OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY.

The "Methode pour etudier l' Histoire," by the Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy, is a master-key to all the locked-up treasures of ancient and modern history, and to the more secret stores of the obscurer memorialists of every nation. The history of this work and its author are equally remarkable. The man was a sort of curiosity in human nature, as his works are in literature. Lenglet du Fresnoy is not a writer merely laborious; without genius, he still has a hardy originality in his manner of writing and of thinking; and his vast and restless curiosity fermenting his immense book-knowledge, with a freedom verging on cynical causticity, led to the pursuit of uncommon topics. Even the prefaces to the works which he edited are singularly curious, and he has usually added bibliotheques, or critical catalogues of authors, which we may still consult for notices on the writers of romances—of those on literary subjects—on alchymy, or the hermetic philosophy; of those who have written on apparitions, visions, &c.; an historical treatise on the secret of confession, &c.; besides those "Pieces Justificatives," which constitute some of the most extraordinary documents in the philosophy of history. His manner of writing secured him readers even among the unlearned; his mordacity, his sarcasm, his derision, his pregnant interjections, his unguarded frankness, and often his strange opinions, contribute to his reader's amusement more than comports with his graver tasks; but his peculiarities cannot alter the value of his knowledge, whatever they may sometimes detract from his opinions; and we may safely admire the ingenuity, without quarrelling with the sincerity of the writer, who having composed a work on L'Usage des Romans, in which he gaily impugned the authenticity of all history, to prove himself not to have been the author, ambidexterously published another of L'Histoire justifiee contre les Romans; and perhaps it was not his fault that the attack was spirited, and the justification dull.

This "Methode" and his "Tablettes Chronologiques," of nearly forty other publications are the only ones which have outlived their writer; volumes, merely curious, are exiled to the shelf of the collector; the very name of an author merely curious—that shadow of a shade—is not always even preserved by a dictionary-compiler in the universal charity of his alphabetical mortuary.

The history of this work is a striking instance of those imperfect beginnings, which have often closed in the most important labours. This admirable "Methode" made its first meagre appearance in two volumes in 1713. It was soon reprinted at home and abroad, and translated into various languages. In 1729 it assumed the dignity of four quartos; but at this stage it encountered the vigilance of government, and the lacerating hand of a celebrated censeur, Gros de Boze. It is said, that from a personal dislike of the author, he cancelled one hundred and fifty pages from the printed copy submitted to his censorship. He had formerly approved of the work, and had quietly passed over some of these obnoxious passages: it is certain that Gros de Boze, in a dissertation on the Janus of the ancients in this work, actually erased a high commendation of himself,[149] which Lenglet had, with unusual courtesy, bestowed on Gros de Boze; for as a critic he is most penurious of panegyric, and there is always a caustic flavour even in his drops of honey. This censeur either affected to disdain the commendation, or availed himself of it as a trick of policy. This was a trying situation for an author, now proud of a great work, and who himself partook more of the bull than of the lamb. He who winced at the scratch of an epithet, beheld his perfect limbs bruised by erasures and mutilated by cancels. This sort of troubles indeed was not unusual with Lenglet. He had occupied his old apartment in the Bastile so often, that at the sight of the officer who was in the habit of conducting him there, Lenglet would call for his nightcap and snuff; and finish the work he had then in hand at the Bastile, where, he told Jordan, that he made his edition of Marot. He often silently restituted an epithet or a sentence which had been condemned by the censeur, at the risk of returning once more; but in the present desperate affair he took his revenge by collecting the castrations into a quarto volume, which was sold clandestinely. I find, by Jordan, in his Voyage Litteraire, who visited him, that it was his pride to read these cancels to his friends, who generally, but secretly, were of opinion that the decision of the censeur was not so wrong as the hardihood of Lenglet insisted on. All this increased the public rumour, and raised the price of the cancels. The craft and mystery of authorship was practised by Lenglet to perfection; and he often exulted, not only in the subterfuges by which he parried his censeurs, but in his bargains with his booksellers, who were equally desirous to possess, while they half feared to enjoy, his uncertain or his perilous copyrights. When the unique copy of the Methode, in its pristine state, before it had suffered any dilapidations, made its appearance at the sale of the curious library of the censeur Gros de Boze, it provoked a Roxburgh competition, where the collectors, eagerly outbidding each other, the price of this uncastrated copy reached to 1500 livres; and even more extraordinary in the history of French bibliography, than in our own. The curious may now find all these cancel sheets, or castrations, preserved in one of those works of literary history, to which the Germans have contributed more largely than other European nations, and I have discovered that even the erasures, or bruises, are amply furnished in another bibliographical record.[150]

This Methode, after several later editions, was still enlarging itself by fresh supplements; and having been translated by men of letters in Europe, by Coleti in Italy, by Mencken in Germany, and by Dr. Rawlinson in England, these translators have enriched their own editions by more copious articles, designed for their respective nations. The sagacity of the original writer now renovated his work by the infusions of his translators; like old AEson, it had its veins filled with green juices; and thus his old work was always undergoing the magic process of rejuvenescence.[151]

The personal character of our author was as singular as many of the uncommon topics which engaged his inquiries; these we might conclude had originated in mere eccentricity, or were chosen at random. But Lenglet has shown no deficiency of judgment in several works of acknowledged utility; and his critical opinions, his last editor has shown, have, for the greater part, been sanctioned by the public voice. It is curious to observe how the first direction which the mind of a hardy inquirer may take, will often account for that variety of uncommon topics he delights in, and which, on a closer examination, may be found to bear an invisible connexion with some preceding inquiry. As there is an association of ideas, so in literary history there is an association of research; and a very judicious writer may thus be impelled to compose on subjects which may be deemed strange or injudicious.

This observation may be illustrated by the literary history of Lenglet du Fresnoy. He opened his career by addressing a letter and a tract to the Sorbonne, on the extraordinary affair of Maria d'Agreda, abbess of the nunnery of the Immaculate Conception in Spain, whose mystical Life of the Virgin, published on the decease of the abbess, and which was received with such rapture in Spain, had just appeared at Paris, where it excited the murmurs of the pious, and the inquiries of the curious. This mystical Life was declared to be founded on apparitions and revelations experienced by the abbess. Lenglet proved, or asserted, that the abbess was not the writer of this pretended Life, though the manuscript existed in her handwriting; and secondly, that the apparitions and revelations recorded were against all the rules of apparitions and revelations which he had painfully discovered. The affair was of a delicate nature. The writer was young and incredulous; a grey-beard, more deeply versed in theology, replied, and the Sorbonnists silenced our philosopher in embryo.

Lenglet confined these researches to his portfolio; and so long a period as fifty-five years had elapsed before they saw the light. It was when Calmet published his Dissertations on Apparitions, that the subject provoked Lenglet to return to his forsaken researches. He now published all he had formerly composed on the affair of Maria d'Agreda, and two other works; the one, "Traite historique et dogmatique sur les Apparitions, les Visions, et les Revelations particulieres," in two volumes; and "Recueil de Dissertations anciennes et nouvelles, sur les Apparitions, &c.," with a catalogue of authors on this subject, in four volumes. When he edited the Roman de la Rose, in compiling the glossary of this ancient poem, it led him to reprint many of the earliest French poets; to give an enlarged edition of the Arrets d'Amour, that work of love and chivalry, in which his fancy was now so deeply embedded; while the subject of Romance itself naturally led to the taste of romantic productions which appeared in "L'Usage des Romans," and its accompanying copious nomenclature of all romances and romance-writers, ancient and modern. Our vivacious Abbe had been bewildered by his delight in the works of a chemical philosopher; and though he did not believe in the existence of apparitions, and certainly was more than a sceptic in history, yet it is certain that the "grande oeuvre" was an article in his creed; it would have ruined him in experiments, if he had been rich enough to have been ruined. It altered his health; and the most important result of his chemical studies appears to have been the invention of a syrup, in which he had great confidence; but its trial blew him up into a tympany, from which he was only relieved by having recourse to a drug, also of his own discovery, which, in counteracting the syrup, reduced him to an alarming state of atrophy. But the mischances of the historian do not enter into his history: and our curiosity must be still eager to open Lenglet's "Histoire de la Philosophie Hermetique," accompanied by a catalogue of the writers in this mysterious science, in two volumes: as well as his enlarged edition of the works of a great Paracelsian, Nicholas le Fevre. This philosopher was appointed by Charles the Second superintendent over the royal laboratory at St. James's: he was also a member of the Royal Society, and the friend of Boyle, to whom he communicated the secret of infusing young blood into old veins, with a notion that he could renovate that which admits of no second creation.[152] Such was the origin of Du Fresnoy's active curiosity on a variety of singular topics, the germs of which may be traced to three or four of our author's principal works.

Our Abbe promised to write his own life, and his pugnacious vivacity, and hardy frankness, would have seasoned a piece of autobiography; an amateur has, however, written it in the style which amateurs like, with all the truth he could discover, enlivened by some secret history, writing the life of Lenglet with the very spirit of Lenglet: it is a mask taken from the very features of the man, not the insipid wax-work of an hyperbolical eloge-maker.[153]

Although Lenglet du Fresnoy commenced in early life his career as a man of letters, he was at first engaged in the great chase of political adventure; and some striking facts are recorded, which show his successful activity. Michault describes his occupations by a paraphrastical delicacy of language, which an Englishman might not have so happily composed. The minister for foreign affairs, the Marquis de Torcy, sent Lenglet to Lille, where the court of the Elector of Cologne was then held: "He had particular orders to watch that the two ministers of the elector should do nothing prejudicial to the king's affairs." He seems, however, to have watched many other persons, and detected many other things. He discovered a captain, who agreed to open the gates of Mons to Marlborough, for 100,000 piastres; the captain was arrested on the parade, the letter of Marlborough was found in his pocket, and the traitor was broken on the wheel. Lenglet denounced a foreign general in the French service, and the event warranted the prediction. His most important discovery was that of the famous conspiracy of Prince Cellamar, one of the chimerical plots of Alberoni; to the honour of Lenglet, he would not engage in its detection unless the minister promised that no blood should be shed. These successful incidents in the life of an honourable spy were rewarded with a moderate pension.—Lenglet must have been no vulgar intriguer; he was not only perpetually confined by his very patrons when he resided at home, for the freedom of his pen, but I find him early imprisoned in the citadel of Strasburgh for six months: it is said for purloining some curious books from the library of the Abbe Bignon, of which he had the care. It is certain that he knew the value of the scarcest works, and was one of those lovers of bibliography who trade at times in costly rarities. At Vienna he became intimately acquainted with the poet Rousseau, and Prince Eugene. The prince, however, who suspected the character of our author, long avoided him. Lenglet insinuated himself into the favour of the prince's librarian; and such was his bibliographical skill, that this acquaintance ended in Prince Eugene laying aside his political dread, and preferring the advice of Lenglet to his librarian's, to enrich his magnificent library. When the motive of Lenglet's residence at Vienna became more and more suspected, Rousseau was employed to watch him; and not yet having quarrelled with his brother spy, he could only report that the Abbe Lenglet was every morning occupied in working on his "Tablettes Chronologiques," a work not worthy of alarming the government; that he spent his evenings at a violin-player's married to a Frenchwoman, and returned home at eleven. As soon as our historian had discovered that the poet was a brother spy and newsmonger on the side of Prince Eugene, their reciprocal civilities cooled. Lenglet now imagined that he owed his six months' retirement in the citadel of Strasburgh to the secret officiousness of Rousseau: each grew suspicious of the other's fidelity; and spies are like lovers, for their mutual jealousies settled into the most inveterate hatred. One of the most defamatory libels is Lenglet's intended dedication of his edition of Marot to Rousseau, which being forced to suppress in Holland, by order of the States-general; at Brussels, by the intervention of the Duke of Aremberg; and by every means the friends of the unfortunate Rousseau could contrive; was, however, many years afterwards at length subjoined by Lenglet to the first volume of his work on Romances; where an ordinary reader may wonder at its appearance unconnected with any part of the work. In this dedication, or "Eloge Historique," he often addresses "Mon cher Rousseau," but the irony is not delicate, and the calumny is heavy. Rousseau lay too open to the unlicensed causticity of his accuser. The poet was then expatriated from France for a false accusation against Saurin, in attempting to fix on him those criminal couplets, which so long disturbed the peace of the literary world in France, and of which Rousseau was generally supposed to be the writer; but of which on his death-bed he solemnly protested that he was guiltless. The coup-de-grace is given to the poet, stretched on this rack of invective, by just accusations on account of those infamous epigrams, which appear in some editions of that poet's works; a lesson for a poet, if poets would be lessoned, who indulge their imagination at the cost of their happiness, and seem to invent crimes, as if they themselves were criminals.

But to return to our Lenglet. Had he composed his own life, it would have offered a sketch of political servitude and political adventure, in a man too intractable for the one, and too literary for the other. Yet to the honour of his capacity, we must observe that he might have chosen his patrons, would he have submitted to patronage. Prince Eugene at Vienna; Cardinal Passionei at Rome; or Mons. Le Blanc, the French minister, would have held him on his own terms. But "Liberty and my books!" was the secret ejaculation of Lenglet; and from that moment all things in life were sacrificed to a jealous spirit of independence, which broke out in his actions as well as in his writings; and a passion for study for ever crushed the worm of ambition.

He was as singular in his conversation, which, says Jordan, was extremely agreeable to a foreigner, for he delivered himself without reserve on all things, and on all persons, seasoned with secret and literary anecdotes. He refused all the conveniences offered by an opulent sister, that he might not endure the restraint of a settled dinner-hour. He lived to his eightieth year, still busied, and then died by one of those grievous chances, to which aged men of letters are liable: our caustic critic slumbered over some modern work, and, falling into the fire was burnt to death. Many characteristic anecdotes of the Abbe Lenglet have been preserved in the Dictionnaire Historique, but I shall not repeat what is of easy recurrence.

FOOTNOTES:

[149] This fact appears in the account of the minuter erasures.

[150] The castrations are in Beyeri Memoriae historico-criticae Librorum rariorum, p. 166. The bruises are carefully noted in the Catalogue of the Duke de la Valiere, 4467. Those who are curious in such singularities will be gratified by the extraordinary opinions and results in Beyer; and which after all were purloined from a manuscript "Abridgment of Universal History," which was drawn up by Count de Boulainvilliers, and more adroitly than delicately inserted by Lenglet in his own work. The original manuscript exists in various copies, which were afterwards discovered. The minuter corrections, in the Duke de la Valiere's catalogue, furnish a most enlivening article in the dryness of bibliography.

[151] The last edition, enlarged by Drouet, is in fifteen volumes, but is not later than 1772. It is still an inestimable manual for the historical student, as well as his Tablettes Chronologiques.

[152] The "Dictionnaire Historique," 1789, in their article Nich. Le Fevre, notices the third edition of his "Course of Chemistry," that of 1664, in two volumes; but the present one of Lenglet du Fresnoy's is more recent, 1751, enlarged into five volumes, two of which contain his own additions. I have never met with this edition, and it is wanting at the British Museum. Le Fevre published a tract on the great cordial of Sir Walter Rawleigh, which may be curious.

[153] This anonymous work of "Memoires de Monsieur l'Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy," although the dedication is signed G. P., is written by Michault, of Dijon, as a presentation copy to Count de Vienne in my possession proves. Michault is the writer of two volumes of agreeable "Melanges Historiques et Philologiques;" and the present is a very curious piece of literary history. The "Dictionnaire Historique" has compiled the article of Lenglet entirely from this work; but the Journal des Scavans was too ascetic in this opinion. Etoit-ce la peine de faire un livre pour apprendre au public qu'un homme de lettres fut espion, escroc, bizarre, fougueux, cynique, incapable d'amitie, de soumission aux loix? &c. Yet they do not pretend that the bibliography of Lenglet du Fresnoy is at all deficient in curiosity.



THE DICTIONARY OF TREVOUX.

A learned friend, in his very agreeable "Trimestre, or a Three Months' Journey in France and Switzerland," could not pass through the small town of Trevoux without a literary association of ideas which should accompany every man of letters in his tours, abroad or at home. A mind well-informed cannot travel without discovering that there are objects constantly presenting themselves, which suggest literary, historical, and moral facts. My friend writes, "As you proceed nearer to Lyons you stop to dine at Trevoux, on the left bank of the Saone. On a sloping hill, down to the water-side, rises an amphitheatre, crowned with an ancient Gothic castle, in venerable ruin; under it is the small town of Trevoux, well known for its Journal and Dictionary, which latter is almost an encyclopaedia, as there are few things of which something is not said in that most valuable compilation, and the whole was printed at Trevoux. The knowledge of this circumstance greatly enhances the delight of any visitor who has consulted the book, and is acquainted with its merit; and must add much to his local pleasures."

A work from which every man of letters may be continually deriving such varied knowledge, and which is little known but to the most curious readers, claims a place in these volumes; nor is the history of the work itself without interest. Eight large folios, each consisting of a thousand closely printed pages, stand like a vast mountain, of which, before we climb, we may be anxious to learn the security of the passage. The history of dictionaries is the most mutable of all histories; it is a picture of the inconstancy of the knowledge of man; the learning of one generation passes away with another; and a dictionary of this kind is always to be repaired, to be rescinded, and to be enlarged.

The small town of Trevoux gave its name to an excellent literary journal, long conducted by the Jesuits, and to this dictionary—as Edinburgh has to its Critical Review and Annual Register, &c. It first came to be distinguished as a literary town from the Duc du Maine, as prince sovereign of Dombes,[154] transferring to this little town of Trevoux not only his parliament and other public institutions, but also establishing a magnificent printing-house, in the beginning of the last century. The duke, probably to keep his printers in constant employ, instituted the "Journal de Trevoux;" and this perhaps greatly tended to bring the printing-house into notice, so that it became a favourite with many good writers, who appear to have had no other connexion with the place; and this dictionary borrowed its first title, which it always preserved, merely from the place where it was printed. Both the journal and the dictionary were, however, consigned to the care of some learned Jesuits; and perhaps the place always indicated the principles of the writers, of whom none were more eminent for elegant literature than the Jesuits.[155]

The first edition of this dictionary sprung from the spirit of rivalry, occasioned by a French dictionary published in Holland, by the protestant Basnage de Beauval. The duke set his Jesuits hastily to work; who, after a pompous announcement that this dictionary was formed on a plan suggested by their patron, did little more than pillage Furetiere, and rummage Basnage, and produced three new folios without any novelties; they pleased the Duc du Maine, and no one else. This was in 1704. Twenty years after, it was republished and improved; and editions increasing, the volumes succeeded each other, till it reached to its present magnitude and value in eight large folios, in 1771, the only edition now esteemed. Many of the names of the contributors to this excellent collection of words and things, the industry of Monsieur Barbier has revealed in his "Dictionnaire des Anonymes," art. 10782. The work, in the progress of a century, evidently became a favourite receptacle with men of letters in France, who eagerly contributed the smallest or largest articles with a zeal honourable to literature and most useful to the public. They made this dictionary their commonplace book for all their curious acquisitions; every one competent to write a short article, preserving an important fact, did not aspire to compile the dictionary, or even an entire article in it; but it was a treasury in which such mites collected together formed its wealth; and all the literati may be said to have engaged in perfecting these volumes during a century. In this manner, from the humble beginnings of three volumes, in which the plagiary much more than the contributor was visible, eight were at length built up with more durable materials, and which claim the attention and the gratitude of the student.

The work, it appears, interested the government itself, as a national concern, from the tenor of the following anecdotes.

Most of the minor contributors to this great collection were satisfied to remain anonymous; but as might be expected among such a number, sometimes a contributor was anxious to be known to his circle; and did not like this penitential abstinence of fame. An anecdote recorded of one of this class will amuse: A Monsieur Lautour du Chatel, avocat au parlement de Normandie, voluntarily devoted his studious hours to improve this work, and furnished nearly three thousand articles to the supplement of the edition of 1752. This ardent scholar had had a lively quarrel thirty years before with the first authors of the dictionary. He had sent them one thousand three hundred articles, on condition that the donor should be handsomely thanked in the preface of the new edition, and further receive a copy en grand papier. They were accepted. The conductors of the new edition, in 1721, forgot all the promises—nor thanks, nor copy! Our learned avocat, who was a little irritable, as his nephew who wrote his life acknowledges, as soon as the great work appeared, astonished, like Dennis, that "they were rattling his own thunder," without saying a word, quits his country town, and ventures, half dead with sickness and indignation, on an expedition to Paris, to make his complaint to the chancellor; and the work was deemed of that importance in the eye of government, and so zealous a contributor was considered to have such an honourable claim, that the chancellor ordered, first, that a copy on large paper should be immediately delivered to Monsieur Lautour, richly bound and free of carriage; and secondly, as a reparation of the unperformed promise, and an acknowledgment of gratitude, the omission of thanks should be inserted and explained in the three great literary journals of France; a curious instance, among others, of the French government often mediating, when difficulties occurred in great literary undertakings, and considering not lightly the claims and the honours of men of letters.

Another proof, indeed, of the same kind, concerning the present work, occurred after the edition of 1752. One Jamet l'aine, who had with others been usefully employed on this edition, addressed a proposal to government for an improved one, dated from the Bastile. He proposed that the government should choose a learned person, accustomed to the labour of the researches such a work requires; and he calculated, that if supplied with three amanuenses, such an editor would accomplish his task in about ten or twelve years, the produce of the edition would soon repay all the expenses and capital advanced. This literary projector did not wish to remain idle in the Bastile. Fifteen years afterwards the last improved edition appeared, published by the associated booksellers of Paris.

As for the work itself, it partakes of the character of our Encyclopaedias; but in this respect it cannot be safely consulted, for widely has science enlarged its domains and corrected its errors since 1771. But it is precious as a vast collection of ancient and modern learning, particularly in that sort of knowledge which we usually term antiquarian and philological. It is not merely a grammatical, scientific, and technical dictionary, but it is replete with divinity, law, moral philosophy, critical and historical learning, and abounds with innumerable miscellaneous curiosities. It would be difficult, whatever may be the subject of inquiry, to open it, without the gratification of some knowledge neither obvious nor trivial. I heard a man of great learning declare, that whenever he could not recollect his knowledge he opened Hoffman's Lexicon Universale Historicum, where he was sure to find what he had lost. The works are similar; and valuable as are the German's four folios, the eight of the Frenchman may safely be recommended as their substitute, or their supplement. As a Dictionary of the French Language it bears a peculiar feature, which has been presumptuously dropped in the Dictionnaire de l'Academie; the last invents phrases to explain words, which therefore have no other authority than the writer himself! this of Trevoux is furnished, not only with mere authorities, but also with quotations from the classical French writers—an improvement which was probably suggested by the English Dictionary of Johnson. One nation improves by another.

FOOTNOTES:

[154] It was always acknowledged as an independent state by the French kings from the time of Philip Augustus. It had its own parliament, and the privilege also of coining its own money.

[155] The house in which the Jesuits resided, having the shield of arms of their order over its portal, still remains at Trevoux.



QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY.

It is, perhaps, somewhat mortifying in our literary researches to discover that our own literature has been only known to the other nations of Europe comparatively within recent times. We have at length triumphed over our continental rivals in the noble struggles of genius, and our authors now see their works printed even at foreign presses, while we are furnishing with our gratuitous labours nearly the whole literature of a new empire; yet so late as in the reign of Anne, our poets were only known by the Latin versifiers of the "Musae Anglicanae;" and when Boileau was told of the public funeral of Dryden, he was pleased with the national honours bestowed on genius, but he declared that he never heard of his name before. This great legislator of Parnassus has never alluded to one of our own poets, so insular then was our literary glory! The most remarkable fact, or perhaps assertion, I have met with, of the little knowledge which the Continent had of our writers, is a French translation of Bishop Hall's "Characters of Virtues and Vices." It is a duodecimo, printed at Paris, of 109 pages, 1610, with this title Characteres de Vertus et de Vices; tires de l'Anglois de M. Josef Hall. In a dedication to the Earl of Salisbury, the translator informs his lordship that "ce livre est la premiere traduction de l'Anglois jamais imprimee en aucun vulgaire"—the first translation from the English ever printed in any modern language! Whether the translator is a bold liar, or an ignorant blunderer, remains to be ascertained; at all events it is a humiliating demonstration of the small progress which our home literature had made abroad in 1610!

I come now to notice a contemporary writer, professedly writing the history of our Poetry, of which his knowledge will open to us as we proceed with our enlightened and amateur historian.

Father Quadrio's Della Storia e dell' ragione d' ogni Poesia,—is a gigantic work, which could only have been projected and persevered in by some hypochondriac monk, who, to get rid of the ennui of life, could discover no pleasanter way than to bury himself alive in seven monstrous closely-printed quartos, and every day be compiling something on a subject which he did not understand. Fortunately for Father Quadrio, without taste to feel, and discernment to decide, nothing occurred in this progress of literary history and criticism to abridge his volumes and his amusements; and with diligence and erudition unparalleled, he has here built up a receptacle for his immense, curious, and trifling knowledge on the poetry of every nation. Quadrio is among that class of authors whom we receive with more gratitude than pleasure, fly to sometimes to quote, but never linger to read; and fix on our shelves, but seldom have in our hands.

I have been much mortified, in looking over this voluminous compiler, to discover, although he wrote so late as about 1750, how little the history of English poetry was known to foreigners. It is assuredly our own fault. We have too long neglected the bibliography and the literary history of our own country. Italy, Spain, and France have enjoyed eminent bibliographers—we have none to rival them. Italy may justly glory in her Tiraboschi and her Mazzuchelli; Spain in the Bibliothecas of Nicholas Antonio; and France, so rich in bibliographical treasures, affords models to every literary nation of every species of literary history. With us, the partial labour of the hermit Anthony for the Oxford writers, compiled before philosophical criticism existed in the nation; and Warton's History of Poetry, which was left unfinished at its most critical period, when that delightful antiquary of taste had just touched the threshold of his Paradise—these are the sole great labours to which foreigners might resort, but these will not be found of much use to them. The neglect of our own literary history has, therefore, occasioned the errors, sometimes very ridiculous ones, of foreign writers respecting our authors. Even the lively Chaudon, in his "Dictionnaire Historique," gives the most extraordinary accounts of most of the English writers. Without an English guide to attend such weary travellers, they have too often been deceived by the mirages of our literature. They have given blundering accounts of works which do exist, and chronicled others which never did exist; and have often made up the personal history of our authors, by confounding two or three into one. Chaudon, mentioning Dryden's tragedies, observes, that Atterbury translated two into Latin verse, entitled Achitophel and Absalom![156]

Of all these foreign authors, none has more egregiously failed than this good Father Quadrio. In this universal history of poetry, I was curious to observe what sort of figure we made, and whether the fertile genius of our original poets had struck the foreign critic with admiration or with critical censure. But little was our English poetry known to its universal historian. In the chapter on those who have cultivated "la melica poesia in propria lingua tra, Tedeschi, Fiamminghi e Inglesi,"[157] we find the following list of English poets.

"Of John Gower; whose rhymes and verses are preserved in manuscript in the college of the most Holy Trinity, in Cambridge.

"Arthur Kelton, flourished in 1548, a skilful English poet: he composed various poems in English; also he lauds the Cambrians and their genealogy.

"The works of William Wycherly, in English prose and verse."

These were the only English poets whom Quadrio at first could muster together! In his subsequent additions he caught the name of Sir Philip Sidney with an adventurous criticism, "le sue poesie assai buone." He then was lucky enough to pick up the title—not the volume, surely—which was one of the rarest; "Fiori poetici de A. Cowley," which he calls "poesie amorose:" this must mean that early volume of Cowley's, published in his thirteenth year, under the title of "Poetical Blossoms." Further he laid hold of "John Donne" by the skirt, and "Thomas Creech," at whom he made a full pause, informing his Italians that "his poems are reputed by his nation as 'assai buone.'" He has also "Le opere di Guglielmo;" but to this Christian name, as it would appear, he had not ventured to add the surname. At length, in his progress of inquiry, in his fourth volume (for they were published at different periods), he suddenly discovers a host of English poets—in Waller, Duke of Buckingham, Lord Roscommon, and others, among whom is Dr. Swift; but he acknowledges their works have not reached him. Shakspeare at length appears on the scene; but Quadrio's notions are derived from Voltaire, whom, perhaps, he boldly translates. Instead of improving our drama, he conducted it a totale rovina nelle sue farse monstruose, che si chiaman tragedie; alcune scene vi abbia luminose e belle e alcuni tratti si trovono terribili e grandi. Otway is said to have composed a tragic drama on the subject of "Venezia Salvata;" he adds with surprise, "ma affatto regolare." Regularity is the essence of genius with such critics as Quadrio. Dryden is also mentioned; but the only drama specified is "King Arthur." Addison is the first Englishman who produced a classical tragedy; but though Quadrio writes much about the life of Addison, he never alludes to the Spectator.

We come now to a more curious point. Whether Quadrio had read our comedies may be doubtful; but he distinguishes them by very high commendation. Our comedy, he says, represents human life, the manners of citizens and the people, much better than the French and Spanish comedies, in which all the business of life is mixed up with love affairs. The Spaniards had their gallantry from the Moors, and their manners from chivalry; to which they added their tumid African taste, differing from that of other nations. I shall translate what he now adds of English comedy.

"The English, more skilfully even than the French, have approximated to the true idea of comic subjects, choosing for the argument of their invention the customary and natural objects of the citizens and the populace. And when religion and decorum were more respected in their theatres, they were more advanced in this species of poetry, and merited not a little praise, above their neighbouring nations. But more than the English and the French (to speak according to pure and bare truth) have the Italians signalised themselves." A sly, insinuating criticism! But, as on the whole, for reasons which I cannot account for, Father Quadrio seems to have relished our English comedy, we must value his candour. He praises our comedy; "per il bello ed il buono;" but, as he is a methodical Aristotelian, he will not allow us that liberty in the theatre which we are supposed to possess in parliament—by delivering whatever we conceive to the purpose. His criticism is a specimen of the irrefragable. "We must not abandon legitimate rules to give mere pleasure thereby; because pleasure is produced by, and flows from, the beautiful; and the beautiful is chiefly drawn from the good order and unity in which it consists!"

Quadrio succeeded in discovering the name of one of our greatest comic geniuses; for, alluding to our diversity of action in comedy, he mentions in his fifth volume, page 148,—"Il celebre Benjanson, nella sua commedia intitolato Bartolommeo Foicere, e in quella altra commedia intitolato Ipsum Veetz." The reader may decipher the poet's name with his Fair; but it required the critical sagacity of Mr. Douce to discover that by Ipsum Veetz we are to understand Shadwell's comedy of Epsom Wells. The Italian critic had transcribed what he and his Italian printer could not spell. We have further discovered the source of his intelligence in St. Evremond, who had classed Shadwell's comedy with Ben Jonson's. To such shifts is the writer of an universal history d' ogni Poesia miserably reduced!

Towards the close of the fifth volume we at last find the sacred muse of Milton,—but, unluckily, he was a man "di pochissima religione," and spoke of Christ like an Arian. Quadrio quotes Ramsay for Milton's vomiting forth abuse on the Roman Church. His figures are said to be often mean, unworthy of the majesty of his subject; but in a later place, excepting his religion, our poet, it is decided on, is worthy "di molti laudi."

Thus much for the information the curious may obtain on English poetry from its universal history. Quadrio unquestionably writes with more ignorance than prejudice against us: he has not only highly distinguished the comic genius of our writers, and raised it above that of our neighbours, but he has also advanced another discovery, which ranks us still higher for original invention, and which, I am confident, will be as new as it is extraordinary to the English reader.

Quadrio, who, among other erudite accessories to his work, has exhausted the most copious researches on the origin of Punch and Harlequin, has also written, with equal curiosity and value, the history of Puppet-shows. But whom has he lauded? whom has he placed paramount, above all other people, for their genius of invention in improving this art!—The English! and the glory which has hitherto been universally conceded to the Italian nation themselves, appears to belong to us! For we, it appears, while others were dandling and pulling their little representatives of human nature into such awkward and unnatural motions, first invented pulleys, or wires, and gave a fine and natural action to the artificial life of these gesticulating machines!

We seem to know little of ourselves as connected with the history of puppet-shows; but in an article in the curious Dictionary of Trevoux, I find that John Brioche, to whom had been attributed the invention of Marionnettes, is only to be considered as an improver; in his time (but the learned writers supply no date) an Englishman discovered the secret of moving them by springs, and without strings; but the Marionnettes of Brioche were preferred for the pleasantries which he made them deliver. The erudite Quadrio appears to have more successfully substantiated our claims to the pulleys or wires, or springs of the puppets, than any of our own antiquaries; and perhaps the uncommemorated name of this Englishman was that Powell, whose Solomon and Sheba were celebrated in the days of Addison and Steele; the former of whom has composed a classical and sportive Latin poem on this very subject. But Quadrio might well rest satisfied that the nation which could boast of its Fantoccini, surpassed, and must ever surpass the puny efforts of a doll-loving people!

FOOTNOTES:

[156] Even recently, il Cavaliere Onofrio Boni, in his Eloge of Lanzi, in naming the three Augustan periods of modern literature, fixes them, for the Italians, under Leo the Tenth; for the French, under Louis the Fourteenth, or the Great; and for the English, under Charles the Second!

[157] Quadrio, vol. ii. p. 416.



"POLITICAL RELIGIONISM."

In Professor Dugald Stewart's first Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, I find this singular and significant term. It has occasioned me to reflect on those contests for religion, in which a particular faith has been made the ostensible pretext, while the secret motive was usually political. The historians, who view in religious wars only religion itself, have written large volumes, in which we may never discover that they have either been a struggle to obtain predominance, or an expedient to secure it. The hatreds of ambitious men have disguised their own purposes, while Christianity has borne the odium of loosening a destroying spirit among mankind; which, had Christianity never existed, would have equally prevailed in human affairs. Of a moral malady, it is not only necessary to know the nature, but to designate it by a right name, that we may not err in our mode of treatment. If we call that religious which we shall find for the greater part is political, we are likely to be mistaken in the regimen and the cure.

Fox, in his "Acts and Monuments," writes the martyrology of the Protestants in three mighty folios; where, in the third, "the tender mercies" of the Catholics are "cut in wood" for those who might not otherwise be enabled to read or spell them. Such pictures are abridgments of long narratives, but they leave in the mind a fulness of horror. Fox made more than one generation shudder; and his volume, particularly this third, chained to a reading-desk in the halls of the great, and in the aisles of churches, often detained the loiterer, as it furnished some new scene of papistical horrors to paint forth on returning to his fireside. The protestants were then the martyrs, because, under Mary, the protestants had been thrown out of power.

Dodd has opposed to Fox three curious folios, which he calls "The Church History of England," exhibiting a most abundant martyrology of the catholics, inflicted by the hands of the protestants; who in the succeeding reign of Elizabeth, after long trepidations and balancings, were confirmed into power. He grieves over the delusion and seduction of the black-letter romance of honest John Fox, which he says, "has obtained a place in protestant churches next to the Bible, while John Fox himself is esteemed little less than an evangelist."[158] Dodd's narratives are not less pathetic: for the situation of the catholic, who had to secrete himself, as well as to suffer, was more adapted for romantic adventures, than even the melancholy but monotonous story of the protestants tortured in the cell, or bound to the stake. These catholics, however, were attempting all sorts of intrigues; and the saints and martyrs of Dodd, to the parliament of England, were only traitors and conspirators!

Heylin, in his history of the Puritans and the Presbyterians, blackens them for political devils. He is the Spagnolet of history, delighting himself with horrors at which the painter himself must have started. He tells of their "oppositions" to monarchical and episcopal government; their "innovations" in the church; and their "embroilments" of the kingdoms. The sword rages in their hands; treason, sacrilege, plunder; while "more of the blood of Englishmen had poured like water within the space of four years, than had been shed in the civil wars of York and Lancaster in four centuries!"

Neal opposes a more elaborate history; where these "great and good men," the puritans and the presbyterians, "are placed among the reformers;" while their fame is blanched into angelic purity. Neal and his party opined that the protestant had not sufficiently protested, and that the reformation itself needed to be reformed. They wearied the impatient Elizabeth and her ardent churchmen; and disputed with the learned James, and his courtly bishops, about such ceremonial trifles, that the historian may blush or smile who has to record them. And when the puritan was thrown out of preferment, and seceded into separation, he turned into a presbyter. Nonconformity was their darling sin, and their sullen triumph.

Calamy, in four painful volumes, chronicles the bloodless martyrology of the two thousand silenced and ejected ministers. Their history is not glorious, and their heroes are obscure; but it is a domestic tale. When the second Charles was restored, the presbyterians, like every other faction, were to be amused, if not courted. Some of the king's chaplains were selected from among them, and preached once. Their hopes were raised that they should, by some agreement, be enabled to share in that ecclesiastical establishment which they had so often opposed; and the bishops met the presbyters in a convocation at the Savoy. A conference was held between the high church, resuming the seat of power, and the low church, now prostrate; that is, between the old clergy who had recently been mercilessly ejected by the new, who in their turn were awaiting their fate. The conference was closed with arguments by the weaker, and votes by the stronger. Many curious anecdotes of this conference have come down to us. The presbyterians, in their last struggle, petitioned for indulgence; but oppressors who had become petitioners, only showed that they possessed no longer the means of resistance. This conference was followed up by the Act of Uniformity, which took place on Bartholomew day, August 24, 1652: an act which ejected Calamy's two thousand ministers from the bosom of the established church. Bartholomew day with this party was long paralleled, and perhaps is still, with the dreadful French massacre of that fatal saint's day. The calamity was rather, however, of a private than of a public nature. The two thousand ejected ministers were indeed deprived of their livings; but this was, however, a happier fate than what has often occurred in these contests for the security of political power. This ejection was not like the expulsion of the Moriscoes, the best and most useful subjects of Spain, which was a human sacrifice of half a million of men, and the proscription of many Jews from that land of Catholicism; or the massacre of thousands of Huguenots, and the expulsion of more than a hundred thousand by Louis the Fourteenth from France. The presbyterian divines were not driven from their fatherland, and compelled to learn another language than their mother-tongue. Destitute as divines, they were suffered to remain as citizens; and the result was remarkable. These divines could not disrobe themselves of their learning and their piety, while several of them were compelled to become tradesmen: among these the learned Samuel Chandler, whose literary productions are numerous, kept a bookseller's shop in the Poultry.

Hard as this event proved in its result, it was, however, pleaded, that "It was but like for like." And that the history of "the like" might not be curtailed in the telling, opposed to Calamy's chronicle of the two thousand ejected ministers stands another, in folio magnitude, of the same sort of chronicle of the clergy of the Church of England, with a title by no means less pathetic.

This is Walker's "Attempt towards recovering an Account of the Clergy of the Church of England who were sequestered, harassed, &c., in the late Times." Walker is himself astonished at the size of his volume, the number of his sufferers, and the variety of the sufferings. "Shall the church," says he, "not have the liberty to preserve the history of her sufferings, as well as the separation to set forth an account of theirs? Can Dr. Calamy be acquitted for publishing the history of the Bartholomew sufferers, if I am condemned for writing that of the sequestered loyalists?" He allows that "the number of the ejected amounts to two thousand," and there were no less than "seven or eight thousand of the episcopal clergy imprisoned, banished, and sent a starving," &c. &c.

Whether the reformed were martyred by the catholics, or the catholics executed by the reformed; whether the puritans expelled those of the established church, or the established church ejected the puritans, all seems reducible to two classes, conformists and non-conformists, or, in the political style, the administration and the opposition. When we discover that the heads of all parties are of the same hot temperament, and observe the same evil conduct in similar situations; when we view honest old Latimer with his own hands hanging a mendicant friar on a tree, and, the government changing, the friars binding Latimer to the stake; when we see the French catholics cutting out the tongues of the protestants, that they might no longer protest; the haughty Luther writing submissive apologies to Leo the Tenth and Henry the Eighth for the scurrility with which he had treated them in his writings, and finding that his apologies were received with contempt, then retracting his retractations; when we find that haughtiest of the haughty, John Knox, when Elizabeth first ascended the throne, crouching and repenting of having written his famous excommunication against all female sovereignty; or pulling down the monasteries, from the axiom that when the rookery was destroyed, the rooks would never return; when we find his recent apologist admiring, while he apologises for, some extraordinary proofs of Machiavelian politics, an impenetrable mystery seems to hang over the conduct of men who profess to be guided by the bloodless code of Jesus. But try them by a human standard, and treat them as politicians, and the motives once discovered, the actions are understood!

Two edicts of Charles the Fifth, in 1555, condemned to death the Reformed of the Low Countries, even should they return to the catholic faith, with this exception, however, in favour of the latter, that they shall not be burnt alive, but that the men shall be beheaded, and the women buried alive! Religion could not, then, be the real motive of the Spanish cabinet, for in returning to the ancient faith that point was obtained; but the truth is, that the Spanish government considered the reformed as rebels, whom it was not safe to re-admit to the rights of citizenship. The undisguised fact appears in the codicil to the will of the emperor, when he solemnly declares that he had written to the Inquisition "to burn and extirpate the heretics," after trying to make Christians of them, because he is convinced that they never can become sincere catholics; and he acknowledges that he had committed a great fault in permitting Luther to return free on the faith of his safe-conduct, as the emperor was not bound to keep a promise with a heretic. "It is because that I destroyed him not, that heresy has now become strong, which I am convinced might have been stifled with him in its birth."[159] The whole conduct of Charles the Fifth in this mighty revolution was, from its beginning, censured by contemporaries as purely political. Francis the First observed that the emperor, under the colour of religion, was placing himself at the head of a league to make his way to a predominant monarchy. "The pretext of religion is no new thing," writes the Duke of Nevers. "Charles the Fifth had never undertaken a war against the Protestant princes but with the design of rendering the Imperial crown hereditary in the house of Austria; and he has only attacked the electoral princes to ruin them, and to abolish their right of election. Had it been zeal for the catholic religion, would he have delayed from 1519 to 1549 to arm? That he might have extinguished the Lutheran heresy, which he could easily have done in 1526, but he considered that this novelty would serve to divide the German princes, and he patiently waited till the effect was realised."[160]

Good men of both parties, mistaking the nature of these religious wars, have drawn horrid inferences! The "dragonnades" of Louis XIV. excited the admiration of Bruyere; and Anquetil, in his "Esprit de la Ligue," compares the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to a salutary amputation. The massacre of St. Bartholomew in its own day, and even recently, has found advocates; a Greek professor at the time asserted that there were two classes of protestants in France—political and religious; and that "the late ebullition of public vengeance was solely directed against the former." Dr. M'Crie, cursing the catholic with a catholic's curse, execrates "the stale sophistry of this calumniator." But should we allow that the Greek professor who advocated their national crime was the wretch the calvinistic doctor describes, yet the nature of things cannot be altered by the equal violence of Peter Charpentier and Dr. M'Crie.

This subject of "Political Religionism" is indeed as nice as it is curious; politics have been so cunningly worked into the cause of religion, that the parties themselves will never be able to separate them; and to this moment the most opposite opinions are formed concerning the same events and the same persons. When public disturbances broke out at Nismes on the first restoration of the Bourbons, the protestants, who there are numerous, declared that they were persecuted for religion, and their cry, echoed by their brethren the dissenters, resounded in this country. We have not forgotten the ferment it raised here; much was said, and something was done. Our minister, however, persisted in declaring that it was a mere political affair. It is clear that our government was right on the cause, and those zealous complainants wrong, who only observed the effect; for as soon as the Bourbonists had triumphed over the Bonapartists, we heard no more of those sanguinary persecutions of the protestants of Nismes, of which a dissenter has just published a large history. It is a curious fact, that when two writers at the same time were occupied in a Life of Cardinal Ximenes, Flechier converted the cardinal into a saint, and every incident in his administration was made to connect itself with his religious character; Marsollier, a writer very inferior to Flechier, shows the cardinal merely as a politician. The elegances of Flechier were soon neglected by the public, and the deep interests of truth soon acquired, and still retain, for the less elegant writer the attention of the statesman.

A modern historian has observed that "the affairs of religion were the grand fomenters and promoters of the Thirty Years' War, which first brought down the powers of the North to mix in the politics of the Southern states." The fact is indisputable, but the cause is not so apparent. Gustavus Adolphus, the vast military genius of his age, had designed, and was successfully attempting, to oppose the overgrown power of the imperial house of Austria, which had long aimed at an universal monarchy in Europe; a circumstance which Philip IV. weakly hinted at to the world when he placed this motto under his arms—"Sine ipso factum est nihil;" an expression applied to Jesus Christ by St. John!

FOOTNOTES:

[158] "Fox's Martyrs," as the book was popularly called, was often chained to a reading-desk in churches; one is still thus affixed at Cirencester; it thus received equal honour with the Bible.

[159] Llorente's "Critical History of the Inquisition."

[160] Naude, "Considerations Politiques," p. 115. See a curious note in Hart's "Life of Gustavus Adolphus," ii. 129.



TOLERATION.

An enlightened toleration is a blessing of the last age—it would seem to have been practised by the Romans, when they did not mistake the primitive Christians for seditious members of society; and was inculcated even by Mahomet, in a passage in the Koran, but scarcely practised by his followers. In modern history it was condemned when religion was turned into a political contest under the aspiring house of Austria—and in Spain—and in France. It required a long time before its nature was comprehended—and to this moment it is far from being clear, either to the tolerators or the tolerated.

It does not appear that the precepts or the practice of Jesus and the apostles inculcate the compelling of any to be Christians;[161] yet an expression employed in the nuptial parable of the great supper, when the hospitable lord commanded the servant, finding that he had still room to accommodate more guests, to go out in the highways and hedges, and "compel them to come in, that my house may be filled," was alleged as an authority by those catholics who called themselves "the converters," for using religious force, which, still alluding to the hospitable lord, they called "a charitable and salutary violence." It was this circumstance which produced Bayle's "Commentaire Philosophique sur ces Paroles de Jesus Christ," published under the supposititious name of an Englishman, as printed at Canterbury in 1686, but really at Amsterdam. It is curious that Locke published his first letter on "Toleration" in Latin at Gouda, in 1689—the second in 1690—and the third in 1692. Bayle opened the mind of Locke, and some time after quotes Locke's Latin letter with high commendation.[162] The caution of both writers in publishing in foreign places, however, indicates the prudence which it was deemed necessary to observe in writing in favour of toleration.

These were the first philosophical attempts; but the earliest advocates for toleration may be found among the religious controversialists of a preceding period; it was probably started among the fugitive sects who had found an asylum in Holland. It was a blessing which they had gone far to find, and the miserable, reduced to humane feelings, are compassionate to one another. With us the sect called "the Independents" had, early in our revolution under Charles the First, pleaded for the doctrine of religious liberty, and long maintained it against the presbyterians. Both proved persecutors when they possessed power. The first of our respectable divines who advocated this cause were Jeremy Taylor, in his "Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying," 1647, and Bishop Hall, who had pleaded the cause of moderation in a discourse about the same period.[163] Locke had no doubt examined all these writers. The history of opinions is among the most curious of histories; and I suspect that Bayle was well acquainted with the pamphlets of our sectarists, who, in their flight to Holland, conveyed those curiosities of theology, which had cost them their happiness and their estates: I think he indicates this hidden source of his ideas by the extraordinary ascription of his book to an Englishman, and fixing the place of its publication at Canterbury!

Toleration has been a vast engine in the hands of modern politicians. It was established in the United Provinces of Holland, and our numerous non-conformists took refuge in that asylum for disturbed consciences; it attracted a valuable community of French refugees; it conducted a colony of Hebrew fugitives from Portugal; conventicles of Brownists, quakers' meetings, French churches, and Jewish synagogues, and (had it been required) Mahometan mosques, in Amsterdam, were the precursors of its mart, and its exchange; the moment they could preserve their consciences sacred to themselves, they lived without mutual persecution, and mixed together as good Dutchmen.

The excommunicated part of Europe seemed to be the most enlightened, and it was then considered as a proof of the admirable progress of the human mind, that Locke and Clarke and Newton corresponded with Leibnitz, and others of the learned in France and Italy. Some were astonished that philosophers who differed in their religious opinions should communicate among themselves with so much toleration.[164]

It is not, however, clear that had any one of these sects at Amsterdam obtained predominance, which was sometimes attempted, they would have granted to others the toleration they participated in common. The infancy of a party is accompanied by a political weakness which disables it from weakening others.

The catholic in this country pleads for toleration; in his own he refuses to grant it. Here, the presbyterian, who had complained of persecution, once fixed in the seat of power, abrogated every kind of independence among others. When the flames consumed Servetus at Geneva, the controversy began, whether the civil magistrate might punish heretics, which Beza, the associate of Calvin, maintained; he triumphed in the small predestinating city of Geneva; but the book he wrote was fatal to the protestants a few leagues distant, among a majority of catholics. Whenever the protestants complained of the persecutions they suffered, the catholics, for authority and sanction, never failed to appeal to the volume of their own Beza.

M. Necker de Saussure has recently observed on "what trivial circumstances the change or the preservation of the established religion in different districts of Europe has depended!" When the Reformation penetrated into Switzerland, the government of the principality of Neufchatel, wishing to allow liberty of conscience to all their subjects, invited each parish to vote "for or against the adoption of the new worship; and in all the parishes, except two, the majority of suffrages declared in favour of the protestant communion." The inhabitants of the small village of Cressier had also assembled; and forming an even number, there happened to be an equality of votes for and against the change of religion. A shepherd being absent, tending the flocks on the hills, they summoned him to appear and decide this important question: when, having no liking to innovation, he gave his voice in favour of the existing form of worship; and this parish remained catholic, and is so at this day, in the heart of the protestant cantons.

I proceed to some facts which I have arranged for the history of Toleration. In the Memoirs of James the Second, when that monarch published "The Declaration for Liberty of Conscience," the catholic reasons and liberalises like a modern philosopher: he accuses "the jealousy of our clergy, who had degraded themselves into intriguers; and like mechanics in a trade, who are afraid of nothing so much as interlopers—they had therefore induced indifferent persons to imagine that their earnest contest was not about their faith, but about their temporal possessions. It was incongruous that a church, which does not pretend to be infallible, should constrain persons, under heavy penalties and punishments, to believe as she does: they delighted, he asserted, to hold an iron rod over dissenters and catholics; so sweet was dominion, that the very thought of others participating in their freedom made them deny the very doctrine they preached." The chief argument the catholic urged on this occasion was "the reasonableness of repealing laws which made men liable to the greatest punishments for that it was not in their power to remedy, for that no man could force himself to believe what he really did not believe."[165]

Such was the rational language of the most bigoted of zealots!—The fox can bleat like the lamb. At the very moment James the Second was uttering this mild expostulation, in his own heart he had anathematised the nation; for I have seen some of the king's private papers, which still exist; they consist of communications, chiefly by the most bigoted priests, with the wildest projects, and most infatuated prophecies and dreams, of restoring the true catholic faith in England! Had the Jesuit-led monarch retained the English throne, the language he now addressed to the nation would have been no longer used; and in that case it would have served his protestant subjects. He asked for toleration, to become intolerant! He devoted himself, not to the hundredth part of the English nation; and yet he was surprised that he was left one morning without an army! When the catholic monarch issued this declaration for "liberty of conscience," the Jekyll of his day observed, that "it was but scaffolding: they intend to build another house, and when that house (Popery) is built, they will take down the scaffold."[166]

When presbytery was our lord, they who had endured the tortures of persecution, and raised such sharp outcries for freedom, of all men were the most intolerant: hardly had they tasted of the Circean cup of dominion, ere they were transformed into the most hideous or the most grotesque monsters of political power. To their eyes toleration was an hydra, and the dethroned bishops had never so vehemently declaimed against what, in ludicrous rage, one of the high-flying presbyterians called "a cursed intolerable toleration!" They advocated the rights of persecution; and "shallow Edwards," as Milton calls the author of "The Gangraena," published a treatise against toleration. They who had so long complained of "the licensers," now sent all the books they condemned to penal fires. Prynne now vindicated the very doctrines under which he himself had so severely suffered; assuming the highest possible power of civil government, even to the infliction of death on its opponents. Prynne lost all feeling for the ears of others!

The idea of toleration was not intelligible for too long a period in the annals of Europe: no parties probably could conceive the idea of toleration in the struggle for predominance. Treaties are not proffered when conquest is the concealed object. Men were immolated! a massacre was a sacrifice! medals were struck to commemorate these holy persecutions![167] The destroying angel, holding in one hand a cross, and in the other a sword, with these words—Vgonottorum Strages, 1572—"The massacre of the Huguenots"—proves that toleration will not agree with that date.[168] Castelnau, a statesman and a humane man, was at a loss how to decide on a point of the utmost importance to France. In 1532 they first began to burn the Lutherans or Calvinists, and to cut out the tongues of all protestants, "that they might no longer protest." According to Father Paul, fifty thousand persons had perished in the Netherlands, by different tortures, for religion. But a change in the religion of the state, Castelnau considered, would occasion one in the government: he wondered how it happened, that the more they punished with death, it only increased the number of the victims: martyrs produced proselytes. As a statesman, he looked round the great field of human actions in the history of the past; there he discovered that the Romans were more enlightened in their actions than ourselves; that Trajan commanded Pliny the younger not to molest the Christians for their religion, but should their conduct endanger the state, to put down illegal assemblies; that Julian the Apostate expressly forbad the execution of the Christians, who then imagined that they were securing their salvation by martyrdom; but he ordered all their goods to be confiscated—a severe punishment—by which Julian prevented more than he could have done by persecutions. "All this," he adds, "we read in ecclesiastical history."[169] Such were the sentiments of Castelnau, in 1560. Amidst perplexities of state necessity, and of our common humanity, the notion of toleration had not entered into the views of the statesman. It was also at this time that De Sainctes, a great controversial writer, declared, that had the fires lighted for the destruction of Calvinism not been extinguished, the sect had not spread! About half a century subsequent to this period, Thuanus was, perhaps, the first great mind who appears to have insinuated to the French monarch and his nation, that they might live at peace with heretics; by which avowal he called down on himself the haughty indignation of Rome, and a declaration that the man who spoke in favour of heretics must necessarily be one of the first class. Hear the afflicted historian: "Have men no compassion, after forty years passed full of continual miseries? Have they no fear after the loss of the Netherlands, occasioned by the frantic obstinacy which marked the times? I grieve that such sentiments should have occasioned my book to have been examined with a rigour that amounts to calumny." Such was the language of Thuanus, in a letter written in 1606;[170] which indicates an approximation to toleration, but which term was not probably yet found in any dictionary. We may consider, as so many attempts at toleration, the great national synod of Dort, whose history is amply written by Brandt; and the mitigating protestantism of Laud, to approximate to the ceremonies of the Roman church; but the synod, after holding about two hundred sessions, closed, dividing men into universalists and semi-universalists, supralapsarians and sublapsarians! The reformed themselves produced the remonstrants; and Laud's ceremonies ended in placing the altar eastward, and in raising the scaffold for the monarchy and the hierarchy. Error is circuitous when it will do what it has not yet learnt. They were pressing for conformity to do that which, a century afterwards, they found could only be done by toleration.

The secret history of toleration among certain parties has been disclosed to us by a curious document, from that religious Machiavel, the fierce ascetic republican John Knox, a calvinistical Pope. "While the posterity of Abraham," says that mighty and artful reformer, "were few in number, and while they sojourned in different countries, they were merely required to avoid all participation in the idolatrous rites of the heathen; but as soon as they prospered into a kingdom, and had obtained possession of Canaan, they were strictly charged to suppress idolatry, and to destroy all the monuments and incentives. The same duty was now incumbent on the professors of the true religion in Scotland. Formerly, when not more than ten persons in a county were enlightened, it would have been foolishness to have demanded of the nobility the suppression of idolatry. But now, when knowledge had been increased," &c.[171] Such are the men who cry out for toleration during their state of political weakness, but who cancel the bond by which they hold their tenure whenever they "obtain possession of Canaan." The only commentary on this piece of the secret history of toleration is the acute remark of Swift:—"We are fully convinced that we shall always tolerate them, but not that they will tolerate us."

The truth is that TOLERATION was allowed by none of the parties! and I will now show the dilemmas into which each party thrust itself.

When the kings of England would forcibly have established episcopacy in Scotland, the presbyters passed an act against the toleration of dissenters from presbyterian doctrines and discipline; and thus, as Guthrie observes, they were committing the same violence on the consciences of their brethren which they opposed in the king. The presbyterians contrived their famous covenant to dispossess the royalists of their livings; and the independents, who assumed the principle of toleration in their very name, shortly after enforced what they called the engagement, to eject the presbyterians! In England, where the dissenters were ejected, their great advocate Calamy complains that the dissenters were only making use of the same arguments which the most eminent reformers had done in their noble defence of the reformation against the papists; while the arguments of the established church against the dissenters were the same which were urged by the papists against the protestant reformation![172] When the presbyterians were our masters, and preached up the doctrine of passive obedience in spiritual matters to the civil power, it was unquestionably passing a self-condemnation on their own recent opposition and detraction of the former episcopacy. Whenever men act from a secret motive entirely contrary to their ostensible one, such monstrous results will happen; and as extremes will join, however opposite they appear in their beginnings, John Knox and Father Petre, in office, would have equally served James the Second as confessor and prime minister!

A fact relating to the famous Justus Lipsius proves the difficulty of forming a clear notion of TOLERATION. This learned man, after having been ruined by the religious wars of the Netherlands, found an honourable retreat in a professor's chair at Leyden, and without difficulty abjured papacy. He published some political works: and adopted as his great principle, that only one religion should be allowed to a people, and that no clemency should be granted to non-conformists, who, he declares, should be pursued by sword and fire: in this manner a single member would be cut off to preserve the body sound. Ure, seca—are his words. Strange notions these in a protestant republic; and, in fact, in Holland it was approving of all the horrors of their oppressors, the Duke d'Alva and Philip the Second, from which they had hardly recovered.[173] It was a principle by which we must inevitably infer, says Bayle, that in Holland no other mode of religious belief but one sect should be permitted; and that those Pagans who had hanged the missionaries of the gospel had done what they ought. Lipsius found himself sadly embarrassed when refuted by Theodore Cornhert,[174] the firm advocate of political and religious freedom, and at length Lipsius, that protestant with a catholic heart, was forced to eat his words, like Pistol his onion, declaring that the two objectionable words, ure, seca, were borrowed from medicine, meaning not literally fire and sword, but a strong efficacious remedy, one of those powerful medicines to expel poison. Jean de Serres, a warm Huguenot, carried the principle of TOLERATION so far in his "Inventaire generale de l'Histoire de France," as to blame Charles Martel for compelling the Frisans, whom he had conquered, to adopt Christianity! "A pardonable zeal," he observes, "in a warrior; but in fact the minds of men cannot be gained over by arms, nor that religion forced upon them, which must be introduced into the hearts of men by reason." It is curious to see a protestant, in his zeal for toleration, blaming a king for forcing idolaters to become Christians; and to have found an opportunity to express his opinions in the dark history of the eighth century, is an instance how historians incorporate their passions in their works, and view ancient facts with modern eyes.

The protestant cannot grant toleration to the catholic, unless the catholic ceases to be a papist; and the Arminian church, which opened its wide bosom to receive every denomination of Christians, nevertheless were forced to exclude the papists, for their passive obedience to the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The catholic has curiously told us, on this word toleration, that Ce mot devient fort en usage a mesure que le nombre des tolerans augmente.[175] It was a word which seemed of recent introduction, though the book is modern! The protestants have disputed much how far they might tolerate, or whether they should tolerate at all; "a difficulty," triumphantly exclaims the catholic, "which they are not likely ever to settle, while they maintain their principles of pretended reformation; the consequences which naturally follow excite horror to the Christian. It is the weak who raise such outcries for toleration; the strong find authority legitimate."

A religion which admits not of toleration cannot be safely tolerated, if there is any chance of its obtaining a political ascendancy.

When Priscillian and six of his followers were condemned to torture and execution for asserting that the three persons of the Trinity were to be considered as three different acceptions of the same being, Saint Ambrose and Saint Martin asserted the cause of offended humanity, and refused to communicate with the bishops who had called out for the blood of the Priscillianists; but Cardinal Baronius, the annalist of the church, was greatly embarrassed to explain how men of real purity could abstain from applauding the ardent zeal of the persecution: he preferred to give up the saints rather than to allow of toleration—for he acknowledges that the toleration which these saints would have allowed was not exempt from sin.[176]

In the preceding article, "Political Religionism," we have shown how to provide against the possible evil of the tolerated becoming the tolerators! Toleration has been suspected of indifference to religion itself; but with sound minds, it is only an indifference to the logomachies of theology—things "not of God, but of man," that have perished, and that are perishing around us!

FOOTNOTES:

[161] Bishop Barlow's "Several Miscellaneous and Weighty Cases of Conscience Resolved," 1692. His "Case of a Toleration in Matters of Religion," addressed to Robert Boyle, p. 39. This volume was not intended to have been given to the world, a circumstance which does not make it the less curious.

[162] In the article Sancterius. Note F.

[163] Recent writers among our sectarists assert that Dr. Owen was the first who wrote in favour of toleration, in 1648! Another claims the honour for John Goodwin, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, who published one of his obscure polemical tracts in 1644, among a number of other persons who, at that crisis, did not venture to prefix their names to pleas in favour of toleration, so delicate and so obscure did this subject then appear! In 1651, they translated the liberal treatise of Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra, under the title of "The Authority of the Highest Powers about Sacred Things." London, 8vo, 1651. To the honour of Grotius, the first of philosophical reformers, be it recorded, that he displeased both parties!

[164] J. P. Rabaut, "sur la Revolution Francaise," p. 27.

[165] "Life of James the Second, from his own Papers," ii 114.

[166] This was a Baron Wallop. From Dr. H. Sampson's Manuscript Diary.

[167] It is curious to observe that the catholics were afterwards ashamed of these indiscretions; they were unwilling to own that there were any medals which commemorate massacres. Thuanus, in his 53rd book, has minutely described them. The medals, however, have become excessively scarce; but copies inferior to the originals have been sold. They had also pictures on similar subjects, accompanied by insulting inscriptions, which latter they have effaced, sometimes very imperfectly. See Hollis's "Memoirs," p. 312-14. This enthusiast advertised in the papers to request travellers to procure them.

[168] The Sala Regia of the Vatican has still upon its walls a painting by Vasari of this massacre, among the other important events in the history of the Popes similarly commemorated.

[169] "Memoires de Michel de Castelnau," liv. i. c. 4.

[170] "Life of Thuanus, by the Rev. J. Collinson," p. 115.

[171] Dr. M'Crie's "Life of John Knox," ii. 122.

[172] I quote from an unpublished letter, written so late as in 1749, addressed to the author of "The Free and Candid Disquisition," by the Rev. Thomas Allen, rector of Kettering, Northamptonshire. However extravagant his doctrine appears to us, I suspect that it exhibits the concealed sentiments of even some protestant churchmen! This rector of Kettering attributes the growth of schism to the negligence of the clergy, and seems to have persecuted both the archbishops, "to his detriment," as he tells us, with singular plans of reform borrowed from monastic institutions. He wished to revive the practice inculcated by a canon of the counsel of Laodicea of having prayers ad horam nonam et ad vesperam—prayers twice a day in the churches. But his grand project take in his own words:—

"I let the archbishop know that I had composed an irenicon, wherein I prove the necessity of an ecclesiastical power over consciences in matters of religion, which utterly silences their arguments who plead so hard for toleration. I took my scheme from 'A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity,' wherein the authority of the civil magistrate over the consciences of subjects in matters of external religion is asserted; the mischiefs and inconveniences of toleration are represented, and all pretences pleaded in behalf of liberty of conscience are fully answered. If this book were reprinted and considered, the king would know his power and the people their duty."

The rector of Kettering seems not to have known that the author of this "Discourse on Ecclesiastical Polity" was the notorious Parker, immortalised by the satire of Marvell. This political apostate, from a republican and presbyterian, became a furious advocate for arbitrary government in church and state! He easily won the favour of James the Second, who made him Bishop of Oxford! His principles were so violent that Father Petre, the confessor of James, made sure of him! This letter of the rector of Kettering, in adopting the system of such a catholic bishop, confirms my suspicion that toleration is condemned as an evil among some protestants!

[173] The cruelties practised by the Protestant against the Catholic party are pictured and described in Arnoudt Van Geluwe's book, "Over de Ontledinghe van dry verscheyden Niew-Ghereformeerde Martelaers Boecken," published at Antwerp in 1656.

[174] Cornhert was one of the fathers of Dutch literature, and even of their arts. He was the composer of the great national air of William of Orange; he was too a famous engraver, the master of Goltzius. On his death-bed he was still writing against the persecution of heretics.

[175] "Dictionnaire de Trevoux," ad vocem Tolerance. Printed in 1771.

[176] Sismondi, "Hist. des Francais," i. 41. The character of the first person who introduced civil persecution into the Christian church has been described by Sulpicius Severus. See Dr. Maclaine's note in his translation of Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. i. 428.



APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE.

An original document now lying before me, the autograph letter of Charles the Ninth, will prove, that the unparalleled massacre, called by the world religious, was, in the French cabinet, considered merely as political; one of those revolting state expedients which a pretended instant necessity has too often inflicted on that part of a nation which, like the undercurrent, subterraneously works its way, and runs counter to the great stream, till the critical moment arrives when one or the other must cease.

The massacre began on St. Bartholomew day, in August, 1572, lasted in France during seven days: that awful event interrupted the correspondence of our court with that of France. A long silence ensued; the one did not dare to tell the tale which the other could not listen to. But sovereigns know how to convert a mere domestic event into a political expedient. Charles the Ninth, on the birth of a daughter, sent over an ambassador extraordinary to request Elizabeth to stand as sponsor: by this the French monarch obtained a double purpose; it served to renew his interrupted intercourse with the silent queen, and alarmed the French protestants by abating their hopes, which long rested on the aid of the English queen.

The following letter, dated 8th February, 1573, is addressed by the king to La Motte Fenelon, his resident ambassador at London. The king in this letter minutely details a confidential intercourse with his mother, Catharine of Medicis, who, perhaps, may have dictated this letter to the secretary, although signed by the king with his own hand.[177] Such minute particulars could only have been known to herself. The Earl of Wolchester (Worcester) was now taking his departure, having come to Paris on the baptism of the princess; and accompanied by Walsingham, our resident ambassador, after taking leave of Charles, had the following interview with Catharine de Medicis. An interview with the young monarch was usually concluded by a separate audience with his mother, who probably was still the directress of his councils.