conversation persecuted Johnson on this subject, whether we might not fortify our minds for the approach of death; he answered in a passion, "No, sir! let it alone! It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives! The art of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time!" But when Boswell persisted in the conversation, Johnson was thrown into such a state of agitation, that he thundered out "Give us no more of this!" and, further, sternly told the trembling and too curious philosopher, "Don't let us meet to-morrow!"

It may be a question whether those who by their preparatory conduct have appeared to show the greatest indifference for death, have not rather betrayed the most curious art to disguise its terrors. Some have invented a mode of escaping from life in the midst of convivial enjoyment. A mortuary preparation of this kind has been recorded of an amiable man, Moncriff, the author of "Histoire des Chats" and "L'Art de Plaire," by his literary friend La Place, who was an actor in, as well as the historian of, the singular narrative. One morning La Place received a note from Moncriff, requesting that "he would immediately select for him a dozen volumes most likely to amuse, and of a nature to withdraw the reader from being occupied by melancholy thoughts." La Place was startled at the unusual request, and flew to his old friend, whom he found deeply engaged in being measured for a new peruke, and a taffety robe-de-chambre, earnestly enjoining the utmost expedition. "Shut the door!" said Moncriff, observing the surprise of his friend. "And now that we are alone, I confide my secret: on rising this morning, my valet in dressing me showed me on this leg this dark spot—from that moment I knew I was 'condemned to death;' but I had presence of mind enough not to betray myself." "Can a head so well organised as yours imagine that such a trifle is a sentence of death?"—"Don't speak so loud, my friend! or rather deign to listen a moment. At my age it is fatal! The system from which I have derived the felicity of a long life has been, that whenever any evil, moral or physical, happens to us, if there is a remedy, all must be sacrificed to deliver us from it—but in a contrary case, I do not choose to wrestle with destiny and to begin complaints, endless as useless! All that I request of you, my friend, is to assist me to pass away the few days which remain for me, free from all cares, of which otherwise they might be too susceptible. But do not think," he added with warmth, "that I mean to elude the religious duties of a citizen, which so many of late affect to contemn. The good and virtuous curate of my parish is coming here under the pretext of an annual contribution, and I have even ordered my physician, on whose confidence I can rely. Here is a list of ten or twelve persons, friends beloved! who are mostly known to you. I shall write to them this evening, to tell them of my condemnation; but if they wish me to live, they will do me the favour to assemble here at five in the evening, where they may be certain of finding all those objects of amusement, which I shall study to discover suitable to their tastes. And you, my old friend, with my doctor, are two on whom I most depend."

La Place was strongly affected by this appeal—neither Socrates, nor Cato, nor Seneca looked more serenely on the approach of death.

"Familiarise yourself early with death!" said the good old man with a smile—"It is only dreadful for those who dread it!"

During ten days after this singular conversation, the whole of Moncriff's remaining life, his apartment was open to his friends, of whom several were ladies; all kinds of games were played till nine o'clock; and that the sorrows of the host might not disturb his guests, he played the chouette at his favourite game of picquet; a supper, seasoned by the wit of the master, concluded at eleven. On the tenth night, in taking leave of his friend, Moncriff whispered to him, "Adieu, my friend! to-morrow morning I shall return your books!" He died, as he foresaw, the following day.

I have sometimes thought that we might form a history of this fear of death, by tracing the first appearances of the SKELETON which haunts our funereal imagination. In the modern history of mankind we might discover some very strong contrasts in the notion of death entertained by men at various epochs. The following article will supply a sketch of this kind.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] To these may be added Queen Anne Boleyn. Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower, in a letter to Cromwell, records that she remarked of her own execution, "'I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck;' and she put her hands about it, laughing heartily. Truly, this lady has much joy and pleasure in death."

[132] Blacks was the term for mourning in James the First and Charles the First's time.

[133] It was from this picture his stone effigy was constructed for his tomb in old St. Paul's. This mutilated figure, which withstood the great fire of London, is still preserved in the crypt of the present cathedral.

[134] A still more curious fashion in this taste for mortuary memorials originated at the court of Henry II. of France; whose mistress, Diana of Poitiers, being a widow; mourning colours of black and white became the fashion at court. Watches in the form of skulls were worn; jewels and pendants in the shape of coffins; and rings decorated with skulls and skeletons.

[135] My discovery of the nature of this rare volume, of what is original and what collected, will be found in volume ii. of this work.



HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH.

Euthanasia! Euthanasia! an easy death! was the exclamation of Augustus; it was what Antoninus Pius enjoyed; and it is that for which every wise man will pray, said Lord Orrery, when perhaps he was contemplating the close of Swift's life.

The ancients contemplated DEATH without terror, and met it with indifference. It was the only divinity to which they never sacrificed, convinced that no human being could turn aside its stroke. They raised altars to Fever, to Misfortune, to all the evils of life; for these might change! But though they did not court the presence of death in any shape, they acknowledged its tranquillity; and in the beautiful fables of their allegorical religion, Death was the daughter of Night, and the sister of Sleep; and ever the friend of the unhappy! To the eternal sleep of death they dedicated their sepulchral monuments—AEternali somno![136] If the full light of revelation had not yet broken on them, it can hardly be denied that they had some glimpses and a dawn of the life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which describe the transmigration of the soul. A butterfly on the extremity of an extinguished lamp, held up by the messenger of the gods intently gazing above, implied a dedication of that soul; Love, with a melancholy air, his legs crossed, leaning on an inverted torch, the flame thus naturally extinguishing itself, elegantly denoted the cessation of human life; a rose sculptured on a sarcophagus, or the emblems of epicurean life traced on it, in a skull wreathed by a chaplet of flowers, such as they wore at their convivial meetings, a flask of wine, a patera, and the small bones used as dice: all these symbols were indirect allusions to death, veiling its painful recollections. They did not pollute their imagination with the contents of a charnel-house. The sarcophagi of the ancients rather recall to us the remembrance of the activity of life; for they are sculptured with battles or games, in basso relievo; a sort of tender homage paid to the dead, observes Mad. de Stael, with her peculiar refinement of thinking.

It would seem that the Romans had even an aversion to mention death in express terms, for they disguised its very name by some periphrasis, such as discessit e vita, "he has departed from life;" and they did not say that their friend had died, but that he had lived; vixit! In the old Latin chronicles, and even in the Foedera and other documents of the middle ages, we find the same delicacy about using the fatal word Death, especially when applied to kings and great people. "Transire a Saeculo—Vitam suam mutare—Si quid de eo humanitus contigerit, &c." I am indebted to Mr. Merivale for this remark. Even among a people less refined, the obtrusive idea of death has been studiously avoided: we are told that when the Emperor of Morocco inquires after any one who has recently died, it is against etiquette to mention the word "death;" the answer is "his destiny is closed!" But this tenderness is only reserved for "the elect" of the Mussulmen. A Jew's death is at once plainly expressed: "He is dead, sir! asking your pardon for mentioning such a contemptible wretch!" i.e. a Jew! A Christian's is described by "The infidel is dead!" or, "The cuckold is dead."

The ancient artists have so rarely attempted to personify Death, that we have not discovered a single revolting image of this nature in all the works of antiquity.[137]—To conceal its deformity to the eye, as well as to elude its suggestion to the mind, seems to have been an universal feeling, and it accorded with a fundamental principle of ancient art; that of never permitting violent passion to produce in its representation distortion of form. This may be observed in the Laocoon, where the mouth only opens sufficiently to indicate the suppressed agony of superior humanity, without expressing the loud cry of vulgar suffering. Pausanias considered as a personification of death a female figure, whose teeth and nails, long and crooked, were engraven on a coffin of cedar, which enclosed the body of Cypselus; this female was unquestionably only one of the Parcae, or the Fates, "watchful to cut the thread of life." Hesiod describes Atropos indeed as having sharp teeth and long nails, waiting to tear and devour the dead; but this image was of a barbarous era. Catullus ventured to personify the Sister Destinies as three Crones; "but in general," Winkelmann observes, "they are portrayed as beautiful virgins, with winged heads, one of whom is always in the attitude of writing on a scroll." Death was a nonentity to the ancient artist. Could he exhibit what represents nothing? Could he animate into action what lies in a state of eternal tranquillity? Elegant images of repose and tender sorrow were all he could invent to indicate the state of death. Even the terms which different nations have bestowed on a burial-place are not associated with emotions of horror. The Greeks called a burying-ground by the soothing term of Coemeterion, or "the sleeping-place;" the Jews, who had no horrors of the grave, by Beth-haim, or, "the house of the living;" the Germans, with religious simplicity, "God's-field." The Scriptures had only noticed that celestial being "the Angel of Death,"—graceful, solemn, and sacred!

Whence, then, originated that stalking skeleton, suggesting so many false and sepulchral ideas, and which for us has so long served as the image of death?

When the Christian religion spread over Europe, the world changed! the certainty of a future state of existence, by the artifices of wicked worldly men, terrified instead of consoling human nature; and in the resurrection the ignorant multitude seemed rather to have dreaded retribution, than to have hoped for remuneration. The Founder of Christianity everywhere breathes the blessedness of social feelings. It is "Our Father!" whom he addresses. The horrors with which Christianity was afterwards disguised arose in the corruptions of Christianity among those insane ascetics who, misinterpreting "the Word of Life," trampled on nature; and imagined that to secure an existence in the other world it was necessary not to exist in the one in which God had placed them. The dominion of mankind fell into the usurping hands of those imperious monks whose artifices trafficed with the terrors of ignorant and hypochondriac "Kaisers and kings." The scene was darkened by penances and by pilgrimages, by midnight vigils, by miraculous shrines, and bloody flagellations; spectres started up amidst their tenebres; millions of masses increased their supernatural influence. Amidst this general gloom of Europe, their troubled imaginations were frequently predicting the end of the world. It was at this period that they first beheld the grave yawn, and Death, in the Gothic form of a gaunt anatomy, parading through the universe! The people were frightened as they viewed, everywhere hung before their eyes, in the twilight of their cathedrals, and their "pale cloisters," the most revolting emblems of death. They startled the traveller on the bridge; they stared on the sinner in the carvings of his table and chair; the spectre moved in the hangings of the apartment; it stood in the niche, and was the picture of their sitting-room; it was worn in their rings, while the illuminator shaded the bony phantom in the margins of their "Horae," their primers, and their breviaries. Their barbarous taste perceived no absurdity in giving action to a heap of dry bones, which could only keep together in a state of immovability and repose; nor that it was burlesquing the awful idea of the resurrection, by exhibiting the incorruptible spirit under the unnatural and ludicrous figure of mortality drawn out of the corruption of the grave.

An anecdote of these monkish times has been preserved by old Gerard Leigh; and as old stories are best set off by old words, Gerard speaketh! "The great Maximilian the emperor came to a monastery in High Almaine (Germany), the monks whereof had caused to be curiously painted the charnel of a man, which they termed—Death! When that well-learned emperor had beholden it awhile, he called unto him his painter, commanding to blot the skeleton out, and to paint therein the image of—a fool. Wherewith the abbot, humbly beseeching him to the contrary, said 'It was a good remembrance!'—'Nay,' quoth the emperor, 'as vermin that annoyeth man's body cometh unlooked for, so doth death, which here is but a fained image, and life is a certain thing, if we know to deserve it.'"[138] The original mind of Maximilian the Great is characterized by this curious story of converting our emblem of death into a parti-coloured fool; and such satirical allusions to the folly of those who persisted in their notion of the skeleton were not unusual with the artists of those times; we find the figure of a fool sitting with some drollery between the legs of one of these skeletons.[139]

This story is associated with an important fact. After they had successfully terrified the people with their charnel-house figure, a reaction in the public feelings occurred, for the skeleton was now employed as a medium to convey the most facetious, satirical, and burlesque notions of human life. Death, which had so long harassed their imaginations, suddenly changed into a theme fertile in coarse humour. The Italians were too long accustomed to the study of the beautiful to allow their pencil to sport with deformity; but the Gothic taste of the German artists, who could only copy their own homely nature, delighted to give human passions to the hideous physiognomy of a noseless skull; to put an eye of mockery or malignity into its hollow socket, and to stretch out the gaunt anatomy into the postures of a Hogarth; and that the ludicrous might be carried to its extreme, this imaginary being, taken from the bone-house, was viewed in the action of dancing! This blending of the grotesque with the most disgusting image of mortality, is the more singular part of this history of the skeleton, and indeed of human nature itself!

"The Dance of Death," erroneously considered as Holbein's, with other similar Dances, however differently treated, have one common subject which was painted in the arcades of burying-grounds, or on town-halls, and in market-places. The subject is usually "The Skeleton" in the act of leading all ranks and conditions to the grave, personated after nature, and in the strict costume of the times. This invention opened a new field for genius; and when we can for a moment forget their luckless choice of their bony and bloodless hero, who to amuse us by a variety of action becomes a sort of horrid Harlequin in these pantomimical scenes, we may be delighted by the numerous human characters, which are so vividly presented to us. The origin of this extraordinary invention is supposed to be a favourite pageant, or religious mummery, invented by the clergy, who in these ages of barbarous Christianity always found it necessary to amuse, as well as to frighten the populace; a circumstance well known to have occurred in so many other grotesque and licentious festivals they allowed the people. The practice of dancing in churches and church-yards was interdicted by several councils; but it was found convenient in those rude times. It seems probable that the clergy contrived the present dance, as more decorous and not without moral and religious emotions. This pageant was performed in churches, in which the chief characters in society were supported in a sort of masquerade, mixing together in a general dance, in the course of which every one in his turn vanished from the scene, to show how one after the other died off. The subject was at once poetical and ethical; and the poets and painters of Germany adopting the skeleton, sent forth this chimerical Ulysses of another world to roam among the men and manners of their own. A popular poem was composed, said to be by one Macaber, which name seems to be a corruption of St. Macaire; the old Gaulish version, reformed, is still printed at Troyes, in France, with the ancient blocks of woodcuts, under the title of "La Grande Danse Macabre des Hommes et des Femmes." Merian's "Todten Tanz," or the "Dance of the Dead," is a curious set of prints of a Dance of Death from an ancient painting, I think not entirely defaced, in a cemetery at Basle, in Switzerland. It was ordered to be painted by a council held there during many years, to commemorate the mortality occasioned by a plague in 1439. The prevailing character of all these works is unquestionably grotesque and ludicrous; not, however, that genius, however barbarous, could refrain in this large subject of human life from inventing scenes often imagined with great delicacy of conception, and even great pathos. Such is the new-married couple, whom Death is leading, beating a drum; and in the rapture of the hour, the bride seems, with a melancholy look, not insensible of his presence; or Death is seen issuing from the cottage of the poor widow with her youngest child, who waves his hand sorrowfully, while the mother and the sister vainly answer; or the old man, to whom Death is playing on a psaltery, seems anxious that his withered fingers should once more touch the strings, while he is carried off in calm tranquillity. The greater part of these subjects of death are, however, ludicrous; and it may be a question, whether the spectators of these Dances of Death did not find their mirth more excited than their religious emotions. Ignorant and terrified as the people were at the view of the skeleton, even the grossest simplicity could not fail to laugh at some of those domestic scenes and familiar persons drawn from among themselves. The skeleton, skeleton as it is, in the creation of genius, gesticulates and mimics, while even its hideous skull is made to express every diversified character, and the result is hard to describe; for we are at once amused and disgusted with so much genius founded on so much barbarism.[140]

When the artist succeeded in conveying to the eye the most ludicrous notions of death, the poets also discovered in it a fertile source of the burlesque. The curious collector is acquainted with many volumes where the most extraordinary topics have been combined with this subject. They made the body and the soul debate together, and ridicule the complaints of a damned soul! The greater part of the poets of the time were always composing on the subject of Death in their humorous pieces.[141] Such historical records of the public mind, historians, intent on political events, have rarely noticed.

Of a work of this nature, a popular favourite was long the one entitled "Le faut mourir, et les Excuses Inutiles qu'on apporte a cette Necessite; Le tout en vers burlesques, 1658." Jacques Jacques, a canon of Ambrun, was the writer, who humorously says of himself that he gives his thoughts just as they lie on his heart, without dissimulation—"For I have nothing double about me except my name! I tell thee some of the most important truths in laughing; it is for thee d'y penser tout a bon." This little volume was procured for me with some difficulty in France; and it is considered as one of the happiest of this class of death-poems, of which I know not of any in our literature.

Our canon of Ambrun, in facetious rhymes, and with the naivete of expression which belongs to his age, and an idiomatic turn fatal to a translator, excels in pleasantry; his haughty hero condescends to hold very amusing dialogues with all classes of society, and delights to confound their "excuses inutiles." The most miserable of men, the galley-slave, the mendicant, alike would escape when he appears to them. "Were I not absolute over them," Death exclaims, "they would confound me with their long speeches; but I have business, and must gallop on!" His geographical rhymes are droll.

Ce que j'ai fait dans l'Afrique Je le fais bien dans l'Amerique; On l'appelle monde nouveau Mais ce sont des brides a veau; Nulle terre a moy n'est nouvelle Je vay partout sans qu'on m'appelle; Mon bras de tout temps commanda Dans le pays du Canada; J'ai tenu de tout temps en bride La Virginie et la Floride, Et j'ai bien donne sur le bec Aux Francais du fort de Kebec. Lorsque je veux je fais la nique Aux Incas, aux rois de Mexique; Et montre aux Nouveaux Grenadins Qu'ils sont des foux et des badins. Chacun sait bien comme je matte Ceux du Bresil et de la Plate, Ainsi que les Taupinembous— En un mot, je fais voir a tout Que ce que nait dans la nature, Doit prendre de moy tablature![142]

The perpetual employments of Death display copious invention with a facility of humour.

Egalement je vay rangeant, Le conseiller et le serjent, Le gentilhomme et le berger, Le bourgeois et le boulanger, Et la maistresse et la servante Et la niece comme la tante; Monsieur l'abbe, monsieur son moine, Le petit clerc et le chanoine; Sans choix je mets dans mon butin Maistre Claude, maistre Martin, Dame Luce, dame Perrete, &c. J'en prends un dans le temps qu'il pleure A quelque autre, au contraire a l'heure Qui demesurement il rit; Je donne le coup qui le frit. J'en prends un, pendant qu'il se leve; En se couchant l'autre j'enleve. Je prends le malade et le sain L'un aujourd'hui, l'autre le demain. J'en surprends un dedans son lit, L'autre a l'estude quand il lit. J'en surprends un le ventre plein Je mene l'autre par la faim. J'attrape l'un pendant qu'il prie, Et l'autre pendant qu'il renie; J'en saisis un au cabaret Entre le blanc et le clairet, L'autre qui dans son oratoire A son Dieu rend honneur et gloire: J'en surprends un lorsqu'il se psame Le jour qu'il epouse sa femme, L'autre le jour que plein de deuil La sieune il voit dans le cercueil; Un a pied et l'autre a cheval, Dans le jeu l'un, et l'autre au bal; Un qui mange et l'autre qui boit, Un qui paye et l'autre qui doit, L'un en ete lorsqu'il moissonne, L'autre eu vendanges dans l'automne, L'un criant almanachs nouveaux— Un qui demande son aumosne L'autre dans le temps qu'il la donne, Je prends le bon maistre Clement, Au temps qu'il prend un lavement, Et prends la dame Catherine Le jour qu'elle prend medecine.

This veil of gaiety in the old canon of Ambrun covers deeper and more philosophical thoughts than the singular mode of treating so solemn a theme. He has introduced many scenes of human life which still interest, and he addresses the "teste a triple couronne," as well as the "forcat de galere," who exclaims, "Laissez-moi vivre dans mes fers," "le gueux," the "bourgeois," the "chanoine," the "pauvre soldat," the "medecin;" in a word, all ranks in life are exhibited, as in all the "Dances of Death." But our object in noticing these burlesque paintings and poems is to show that after the monkish Goths had opened one general scene of melancholy and tribulation over Europe, and given birth to that dismal skeleton of death, which still terrifies the imagination of many, a reaction of feeling was experienced by the populace, who at length came to laugh at the gloomy spectre which had so long terrified them!

FOOTNOTES:

[136] Montfaucon, "L'Antiquite Expliquee," i. 362.

[137] A representation of Death by a skeleton appears among the Egyptians: a custom more singular than barbarous prevailed, of enclosing a skeleton of beautiful workmanship in a small coffin, which the bearer carried round at their entertainments; observing, "After death you will resemble this figure: drink, then! and be happy." A symbol of Death in a convivial party was not designed to excite terrific or gloomy ideas, but a recollection of the brevity of human life.

[138] "The Accidence of Armorie," p. 199.

[139] A woodcut preserved in Mr. Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron, i. 35.

[140] My greatly-lamented friend, the late Mr. Douce, has poured forth the most curious knowledge on this singular subject, of "The Dance of Death." This learned investigator has reduced Macaber to a nonentity, but not "The Macaber Dance," which has been frequently painted. Mr. Douce's edition is accompanied by a set of woodcuts, which have not unsuccessfully copied the exquisite originals of the Lyons wood-cutter.

[141] Goujet, "Bib. Francoise," vol. x. 185.

[142] Tablature d'un luth, Cotgrave says, is the belly of a lute, meaning "all in nature must dance to my music!"



THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN.

Peter Heylin was one of the popular writers of his times, like Fuller and Howell, who, devoting their amusing pens to subjects which deeply interested their own busy age, will not be slighted by the curious.[143] We have nearly outlived their divinity, but not their politics. Metaphysical absurdities are luxuriant weeds which must be cut down by the scythe of Time; but the great passions branching from the tree of life are still "growing with our growth."

There are two biographies of our Heylin, which led to a literary quarrel of an extraordinary nature; and, in the progress of its secret history, all the feelings of rival authorship were called out.

Heylin died in 1662. Dr. Barnard, his son-in-law, and a scholar, communicated a sketch of the author's life to be prefixed to a posthumous folio, of which Heylin's son was the editor. This Life was given by the son, but anonymously, which may not have gratified the author, the son-in-law.[144]

Twenty years had elapsed when, in 1682, appeared "The Life of Dr. Peter Heylin, by George Vernon." The writer, alluding to the prior Life prefixed to the posthumous folio, asserts that, in borrowing something from Barnard, Barnard had also "Excerpted passages out of my papers, the very words as well as matter, when he had them in his custody, as any reader may discern who will be at the pains of comparing the Life now published with what is extant before the Keimalea Ecclesiastica;" the quaint, pedantic title, after the fashion of the day, of the posthumous folio.

This strong accusation seemed countenanced by a dedication to the son and the nephew of Heylin. Roused now into action, the indignant Barnard soon produced a more complete Life, to which he prefixed "A necessary Vindication." This is an unsparing castigation of Vernon, the literary pet whom the Heylins had fondled in preference to their learned relative.[145] The long-smothered family grudge, the suppressed mortifications of literary pride, after the subterraneous grumblings of twenty years, now burst out, and the volcanic particles flew about in caustic pleasantries and sharp invectives; all the lava of an author's vengeance, mortified by the choice of an inferior rival.

It appears that Vernon had been selected by the son of Heylin, in preference to his brother-in-law, Dr. Barnard, from some family disagreement. Barnard tells us, in describing Vernon, that "No man, except himself, who was totally ignorant of the doctor, and all the circumstances of his life, would have engaged in such a work, which was never primarily laid out for him, but by reason of some unhappy differences, as usually fall out in families; and he, who loves to put his oar in troubled waters, instead of closing them up, hath made them wider."

Barnard tells his story plainly. Heylin the son, intending to have a more elaborate Life of his father prefixed to his works, Dr. Barnard, from the high reverence in which he held the memory of his father-in-law, offered to contribute it. Many conferences were held, and the son entrusted him with several papers. But suddenly his caprice, more than his judgment, fancied that George Vernon was worth John Barnard. The doctor affects to describe his rejection with the most stoical indifference. He tells us—"I was satisfied, and did patiently expect the coming forth of the work, not only term after term, but year after year—a very considerable time for such a tract. But at last, instead of the Life, came a letter to me from a bookseller in London, who lived at the sign of the Black Boy, in Fleet-street."[146]

Now, it seems that he who lived at the Black Boy had combined with another who lived at the Fleur de Luce, and that the Fleur de Luce had assured the Black Boy that Dr. Barnard was concerned in writing the Life of Heylin—this was a strong recommendation. But lo! it appeared that "one Mr. Vernon, of Gloucester," was to be the man! a gentle, thin-skinned authorling, who bleated like a lamb, and was so fearful to trip out of its shelter, that it allows the Black Boy and the Fleur de Luce to communicate its papers to any one they choose, and erase or add at their pleasure.[147]

It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism, that the work required addition, subtraction, and division; that the fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the work, was our Dr. Barnard; and he sent the package to the doctor, who resided near Lincoln.

The doctor, it appears, had no appetite for a dish dressed by another, while he himself was in the very act of the cookery; and it was suffered to lie cold for three weeks at the carrier's.

But entreated and overcome, the good doctor at length sent to the carrier's for the life of his father-in-law. "I found it, according to the bookseller's description, most lame and imperfect; ill begun, worse carried on, and abruptly concluded." The learned doctor exercised that plenitude of power with which the Black Boy had invested him—he very obligingly showed the author in what a confused state his materials lay together, and how to put them in order—

Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo.

If his rejections were copious, to show his good-will as well as his severity, his additions were generous, though he used the precaution of carefully distinguishing by "distinct paragraphs" his own insertions amidst Vernon's mass, with a gentle hint that "He knew more of Heylin than any man now living, and ought therefore to have been the biographer." He returned the MS. to the gentleman with great civility, but none he received back! When Vernon pretended to ask for improvements, he did not imagine that the work was to be improved by being nearly destroyed; and when he asked for correction, he probably expected all might end in a compliment.

The narrative may now proceed in Dr. Barnard's details of his doleful mortifications, in being "altered and mangled" by Mr. Vernon.

"Instead of thanks from him (Vernon), and the return of common civility, he disfigured my papers, that no sooner came into his hands, but he fell upon them as a lion rampant, or the cat upon the poor cock in the fable, saying, Tu hodie mihi discerperis—so my papers came home miserably clawed, blotted, and blurred; whole sentences dismembered, and pages scratched out; several leaves omitted which ought to be printed,—shamefully he used my copy; so that before it was carried to the press, he swooped away the second part of the Life wholly from it—in the room of which he shuffled in a preposterous conclusion at the last page, which he printed in a different character, yet could not keep himself honest, as the poet saith,

Dicitque tua pagina, fur es. MARTIAL.

For he took out of my copy Dr. Heylin's dream, his sickness, his last words before his death, and left out the burning of his surplice. He so mangled and metamorphosed the whole Life I composed, that I may say as Sosia did, Egomet mihi non credo, ille alter Sosia me malis mulcavit modis—PLAUT."

Dr. Barnard would have "patiently endured these wrongs;" but the accusation Vernon ventured on, that Barnard was the plagiary, required the doctor "to return the poisoned chalice to his own lips," that "himself was the plagiary both of words and matter." The fact is, that this reciprocal accusation was owing to Barnard having had a prior perusal of Heylin's papers, which afterwards came into the hands of Vernon: they both drew their water from the same source. These papers Heylin himself had left for "a rule to guide the writer of his life."

Barnard keenly retorts on Vernon for his surreptitious use of whole pages from Heylin's works, which he has appropriated to himself without any marks of quotation. "I am no such excerptor (as he calls me); he is of the humour of the man who took all the ships in the Attic haven for his own, and yet was himself not master of any one vessel."

Again:—

"But all this while I misunderstand him, for possibly he meaneth his own dear words I have excerpted. Why doth he not speak in plain, downright English, that the world may see my faults? For every one doth not know what is excerpting. If I have been so bold to pick or snap a word from him, I hope I may have the benefit of the clergy. What words have I robbed him of?—and how have I become the richer for them? I was never so taken with him as to be once tempted to break the commandments, because I love plain speaking, plain writing, and plain dealing, which he does not: I hate the word excerpted, and the action imported in it. However, he is a fanciful man, and thinks there is no elegancy nor wit but in his own way of talking. I must say as Tully did, Malim equidem indisertam prudentiam quam stultam loquacitatem."

In his turn he accuses Vernon of being a perpetual transcriber, and for the Malone minuteness of his history.

"But how have I excerpted his matter? Then I am sure to rob the spittle-house; for he is so poor and put to hard shifts, that he has much ado to compose a tolerable story, which he hath been hammering and conceiving in his mind for four years together, before he could bring forth his foetus of intolerable transcriptions to molest the reader's patience and memory. How doth he run himself out of breath, sometimes for twenty pages and more, at other times fifteen, ordinarily nine and ten, collected out of Dr. Heylin's old books, before he can take his wind again to return to his story! I never met with such a transcriber in all my days; for want of matter to fill up a vacuum, of which his book was in much danger, he hath set down the story of Westminster, as long as the Ploughman's Tale in Chaucer, which to the reader would have been more pertinent and pleasant. I wonder he did not transcribe bills of Chancery, especially about a tedious suit my father had for several years about a lease at Norton."

In his raillery of Vernon's affected metaphors and comparisons, "his similitudes and dissimilitudes strangely hooked in, and fetched as far as the Antipodes," Barnard observes, "The man hath also a strange opinion of himself that he is Dr. Heylin; and because he writes his Life, that he hath his natural parts, if not acquired. The soul of St. Augustin (say the schools) was Pythagorically transfused into the corpse of Aquinas; so the soul of Dr. Heylin into a narrow soul. I know there is a question in philosophy, An animae sint oequales?—whether souls be alike? But there's a difference between the spirits of Elijah and Elisha: so small a prophet with so great a one!"

Dr. Barnard concludes by regretting that good counsel came now unseasonably, else he would have advised the writer to have transmitted his task to one who had been an ancient friend of Dr. Heylin, rather than ambitiously have assumed it, who was a professed stranger to him, by reason of which no better account could be expected from him than what he has given. He hits off the character of this piece of biography—"A Life to the half; an imperfect creature, that is not only lame (as the honest bookseller said), but wanteth legs, and all other integral parts of a man; nay, the very soul that should animate a body like Dr. Heylin. So that I must say of him, as Plutarch does of Tib. Gracchus, 'that he is a bold undertaker and rash talker of those matters he does not understand.' And so I have done with him, unless he creates to himself and me a future trouble!"

Vernon appears to have slunk away from the duel. The son of Heylin stood corrected by the superior Life produced by their relative; the learned and vivacious Barnard probably never again ventured to alter and improve the works of an author kneeling and praying for corrections. These bleating lambs, it seems, often turn out roaring lions![148]

FOOTNOTES:

[143] Dr. Heylin's principal work, "Ecclesia Restaurata; or, the History of the Reformation of the Church of England," was reprinted at the Cambridge University press, for "the Ecclesiastical History Society," in 2 vols. 8vo, 1849, under the able editorship of J. C. Robertson, M.A., Vicar of Bekesbourne, Kent. The introductory account of Heylin has enabled us to correct the present article in some particulars, and add a few useful notes.

[144] Dr. John Barnard married the daughter of Heylin, when he lived at Abingdon, near Oxford. He afterwards became rector of the rich living of Waddington, near Lincoln, of which he purchased the perpetual advowson, holding also the sinecure of Gedney, in the same county. He was ultimately made Prebendary of Asgarby, in the church of Lincoln, and died at Newark, on a journey, in August, 1683. His rich and indolent life would naturally hold out few inducements for literary labour.

[145] Mr. George Vernon, according to Wood (Athen. Oxon. iv. 606), was made Chaplain of All Souls' College, afterwards Rector of Sarsden, near Churchill, in Oxfordshire, of Bourton-on-the-Water, in Gloucestershire, and of St. John and St. Michael, in the city of Gloucester. Wood enumerates several works by him, so that he was evidently more of a "literary man" than Barnard, who enjoyed "learned ease" to a great degree, and was evidently only to be aroused by something flagitious.

[146] This was Harper, a bookseller, who had undertaken a republication of the Ecclesia Vindicata, and other tracts by Heylin, to which the Life was to be prefixed.

[147] The author had "desired Mr. Harper to communicate the papers to whom he pleases, and cross out or add what is thought convenient." A leave very few literary men would give!

[148] The most curious part of the story remains yet to be told. Dr. Barnard was mistaken in his imputations, and Vernon was not the really blamable party. We tell the tale in Mr. Robertson's words in the work already alluded to.—"Who was the party guilty of these outrages? Barnard assumed that it could be no other than Vernon; but the truth seems to be that the Rector of Bourton had nothing whatever to do with the matter. The publisher had called in a more important adviser—Dr. Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln (Ath. Oxon. iii. 567; iv. 606); the mutilations of Barnard's MS. were really the work, not of the obscure Gloucestershire clergyman, but of the indignant author's own diocesan; and we need not hesitate to ascribe the abruptness of the conclusion, and the smallness of the type in which it is printed, to Mr. Harper's economical desire to save the expense of an additional sheet." Thus "Bishop Barlow and the bookseller had made the mischief between the parties, who, instead of attempting a private explanation, attacked each other in print."