Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/curiositiesoflit41disr 
 
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. 
 
• 
 
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 ISAAC DISRAELI. 
 
 WITH A VIEW OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 
 OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 BY HIS SON. 
 
 IN FOUR VOLUMES. 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 FROM THE FOURTEENTH CORRECTED LONDON EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 SHELDON AND COMPANY. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WILLIAM VEAZIE. 
 1863. 
 
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 H 0. HOUGHTON. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LITERARY UNIONS 7 
 
 OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED 13 
 
 CAUSE AND PRETEXT 19 
 
 POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS . • • . 23 
 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION • • • .29 
 
 AUTOGRAPHS 44 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS 48 
 
 THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS 61 
 
 OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS 71 
 
 " TAXATION NO TYRANNY ! " 78 
 
 THE BOOK OF DEATH 87 
 
 HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH ... 95 
 
 THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLLN .... 105 
 
 OF LENGLET DU FRESNO Y Ill 
 
 THE DICTIONARY OF TREVOUX 120 
 
 QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY . . .125 
 
 "POLITICAL RELIGIONISM" 131 
 
 TOLERATION 139 
 
 APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE .... 151 
 
 PREDICTION 157 
 
 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY . . . .179 
 ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR . . . . .197 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES • 205 
 
 OF LITERARY FILCHERS 219 
 
 OF LORD BACON AT HOME 224 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH 233 
 JAMES THE FIRST, AS A FATHER AND A HUSBAND . 239 
 THE MAN OF ONE BOOK 244 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A BIBLIOGNOSTS 248 
 
 8ECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY . . 255 
 BUILDINGS IN THE METROPOLIS, AND RESIDENCE IN THE 
 
 COUNTRY 275 
 
 ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS 284 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY 293 
 
 LITERARY RESIDENCES 310 
 
 WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF . . .317 
 
 DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN 327 
 
 SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY 333 
 
 LITERARY PARALLELS 346 
 
 THE PEARL BIBLES, AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA . .349 
 VIEW OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF THE STATE OF RE- 
 LIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS 356 
 
 BUCKINGHAM'S POLITICAL COQUETRY WITH THE PURITANS 367 
 SIR EDWARD COKE'S EXCEPTIONS AGAINST THE HIGH 
 
 SHERIFF'S OATH 371 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST AND HIS FIRST 
 
 PARLIAMENTS 372 
 
 THE RUMP 412 
 
 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY — OLDYS 
 
 AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS 425 
 
 INDEX 449 
 
CUKIOSITIES OF LITEKATUEE. 
 
 LITERARY UNIONS. 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF RAWLEIGH'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD, 
 AND VASARl'S LIVES. 
 
 A union of talents, differing in their qualities, might carry 
 sgme important works to a more extended perfection. In a 
 work of great enterprise, the aid of a friendly hand may be 
 absolutely necessary to complete the labours of the projector, 
 who may have neither the courage, the leisure, nor all neces- 
 sary acquisitions for performing the favourite task which he 
 has otherwise matured. Many great works, commenced by a 
 master-genius, have remained unfinished, or have been de- 
 ficient for want of this friendly succour. The public would 
 have been grateful to Johnson, had he united in his diction- 
 ary the labours of some learned etymologist. Speed's 
 Chronicle owes most of its value, as it does its ornaments, to 
 the hand of Sir Robert Cotton, and other curious researchers, 
 who contributed entire portions. Goguet's esteemed work 
 of the " Origin of the Arts and Sciences " was greatly in- 
 debted to the fraternal zeal of a devoted friend. The still 
 valued books of the Port-royal Society, were all formed by 
 this happy union. The secret history of many eminent 
 works would show the advantages which may be derived 
 from that combination of talents, differing in their nature. 
 
8 
 
 LITERARY UNIONS. 
 
 Cumberland's masterly versions of the fragments of the 
 Greek dramatic poets would never have been given to the 
 poetical world, had he not accidentally possessed the manu- 
 script notes of his relative, the learned Bentley. This 
 treasure supplied that research in the most obscure works, 
 which the volatile studies of Cumberland could never have 
 explored ; a circumstance which he concealed from the world, 
 proud of the Greek erudition which he thus cheaply pos- 
 sessed. Yet by this literary union, Bentley's vast erudition 
 made those researches which Cumberland could not ; and 
 Cumberland gave the nation a copy of the domestic drama 
 of Greece, of which Bentley was incapable. 
 
 There is a large work, which is still celebrated, of which 
 the composition has excited the astonishment even of the 
 philosophic Hume, but whose secret history remains yet to 
 be disclosed. This extraordinary volume is " The History 
 of the World by Rawleigh." I shall transcribe Hume's 
 observation, that the reader may observe the literary pheno- 
 menon. " They were struck with the extensive genius of 
 the man, who being educated amidst naval and military en- 
 terprises, had surpassed in the pursuits of literature, even 
 those of the most recluse and sedentary lives ; and they ad- 
 mired his unbroken magnanimity, which at his age, and 
 under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and 
 execute so great a work, as his History of the World." 
 Now when the truth is known, the wonderful in this literary 
 mystery will disappear, except in the eloquent, the grand, 
 and the pathetic passages interspersed in that venerable 
 volume. We may, indeed, pardon the astonishment of our 
 calm philosopher, when we consider the recondite matter 
 contained in this work, and recollect the little time which 
 this adventurous spirit, whose life was passed in fabricating 
 his own fortune, and in perpetual enterprise, could allow to 
 such erudite pursuits. Where could Rawleigh obtain that 
 familiar acquaintance with the rabbins, of whose language he 
 was probably entirely ignorant ? His numerous publications, 
 
LITERARY UNIONS. 
 
 S 
 
 the effusions of a most active mind, though excellent in their 
 kind, were evidently composed by one who was not abstracted 
 in curious and remote inquiries, but full of the daily business 
 and the wisdom of human life. His confinement in the 
 Tower, which lasted several years, was indeed sufficient for 
 the composition of this folio volume, and of a second which 
 appears to have occupied him. But in that imprisonment it 
 singularly happened that he lived among literary characters, 
 with most intimate friendship. There he joined the Earl of 
 Northumberland, the patron of the philosophers of his age, 
 and with whom Rawleigh pursued his chemical studies ; and 
 Serjeant Hoskins, a poet and a wit, and the poetical " father " 
 of Ben Jonson, who acknowledged that "It was Hoskins 
 who had polished him ; " and that Rawleigh often consulted 
 Hoskins on his literary works, I learn from a manuscript. 
 But however literary the atmosphere of the Tower proved 
 to Rawleigh, no particle of Hebrew, and perhaps little of 
 Grecian lore, floated from a chemist and a poet. The truth 
 is, that the collection of the materials of this history was the 
 labour of several persons, who have not all been discovered. 
 It has been ascertained that Ben Jonson was a considerable 
 contributor; and there was an English philosopher from 
 whom Descartes, it is said even by his own countrymen, 
 borrowed largely — Thomas Hariot, whom Anthony Wood 
 charges with infusing into Rawleigh's volume philosophical 
 notions, while Rawleigh was composing his History of the 
 World. But if Rawleigh's pursuits surpassed even those of 
 the most recluse and sedentary lives, as Hume observes, we 
 must attribute this to a "Dr. Robert Burrel, Rector of 
 Northwald, in the county of Norfolk, who was a great 
 favourite of Sir Walter Rawleigh, and had been his 
 chaplain. All, or the greatest part of the drudgery of Sir 
 Walter's History for criticisms, chronology, and reading 
 Greek and Hebrew authors, were performed by him, for 
 Sir Walter." * Thus a simple fact, when discovered, clears 
 * I draw my information from a very singular manuscript in the Lans- 
 
10 
 
 LITERAKY UNIONS. 
 
 up the whole mystery ; and we learn how that knowledge 
 was acquired, which, as Hume sagaciously detected, required 
 "a recluse and sedentary life," such as the studies and the 
 habits of a country clergyman would have been in a learned 
 age. 
 
 The secret history of another work, still more celebrated 
 than the History of the World, by Sir Walter Rawleigh, will 
 doubtless surprise its numerous admirers. 
 
 Without the aid of a friendly hand, we should probably 
 have been deprived of the delightful history of Artists by 
 Vasari : although a mere painter and goldsmith, and not a 
 literary man, Vasari was blessed with the nice discernment 
 of one deeply conversant with art, and saw rightly what was 
 to be done, when the idea of the work was suggested by the 
 celebrated Paulus Jovius as a supplement to his own work 
 of the " Eulogiums of illustrious men." Vasari approved of 
 the project ; but on that occasion judiciously observed, not 
 blinded by the celebrity of the literary man who projected it, 
 that " It would require the assistance of an artist to collect 
 the materials, and arrange them in their proper order ; for 
 although Jovius displayed great knowledge in his observa- 
 
 downe collection, which I think has been mistaken for a boy's ciphering 
 book, of which it has much the appearance, No. 741, fo. 57, as it stands in 
 the auctioneer's catalogue. It appears to be a collection closely written, 
 extracted out of Anthony Wood's papers ; and as I have discovered in the 
 manuscript, numerous notices not elsewhere preserved, I am inclined to 
 think that the transcriber copied them from that mass of Anthony Wood's 
 papers, of which more than one sack full was burnt at his desire before him 
 when dying. If it be so, this MS. is the only register of many curious facts. 
 
 Ben Jonson has been too freely censured for his own free censures, and 
 particularly for one he made on Sir Walter Eawleigh, who, he told Drum- 
 mond, " esteemed more fame than conscience. The best wits in England 
 were employed in making his History ; Ben himself had written a piece to 
 him of the Punic War, which he altered and set in his book." Jonson's 
 powerful advocate, Mr. Gifford, has not alleged a word in the defence of 
 our great Bard's free conversational strictures; the secret history of Raw- 
 leigh's great work had never been discovered; on this occasion, however, 
 Jonson only spoke what he knew to be true — and there may have been 
 other truths, in those conversations which were set down at random by 
 Drummond, who may have chiefly recollected the satirical touches. 
 
LITERARY UNIONS. 
 
 11 
 
 tions, yet he had not been equally accurate in the arrange- 
 ment of his facts in his book of Eulogiuras." Afterwards, 
 when Vasari began to collect his information, and consulted 
 Paulus Jovius on the plan, although that author highly ap- 
 proved of what he saw, he alleged his own want of leisure 
 and ability to complete such an enterprise ; and this was for- 
 tunate : we should otherwise have had, instead of the rambling 
 spirit which charms us in the volumes of Yasari, the verbose 
 babble of a declaimer. Vasari, however, looked round for 
 the assistance he wanted ; a circumstance which Tiraboschi 
 has not noticed : like Hogarth, he required a literary man 
 for his scribe. I have discovered the name of the chief writer 
 of the Lives of the Painters, who wrote under the direction 
 of Vasari, and probably often used his own natural style, and 
 conveyed to us those reflections which surely come from their 
 source. I shall give the passage, as a curious instance where 
 the secret history of books is often detected in the most ob- 
 scure corners of research. Who could have imagined that 
 in a collection of the lives de' Santi e Beati delV or dine de' 
 Predicatori, we are to look for the writer of Vasari's lives ? 
 Don Serafini Razzi, the author of this ecclesiastical biogra- 
 phy, has this reference : " Who would see more of this may 
 turn to the lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects, 
 written for the greater part by Don Silvano Razzi, my 
 brother, for the Signor Cavaliere M. Giorgio Vasari, his 
 great friend." * 
 
 The discovery that Vasari's volumes were not entirely 
 written by himself, though probably under his dictation, and 
 unquestionably, with his communications, as we know that 
 Dr. Morell wrote the " Analysis of Beauty " for Hogarth, 
 will perhaps serve to clear up some unaccountable mistakes 
 
 * I find this quotation in a sort of polemical work of natural philosophy, 
 entitled " Saggio di Storia Litteraria Fiorentina del Secolo XVII. da Gio- 
 vanne Clemente Nelli, Lucca, 1759," p. 68. Nelli also refers to what he 
 had said on this subject in his " Piante ad alzati di S. M. del Fiore, p. vi. 
 e. vii. ;" a work on architecture. See Brunet; and Haym, Bib. ItaL d£ 
 Libri rari. 
 
12 
 
 LITERARY UNIONS. 
 
 or omissions which appear in that series of volumes, written 
 at long intervals, and by different hands. Mr. Fuseli has 
 alluded to them in utter astonishment ; and cannot account 
 for Vasari's " incredible dereliction of reminiscence, which 
 prompted him to transfer what he had rightly ascribed to 
 Giorgione in one edition to the elder Parma in the subse- 
 quent ones." Again : Vasari's " memory was either so 
 treacherous, or his rapidity in writing so inconsiderate, 
 that his account of the Capella Sistina, and the stanze of 
 Raffaello, is a mere heap of errors and unpardonable con- 
 fusion." Even Bottari, his learned editor, is at a loss how to 
 account for his mistakes. Mr. Fuseli finely observes, " He 
 has been called the Herodotus of our art ; and if the main 
 simplicity of his narrative, and the desire of heaping anec- 
 dote on anecdote, entitle him in some degree to that appella- 
 tion, we ought not to forget that the information of every day 
 adds something to the authenticity of the Greek historian, 
 whilst every day furnishes matter to question the credibility 
 of the Tuscan." All this strongly confirms the suspicion 
 that Vasari employed different hands at different times to 
 write out his work. Such mistakes would occur to a new 
 writer, not always conversant with the subject he was com- 
 posing on, and the disjointed materials of which were often 
 found in a disordered state. It is, however, ' strange that 
 neither Bottari nor Tiraboschi appear to have been aware 
 that Vasari employed others to write for him-; we see that 
 from the first suggestion of the work he had originally pro- 
 posed that Paulus Jovius should hold the pen for him. 
 
 The principle illustrated in this article might be pursued ; 
 but the secret history of two great works so well known are 
 as sufficient as twenty others of writings less celebrated. 
 The literary phenomenon which had puzzled the calm in- 
 quiring Hume to cry out " a miracle ! " has been solved by 
 the discovery of a little fact on Literary Unions, which 
 derives importance from this circumstance.* 
 * Mr. Patrick Fraser Tytler, in his recent biography of Sir Waltef 
 
OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED. 
 
 13 
 
 OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED. 
 
 There are objects connected with literary curiosity, whose 
 very history, though they may never gratify our sight, is 
 literary ; and the originality of their invention, should they 
 excite imitation, may serve to constitute a class. I notice a 
 book-curiosity of this nature. 
 
 This extraordinary volume may be said to have contained 
 the travels and adventures of Charles Magius, a noble Vene- 
 tian ; and this volume, so precious, consisted only of eighteen 
 pages, composed of a series of highly-finished miniature 
 paintings on vellum, some executed by the hand of Paul 
 Veronese. Each page, however, may be said to contain 
 many chapters ; for, generally, it is composed of a large 
 centre-piece, surrounded by ten small ones, with many apt 
 inscriptions, allegories, and allusions ; the whole exhibiting 
 romantic incidents in the life of this Venetian nobleman. 
 But it is not merely as a beautiful production of art that we 
 are to consider it ; it becomes associated with a more elevated 
 feeling in the occasion which produced it. The author, who 
 is,himself the hero, after having been long calumniated, re- 
 solved to set before the eyes of his accusers the sufferings 
 and adventures he could perhaps have but indifferently de- 
 
 Kawleigh, a work of vigorous research and elegant composition, has dedi- 
 cated to me a supernumerary article in his Appendix, entitled Mr. Z>' Is- 
 raeli's Errors ! 
 
 He has inferred from the present article, that I denied that Rawleigh 
 was the writer of his own great work ! — because I have shown how great 
 works may be advantageously pursued by the aid of " Literary Union." 
 It is a monstrous inference ! The chimrera which plays before his eyes is 
 his own contrivance ; he starts at his own phantasmagoria, and leaves me, 
 after all, to fight with his shadow. 
 
 Mr. Tytler has not contradicted a single statement of mine. I have care- 
 fully read his article and my own, and I have made no alteration. 
 
 I may be allowed to add that there is much redundant matter in tbe 
 article of Mr. Tytler; and, to use the legal style, there is much " imperti- 
 nence," which, with a little candour and more philosophy, he would strike 
 his pen through, as sound lawyers do on these occasions. 
 
14 
 
 OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED. 
 
 scribed : and instead of composing a tedious volume for his 
 justification, invented this new species of pictorial biography. 
 The author minutely described the remarkable situations in 
 which fortune had placed him ; and the artists, in embellish- 
 ing the facts he furnished them with to record, emulated each 
 other in giving life to their truth, and putting into action, be- 
 fore the spectator, incidents which the pen had less impres- 
 sively exhibited. This unique production may be considered 
 as a model to represent the actions of those who may succeed 
 more fortunately by this new mode of perpetuating their his- 
 tory ; discovering, by the aid of the pencil, rather than by 
 their pen, the forms and colours of an extraordinary life. 
 
 It was when the Ottomans (about 1571) attacked the Isle 
 of Cyprus, that this Venetian nobleman was charged by his 
 republic to review and repair the fortifications. He was 
 afterwards sent to the pope to negotiate an alliance: he 
 returned to the senate to give an account of his commission. 
 Invested with the chief command, at the head of his troops, 
 Magius threw himself into the island of Cyprus, and after a 
 skilful defence, which could not prevent its fall, at Famagusta 
 he was taken prisoner by the Turks, and made a slave. His 
 age and infirmities induced his master, at length, to sell him 
 to some Christian merchants ; and after an absence of several 
 years from his beloved Venice, he suddenly appeared, to the 
 astonishment and mortification of a party who had never 
 ceased to calumniate him ; while his own noble family were 
 compelled to preserve an indignant silence, having had no 
 communications with their lost and enslaved relative. Magius 
 now returned to vindicate his honour, to reinstate himself in 
 the favour of the senate, and to be restored to a venerable 
 parent amidst his family ; to whom he introduced a fresh 
 branch, in a youth of seven years old, the child of his mis- 
 fortunes, who, born in trouble, and a stranger to domestic 
 endearments, was at one moment united to a beloved circle 
 of relations. 
 
 I shall give a rapid view of some of the pictures of this 
 
OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED. 
 
 15 
 
 Venetian nobleman's life. The whole series has been elabor- 
 ately drawn up by the Duke de la Valliere, the celebrated 
 book-collector, who dwells on the detail with the curiosity of 
 an amateur.* 
 
 In a rich frontispiece, a Christ is expiring on the cross ; 
 Religion, leaning on a column, contemplates the Divinity, 
 and Hope is not distant from her. The genealogical tree of 
 the house of Magius, with an allegorical representation of 
 Venice, its nobility, power, and riches : the arms of Magius, 
 in which is inserted a view of the holy sepulchre of Jeru- 
 salem, of which he was made a knight ; his portrait, with a 
 Latin inscription : " I have passed through arms and the 
 enemy, amidst fire and water, and the Lord conducted me to 
 a safe asylum, in the year of grace 1571." The portrait of 
 his son, aged seven years, finished with the greatest beauty, 
 and supposed to have come from the hand of Paul Veronese ; 
 it bears this inscription : " Overcome by violence and arti- 
 fice, almost dead before his birth, his mother was at length 
 delivered of him, full of life, with all the loveliness of in- 
 fancy ; under the divine protection, his birth was happy, and 
 his life with greater happiness shall be closed with good 
 fortune." 
 
 A plan of the isle of Cyprus, where Magius commanded, 
 and his first misfortune happened, his slavery by the Turks. 
 — The painter has expressed this by an emblem of a tree 
 shaken by the winds and scathed by the lightning ; but from 
 the trunk issues a beautiful green branch shining in a brilliant 
 sun, with this device — " From this fallen trunk springs a 
 branch full of vigour." 
 
 The missions of Magius to raise troops in the province of 
 
 * The duke's description is not to be found, as might be expected, in 
 his own valued catalogue, but was a contribution to Gaignat's, ii. 16, 
 where it occupies fourteen pages. This singular work sold at Gaignat's 
 sale for 902 livres. It was then the golden age of literary curiosity, when 
 the rarest things were not ruinous ; and that price was even then con- 
 sidered extraordinary, though the work was an unique. It must consist 
 of about 180 subjects, by Italian artists. 
 
16 
 
 OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED. 
 
 la Puglia. — In one of these Magius is seen returning to 
 Venice ; his final departure, — a thunderbolt is viewed falling 
 on his vessel — his passage by Corfu and Zante, and his 
 arrival at Candia. 
 
 His travels to Egypt. — The centre figure represents this 
 province raising its right hand extended towards a palm-tree, 
 and the left leaning on a pyramid, inscribed " Celebrated 
 throughout the world for her wonders." The smaller pictures 
 are the entrance of Magius into the port of Alexandria; 
 Rosetta, with a caravan of Turks and different nations ; the 
 city of Grand Cairo, exterior and interior, with views of 
 other places ; and finally, his return to Venice. 
 
 His journey to Rome. — The centre figure an armed Pallas 
 seated on trophies, the Tyber beneath her feet, a globe in her 
 hands, inscribed Quod rerum victrix ac domina — " Because 
 she is the Conqueress and Mistress of the World." The ten 
 small pictures are views of the cities in the pope's dominion. 
 His first audience at the conclave forms a pleasing and fine 
 composition. 
 
 His travels into Syria. — The principal figure is a female, 
 emblematical of that fine country ; she is seated in the midst 
 of a gay orchard, and embraces a bundle of roses, inscribed 
 Mundi delicice — " The delight of the universe." The small 
 compartments are views of towns and ports, and the spot 
 where Magius collected his fleet. 
 
 His pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was made a knight 
 of the holy sepulchre. — The principal figure represents De- 
 votion, inscribed Ducit. " It is she who conducts me." The 
 compartments exhibit a variety of objects, with a correctness 
 of drawing, which are described as belonging to the class, 
 and partaking of the charms, of the pencil of Claude Lor- 
 raine. His vessel is first viewed in the roadstead at Venice 
 beat by a storm ; arrives at Zante to refresh ; enters the 
 port of Simiso ; there having landed, he and his companions 
 are proceeding to the town on asses, for Christians were not 
 permitted to travel in Turkey on horses. — In the church at 
 
OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED. 
 
 17 
 
 Jerusalem the bishop, in his pontifical habit, receives him as 
 a knight of the holy sepulchre, arraying him in the armour 
 of Godfrey of Bouillon, and placing his sword in the hands 
 of Magius. His arrival at Bethlehem, to see the cradle of 
 the Lord — and his return by Jaffa with his companions, in 
 the dress of pilgrims ; the groups are finely contrasted with 
 the Turks mingling amongst them. 
 
 The taking of the city of Famagusta, and his slavery. — 
 The middle figure, with a dog at its feet represents Fidelity, 
 the character of Magius, who ever preferred it to his life or 
 his freedom, inscribed Captivat — " She has reduced me to 
 slavery." Six smaller pictures exhibit the different points of 
 the island of Cyprus, where the Turks effected their descents. 
 Magius retreating to Famagusta, which he long defended, 
 and where his cousin, a skilful engineer, was killed. The 
 Turks compelled to raise the siege, but return with greater 
 forces — the sacking of the town and the palace, where 
 Magius was taken. — One picture exhibits him brought before 
 a bashaw, who has him stripped, to judge of his strength and 
 fix his price, when, after examination, he is sent among other 
 slaves. He is seen bound and tied up among his companions 
 in misfortune — again he is forced to labour, and carries a 
 cask of water on his shoulders. — In another picture, his 
 master, finding him weak of body, conducts him to a slave 
 merchant to sell him. In another we see him leading an ass 
 loaded with packages ; his new master, finding him loitering 
 on his way, showers his blows on him, while a soldier is seen 
 purloining one of the packages from the ass. Another ex- 
 hibits Magius sinking with fatigue on the sands, while his 
 master would raise him up by an unsparing use of the basti- 
 nado. The varied details of these little paintings are pleas- 
 ingly executed. 
 
 The close of his slavery. — The middle figure kneeling to 
 heaven, and a light breaking from it, inscribed " He breaks 
 my chains," to express the confidence of Magius. The 
 Turks are seen landing with their pillage and their slaves. — 
 
 VOL. IV. 2 
 
18 
 
 OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED. 
 
 In one of the pictures are seen two ships on fire ; a young 
 lady of Cyprus preferring death to the loss of her honour 
 and the miseries of slavery, determined to set fire to the 
 vessel in which she was carried; she succeeded, and the 
 flames communicated to another. 
 
 His return to Venice. — The painter for his principal 
 figure has chosen a Pallas, with a helmet on her head, the 
 aegis on one arm, and her lance in the other, to describe the 
 courage with which Magius had supported his misfortunes, 
 inscribed Reducit — " She brings me back." In the last of 
 the compartments he is seen at the custom-house at Venice ; 
 he enters the house of his father; the old man hastens to 
 meet him, and embraces him. 
 
 One page is filled by a single picture, which represents the 
 senate of Venice, with the Doge on his throne; Magius 
 presents an account of his different employments, and holds 
 in his hand a scroll, on which is written Quod commisisti 
 perfect; quod restat agendum, pare fide complectar — "I 
 have done what you committed to my care ; and I will per- 
 form with the same fidelity what remains to be done." He 
 is received by the senate with the most distinguished honours, 
 and is not only justified, but praised and honoured. 
 
 The most magnificent of these paintings is the one attrib- 
 uted to Paul Veronese. It is described by the Duke de la 
 Valliere as almost unparalleled for its richness, its elegance, 
 and its brilliancy. It is inscribed Pater mens etfratres met 
 dereliquerunt me ; Dcminus autem assumpsit me ! — " My 
 father and my brothers abandoned me ; but the Lord took 
 me under his protection." This is an allusion to the accusa- 
 tion raised against him in the open senate when the Turks 
 took the isle of Cyprus, and his family wanted either the con- 
 fidence or the courage to defend Magius. In the front of this 
 large picture, Magius leading his son by the hand, conducts 
 him to be reconciled with his brothers and sisters-in-law, who 
 are on the opposite side ; his hand holds this scroll, Vos cogi- 
 tastis de me malum; sed Deus convertit illud in bonum — 
 
CAUSE AND PRETEXT. 
 
 19 
 
 " You thought ill of me ; but the Lord has turned it to good." 
 In this he alludes to the satisfaction he had given the senate, 
 and to the honours they had decreed him. Another scene is 
 introduced, where Magius appears in a magnificent hall at a 
 table in the midst of all his family, with whom a general recon- 
 ciliation has taken place : on his left hand are gardens open- 
 ing with an enchanting effect, and magnificently ornamented, 
 with the villa of his father, on which flowers and wreaths 
 seem dropping on the roof, as if from heaven. In the per- 
 spective, the landscape probably represents the rural neigh- 
 bourhood of Magius's early days. 
 
 Such are the most interesting incidents which I have 
 selected from the copious description of the Duke de la 
 Valliere. The idea of this production is new : an auto- 
 biography in a series of remarkable scenes, painted under the 
 eye of the describer of them, in which too he has preserved 
 all the fulness of his feelings and his minutest recollections ; 
 but the novelty becomes interesting from the character of the 
 noble Magius, and the romantic fancy which inspired this 
 elaborate and costly curiosity. It was not indeed without 
 some trouble that I have drawn up this little account ; but 
 while thus employed, I seemed to be composing a very 
 uncommon romance. 
 
 CAUSE AND PRETEXT. 
 
 It is an important principle in morals and in politics, not 
 to mistake the cause for the pretext, nor the pretext for the 
 cause, and by this means to distinguish between the concealed 
 and the ostensible motive. On this principle, history might 
 be recomposed in a new manner ; it would not often describe 
 circumstances and characters as they usually appear. When 
 we mistake the characters of men, we mistake the nature of 
 their actions, and we shall find in the study of secret history, 
 
20 
 
 CAUSE AND PRETEXT. 
 
 that some of the most important events in modern history 
 were produced from very different motives than their osten- 
 sible ones. Polybius, the most philosophical writer of the 
 ancients, has marked out this useful distinction of cause and 
 pretext, and aptly illustrates the observation by the facts 
 which he explains. Amilcar, for instance, was the first au- 
 thor and contriver of the second Punic war, though he died 
 ten years before the commencement of it. " A statesman," 
 says the wise and grave historian, " who knows not how to 
 trace the origin of events, and discern the different sources 
 from whence they take their rise, may be compared to a phy- 
 sician, who neglects to inform himself of the causes of those 
 distempers which he is called in to cure. Our pains can 
 never be better employed than in searching out the causes 
 of events ; for the most trifling incidents give birth to matters 
 of the greatest moment and importance." The latter part 
 of this remark of Polybius points out another principle which 
 has been often verified by history, and which furnished the 
 materials of the little book of " Grands Evenemens par les 
 petites Causes." 
 
 Our present inquiry concerns " cause and pretext." 
 
 Leo X. projected an alliance of the sovereigns of Christen- 
 dom against the Turks. The avowed object was to oppose 
 the progress of the Ottomans against the Mamelukes of 
 Egypt, who were more friendly to the Christians ; but the 
 concealed motive with his holiness was to enrich himself and 
 his family with the spoils of Christendom, and to aggrandize 
 the papal throne by war ; and such, indeed, the policy of 
 these pontiffs had always been in those mad crusades which 
 they excited against the East. 
 
 The Reformation, excellent as its results have proved in 
 the cause of genuine freedom, originated in no purer source 
 than human passions and selfish motives : it was the progeny 
 of avarice in Germany, of novelty in France, and of love in 
 England. The latter is elegantly alluded to by Gray : — 
 " And gospel-light first beam'd from Bullen's eyes." 
 
CAUSE AND PRETEXT. 
 
 21 
 
 The Reformation is considered by the Duke of Nevers, in a 
 work printed in 1590, as it had been by Francis L, in his 
 Apology in 1537, as a coup-d'etat of Charles V. towards uni- 
 versal monarchy. The duke says, that the emperor silently 
 permitted Luther to establish his principles in Germany, that 
 they might split the confederacy of the elective princes, and 
 by this division facilitate their more easy conquest, and play 
 them off one against another, and by these means to secure 
 the imperial crown, hereditary in the house of Austria. Had 
 Charles V. not been the mere creature of his politics, and had 
 he felt any zeal for the Catholic cause, which he pretended to 
 fight for, never would he have allowed the new doctrines 
 to spread for more than twenty years without the least 
 opposition. 
 
 The famous league in France was raised for " religion and 
 the relief of public grievances ; " such was the pretext ! 
 After the princes and the people had alike become its vic- 
 tims, this " league " was discovered to have been formed by 
 the pride and the ambition of the Guises, aided by the machi- 
 nations of the Jesuits against the attempts of the Prince of 
 Conde to dislodge them from their " seat of power." While 
 the Huguenots pillaged, burnt, and massacred, declaring in 
 their manifestoes that they were only fighting to release the 
 king, whom they asserted was a prisoner of the Guises ; the 
 Catholics repaid them with the same persecution and the 
 same manifestoes, declaring that they only wished to liberate 
 the Prince of Conde, who was the prisoner of the Huguenots. 
 The people were led on by the cry of " religion ; " but this 
 civil war was not in reality so much Catholic against Hugue- 
 not, as Guise against Conde. A parallel event occurred be- 
 tween our Charles I. and the Scotch covenanters ; and the 
 king expressly declared, in " a large declaration, concerning 
 the late tumults in Scotland," that " religion is only pretended, 
 and used by them as a cloak to palliate their intended rebel- 
 lion" which he demonstrated by the facts he alleged. There 
 was a revolutionary party in France, which, taking the name 
 
22 
 
 CAUSE AND PRETEXT. 
 
 of Frondeurs, shook that kingdom under the administration 
 of Cardinal Mazarin, and held out for their pretext the public 
 freedom. But that faction, composed of some of the discon- 
 tented French princes and the mob, was entirely organized 
 by Cardinal de Retz, who held them in hand, to check or to 
 spur them as the occasion required, from a mere personal 
 pique against Mazarin, who had not treated that vivacious 
 genius with all the deference he exacted. This appears from 
 his own Memoirs. 
 
 We have smiled at James I. threatening the states-general 
 by the English ambassador, about Vorstius, a Dutch profes- 
 sor, who had espoused the doctrines of Arminius against 
 those of the contra-remonstrants, or Calvinists ; the osten- 
 sible subject was religious, or rather metaphysical-religious 
 doctrines, but the concealed one was a struggle for predomi- 
 nance between the Pensionary Barnevelt, assisted by the 
 French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the 
 English. " These were the real sources," says Lord Hard- 
 wicke, a statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant 
 with secret and public history, and a far more able judge 
 than Diodati the Swiss divine, and Brandt the ecclesiastical 
 historian, who in the Synod of Dort could see nothing but 
 what appeared in it ; and gravely narrated the idle squabbles 
 on phrases concerning predestination or grace. Hales, of 
 Eaton, who was secretary to the English ambassador at this 
 synod, perfectly accords with the account of Lord Hardwicke. 
 " Our synod," writes that judicious observer, " goes on like a 
 watch ; the main wheels upon which the whole business turns 
 are least in sight ; for all things of moment are acted in pri- 
 vate sessions ; what is done in public is only for show and 
 entertainment.'" 
 
 The cause of the persecution of the Jansenists was the 
 jealousy of the Jesuits ; the pretext was la grace suffisante. 
 The learned La Croze observes, that the same circumstance 
 occurred in the affair of Nestorius and the church of Alex- 
 andria ; the pretext was orthodoxy, the cause was the 
 
POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS. 
 
 23 
 
 jealousy of the church of Alexandria; or rather the fiery 
 and turbulent Cyril, who personally hated Nestorius. The 
 opinions of Nestorius, and the council which condemned 
 them, were the same in effect. I only produce this remote 
 fact to prove that ancient times do not alter the truth of our 
 principle. 
 
 When James II. was so strenuous an advocate for tolera- 
 tion and liberty of conscience in removing the test act, this 
 enlightened principle of government was only a pretext with 
 that monk-ridden monarch ; it is well known that the came 
 was to introduce and make the catholics predominant in his 
 councils and government. The result, which that eager and 
 blind politician hurried on too fast, and which therefore did 
 not take place, would have been, that " liberty of conscience " 
 would soon have become an " overt act of treason," before an 
 inquisition of his Jesuits ! 
 
 In all political affairs drop the pretexts and strike at the 
 causes ; we may thus understand what the heads of parties 
 may choose to conceal. 
 
 POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS. 
 
 A writer, whose learning gives value to his eloquence, 
 in his Bampton Lectures has censured, with that liberal spirit 
 so friendly to the cause of truth, the calumnies and rumours 
 of parties, which are still industriously retailed, though they 
 have been often confuted. Forged documents are still re- 
 ferred to, or tales unsupported by evidence are confidently 
 quoted. Mr. Heber's subject confined his inquiries to theo- 
 logical history ; he has told us that " Augustin is not 
 ashamed, in his dispute with Faustus, to take advantage of 
 the popular slanders against the followers of Manes, though 
 his own experience, for he had himself been of that sect, 
 was sufficient to detect this falsehood." The Romanists, in 
 
24 
 
 POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS. 
 
 spite of satisfactory answers, have continued to urge against 
 the English protestant the romance of Parker's consecration ; 
 while the protestant persists in falsely imputing to the 
 catholic public formularies the systematic omission of the 
 second commandment. " The calumnies of Rimius and 
 Stinstra against the Moravian brethren are cases in point," 
 continues Mr. Heber. u No one now believes them, yet they 
 once could deceive even Warburton ! " We may also add 
 the obsolete calumny of Jews crucifying boys — of which a 
 monument raised to Hugh of Lincoln perpetuates the 
 memory, and which a modern historian records without any 
 scruple of doubt; several authorities, which are cited on 
 this occasion, amount only to the single one of Matthew 
 Paris, who gives it as a popular rumour. Such accusations 
 usually happened when the Jews were too rich and the king 
 was too poor ! 
 
 The falsehoods and forgeries raised by parties are over- 
 whelming! It startles a philosopher, in the calm of his 
 study, when he discovers how writers, who, we may presume, 
 are searchers after truth, should, in fact, turn out to be 
 searchers after the grossest fictions. This alters the habits 
 of the literary man : it is an unnatural depravity of his pur- 
 suits — and it proves that the personal is too apt to predom- 
 inate over the literary character. 
 
 I have already touched on the main point of the present 
 article in the one on " Political Nick-names." I have there 
 shown how political calumny appears to have been reduced 
 into an art ; one of its branches would be that of converting 
 forgeries and fictions into historical authorities. 
 
 When one nation is at war with another, there is no doubt 
 that the two governments connive at, and often encourage, 
 the most atrocious libels on each other, to madden the people 
 to preserve their independence, and contribute cheerfully to 
 the expenses of the war. France and England formerly 
 complained of Holland — the Athenians employed the same 
 policy against the Macedonians and Persians. Such is the 
 
POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS. 
 
 25 
 
 origin of a vast number of supposititious papers and volumes, 
 which sometimes, at a remote date, confound the labors of 
 the honest historian, and too often serve the purposes of the 
 dishonest, with whom they become authorities. The crude 
 and suspicious libels which were drawn out of their obscurity 
 in Cromwell's time against James the First, have over-loaded 
 the character of that monarch, yet are now eagerly referred 
 to by party writers, though in their own days they were 
 obsolete and doubtful. During the civil wars of Charles the 
 First, such spurious documents exist in the forms of speeches 
 which were never spoken ; of letters never written by the 
 names subscribed ; printed declarations never declared ; 
 battles never fought, and victories never obtained ! Such is 
 the language of Rushworth, who complains of this evil 
 spirit of party forgeries, while he is himself suspected of 
 having rescinded or suppressed whatever was not agreeable 
 to his patron Cromwell. A curious, and, perhaps, a neces- 
 sary list might be drawn up of political forgeries of our own, 
 which have been sometimes referred to as genuine, but which 
 are the inventions of wits and satirists ! Bayle ingeniously 
 observes, that at the close of every century such productions 
 should be branded by a skilful discriminator, to save the 
 future inquirer from errors he can hardly avoid. " How 
 many are still kept in error by the satires of the sixteenth 
 century ! Those of the present age will be no less active 
 in future ages, for they will still be preserved in public 
 libraries." 
 
 The art and skill with which some have fabricated a forged 
 narrative, render its detection almost hopeless. When young 
 Maitland, the brother to the secretary, in order to palliate 
 the crime of the assassination of the Regent Murray, w r as 
 employed to draw up a pretended conference between him, 
 Knox, and others, to stigmatize them by the odium of advis- 
 ing to dethrone the young monarch, and to substitute the 
 regent for their sovereign, Maitland produced so dramatic a 
 performance, by giving to each person his peculiar mode of 
 
26 
 
 POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS. 
 
 expression, that this circumstance long baffled the incre- 
 dulity of those who could not in consequence deny the truth 
 of a narrative apparently so correct in its particulars ! " The 
 fiction of the warming-pan, inclosing the young Pretender, 
 brought more adherents to the cause of the Whigs than the 
 Bill of Rights," observes Lord John Russell. 
 
 Among such party narratives, the horrid tale of the bloody 
 Colonel Kirk has been worked up by Hume with all his 
 eloquence and pathos ; and, from its interest, no suspicion 
 has arisen of its truth. Yet, so far as it concerns Kirk, or 
 the reign of James the Second, or even English history, it is, 
 as Ritson too honestly expresses it, "an impudent and a 
 barefaced lie ! " The simple fact is told by Kennet in a few 
 words : he probably was aware of the nature of this political 
 fiction. Hume was not, indeed, himself the fabricator of the 
 tale ; but he had not any historical authority. The origin 
 of this fable was probably a pious fraud of the Whig party, 
 to whom Kirk had rendered himself odious ; at that moment, 
 stories still more terrifying were greedily swallowed, and 
 which, Ritson insinuates, have become a part of the history 
 of England. The original story, related more circumstan- 
 tially, though not more affectingly, nor perhaps more truly, 
 may be found in Wanley's " Wonders of the Little World," * 
 which I give, relieving it from the tediousness of old Wanley. 
 
 A governor of Zealand, under the bold Duke of Burgundy, 
 had in vain sought to seduce the affections of the beautiful 
 wife of a citizen. The governor imprisons the husband on 
 an accusation of treason ; and when the wife appeared as the 
 suppliant, the governor, after no brief eloquence, succeeded as 
 a lover, on the plea that her husband's life could only be 
 spared by her compliance. The woman, in tears and in 
 aversion, and not without a hope of vengeance only delayed, 
 lost her honour ! Pointing to the prison, the governor told 
 her, " If you seek your husband, enter there, and take him 
 along with you ! " The wife, in the bitterness of her thoughts, 
 * Book iii. ch. 29, sec. 18. 
 
POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS. 
 
 27 
 
 yec not without the consolation that she had snatched her 
 husband from the grave, passed into the prison ; there in a 
 cell, to her astonishment and horror, she beheld the corpse 
 of her husband laid out in a coffin, ready for burial ! Mourn- 
 ing over it, she at length returned to the governor, fiercely 
 exclaiming, " You have kept your word ! you have restored 
 to me my husband ! and be assured the favour shall be re- 
 paid ! " The inhuman villain, terrified in the presence of his 
 intrepid victim, attempted to appease her vengeance, and 
 more, to win her to his wishes. Returning home, she assem- 
 bled her friends, revealed her whole story, and under their 
 protection she appealed to Charles the Bold, a strict lover 
 of justice, and who now awarded a singular but an exem- 
 plary catastrophe. The duke first commanded that the crim- 
 inal governor should instantly marry the woman whom he 
 had made a widow, and at the same time sign his will, with 
 a clause importing that should he die before his lady he con- 
 stituted her his heiress. All this was concealed from both 
 sides, rather to satisfy the duke than the parties themselves. 
 This done, the unhappy woman was dismissed alone ! The 
 governor was conducted to the prison to suffer the same death 
 he had inflicted on the husband of his wife ; and when this 
 lady was desired once more to enter the prison, she beheld 
 her second husband headless in his coffin as she had her first ! 
 Such extraordinary incidents in so short a period overpow- 
 ered the feeble frame of the sufferer ; she died — leaving a 
 son, who inherited the rich accession of fortune so fatally 
 obtained by his injured and suffering mother. 
 
 Such is the tale of which the party story of Kirk appeared 
 to Ritson to have been a rifacimento ; but it is rather the 
 foundation than the superstructure. This critic was right in 
 the general, but not in the particular. It was not necessary 
 to point out the present source, when so many others of a 
 parallel nature exist. This tale, universally told, Mr. Douce 
 considers as the origin of " Measure for Measure," and was 
 probably some traditional event ; for it appears sometimes 
 
28 POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS. 
 
 with a change of names and places, without any of incident. 
 It always turns on a soldier, a brother, or a husband exe- 
 cuted ; and a wife, or sister, a deceived victim, to save them 
 from death. It was therefore easily transferred to Kirk, and 
 Pomfret's poem of " Cruelty and Lust " long made the story 
 popular. It could only have been in this form that it reached 
 the historian, who, it must be observed, introduces it as a 
 " story commonly told of him ; " but popular tragic romances 
 should not enter into the dusty documents of a history of 
 England, and much less be particularly specified in the 
 index ! Belleforest, in his old version of the tale, has even 
 the circumstance of the " captain, who having seduced the 
 wife under the promise to save her husband's life, exhibited 
 him soon afterwards through the window of her apartment 
 suspended on a gibbet." This forms the horrid incident in 
 the history of " the bloody Colonel," and served the purpose 
 of a party, who wished to bury him in odium. Kirk was a 
 soldier of fortune, and a loose liver, and a great blusterer, 
 who would sometimes threaten to decimate his own regi- 
 ment ; but is said to have forgotten the menace the next day. 
 Hateful as such military men will always be, in the present 
 instance Colonel Kirk has been shamefully calumniated by 
 poets and historians, who suffer themselves to be duped by 
 the forgeries of political parties ! 
 
 While we are detecting a source of error, into which the 
 party feelings of modern historians may lead them, let us 
 confess that they are far more valuable than the ancient ; for 
 to us, at least, the ancients have written history without pro- 
 ducing authorities ! Modern historians must furnish their 
 readers with the truest means to become their critics, by pro- 
 viding them with their authorities ; and it is only by judi- 
 ciously appreciating these that we may confidently accept 
 their discoveries. Unquestionably the ancients have often 
 introduced into their histories many tales similar to the story 
 of Kirk — popular or party forgeries ! The mellifluous copi- 
 ousness of Livy conceals many a tale of wonder; the graver 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 29 
 
 of Tacitus etches many a fatal stroke ; and the secret history 
 of Suetonius too often raises a suspicion of those whispers, 
 Quid rex in aurem regince dixerit, quid Juno fabulata sit cum 
 Jove. It is certain that Plutarch has often told, and varied 
 too in the telling, the same story, which he has applied to dif- 
 ferent persons. A critic in the Ritsonian style has said 
 of the grave Plutarch, Mendax ille Plutarchus qui vitas 
 oratorum, dolis et erroribus, co?isutas, olim conscribillavit* 
 " That lying Plutarch, who formerly scribbled the lives of the 
 orators, made up of falsities and blunders ! " There is in 
 Italian a scarce book, of a better design than execution, of 
 the Abbate Lancellotti, Farfalloni degli Antichi Historici. 
 — " Flim-flams of the ancients." Modern historians have to 
 dispute their passage to immortality step by step ; and how- 
 ever fervid be their eloquence, their real test as to value must 
 be brought to the humble references in their margin. Yet 
 these must not terminate our inquiries ; for in tracing a story 
 to its original source, we shall find that fictions have been 
 sometimes grafted on truths or hearsays, and to separate 
 them as they appeared in their first stage, is the pride and 
 glory of learned criticism. 
 
 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 A people denied the freedom of speech or of writing, 
 have usually left some memorials of their feelings in that 
 silent language which addresses itself to the eye. Many 
 ingenious inventions have been contrived, to give vent to 
 their suppressed indignation. The voluminous grievance 
 which they could not trust to the voice or the pen, they have 
 carved in wood, or sculptured on stone ; and have sometimes 
 even facetiously concealed their satire among the playful 
 
 * Taylor, Armot. ad Lysiam. 
 
30 
 
 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 ornaments designed to amuse those of whom they so fruit- 
 lessly complained ! Such monuments of the suppressed feel- 
 ings of the multitude are not often inspected by the historian 
 — their minuteness escapes all eyes but those of the phi- 
 losophical antiquary : nor are these satirical appearances 
 always considered as grave authorities, which unquestionably 
 they will be found to be by a close observer of human nature. 
 An entertaining history of the modes of thinking, or the dis- 
 contents, of a people, drawn from such dispersed efforts, in 
 every sera, would cast a new light of secret history over many 
 dark intervals. 
 
 Did we possess a secret history of the Saturnalia, it would 
 doubtless have afforded some materials for the present article. 
 In those revels of venerable radicalism, when the senate was 
 closed, and the Pileus, or cap of liberty, was triumphantly 
 worn, all things assumed an appearance contrary to what 
 they were ; and human nature, as well as human laws, might 
 be said to have been parodied. Among so many whimsical 
 regulations in favour of the licentious rabble, there was one 
 which forbad the circulation of money ; if any one offered 
 the coin of the state, it was to be condemned as an act of 
 madness, and the man was brought to his senses by a peni- 
 tential fast for that day. An ingenious French antiquary 
 seems to have discovered a class of wretched medals, cast in 
 lead or copper, which formed the circulating medium of these 
 mob lords, who, to ridicule the idea of money, used the basest 
 metals, stamping them with grotesque figures, or odd devices 
 — such as a sow ; a chimerical bird ; an imperator in his car, 
 with a monkey behind him ; or an old woman's head, Acca 
 Laurentia, either the traditional old nurse of Romulus, or an 
 old courtesan of the same name, who bequeathed the fruits 
 of her labours to the Roman people ! As all things were 
 done in mockery, this base metal is stamped with s. c, to 
 ridicule the Senatus consulto, which our antiquary happily 
 explains,* in the true spirit of this government of mockery, 
 * Baudelot de Dairval, de F UUUte des Voyages, ii. 645. There is a work, 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 31 
 
 Satumalium consulto, agreeing with the legend of the re- 
 verse, inscribed in the midst of four tali, or bones, which they 
 used as dice, Qui ludit arram det, quod satis sit — " Let them 
 who play give a pledge, which will be sufficient." This mock- 
 money served not only as an expression of the native irony 
 of the radical gentry of Rome during their festival, but had 
 they spoken their mind out, meant a ridicule of money itself ; 
 for these citizens of equality have always imagined that 
 society might proceed without this contrivance of a medium 
 which served to represent property, in which they themselves 
 must so little participate. 
 
 A period so glorious for exhibiting the suppressed senti- 
 ments of the populace, as were these Saturnalia, had been 
 nearly lost for us, had not some notions been preserved by 
 Lucian ; for we glean but sparingly from the solemn pages 
 of the historian, except in the remarkable instance which 
 Suetonius has preserved of the arch-mime who followed the 
 body of the Emperor Vespasian at his funeral. This officer, 
 as well as a similar one who accompanied the general to 
 whom they granted a triumph, and who was allowed the un- 
 restrained licentiousness of his tongue, were both the organs 
 of popular feeling, and studied to gratify the rabble, who 
 were their real masters. On this occasion the arch-mime, 
 representing both the exterior personage and the character 
 of Vespasian, according to custom, inquired the expense of 
 the funeral ? He was answered, " ten millions of sesterces ! " 
 In allusion to the love of money which characterized the 
 emperor, his mock representative exclaimed, " Give me the 
 money, and, if you will, throw my body into the Tiber ! " 
 
 by Ficoroni, on these lead coins or tickets. They are found in the cabinets 
 of the curious medallist. Pinkerton, in referring to this entertaining work, 
 regrets that " Such curious remains have almost escaped the notice of 
 medallists, and have not yet been arranged in one class, or named. A 
 special work on them would be highly acceptable." The time has perhaps 
 arrived when antiquaries may begin to be philosophers, and philosophers 
 antiquaries ! The unhappy separation of erudition from philosophy, and 
 of philosophy from erudition, has hitherto thrown impediments in the 
 progress of the human mind, and the history of man. 
 
32 
 
 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 All these mock offices and festivals among the ancients, I 
 consider as organs of the suppressed opinions and feelings of 
 the populace, who were allowed no other, and had not the 
 means of the printing ages to leave any permanent records. 
 At a later period, before the discovery of the art, which 
 multiplies, with such facility, libels or panegyrics ; when the 
 people could not speak freely against those rapacious clergy, 
 who sheared the fleece and cared not for the sheep, many a 
 secret of popular indignation was confided not to books (for 
 they could not read), but to pictures and sculptures, which 
 are books which the people can always read. The sculptors 
 and illuminators of those times, no doubt shared in common 
 the popular feelings, and boldly trusted to the paintings or 
 the carvings which met the eyes of their luxurious and in- 
 dolent masters, their satirical inventions. As far back as in 
 1300, we find in Wolfius,* the description of a picture of 
 this kind, in a MS. of iEsop's Fables, found in the Abbey 
 of Fulda, among other emblems of the corrupt lives of the 
 churchmen. The present was a wolf, large as life, wearing 
 a monkish cowl, with a shaven crown, preaching to a flock 
 of sheep, with these words of the apostle in a label from his 
 mouth, — " God is my witness how I long for you all in my 
 bowels ! " And underneath was inscribed — " This hooded 
 wolf is the hypocrite of whom is said in the Gospel, 1 Beware 
 of false prophets ! ' " Such exhibitions were often introduced 
 into articles of furniture. A cushion was found in an old 
 abbey, in which was worked a fox preaching to geese, each 
 goose holding in his bill his praying beads ! In the stone 
 wall, and on the columns of the great church at Strasburg 
 was once viewed a number of wolves, bears, foxes, and other 
 mischievous animals, carrying holy water, crucifixes, and 
 tapers ; and others more indelicate. These, probably as old 
 as the year 1300, were engraven in 1617, by a protestant; 
 and were not destroyed till 1685, by the pious rage of the 
 catholics, who seemed at length to have rightly construed 
 * Lect. Mem. I. ad an. 1300. 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 33 
 
 these silent lampoons ; and in their turn broke to pieces the 
 protestant images, as the others had done the papistical dolls. 
 The carved seats and stalls in our own cathedrals exhibit 
 subjects, not only strange and satirical, but even indecent. 
 At the time they built churches they satirized the ministers ; 
 a curious instance how the feelings of the people struggle to 
 find a vent. It is conjectured that rival orders satirized each 
 other, and that some of the carvings are caricatures of cer- 
 tain monks. The margins of illuminated manuscripts fre- 
 quently contain ingenious caricatures, or satirical allegories. 
 In a magnificent chronicle of Froissart, I observed several. 
 A wolf, as usual, in a monk's frock and cowl, stretching his 
 paw to bless a cock, bending its head submissively to the 
 wolf : or a fox with a crosier, dropping beads, which a cock 
 is picking up ; to satirize the blind devotion of the bigots ; 
 perhaps the figure of the cock alluded to our Gallic neigh- 
 bours. A cat in the habit of a nun, holding a platter in its 
 paws to a mouse approaching to lick it ; alluding to the 
 allurements of the abbesses to draw young women into their 
 convents ; while sometimes I have seen a sow in an abbess's 
 veil, mounted on stilts : the sex marked by the sow's dugs. 
 A pope sometimes appears to be thrust by devils into a 
 caldron ; and cardinals are seen roasting on spits ! These 
 ornaments must have been generally executed by the monks 
 themselves ; but these more ingenious members of the eccle- 
 siastical order appear to have sympathized with the people, 
 like the curates in our church, and envied the pampered 
 abbot and the purple bishop. Churchmen were the usual 
 objects of the suppressed indignation of the people in those 
 days ; but the knights and feudal lords have not always 
 escaped from the " curses not loud, but deep," of their satir- 
 ical pencils. 
 
 As the Reformation, or rather the Revolution, was hasten- 
 ing, this custom became so general, that in one of the dia- 
 logues of Erasmus, where two Franciscans are entertained 
 by their host, it appears that such satirical exhibitions were 
 
 VOL. iv. 3 
 
34 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 hung up as common furniture in the apartments of inns. 
 The facetious genius of Erasmus either invents or describes 
 one which he had seen of an ape in the habit of a Francis- 
 can sitting by a sick man's bed, dispensing ghostly counsel, 
 holding up a crucifix in one hand, while with the other he is 
 filching a purse out of the sick man's pocket. Such are 
 " the straws " by which we may always observe from what 
 corner the wind rises ! Mr. Dibdin has recently informed 
 us, that Geyler, whom he calls " the herald of the Reforma- 
 tion," preceding Luther by twelve years, had a stone chair 
 or pulpit in the cathedral at Strasburg, from which he de- 
 livered his lectures, or rather rolled the thunders of his 
 anathemas against the monks. This stone pulpit was con- 
 structed under his own superintendence, and is covered with 
 very indecent figures of monks and nuns, expressly designed 
 by him to expose their profligate manners. We see Geyler 
 doing what for centuries had been done ! " 
 
 In the curious folios of Sauval, the Stowe of France, there 
 is a copious chapter entitled " Heretiques, leurs attentats" 
 In this enumeration of their attempts to give vent to their 
 suppressed indignation, it is very remarkable, that 'preceding 
 the time of Luther, the minds of many were perfectly Lu- 
 theran respecting the idolatrous worship of the Roman 
 church ; and what I now notice would have rightly entered 
 into that significant Historia Reformationis ante Reforma- 
 tionem, which was formerly projected by continental writers. 
 
 Luther did not consign the pope's decretals to the flames 
 till 1520 — this was the first open act of reformation and in- 
 surrection, for hitherto he had submitted to the court of 
 Rome. Yet in 1490, thirty years preceding this great event, 
 I find a priest burnt for having snatched the host in derision 
 from the hands of another celebrating mass. Twelve years 
 afterwards, 1502, a student repeated the same deed, tramp- 
 ling on it ; and in 1523, the resolute death of Anne de Bourg, 
 a counsellor in the parliament of Paris, to use the expression 
 of Sauval, "corrupted the world." It is evident that the 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 35 
 
 Huguenots were fast on the increase. From that period I 
 find continued accounts which prove that the Huguenots of 
 France, like the Puritans of England, were most resolute 
 iconoclasts. They struck off the heads of Virgins and little 
 Jesuses, or blunted their daggers by chipping the wooden 
 saints, which were then fixed at the corners of streets. 
 Every morning discovered the scandalous treatment they had 
 undergone in the night. Then their images were painted on 
 the walls, but these were heretically scratched and disfigured : 
 and, since the saints could not defend themselves, a royal 
 edict was published in their favour, commanding that all 
 holy paintings in the streets should not be allowed short of 
 ten feet from the ground ! They entered churches at night, 
 tearing up or breaking down the prians, the benitoires, the 
 crucifixes, the colossal ecce-homos, which they did not always 
 succeed in dislodging for want of time or tools. Amidst 
 these battles with wooden adversaries, we may smile at the 
 frequent solemn processions instituted to ward off the ven- 
 geance of the parish saint ; the wooden was expiated by a 
 silver image, secured by iron bars and attended by the king 
 and the nobility, carrying the new saint, with prayers that he 
 would protect himself from the heretics ! 
 
 In an early period of the Reformation, an instance occurs 
 of the art of concealing what we wish only the few should 
 comprehend, at the same time that we are addressing the 
 public. Curious collectors are acquainted with " The Olive- 
 tan Bible ; " this was the first translation published by the 
 protestants, and there seems no doubt that Calvin was the 
 chief, if not the only translator; but at that moment not 
 choosing to become responsible for this new version, he made 
 use of the name of an obscure relative, Robert Pierre 
 Olivetan. Calvin, however, prefixed a Latin preface, re- 
 markable for delivering positions very opposite to those 
 tremendous doctrines of absolute predestination, which in his 
 theological despotism he afterwards assumed. De Bure 
 describes this first protestant Bible not only as rare, but 
 
3G 
 
 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 when found, as usually imperfect, much soiled and dog-eared, 
 as the well-read first edition of Shakspeare, by the perpetual 
 use of the multitude. But a curious fact has escaped the 
 detection both of De Bure and Beloe ; at the end of the 
 volume are found ten verses, which, in a concealed manner, 
 authenticate the translation ; and which no one, unless initi- 
 ated into the secret, could possibly suspect. The verses are 
 not poetical, but I give the first sentence : — 
 
 " Lecteur entends, si v^rite* adresse 
 Viens done ouyr instament sa promesse 
 Et vif parler " &c. 
 
 The first letters of every word of these ten verses form a per- 
 fect distich, containing information important to those to 
 whom the Olivetan Bible was addressed. 
 
 " Les Vaudois, peuple eVangelique, 
 Ont mis ce thr^sor en publique." 
 
 An anagram would have been too inartificial a contrivance 
 to have answered the purpose of concealing from the world 
 at large this secret. There is an adroitness in the invention 
 of the initial letters of all the words through these ten verses. 
 They contained a communication necessary to authenticate 
 the version, but which, at the same time, could not be sus- 
 pected by any person not intrusted with the secret. 
 
 When the art of medal -engraving was revived in Europe, 
 the spirit we are now noticing took possession of those less 
 perishable and more circulating vehicles. Satiric medals 
 were almost unknown to the ancient mint, notwithstanding 
 those of the Saturnalia, and a few which bear miserable 
 puns on the unlucky names of some consuls. Medals illus- 
 trate history, and history reflects light on medals ; but we 
 should not place such unreserved confidence on medals, as 
 their advocates, who are warm in their favourite study. It 
 has been asserted, that medals are more authentic memorials 
 than history itself ; but a medal is not less susceptible of the 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 37 
 
 bad passions than a pamphlet or an epigram. Ambition has 
 its vanity, and engraves a dubious victory ; and Flattery 
 will practise its art, and deceive us in gold ! A calumny or 
 a fiction on metal may be more durable than on a fugitive 
 page ; and a libel has a better chance of being preserved, 
 when the artist is skilful, than simple truths when miserably 
 executed. Medals of this class are numerous, and were the 
 precursors of those political satires exhibited in caricature 
 prints. There is a large collection of wooden cuts about the 
 time of Calvin, where the Romish religion is represented by 
 the most grotesque forms which the ridicule of the early 
 Reformers could invent. More than a thousand figures 
 attest the exuberant satire of the designers. This work is 
 equally rare and costly." * 
 
 Satires of this species commenced in the freedom of the 
 Reformation ; for we find a medal of Luther in a monk's 
 habit, satirically bearing for its reverse Catherine de Bora, 
 the nun whom this monk married ; the first step of his per- 
 sonal reformation ! Nor can we be certain that Catherine 
 was not more concerned in that great revolution than appears 
 in the voluminous lives we have of the great reformer. 
 However, the reformers were as great sticklers for medals as 
 the " papelins." Of Pope John VIII., an effeminate volup- 
 tuary, we have a medal with his portrait, inscribed Pope 
 Joan! and another of Innocent X., dressed as a woman 
 holding a spindle ; the reverse, his famous mistress, Donna 
 Olympia, dressed as a Pope, with the tiara on her head, and 
 the keys of St. Peter in her hands ! 
 
 When, in the reign of Mary, England was groaning under 
 Spanish influence, and no remonstrance could reach the 
 throne, the queen's person and government were made ridic- 
 ulous to the people's eyes, by prints or pictures, " represent- 
 ing her majesty naked, meagre, withered, and -wrinkled, with 
 every aggravated circumstance of deformity that could dis- 
 
 * Mr. Douce possessed a portion of this very curious collection : for a 
 complete one De Bure asked about twenty pounds. 
 
38 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 grace a female figure, seated in a regal chair ; a crown on 
 her head, surrounded with M. R. and A. in capitals, accom- 
 panied by small letters ; Maria Regina Anglice ! a number 
 of Spaniards were sucking her to skin and bone, and a speci- 
 fication was added of the money, rings, jewels, and other 
 presents with which she had secretly gratified her husband 
 Philip." * It is said that the queen suspected some of her 
 own council of this invention, who alone were privy to these 
 transactions. It is, however, in this manner that the voice, 
 which is suppressed by authority, comes at length in another 
 shape to the eye. 
 
 The age of Elizabeth, when the Roman pontiff* and all his 
 adherents were odious to the people, produced a remarkable 
 caricature, and ingenious invention — a gorgon's head! A 
 church bell forms the helmet ; the ornaments, instead of the 
 feathers, are a wolfs head in a mitre devouring a lamb, an 
 ass's head with spectacles reading, a goose holding a rosary : 
 the face is made out with a fish for the nose, a chalice and 
 water for the eye, and other priestly ornaments for the shoulder 
 and breast, on which rolls of parchment pardons hang, f 
 
 A famous bishop of Munster, Bernard de Galen, who, in 
 his charitable violence for converting protestants, got him- 
 self into such celebrity that he appears to have served as an 
 excellent sign-post to the inns in Germany, was the true 
 church militant : and his figure was exhibited according to 
 the popular fancy. His head was half mitre and half 
 helmet ; a crosier in one hand and a sabre in the other ; 
 half a rochet and half a cuirass : he was made performing 
 mass as a dragoon on horseback, and giving out the charge 
 when he ought the Ite, missa est ! He was called the con- 
 verter ! and the " Bishop of Munster " became popular as a 
 sign-post in German towns ; for the people like fighting men, 
 though they should even fight against themselves. 
 
 * Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope, p. 58. 
 
 f This ancient caricature, so descriptive of the popular feelings, is 
 tolerably given in Malcolm's history of " Caricaturing," plate ii. fig. I. 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 39 
 
 It is rather curious to observe of this new species of satire, 
 so easily distributed among the people, and so directly ad- 
 dressed to their understandings, that it was made the vehicle 
 of national feeling. Ministers of state condescended to in- 
 vent the devices. Lord Orford says, that caricatures on 
 cards were the invention of George Townshend in the affair 
 of Byng, which was soon followed by a pack. I am in- 
 formed of an ancient pack of cards which has caricatures of 
 all the Parliamentarian Generals, which might be not unuse- 
 fully shuffled by a writer of secret history. We may be 
 surprised to find the grave Sully practising this artifice on 
 several occasions. In the civil wars of France the Duke of 
 Savoy had taken by surprise Saluces, and struck a medal ; 
 on the reverse a centaur appears shooting with a bow and 
 arrow, with the legend Opportune! But when Henry the 
 Fourth had reconquered the town, he published another, on 
 which Hercules appears killing the centaur, with the word 
 Opportunius. The great minister was the author of this 
 retort ! A medal of the Dutch ambassador at the court of 
 France, Van Beuninghen, whom the French represent as a 
 haughty burgomaster, but who had the vivacity of a French- 
 man and the haughtiness of a Spaniard, as Voltaire charac- 
 terizes him, is said to have been the occasion of the Dutch 
 war in 1672 ; but wars will be hardly made for an idle 
 medal. Medals may, however, indicate a preparatory war. 
 Louis the Fourteenth was so often compared to the sun at its 
 meridian, that some of his creatures may have imagined 
 that, like the sun, he could dart into any part of Europe as 
 he willed, and be as cheerfully received. The Dutch min- 
 ister, whose christian name was Joshua, however, had a 
 medal struck of Joshua stopping the sun in his course, in- 
 ferring that this miracle was operated by his little republic. 
 The medal itself is engraven in Van Loon's voluminous 
 Histoire Medallique du Pays Bas, and in Marchand's Die- 
 tionnaire Historique, who labours to prove against twenty 
 authors that the Dutch ambassador was not the inventor ; it 
 
40 
 
 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 was not, however, unworthy of him, and it conveyed to the 
 world the high feeling of her power which Holland had then 
 assumed. Two years after the noise about this medal, the 
 republic paid dear for the device; but thirty years after- 
 wards this very burgomaster concluded a glorious peace, and 
 France and Spain were compelled to receive the mediation 
 of the Dutch Joshua with the French Sun.* In these 
 Vehicles of national satire, it is odd that the phlegmatic 
 Dutch, more than any other nation, and from the earliest 
 period of their republic, should have indulged freely, if not 
 licentiously. It was a republican humour. Their taste was 
 usually gross. We owe to them, even in the reign of Eliza- 
 beth, a severe medal on Leicester, who, having retired in 
 disgust from the government of their provinces, struck a 
 medal with his bust, reverse a dog and sheep, 
 
 " Non gregem, sed ingratos invitus desero ; " 
 
 on which the angry juvenile states struck another, represent- 
 ing an ape and young ones ; reverse, Leicester near a fire, 
 
 11 Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignzm.' 1 '' 
 
 Another medal, with an excellent portrait of Cromwell, was 
 struck by the Dutch. The protector, crowned with laurels, 
 is on his knees, laying his head in the lap of the common- 
 wealth, but loosely exhibiting himself to the French and 
 Spanish ambassadors with gross indecency : the Frenchman, 
 covered with Jleurs de lis, is pushing aside the great Don, and 
 disputes with him the precedence — Retire-toy ; Vhonneur ap- 
 parlient au roy mon maitre, Louis le Grand. Van Loon is 
 very right in denouncing this same medal, so grossly flatter- 
 ing to the English, as most detestable and indelicate ! But 
 why does Van Loon envy us this lumpish invention ? why 
 does the Dutchman quarrel with his own cheese ? The 
 honour of the medal we claim, but the invention belongs to 
 his country. The Dutch went on, commenting in this man- 
 
 * The history of this medal is useful in more than one respect; and 
 may be found in Prosper Marchand. 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 41 
 
 ner on English affairs, from reign to reign. Charles the 
 Second declared war against them in 1672 for a malicious 
 medal, though the States- General offered to break the die, by 
 purchasing it of the workman for one thousand ducats ; but it 
 served for a pretext for a Dutch war, which Charles cared 
 more about than the mala bestia of his exergue. Charles 
 also complained of a scandalous picture which the brothers 
 De Witt had in their house, representing a naval battle with 
 the English. Charles the Second seems to have been more 
 sensible to this sort of national satire than we might have 
 expected in a professed wit ; a race, however, who are not 
 the most patient in having their own sauce returned to their 
 lips. The king employed Evelyn to write a history of the 
 Dutch war, and " enjoined him to make it a little keen, for the 
 Hollanders had very unhandsomely abused him in their pic- 
 tures, books, and libels." The Dutch continued their career 
 of conveying their national feeling on English affairs more 
 triumphantly when their stadtholder ascended an English 
 throne. The birth of the Pretender is represented by the 
 chest which Minerva gave to the daughters of Cecrops to 
 keep, and which, opened, discovered an infant with a ser- 
 pent's tail : Infantemque violent apporrectumque draconem ; 
 the chest perhaps alluding to the removes of the warming- 
 pan ; and, in another, James and a Jesuit flying in terror, the 
 king throwing away a crown and sceptre, and the Jesuit 
 carrying a child, Ite missa est, the words applied from the 
 mass. But in these contests of national feeling, while the 
 grandeur of Louis the Fourteenth did not allow of these ludi- 
 crous and satirical exhibitions ; and while the political idolatry 
 which his forty academicians paid to him, exhausted itself in 
 the splendid fictions of a series of famous medals, amounting 
 to nearly four hundred ; it appears that we were not without 
 our reprisals : for I find Prosper Marchand, who writes as a 
 Hollander, censuring his own country for having at length 
 adulated the grand monarque by a complimentary medal. 
 He says, " The English cannot be reproached with a similar 
 
42 
 
 EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 
 
 debonairete." After the famous victories of Marlborough, 
 they indeed inserted in a medal the head of the French mon- 
 arch and the English queen, with this inscription, Ludovicus 
 Magnus, Anna Major. Long ere this one of our queens had 
 been exhibited by ourselves with considerable energy. On 
 the defeat of the Armada, Elizabeth, Pinkerton tells us, 
 struck a medal representing the English and Spanish fleets, 
 Hesperidum regem devicit virgo. Philip had medals dis- 
 persed in England of the same impression, with this addition, 
 Negatur. Est meretrix vulgi. These the queen suppressed, 
 but published another medal, with this legend : 
 
 " Hesperidum regem devicit virgo ; negatur, 
 Est meretrix vulgi; res eo deterior." 
 
 An age fertile in satirical prints was the eventful agra of 
 Charles the First : they were showered from all parties, and 
 a large collection of them would admit of a critical historical 
 commentary, which might become a vehicle of the most curi- 
 ous secret history. Most of them are in a bad style, for they 
 are allegorical ; yet that these satirical exhibitions influenced 
 the eyes and minds of the people is evident, from an extra- 
 ordinary circumstance. Two grave collections of historical 
 documents adopted them. We are surprised to find prefixed 
 to Rushworth's and Nalson's historical collections, two such 
 political prints ! Nalson's was an act of retributive justice ; 
 but he seems to have been aware, that satire in the shape of 
 pictures is a language very attractive to the multitude ; for 
 he has introduced a caricature print in the solemn folio of the 
 trial of Charles the First. Of the happiest of these political 
 prints is one by Taylor the water-poet, not included in his 
 folio, but prefixed to his " Mad fashions, odd fashions, or the 
 emblems of these distracted times." It is the figure of a man 
 whose eyes have left their sockets, and whose legs have 
 usurped the place of his arms ; a horse on his hind legs is 
 drawing a cart ; a church is inverted ; fish fly in the air ; a 
 candle burns with the flame downwards ; and the mouse and 
 rabbit are pursuing the cat and the fox ! 
 
EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION. 43 
 
 The animosities of national hatred have been a fertile 
 source of these vehicles of popular feeling — which discover 
 themselves in severe or grotesque caricatures. The French 
 and the Spaniards mutually exhibited one another under the 
 most extravagant figures. The political caricatures of the 
 French, in the seventeenth century, are numerous. The 
 badauds of Paris amused themselves for their losses, by 
 giving an emetic to a Spaniard, to make him render up all 
 the towns his victories had obtained : seven or eight Span- 
 iards are seen seated around a large turnip, with their frizzled 
 mustachios, their hats en pot-a-beurre ; their long rapiers, with 
 their pummels down to their feet, and their points up to their 
 shoulders ; their ruffs stiffened by many rows, and pieces of 
 garlick stuck in their girdles. The Dutch were exhibited in 
 as great variety as the uniformity of frogs would allow. We 
 have largely participated in the vindictive spirit, which these 
 grotesque emblems keep up among the people ; they mark 
 the secret feelings of national pride. The Greeks despised 
 foreigners, and considered them only as fit to be slaves ; * 
 the ancient Jews, inflated with a false idea of their small ter- 
 ritory, would be masters of the world : the Italians placed a 
 line of demarcation for genius and taste, and marked it by 
 their mountains. The Spaniards once imagined that the 
 conferences of God with Moses on Mount Sinai were in the 
 Spanish language. If a Japanese become the friend of a 
 foreigner, he is considered as committing treason to his 
 emperor ; and rejected as a false brother in a country 
 which, we are told, is figuratively called Tenka, or the 
 Kingdom under the Heavens. John Bullism is not pecu- 
 liar to Englishmen ; and patriotism is a noble virtue, when 
 it secures our independence without depriving us of our 
 humanity. 
 
 * A passage may be found in Aristotle's Politics, vol. i. c. 3-7; where 
 Aristotle advises Alexander to govern the Greeks like his subjects, and the 
 barbarians like slaves ; for that the one he was to consider as companions, 
 and the other as creatures of an inferior race. 
 
44 
 
 AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 The civil wars of the League in France, and those in 
 England under Charles the First, bear the most striking 
 resemblance; and in examining the revolutionary scenes 
 exhibited by the graver in the famous Satire Menippee, we 
 discover the foreign artist revelling in the caricature of his 
 ludicrous and severe exhibition ; and in that other revolu- 
 tionary period of La Fronde, there was a mania for political 
 songs ; the curious have formed them into collections ; and 
 we not only have " the Rump Songs " of Charles the First's 
 times, but have repeated this kind of evidence of the public 
 feeling at many subsequent periods. Caricatures and 'polit- 
 ical songs might with us furnish a new sort of history ; and 
 perhaps would preserve some truths, and describe some par- 
 ticular events, not to be found in more grave authorities. 
 
 AUTOGRAPHS* 
 
 The art of judging of the characters of persons by their 
 handwriting can only have any reality, when the pen, acting 
 without restraint, becomes an instrument guided by, and 
 indicative of the natural dispositions. But regulated as the 
 pen is now too often by a mechanical process, which the 
 present race of writing-masters seem to have contrived for 
 their own convenience, a whole school exhibits a similar 
 handwriting; the pupils are forced in their automatic motions, 
 as if acted on by the pressure of a steam-engine ; a bevy of 
 beauties will now write such fac-similes of each other, that in 
 a heap of letters presented to the most sharp-sighted lover, 
 to select that of his mistress — though like Bassanio among 
 the caskets, his happiness should be risked on the choice — he 
 
 * A small volume which I met with at Paris, entitled " L'Art de juger 
 du Caractere des Hommes sur leurs Ecritures," is curious for its illustra- 
 tions, consisting of twenty-four plates, exhibiting fac-similes of the writing of 
 eminent and other persons, correctly taken from the original autographs. 
 
AUTOGEAPHS. 
 
 would despair of fixing on the right one, all appearing to 
 have come from the same rolling-press. Even brothers of 
 different tempers have been taught by the same master to 
 give the same form to their letters, the same regularity to 
 their line, and have made our handwritings as monotonous 
 as are our characters in the present habits of society. The 
 true physiognomy of writing will be lost among our rising 
 generation : it is no longer a face that we are looking on, but 
 .a beautiful mask of a single pattern ; and the fashionable 
 handwriting of our young ladies is like the former tight- 
 lacing of their mothers' youthful days, when every one alike 
 had what was supposed to be a fine shape ! 
 
 Assuredly Nature would prompt every individual to have 
 a distinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar counte- 
 nance — a voice — and a manner. The flexibility of the 
 muscles differs with every individual, and the hand will 
 follow the direction of the thoughts, and the emotions and 
 the habits of the writers. The phlegmatic will portray his 
 words, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely 
 sketch them ; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, 
 while the neat and orderly-minded will view themselves in 
 the paper before their eyes. The merchant's clerk will not 
 write like the lawyer or the poet. Even nations are dis- 
 tinguished by their writing; the vivacity and variableness 
 of the Frenchman, and the delicacy and suppleness of the 
 Italian, are perceptibly distinct from the slowness and strength 
 of pen discoverable in the phlegmatic German, Dane, and 
 Swede. When we are in grief, we do not write as we should 
 in joy. The elegant and correct mind, which has acquired 
 the fortunate habit of a fixity of attention, will write with 
 scarcely an erasure on the page, as Fenelon and Gray and 
 Gibbon ; while we find in Pope's manuscripts the perpetual 
 struggles of correction, and the eager and rapid interlinea- 
 tions struck off in heat. Lavater's notion of handwriting is 
 by no means chimerical; nor was General Paoli fanciful, 
 when he told Mr. Northcote, that he had decided on the 
 
4G 
 
 AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 character and dispositions of a man from his letters, and the 
 handwriting. 
 
 Long before the days of Lavater, Shenstone in one of his 
 letters said, " I want to see Mrs. Jago's handwriting, that I 
 may judge of her temper." One great truth must however 
 be conceded to the opponents of the physiognomy of writing; 
 general rules only can be laid down. Yet the vital principle 
 must be true that the handwriting bears an analogy to the 
 character of the writer, as all voluntary actions are charac-. 
 teriitic of the individual. But many causes operate to 
 counteract or obstruct this result. I am intimately ac- 
 quainted with the handwritings of five of our great poets. 
 The first in early life acquired among Scottish advocates a 
 handwriting which cannot be distinguished from that of his 
 ordinary brothers ; the second, educated in public schools, 
 where writing is shamefully neglected, composes his sublime 
 or sportive verses in a school-boy's ragged scrawl, as if he 
 had never finished his tasks with the writing-master; the 
 third writes his highly-wrought poetry in the common hand 
 of a merchant's clerk, from early commercial avocations ; the 
 fourth has all that finished neatness, which polishes his 
 verses ; while the fifth is a specimen of a full mind, not in 
 the habit of correction or alteration ; so that he appears to 
 be printing down his thoughts, without a solitary erasure. 
 The handwriting of the first and third poets, not indicative 
 of their character, we have accounted for; the others are 
 admirable specimens of characteristic autographs. 
 
 Oldys, in one of his curious notes, was struck by the dis- 
 tinctness of character in the handwritings of several of our 
 kings. He observed nothing further than the mere fact, and 
 did not extend his idea to the art of judging of the natural 
 character by the writing. Oldys has described these hand- 
 writings with the utmost correctness, as I have often verified. 
 I shall add a few comments. 
 
 " Henry the Eighth wrote a strong hand, but as if he 
 had seldom a good pen." — The vehemence of his character 
 
AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 47 
 
 conveyed itself into his writing ; bold, hasty, and command- 
 ing, I have no doubt the assertor of the Pope's supremacy 
 and its triumphant destroyer, split many a good quill. 
 
 " Edward the Sixth wrote a fair legible hand." — We have 
 this promising young prince's diary, written by his own 
 hand ; in all respects he was an assiduous pupil, and he had 
 scarcely learnt to write and to reign when we lost him. 
 
 " Queen Elizabeth writ an upright hand, like the ba?tard 
 Italian." She was indeed a most elegant caligrapher, whom 
 Roger Ascham had taught all the elegancies of the pen. 
 The French editor of the little autographical work I have 
 noticed has given the autograph of her name, which she 
 usually wrote in a very large tall character, and painfully 
 elaborate. He accompanies it with one of the Scottish 
 Mary, who at times wrote elegantly, though usually in un- 
 even lines ; when in haste and distress of mind, in several 
 letters during her imprisonment which I have read, much 
 the contrary. The French editor makes this observation: 
 " Who could believe that these writings are of the same 
 epoch ? The first denotes asperity and ostentation ; the 
 second indicates simplicity, softness, and nobleness. The 
 one is that of Elizabeth, queen of England ; the other that 
 of her cousin, Mary Stuart. The difference of these two 
 handwritings answers most evidently to that of their char- 
 acters." 
 
 " James the First writ a poor ungainly character, all awry, 
 and not in a straight line." James certainly wrote a slovenly 
 scrawl, strongly indicative of that personal negligence which 
 he carried into all the little things of life ; and Buchanan, 
 who had made him an excellent scholar, may receive the 
 disgrace of his pupil's ugly scribble, which sprawls about his 
 careless and inelegant letters. 
 
 " Charles the First wrote a fair open Italian hand, and 
 more correctly perhaps than any prince we ever had." 
 Charles was the first of our monarchs who intended to 
 have domiciliated taste in the kingdom, and it might have 
 
18 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 been conjectured from this unfortunate prince, who so finely 
 discriminated the manners of the different painters, which 
 are in fact their handwritings, that he would not have been 
 insensible to the elegancies of the pen. 
 
 " Charles the Second wrote a little fair running hand, as 
 if wrote in haste, or uneasy till he had done." Such was 
 the writing to have been expected from this illustrious vaga- 
 bond, who had much to write, often in odd situations, and 
 could never get rid of his natural restlessness and vivacity. 
 
 " James the Second writ a large fair hand/' It is charac- 
 terized by his phlegmatic temper, as an exact detailer of 
 occurrences, and the matter-of-business genius of the writer. 
 
 "Queen Anne wrote a fair round hand;" that is the 
 writing she had been taught by her master, probably without 
 any alteration of manner naturally suggested by herself ; the 
 copying hand of a common character. 
 
 The subject of autographs associates itself with what has 
 been dignified by its professors as caligraphy, or the art of 
 beautiful writing. As I have something curious to com- 
 municate on that subject, considered professionally, it shall 
 form our following article. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 There is a very apt letter from James the First to Prince 
 Henry when very young, on the neatness and fairness of his 
 handwriting. The royal father suspecting that the prince's 
 tutor, Mr., afterwards Sir Adam, Newton, had helped out 
 the young prince in the composition ; and that in this speci- 
 men of caligraphy he had relied also on the pains of Mr. 
 Peter Bales, the great writing-master, for touching up his 
 letters ; his majesty shows a laudable anxiety that the prince 
 should be impressed with the higher importance of the one 
 over the other. James shall himself speak. "I confess I 
 
THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 49 
 
 long to receive a letter from you that may be wholly yours, 
 as well matter as form; as well formed by your mind as 
 drawn by your fingers ; for ye may remember, that in my 
 book to you I warn you to beware with (of) that kind of wit 
 that may fly out at the end of your fingers ; not that I com- 
 mend not a fair handwriting; sed hoc facito, Mud non 
 omittito : and the other is multo magis prcecipuum" Prince 
 Henry, indeed, wrote with that elegance which he borrowed 
 from his own mind ; and in an age when such minute 
 elegance was not universal among the crowned heads of 
 Europe. Henry IV., on receiving a letter from prince 
 Henry, immediately opened it, a custom not usual with him, 
 and comparing the writing with the signature, to decide 
 whether it were of one hand, Sir George Carew, observing 
 the French king's hesitation, called Mr. Douglas to testify to 
 the fact ; on which Henry the Great, admiring an art in 
 which he had little skill, and looking on the neat elegance of 
 the writing before him, politely observed, " I see that in 
 writing fair, as in other things, the elder must yield to the 
 younger." 
 
 Had this anecdote of neat writing reached the professors 
 of caligraphy, who in this country have put forth such pain- 
 ful panegyrics on the art, these royal names had unquestion- 
 ably blazoned their pages. Not indeed that these penmen 
 require any fresh inflation ; for never has there been a race 
 of professors in any art, who have exceeded in solemnity 
 and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechani- 
 cal craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of 
 human nature, to reveal the occult cause which has operated 
 such powerful delusions on these " Vive la Plume ! " men, 
 who have been generally observed to possess least intellec- 
 tual ability, in proportion to the excellence they have ob- 
 tained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is 
 peculiar to the writing-masters of England ; and I can only 
 attribute the immense importance which they have conceived 
 of their art, to the perfection to which they have carried the 
 
 VOL. IV. 4 
 
50 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 art of shorthand writing; an art which was always better 
 understood, and more skilfully practised, in England, than in 
 any other country. It will surprise some, when they learn 
 that the artists in verse and colours, poets and painters, have 
 not raised loftier pretensions to the admiration of mankind. 
 Writing-masters, or caligraphers, have had their engraved 
 " effigies," with a Fame in flourishes, a pen in one hand, and 
 a trumpet in the other ; and fine verses inscribed, and their 
 very lives written ! They have compared 
 
 " The nimbly-turning of their silver quill," 
 
 to the beautiful in art and the sublime in invention ; nor is 
 this wonderful, since they discover the art of writing, like 
 the invention of language, in a divine original ; and from 
 the tablets of stone which the Deity himself delivered, they 
 trace their German broad text, or their fine running-hand. 
 One, for " the bold striking of those words, Vive la Plume" 
 was so sensible of the reputation that this last piece of com- 
 mand of hand would give the book which he thus adorned, 
 and which his biographer acknowledges was the product of 
 about a minute, — (but then how many years of flourishing 
 had that single minute cost him!) — that he claims the glory 
 of an artist ; observing, — 
 
 " We seldom find 
 The man of business with the artist join'd." 
 
 Another was flattered that his writing could impart immor- 
 tality to the most wretched compositions ! — 
 
 " And any lines prove pleasing, when you write." 
 
 Sometimes the caligrapher is a sort of hero : — 
 
 " To you, you rare commander of the quill, 
 Whose wit and worth, deep learning, and high skill, 
 Speak you the honour of Great Tower Hill! " 
 
 The last line became traditionally adopted by those who 
 were so lucky as to live in the neighbourhood of this Par- 
 
THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 51 
 
 nassus. But the reader must form some notion of that charm 
 of caligraphy which has so bewitched its professors, when, 
 
 " Soft, bold, and free, your manuscripts still please." 
 
 u How justly bold in Sxell's improving hand 
 The pen at once joins freedom with command ! 
 With softness strong, with ornaments not vain, 
 Loose with proportion, and with neatness plain; 
 Not swell' d, not full, complete in every part, 
 And artful most, when not affecting art." 
 
 And these describe those pencilled knots and flourishes, 
 " the angels, the men, the birds, and the beasts," which, as 
 one of them observed, he could 
 
 u Command 
 " Even by the gentle motion of his hand" 
 
 all the speciosa miracula of caligraphy ; 
 
 " Thy tender strokes, inimitably fine, 
 Crown with perfection every flowing line; 
 And to each grand performance add a grace, 
 As curling hair adorns a beauteous face: 
 In every page neio fancies give delight, 
 And sporting round the margin charm the sight." 
 
 One Massey, a writing-master, published, in 1763, " The 
 Origin and Progress of Letters." The great singularity of 
 this volume is " A new species of biography never attempted 
 before in English." This consists of the lives of " English 
 Penmen," otherwise writing-masters ! If some have foolishly 
 enough imagined that the sedentary lives of authors are void 
 of interest from deficient incident and interesting catastrophe, , 
 what must they think of the barren labours of those, who, in 
 the degree they become eminent, to use their own style, in 
 the art of " dish, dash, long-tail fly," the less they become 
 interesting to the public ; for what can the most skilful 
 writing-master do but wear away his life in leaning over his 
 pupil's copy, or sometimes snatch a pen to decorate the 
 margin, though he cannot compose the page ? Montaigne 
 has a very original notion on writing-masters : he says that 
 
52 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 some of those caligraphers who had obtained promotion by 
 their excellence in the art, afterwards affected to write care- 
 lessly, lest their promotion should be suspected to have been 
 owing to such an ordinary acquisition! 
 
 Massey is an enthusiast, fortunately for his subject. He 
 considers that there are schools of writing, as well as of 
 painting or sculpture ; and expatiates with the eye of frater- 
 nal feeling on " a natural genius, a tender stroke, a grand 
 performance, a bold striking freedom, and a liveliness in the 
 sprigged letters, and pencilled knots and flourishes ; " while 
 this Vasari of writing-masters relates the controversies and the 
 libels of many a rival pen-nibber. " George Shelley, one of 
 the most celebrated worthies who have made a shining 
 figure in the commonwealth of English caligraphy, born I 
 suppose of obscure parents, because brought up in Christ's 
 Hospital, yet under the humble blue-coat he laid the founda- 
 tion of his caligraphic excellence and lasting fame, for he was 
 elected writing-master to the hospital." Shelley published 
 his " Natural Writing ; " but, alas ! Snell, another blue-coat, 
 transcended the other. He was a genius who would " bear 
 no brother near the throne." — " I have been informed that 
 there were jealous heart-burnings, if not bickerings, between 
 him and Col. Ayres, another of our great reformers in the 
 writing commonweal, both eminent men, yet, like our most 
 celebrated poets Pope and Addison, or, to carry the compar- 
 ison still higher, like Ccesar and Pompey, one could bear no 
 superior, and the other no equal." Indeed, the great Snell 
 practised a little stratagem against Mr. Shelley, for which, if 
 writing-masters held courts-martial, this hero ought to have 
 appeared before his brothers. In one of his works he pro- 
 cured a number of friends to write letters, in which Massey 
 confesses " are some satyrical strokes upon Shelley," as if he 
 had arrogated too much to himself in his book of " Natural 
 Writing." They find great fault with pencilled knots and 
 sprigged letters. Shelley, who was an advocate for orna- 
 ments in fine penmanship, which Snell utterly rejected, had 
 
THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 53 
 
 parodied a well-known line of Herbert's in favour of his 
 
 favourite decorations : — 
 
 " A Knot may take him who from letters flies, 
 And turn delight into an exercise." 
 
 These reflections created ill-blood, and even an open differ- 
 ence amongst several of the superior artists in writing. The 
 commanding genius of Snell had a more terrific contest when 
 he published his " Standard Rules," pretending to have de- 
 monstrated them as Euclid would. " This proved a bone of 
 contention, and occasioned a terrific quarrel between Mr. 
 Snell and Mr. Clark. This quarrel about ' Standard Rules ' 
 ran so high between them, that they could scarce forbear 
 scurrilous language therein, and a treatment of each other 
 unbecoming gentlemen! Both sides in this dispute had their 
 abettors ; and to say which had the most truth and reason, 
 non nostrum est tantas componere lites ; perhaps both parties 
 might be too fond of their own schemes. They should have 
 left them to people to choose which they liked best." A can- 
 did politican is our Massey, and a philosophical historian too ; 
 for he winds up the whole story of this civil war by describ- 
 ing its result, which happened as all such great controversies 
 have ever closed. " Who now-a-days takes those Standard 
 Rides, either one or the other, for their guide in writing ? " 
 This is the finest lesson ever offered to the furious heads of 
 parties, and to all their men ; let them meditate on the noth- 
 ingness of their " Standard Rules," by the fate of Mr. Snell. 
 
 It was to be expected, when once these writing-masters 
 imagined that they were artists, that they would be infected 
 with those plague-spots of genius — envy, detraction, and all 
 the jalousie du metier. And such to this hour we find them ! 
 An extraordinary scene of this nature has long been exhibited 
 in my neighbourhood, where two doughty champions of the 
 quill have been posting up libels in their windows respecting 
 the inventor of a new art of writing, the Carstairian, or the 
 Lewisian ? When the great German philosopher asserted 
 that he had discovered the method of fluxions before Sir 
 
54 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 Isaac, and when the dispute grew ?o violent that even the 
 calm Newton sent a formal defiance in set terms, and got 
 even George the Second to try to arbitrate (who would rather 
 have undertaken a campaign), the method of fluxions was no 
 more cleared up than the present affair between our two 
 heroes of the quill. 
 
 A recent instance of one of these egregious caligraphers 
 may be told of the late Tomkins. This vainest of writing- 
 masters dreamed through life that penmanship was one of 
 the fine arts, and that a writing-master should be seated with 
 his peers in the Academy ! He bequeathed to the British 
 Museum his opus magnum — a copy of Macklin's Bible, pro- 
 fusely embellished with the most beautiful and varied decora- 
 tions of his pen ; and as he conceived that both the workman 
 and the work would alike be darling objects with posterity, 
 he left something immortal with the legacy, his fine bust, by 
 Chantrey, unaccompanied by which they were not to receive 
 the unparalleled gift ! When Tomkins applied to have Ins 
 bust, our great sculptor abated the usual price, and, courte- 
 ously kind to the feelings of the man, said that he considered 
 Tomkins as an artist ! It was the proudest day of the life of 
 our writing-master ! 
 
 But an eminent artist and wit now living, once looking on 
 this fine bust of Tomkins, declared, that " this man had died 
 for want of a dinner ! " — a fate, however, not so lamentable 
 as it appeared ! Our penman had long felt that he stood 
 degraded in the scale of genius by not being received at the 
 Academy, at least among the class of engravers ; the next 
 approach to academic honour he conceived would be that of 
 appearing as a guest at their annual dinner. These invita- 
 tions are as limited as they are select, and all the Academy 
 persisted in considering Tomkins as a writing-master ! 
 Many a year passed, every intrigue was practised, every re- 
 monstrance was urged, every stratagem of courtesy was tried ; 
 but never ceasing to deplore the failure of his hopes, it 
 preyed on his spirits, and the luckless caligrapher went down 
 
THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 55 
 
 to his grave — without dining at the Academy ! This au- 
 thentic anecdote has been considered as " satire improperly 
 directed " — by some friend of Mr. Tomkins — but the criticism 
 is much too grave ! The foible of Mr. Tomkins as a writing- 
 master, presents a striking illustration of the class of men 
 here delineated. I am a mere historian — and am only re- 
 sponsible for the veracity of this fact. That " Mr. Tomkins 
 lived in familiar intercourse with the Royal Academicians of 
 his day, and was a frequent guest at their private tables," 
 and moreover was a most worthy man, I believe — but is it 
 less true that he was ridiculously mortified by being never 
 invited to the Academic dinner, on account of his caligraphy ? 
 He had some reason to consider that his art was of the ex- 
 alted class, to which he aspired to raise it, when this friend 
 concludes his eulogy of this writing-master thus — " Mr. 
 Tomkins, as an artist, stood foremost in his own profession, 
 and his name will be handed down to posterity with the 
 Heroes and Statesmen, whose excellences his penmanship has 
 contributed to illustrate and to commemorate." I always 
 give the Pour and the Contre / 
 
 Such men about such things have produced public contests, 
 combats a Voutrance, where much ink was spilled by the 
 knights in a joust of goose-quills ; these solemn trials have 
 often occurred in the history of writing-masters, which is 
 enlivened by public defiances, proclamations, and judicial 
 trials by umpires ! The prize was usually a golden pen of 
 some value. One as late as in the reign of Anne took place, 
 between Mr. German and Mr. More. German having 
 courteously insisted that Mr. More should set the copy, he 
 thus set it, ingeniously quaint ! 
 
 " As more, and More, our understanding clears, 
 So more and more our ignorance appears.*' 
 
 The result of this pen-combat was really lamentable ; they 
 displayed such an equality of excellence that the umpires re- 
 fused to decide, till one of them espied that Mr. German had 
 
,36 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 omitted the tittle of an i ! But Mr. More wa?. evidently a 
 man of genius, not only by his couplet, but in his " Essay on 
 the Invention of Writing," where occurs this noble passage : 
 " Art with me is of no party. A noble emulation I would 
 cherish, while it proceeded neither from, nor to malevolence. 
 Bales had his Johnson, Norman his Mason, Ayres his Mat- 
 lock and his Shelley; yet Art the while was no sufferer. 
 The busy-body who officiously employs himself in creating 
 misunderstandings between artists, may be compared to a 
 turn-stile, which stands in every man's way, yet hinders no- 
 body ; and he is the slanderer who gives ear to the slan- 
 der." * 
 
 Among these knights of the " Plume volante," whose 
 chivalric exploits astounded the beholders, must be distin- 
 guished Peter Bales in his joust with David Johnson. In 
 this tilting-match the guerdon of caligraphy was won by the 
 greatest of caligraphers ; its arms were assumed by the vic- 
 tor, azure, a pen or ; while the " golden pen," carried away 
 in triumph, was painted with a hand over the door of the 
 caligrapher. The history of this renowned encounter was 
 only traditionally known, till with my own eyes I pondered 
 on this whole trial of skill in the precious manuscript of the 
 champion himself ; who, like Caesar, not only knew how to 
 win victories, but also to record them. Peter Bales was a 
 hero of such transcendent eminence, that his name has en- 
 tered into our history. Holingshed chronicles one of his cu- 
 riosities of microscopic writing at a time when the taste pre- 
 vailed for admiring writing which no eye could read ! In the 
 compass of a silver penny this caligrapher put more things 
 than would fill several of these pages. He presented Queen 
 Elizabeth with the manuscript set in a ring of gold covered 
 with a crystal ; he had also contrived a magnifying glass of 
 such power, that, to her delight and wonder, her majesty 
 read the whole volume, which she held on her thumb nail, 
 
 * I have not met with More's book, and am obliged to transcribe this 
 from the Biog. Brit. 
 
THE HIST OK Y OF WRITING-MASTERS. 57 
 
 and " commended the same to the lords of the council, and 
 the ambassadors ; " and frequently, as Peter often heard, did 
 her majesty vouchsafe to wear this caligraphic ring. 
 
 " Some will think I labour on a cobweb " — modestly ex- 
 claimed Bales in his narrative, and his present historian 
 much fears for himself! The reader's gratitude will not be 
 proportioned to my pains, in condensing such copious pages 
 into the size of a " silver penny," but without its worth ! 
 
 For a whole year had David Johnson affixed a challenge 
 " To any one who should take exceptions to this my writing 
 and teaching." He was a young friend of Bales, daring and 
 longing for an encounter; yet Bales was magnanimously 
 silent, till he discovered that he was " doing much less in 
 writing and teaching " since this public challenge was pro- 
 claimed ! He then set up his counter challenge, and in one 
 hour afterwards Johnson arrogantly accepted it, " in a most 
 despiteful and disgraceful manner." Bales's challenge was 
 delivered " in good terms." " To all Englishmen and stran- 
 gers." It was to write for a gold pen of twenty pounds val- 
 ue in all kinds of hands, " best, straightest, and fastest," and 
 most kind of ways ; " a full, a mean, a small, with line, and 
 without line ; in a slow set hand, a mean facile hand, and a 
 fast running hand ;" and further, "to write truest and speed- 
 iest, most secretary and clerk-like, from a man's mouth read- 
 ing or pronouncing, either English or Latin." 
 
 Young Johnson had the hardihood now of turning the 
 tables on his great antagonist, accusing the veteran Bales of 
 arrogance. Such an absolute challenge, says he, was never 
 witnessed by man, " without exception of any in the world ! " 
 And a few days after meeting Bales, " of set purpose to af- 
 front and disgrace him what he could, showed Bales a piece 
 of writing of secretary's hand, which he had very much la- 
 boured in fine abortive parchment," * uttering to the challen- 
 
 * This was written in the reign of Elizabeth. Holyoke notices " virgin- 
 perchment made of an abortive skin; membrano virgo." Peacham on 
 Drawing, calls parchment simply an abortive. 
 
58 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 ger, these words : " Mr. Bales, give me one shilling out of 
 your purse, and if within six months you better, or equal 
 this piece of writing, I will give you forty pounds for it." 
 This legal deposit of the shilling was made, and the challen- 
 ger, or appellant, was thereby bound by law to the perform- 
 ance. 
 
 The day before the trial a printed declaration was affixed 
 throughout the city, taunting Bales's " proud poverty," and 
 his pecuniary motives, as " a thing ungentle, base, and mer- 
 cenary, and not answerable to the dignity of the golden pen !" 
 Johnson declares he would maintain his challenge for a thou- 
 sand pounds more, but for the respondent's inability to per- 
 form a thousand groats. Bales retorts on the libel ; declares 
 it as a sign of his rival's weakness, " yet who so bold as blind 
 Bayard, that hath not a word of Latin to cast at a dog, or 
 say Bo ! to a goose ! " 
 
 On Michaelmas day, 1595, the trial opened before five 
 judges : the appellant and the respondent appeared at the 
 appointed place, and an ancient gentleman was intrusted with 
 " the golden pen." In the first trial, for the manner of teach- 
 ing scholars, after Johnson had taught his pupil a fortnight, 
 he would not bring him forward ! This was awarded in 
 favour of Bales. 
 
 The second, for secretary and clerk-like writing, dictating 
 to them both in English and in Latin, Bales performed best, 
 being first done ; written straightest without line, with true 
 orthography : the challenger himself confessing that he wanted 
 the Latin tongue, and was no clerk ! 
 
 The third and last trial for fair writing in sundry kinds 
 of hands, the challenger prevailed for the beauty and most 
 " authentic proportion," and for the superior variety of the 
 Roman hand. In the court-hand the respondent exceeded 
 the appellant, and likewise in the set text ; and in bastard 
 secretary was also somewhat perfecter. 
 
 At length Bales, perhaps perceiving an equilibrium in the 
 judicial decision, to overwhelm his antagonist presented what 
 
THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 59 
 
 he distinguishes as his " master-piece," composed of secretary 
 and Roman hand four ways varied, and offering the defend- 
 ant to let pass all his previous advantages if he could better 
 this specimen of caligraphy ! The challenger was silent ! At 
 this moment some of the judges perceiving that the decision 
 must go in favour of Bales, in consideration of the youth of 
 the challenger, lest he might be disgraced to the world, 
 requested the other judges not to pass judgment in public. 
 Bales assures us, that he in vain remonstrated ; for by these 
 means the winning of the golden pen might not be so fa- 
 mously spread as otherwise it would have been. To Bales 
 the prize was awarded. But our history has a more interest 
 ing close ; the subtle Machiavelism of the first challenger ! 
 
 "When the great trial had closed, and Bales, carrying off 
 the golden pen, exultingly had it painted and set up for his 
 sign, the baffled challenger went about reporting that he had 
 won the golden pen, but that the defendant had obtained the 
 same by " plots and shifts, and other base and cunning prac- 
 tices." Bales vindicated his claim, and offered to show the 
 world his " master-piece " which had acquired it. Johnson 
 issued an " Appeal to all impartial Pen-men," which he 
 spread in great numbers through the city for ten days, a libel 
 against the judges and the victorious defendant ! He de- 
 clared that there had been a subtle combination with one of 
 the judges concerning the place of trial ; which he expected 
 to have been " before pen-men," but not before a multitude 
 like a stage-play, and shouts and tumults, with which the 
 challenger had hitherto been unacquainted. The judges 
 were intended to be twelve ; but of the five, four were the 
 challenger's friends, honest gentlemen, but unskilled in judg- 
 ing of most hands ; and he offered again forty pounds to be 
 allowed in six months to equal Bales's master-piece. And 
 he closes his " appeal " by declaring that Bales had lost in 
 several parts of the trial, neither did the judges deny that 
 Bales possessed himself of the golden pen by a trick ! Before 
 judgment was awarded, alleging the sickness of his wife to be 
 
60 
 
 THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. 
 
 extreme, he desired she might have a sight of the golden pen 
 to comfort her ! The ancient gentleman who was the holder, 
 taking the defendant's word, allowed the golden pen to be 
 carried to the sick wife ; and Bales immediately pawned it, 
 and afterwards, to make sure work, sold it at a great loss, so 
 that when the judges met for their definite sentence, nor pen 
 nor penny-worth was to be had ! The judges being ashamed 
 of their own conduct, were compelled to give such a verdict 
 as suited the occasion. 
 
 Bales rejoins ; he publishes to the universe the day and 
 the hour when the judges brought the golden pen to his 
 house, and while he checks the insolence of this Bobadil, to 
 show himself no recreant, assumes the golden pen for his sign. 
 
 Such is the shortest history I could contrive of this chiv- 
 alry of the pen ; something mysteriously clouds over the fate 
 of the defendant ; Bales's history, like Caesar's, is but an ex- 
 parte evidence. Who can tell whether he has not slurred 
 over his defeats, and only dwelt on his victories ? 
 
 There is a strange phrase connected with the art of the 
 caligrapher, which I think may be found in most, if not in all 
 modern languages, to write like an angel ! Ladies have been 
 frequently compared with angels ; they are beautiful as an- 
 gels, and sing and dance like angels ; but, however intelligible 
 these are, we do not so easily connect penmanship with the 
 other celestial accomplishments. This fanciful phrase, how- 
 ever, has a very human origin. Among those learned Greeks 
 who emigrated to Italy, and afterwards into France, in the 
 reign of Francis I. was one Angelo Vergecio, whose beautiful 
 caligraphy excited the admiration of the learned. The French 
 monarch had a Greek fount cast, modelled by his writing. 
 The learned Henry Stephens, who, like our Porson for cor- 
 rectness and delicacy, was one of the most elegant writers 
 of Greek, had learnt the practice from our Angelo. His 
 name became synonymous for beautiful writing, and gave 
 birth to the vulgar proverb, or familiar phrase, to write like 
 an angel/ 
 
THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 61 
 
 THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 It is remarkable that the country, which has long lost its 
 political independence, may be considered as the true parent 
 of modern history. The greater part of their historians have 
 abstained from the applause of their contemporaries, while 
 they have not the less elaborately composed their posthumous 
 folios, consecrated solely to truth and posterity ! The true 
 principles of national glory are opened by the grandeur of 
 the minds of these assertors of political freedom. It was 
 their indignant spirit, seeking to console its injuries by con- 
 fiding them to their secret manuscripts, which raised up this 
 singular phenomenon in the literary world. 
 
 Of the various causes which produced such a lofty race 
 of patriots, one is prominent. The proud recollections of 
 their Roman fathers often troubled the dreams of the sons. 
 The petty rival republics, and the petty despotic principal- 
 ities, which had started up from some great families, who at 
 first came forward as the protectors of the people from their 
 exterior enemies, or their interior factions, at length settled 
 into a corruption of power ; a power which had been con- 
 ferred on them to preserve liberty itself ! These factions 
 often shook, by their jealousies, their fears, and their hatreds, 
 that divided land, which groaned whenever they witnessed 
 the " Ultramontanes " descending from their Alps and their 
 Apennines. Petrarch, in a noble invective, warmed by Livy 
 and ancient Rome, impatiently beheld the French and the 
 Germans passing the mounts. "Enemies," he cries, "so 
 often conquered, prepare to strike with swords, which for- 
 merly served us to raise our trophies : shall the mistress of the 
 world bear chains forged by hands which she has so often 
 bound to their backs ? " Machiavel, in his " Exhortations to 
 free Italy from the barbarians," rouses his country against 
 their changeable masters, the Germans, the French, and the 
 Spaniards ; closing with the verse of Petrarch, that short 
 
62 
 
 THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 shall be the battle for which patriot virtue arms to show the 
 world — 
 
 " che 1' antico valore 
 Ne gl' Italici cuor non e ancor morto." 
 
 Nor has this sublime patriotism declined even in more 
 recent times ; I cannot resist from preserving in this place a 
 sonnet by Filicaja, which I could never read without parti- 
 cipating in the agitation of the writer, for the ancient glory 
 of his degenerated country ! The energetic personification 
 of the close, perhaps, surpasses even his more celebrated 
 sonnet, preserved in Lord Byron's notes to the fourth canto 
 of « Childe Harold." 
 
 " Dov' e Italia, il tuo braccio? e a che ti servi 
 
 Tu dell' altrui ? non e s' io scorgo il vero, 
 
 Di chi t' offende il defensor men fero 
 
 Ambe nemici sono, arabo fur servi. 
 Cosl dunque 1' on or, cosl conservi 
 
 Gli avanzi tu del glorioso Impero? 
 
 Cosi al valor, cosi al valor primiero 
 
 Che a te fede giuro, la fede osservi ? 
 Or va ; repudia il valor prisco, e sposa 
 
 L' ozio, e fra il sangue, i gemiti, e le strida 
 
 Nel periglio maggior dormi e riposa ! 
 Donni, Adultera vil ! fin die omicida 
 
 Spada ultrice ti svegli, e sonnacchiosa, 
 
 E nuda in braccio al tuo fedel t'uccida! " 
 
 " Oh, Italy ! where is thine arm ? What purpose serves 
 
 So to be helped by others ? Deem I right, 
 Among offenders thy defender stands ? 
 Both are thy enemies — both were thy servants ! 
 Thus dost thou honour — thus dost thou preserve 
 The mighty boundaries of the glorious empire? 
 And thus to Valour, to thy pristine Valour 
 That swore its faith to thee, thy faith thou keep'st? 
 Go ! and divorce thyself from thy old Valiance, 
 And marry Idleness : and midst the blood, 
 The heavy groans and cries of agony, 
 In thy last danger sleep, and seek repose ! 
 Sleep, vile Adulteress ! the homicidal sword 
 Vengeful shall waken thee! and lull'd to slumber, 
 While naked in thy minion's arms, shall strike"! " 
 
THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 63 
 
 Among the domestic contests of Italy the true principles 
 of political freedom were developed ; and in that country we 
 may find the origin of that philosophical history, which 
 includes so many important views and so many new results 
 unknown to the ancients. 
 
 Machiavel seems to have been the first writer who dis- 
 covered the secret of what may be called comparative history. 
 He it was who first sought in ancient history for the materials 
 which were to illustrate the events of his own times ; by 
 fixing on analogous facts, similar personages, and parallel 
 periods. This was enlarging the field of history, and open- 
 ing a new combination for philosophical speculation. His 
 profound genius advanced still further ; he not only ex- 
 plained modern by ancient history, but he deduced those 
 results or principles founded on this new sort of evidence, 
 which guided him in forming his opinions. History had 
 hitherto been, if we except Tacitus, but a story well told ; 
 and by writers of limited capacity, the detail and number of 
 facts had too often been considered as the only valuable por- 
 tion of history. An erudition of facts is not the philosophy 
 of history ; an historian unskilful in the art of applying his 
 facts amasses impure ore, which he cannot strike into coin. 
 The chancellor D'Aguesseau, in his instructions to his son on 
 the study of history, has admirably touched on this distinc- 
 tion. " Minds which are purely historical mistake a fact for 
 an argument ; they are so accustomed to satisfy themselves 
 by repeating a great number of facts and enriching their 
 memory, that they become incapable of reasoning on prin- 
 ciples. It often happens that the result of their knowledge 
 breeds confusion and universal indecision ; for their facts, 
 often contradictory, only raise up doubts. The superfluous 
 and the frivolous occupy the place of what is essential and 
 solid, or at least so overload and darken it, that we must sail 
 with them in a sea of trifles to get to firm land. Those who 
 only value the philosophical part of history, fall into an 
 opposite extreme ; they judge of what has been done by that 
 
04 
 
 THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 which should be done ; while the others always decide on 
 what should be done by that which has been : the first are 
 the dupes of their reasoning, the second of the facts which 
 they mistake for reasoning. We should not separate two 
 things which ought always to go in concert, and mutually 
 lend an aid, reason and example I Avoid equally the con- 
 tempt of some philosophers for the science of facts, and the 
 distaste or the incapacity which those who confine them- 
 selves to facts often contract for whatever depends on pure 
 reasoning. True and solid philosophy should direct us in 
 the study of history, and the study of history should give 
 perfection to philosophy." Such was the enlightened opinion, 
 as far back as at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 of the studious chancellor of France, before the more recent 
 designation of Philosophical History was so generally re- 
 ceived, and so familiar on our title-pages. 
 
 From the moment that the Florentine secretary conceived 
 the idea that the history of the Roman people, opening such 
 varied spectacles of human nature, served as a point of com- 
 parison to which he might perpetually recur to try the ana- 
 logous facts of other nations, and the events passing under 
 his own eye ; a new light broke out and ran through the vast 
 extents of history. The maturity of experience seemed to 
 have been obtained by the historian, in his solitary medita- 
 tion. Livy in the grandeur of Rome, and Tacitus in its 
 fated decline, exhibited for Machiavel a moving picture of 
 his own republics — the march of destiny in all human 
 governments ! The text of Livy and Tacitus revealed to 
 him many an imperfect secret — the fuller truth he drew from 
 the depth of his own observations on his own times. In 
 Machiavel's "Discourses on Livy," we may discover the 
 foundations of our Philosophical History. 
 
 The example of Machiavel, like that of all creative genius, 
 influenced the character of his age, and his history of Flo- 
 rence produced an emulative spirit among a new dynasty of 
 historians. 
 
THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 65 
 
 The Italian historians have proved themselves to be an 
 extraordinary race, for they devoted their days to the com- 
 position of historical works, which they were certain could 
 not see the light during their lives ! They nobly determined 
 that their works should be posthumous, rather than be com- 
 pelled to mutilate them for the press. These historians were 
 rather the saints than the martyrs of history ; they did not 
 always personally suffer for truth, but during their protracted 
 labour they sustained their spirit, by anticipating their glori- 
 fied after-state. 
 
 Among these Italian historians must be placed the illus- 
 trious Guicciardini, the friend of Machiavel. No perfect 
 edition of this historian existed till recent times. The 
 history itself was posthumous ; nor did his nephew venture 
 to publish it, till twenty years after the historian's death. 
 He only gave the first sixteen books, and these castrated. 
 The obnoxious passages consisted of some statements relating 
 to the papal court, then so important in the affairs of Europe ; 
 some account of the origin and progress of the papal power ; 
 some eloquent pictures of the abuses and disorders of that 
 corrupt court ; and some free caricatures on the government 
 of Florence. The precious fragments were fortunately 
 preserved in manuscript, and the Protestants procured tran- 
 scripts which they published separately, but which were long 
 very rare.* All the Italian editions continued to be re- 
 printed in the same truncated condition, and appear only to 
 have been reinstated in the immortal history, so late as in 
 1775 ! Thus it required two centuries, before an editor 
 could venture to give the world the pure and complete text 
 of the manuscript of the lieutenant-general of the papal 
 army, who had been so close and so indignant an observer 
 of the Roman cabinet. 
 
 Adriani, whom his son entitles gentilnomo Fiorentino, the 
 
 * They were printed at Basle in 1569— at London in 1595— in Amster- 
 dam, 1663. How many attempts to echo the voice of suppressed truth \ 
 —Haym's Bib. Ital. 1803. 
 
 VOL. IV. 5 
 
GG 
 
 THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 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? w r hich 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 dis- 
 covered this history of Florence, which the author had care- 
 fully 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, 
 
THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 G7 
 
 who threw it aside. Another copy had been more care- 
 fully 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 Floren- 
 tine 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 pub- 
 lishing his well-known " Storie Florentine," 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 father-land, 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 
 
68 
 
 THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 •with truth, which is to be preferred to all thing?, however 
 detrimental it may be to the writer." * 
 
 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 1 am not permitted 
 to write as I would ; and I would not write as I am permit- 
 
 * 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 1 
 bishop Petrus Paulus Vergerius. See its refutation in Amiani, Hist, di 
 Fano, ii. 149, et seq. 160. 
 
 " Varchf 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 Verge- 
 rius 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 sceleraiezza 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. 
 
THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 69 
 
 ted." 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 devo- 
 tion to truth, which reduced them to silence, but not to inac- 
 tivity! 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 wrote the English his- 
 tory, 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 dis- 
 cover 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 the 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 in- 
 quiries concerning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 
 the laws and customs of that kingdom. With some inter- 
 ruptions 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 after- 
 wards extracted from the history by Vernet, and published 
 in a small volume, under the title of "Anecdotes Ecclesias- 
 tiques," 1738. When Giannone consulted with a friend on 
 the propriety of publishing his history, his critic, in admiring 
 
70 
 
 THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS. 
 
 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 fugi- 
 tive 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 pre- 
 paring a supplemental volume to his celebrated history, when, 
 enticed by a treacherous friend to a catholic village, Gian- 
 none 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 mon- 
 arch, 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 
 i troppa liberta. He hints that this history is only paralleled 
 
OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. 
 
 71 
 
 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 unde- 
 finable 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 ? 
 
 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 name, exciting even the envy of their equals 
 — in the erection of palaces for themselves, which outvied 
 those of the sovereign ; and which, to the eyes of the pop- 
 ulace, appeared as a perpetual and insolent exhibition of what 
 they deemed the ill-earned wages of peculation, oppression, 
 
72 
 
 OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. 
 
 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 relin- 
 quished one palace after the other, and gave up as gifts to 
 the monarch, what, in all his over-grown greatness, he trem- 
 bled to retain for himself. The state satire of that day was 
 often pointed at this very circumstance, as appears in Skel- 
 ton's " Why come ye not to Court ? " and Roy's " Rede me, 
 and be not wrothe." 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 the 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 pi-eeminence; 
 And York's Place 
 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 PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. 
 
 73 
 
 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,* 
 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 magnifi- 
 cence ; 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 banquetted 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 edi- 
 fice, Wolsey presented it to the king, who, in recompense, 
 suffered the Cardinal occasionally to inhabit this w r onder of 
 England, in the character of keeper of the king's palace ; f 
 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. 
 
 * 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 any thing uncommonly exact, or woi*ked with the nicety and pre- 
 cision of stitches made or devised by the needle. — Illustrations of Shakspeare, 
 i. 93. But Mr. Gifford has since observed that the origin of the expres- 
 sion 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. 
 
 t Lyson's Environs, v. 58. 
 
74 
 
 OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. 
 
 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 Bassom- 
 pierre, 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 adven- 
 turous ; 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 hav- 
 ing out-rivalled Richelieu and Olivarez, the nominal minis- 
 ters 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 vic- 
 tims 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 Graf- 
 ton-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. Clar- 
 endon 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 circum- 
 stances, 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 
 
OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. 
 
 75 
 
 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. 
 He was reproached with having profaned the sacred stones 
 dedicated to the use of the church. The great but unfortu- 
 nate 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 per- 
 suaded 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 Bour- 
 bons. 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 po- 
 litical 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, " Claren- 
 don'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 
 
76 
 
 OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. 
 
 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.* 
 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, Clar- 
 endon-House met its fate, and was abandoned to the brokers, 
 who had purchased it for its materials. An affecting circum- 
 stance is recorded by Evelyn on this occasion. In returning 
 to town with the Earl of Clarendon, the son of the great 
 
 * At the gateway of the Three Kings Inn, near Dover-street in Picca- 
 dilly, are two pilasters with Corinthian capitals, which belonged to Cla- 
 rendon-House, and are perhaps the only remains of that edifice. 
 
OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. 
 
 77 
 
 earl, " in passing by the glorious palace his father built but 
 few years before, which they were now demolishing, being 
 sold to certain undertakers, 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 ex- 
 actly 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 
 
78 
 
 " TAXATION NO TYRANNY! " 
 
 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 Walsing- 
 ham : 
 
 " 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 quire 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 augmen- 
 tation 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 ! 
 
 "TAXATION NO TYRANNY ! 9 
 
 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 
 
"TAXATION NO TYRANNY ! " 
 
 79 
 
 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!* the 
 strange equality of levellers ! 
 
 These political monsters in all times have had an associa- 
 tion 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,f of which only 312 leaves amused 
 the Florentines ; these having had the honour of being con- 
 signed to the flames by the hands of the hangman for certain 
 popular errors ; such as, for instance, under the word Gran 
 Dnca we find Vedi Gabelli I (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 nick- 
 named 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
 t Vocabulario di Santa Caterina e della Lingua Sanese, 1717. This pun- 
 gent lexicon was prohibited at Rome by desire of the court of Florence. 
 The history of this suppressed work may be found in 11 Giornale de* Let- 
 ierati d 1 Italia, tomo xxix. 1410. In the last edition of Haym's " Biblioteca 
 Italiana," 1803, it is said to be reprinted at Manilla, nelV hole Fillippine! — 
 For the book-licensers it is a great way to go for it! 
 
80 
 
 "TAXATION NO TYRANNY!" 
 
 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 re- 
 fused — 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 law-giver, 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 Repub- 
 lic," has noticed a class of politicians who are in too great 
 favour with the people. " Many seditious citizens, and de- 
 sirous 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 common-weal, being the 
 ground and foundation of one." * 
 
 The undisguised and naked term of " taxation " is, how- 
 ever, so odious to the people, that it may be curious to observe 
 
 * 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 anathematize those who doubted the existence 
 of sorcerers and witches, &c. whom he condemns to the flames ! See his 
 " Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593. 
 
"TAXATION NO TYRANNY!" 
 
 81 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinction 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 in- 
 fluenced circumstances, as names do things ; and conquest or 
 oppression, which we may allow to be sytionymes, apes be- 
 nevolence 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 Da- 
 mascus to the several Arab princes through whose territory 
 he conducts the caravan of pilgrims to Mecca, are, at Con- 
 stantinople, 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 pas- 
 sage 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 adjust- 
 ment of these fees produce, the Turks complain of robbery, 
 and the Arabs of invasion." * 
 
 Here we trace taxation through all its shifting forms, ac- 
 commodating itself to the feelings of the different people; 
 the same principle regulated the alternate terms proposed by 
 the buccaneers, when they ashed what the weaker party was 
 sure to give, or when they levied what the others paid only as 
 a common toll. 
 
 * Wood's Inquiry on Homer, p. 153. 
 
 VOL. IV. 6 
 
82 
 
 TAXATION NO TYRANNY! " 
 
 When Louis the Eleventh of France beheld his country- 
 exhausted bj 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. Holingshed 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 indiffer- 
 ence, " 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 ! " * 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 dis- 
 agreeable idea to the imagination. When it was formerly 
 thought desirable, in the relaxation of morals which pre- 
 vailed in Venice, to institute the office of censor, three magis- 
 trates 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 vi- 
 vere della citta, all agreed on the propriety of the office under 
 the softened term. Father Joseph, the secret agent of Car- 
 dinal Richelieu, was the inventor of lettres de cachet, disguis- 
 ing that instrument of despotism by the amusing term of a 
 sealed letter. Expatriation would have been merciful com- 
 pared 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 
 
 * Bodin' s Common-weal, translated by R. Knolles, p. 14S. 1C06. 
 
"TAXATION NO TYRANNY ! " 
 
 83 
 
 contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest 
 times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the con- 
 tests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the 
 right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among (lie 
 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." * 
 
 One party clamorously asserts that taxation is their griev- 
 ance, 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. Hal- 
 lam's party would tax us without " wastefulness ! " Minis- 
 terial 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 prceterea 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 considera- 
 tion towards the feelings of the people, and often contrived 
 to hide the nature of its exactions by a name of blandish- 
 ment. An enormous grievance was long the office of pur- 
 vej^ance. 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, 
 
 * Burke's Works, vol. i. 288. 
 
84 
 
 TAXATION NO TYRANNY! " 
 
 would enter into the history of the arts of grinding the labor- 
 ing class of society ; a remnant of feudal tyranny ! The very 
 title of this officer became odious ; and by a statute of Ed- 
 ward III. the hateful name of 'purveyor was ordered to be 
 changed into acheteur or buyer ! 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 jour- 
 ney," 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 benevo- 
 lence." 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 " sup- 
 plies." " 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 under- 
 stood 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 
 
"TAXATION NO TYRANNY! " 85 
 
 good will list to take." * Richard III., whose business, like 
 that of all usurpers, was to be popular, in a statute even con- 
 demns 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 suc- 
 cessor, 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 in- 
 sisted 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 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 cour- 
 teous term strangely contrasted with the rough demand. 
 Lord Digby said " the granting of subsidies, under so pre- 
 posterous 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 
 namer The nature indeed had so entirely changed from 
 the name, that when James I. had tried to warm the hearts 
 
 * Daines Barrington, in " Observations on the Statutes," gives the 
 marginal note of Buck as the xoords 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. 
 
86 
 
 "TAXATION NO TYRANNY! ' 
 
 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 his- 
 torian, " get more of the people's money, but exactions en- 
 slave the mind." 
 
 When benevolences had become a grievance, to diminish 
 the odium they invented more inviting phrases. The sub- 
 ject 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 manu- 
 script 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 gen- 
 eral loan, which in fact was a forced loan, was one of the most 
 crying grievances under Charles I. Ingenious in the destruc- 
 tion of his own popularity, the king contrived a new mode 
 of " secret instructions to commissioners" * 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 
 
 * These " Private Instructions to the Commissioners for the General 
 Loan " may be found in Rush worth, i. 418. 
 
THE BOOK OF DEATH. 37 
 
 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 ! " 
 
 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 word-, their 
 actions, and what sort of countenance they put upon it." He 
 seems to have been a little over curious about deaths, in ref- 
 erence, no doubt, to his own, in which he was certainly 
 deceived ; for we are told that he did not die as he had prom- 
 ised 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 monot- 
 onous ; 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 
 
88 
 
 THE BOOK OF DEATH. 
 
 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 ago?iia, con dolore e con 
 pena, seperandosi Vanima 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 con- 
 templating 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 in- 
 formed 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 associa- 
 tions 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 vir- 
 tuous Erasmus, with miserable groans, was heard crying out, 
 Domine ! Dominef fac finem! fac Jinemf 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 ! " 
 
THE BOOK OF DEATH. 
 
 89 
 
 " 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 ex- 
 hilarated 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. 
 
 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 
 vvould 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." 
 
00 
 
 THE BOOK OF DEATH. 
 
 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 con- 
 tinuing 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 col- 
 lector of " The Book of Death " would only deign to chron- 
 icle ; 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 cen- 
 tury, and both these poets loved preternatural terror. 
 
 " If I must die, I'll snatch at every thing 
 
 That may but mind me of my latest breath; 
 Death's-heads, Graves, Knells, Blacks,* 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. 
 
 * Blacks was the term for mourning in James the First and Charles the 
 First's time. 
 
THE BOOK OF DEATH. 
 
 91 
 
 But it may be doubful whether the thoughts of death are 
 useful, whenever they put a man out of the possession of bis 
 faculties. Young pursued the scheme of Quarles : lie 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. 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. Without adverting to those numer- 
 ous testimonies, the diaries of fanatics, I shall offer a picture 
 of an accomplished and innocent lady, in a curious and un- 
 affected 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," * 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 inconsider- 
 ate 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. — 
 
 * My discovery of the nature of this rare volume, of what is original 
 und what collected, will be found in a previous article. 
 
92 
 
 THE BOOK OF DEATH. 
 
 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 per- 
 suaded '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 al- 
 though 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 sub- 
 mit 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 haunt- 
 ing 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 Bos- 
 well 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 prepara- 
 
THE BOOK OF DEATH. 
 
 93 
 
 tory 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 escap- 
 ing from life in the midst of convivial enjoyment. A mortu- 
 ary 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 nar- 
 rative. One morning La Place received a note from Mon- 
 criff, requesting that " he would immediately select for him a 
 dozen volumes most likely to amuse, and of a nature to with- 
 draw 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 meas- 
 ured for a new peruke, and a taffety robe-de-chambre, ear- 
 nestly 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 4 condemned to 
 death ; ' but I had presence of mind enough not to betray 
 myself." " Can a head so well organized 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 sus- 
 ceptible. 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 cu- 
 rate of my parish is coming here under a pretext of an an- 
 
94 
 
 THE BOOK OF DEATH. 
 
 nual 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 condem- 
 nation ; but if they wish me to live, they will do me the fav- 
 our 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 de- 
 pend.'' 
 
 La Place was strongly affected by this appeal — neither 
 Socrates, nor Cato, nor Seneca looked more serenely on the 
 approach of death. 
 
 " Familiarize 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. 
 
HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 95 
 
 HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 Euthanasia ! Euthanasia ! an easy death ! was the excla- 
 mation 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 — JEternali somno ! * If the full light of reve- 
 lation 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 sculp- 
 tured 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 recollec- 
 tions. They did not pollute their imagination with the con- 
 tents of a charnel-house. The sarcophagi of the ancients 
 * Montfaucon, L' Antiquity Expliqu^e, I. 362. 
 
96 
 
 HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 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 Fcedera 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 Scecido — Vitam suam mutare — Si 
 quid de eo humanities contigerit, fyc." I am indebted to Mr. 
 Merivale for this remark. Even among a people less re- 
 fined, the obtrusive idea of death has been studiously 
 avoided : we are told that when the Emperor of Morocco in- 
 quires after any one who has recently died, it is against 
 etiquette to mention the word " death ; " the answer i.-, kk 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.* — 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 
 
 * A representation of Death by a skeleton appears among the Egyp- 
 tians: a custom more singular than barbarous prevailed, of inclosing 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. 
 
HISTOKY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 07 
 
 accorded with a fundamental principle of ancient art ; that 
 of never permitting violent passion to produce in its repre- 
 sentation 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 express- 
 ing 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 cedai-j 
 which inclosed the body of Cypselus ; this female was un- 
 questionably only one of the Parcce, 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 nonenity to the ancient artist. Could he ex- 
 hibit 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 indi- 
 cate 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 sleep- 
 ing-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 
 
 VOL. IV. 7 
 
98 
 
 HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 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 usurp- 
 ing hands of those imperious monks whose artifices trafficked 
 with the terrors of ignorant and hypochondriac " Kaisers and 
 kings." The scene was darkened by penances and by pil- 
 grimages, by midnight vigils, by miraculous shrines, and 
 bloody flagellations ; spectres started up amidst their tene- 
 bres ; millions of masses increased their supernatural influ- 
 ence. 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 immova- 
 bility 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. 
 
HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 99 
 
 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 4 It was a good 
 remembrance ! ' — ' Nay,' quoth the emperor, 1 as vermin that 
 annoy eth 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.' " * The original mind of Maxi- 
 milian the Great is characterized by this curious story of con- 
 verting 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 skele- 
 tons. | 
 
 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, sud- 
 denly changed into a theme fertile in coarse humour. The 
 Italians were too long accustomed to the study of the beau- 
 tiful 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 
 
 * The Accidence of Armorie, p. 199. 
 
 f A woodcut preserved in Mr. Dibdin's Bib. Dec. i. 35. 
 
100 HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 out the gaunt anatomy into the postures of a Hogarth ; and 
 that the ludicrous mifdit be carried to its extreme, this ima£- 
 inary 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 Hol- 
 bein's, with other similar Dance's, 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 na- 
 ture, and in the strict costume of the times. This invention 
 opened a new field for genius ; and when we can for a mo- 
 ment 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 bar- 
 barous 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 churchyards 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 Ger- 
 
HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 101 
 
 many 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 com- 
 memorate 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 
 
102 HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 the result is hard to describe ; for we are at once amused 
 and disgusted with so much genius founded on so much 
 barbarism.* 
 
 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 com- 
 plaints 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.f 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 qvton 
 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 
 
 * 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 cop- 
 ted the exquisite originals of the Lyons woodcutter. 
 
 f Goujet, Bib. Francoise, vol. x. 185. 
 
HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 103 
 
 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 1' Afrique 
 Je le fais bien dans l'Amdrique; 
 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 bee 
 Aux Francais du fort de Kebec. 
 Lorsque je veux je fais la nique 
 Aux Incas, aux rois de Mexique; 
 Et montre aux Nouveaux Gr^nadins 
 Qu'ils sont des foux et des badins. 
 Chacun sait bien comme je matte 
 Ceux du Br£sil 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! " * 
 
 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; 
 
 * Tablature d'un luth, Cotgrave says, is the belly of a lute, meaning " all 
 in nature must dance to my music ! " 
 
104 HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH. 
 
 Sam choix je mets dans mon butin 
 
 Maistre Claude, maistre Martin, 
 
 Dame Luce, dame Perrette, cfc. 
 
 J'en prend3 un dans le temps qu'il pleure 
 
 A quelque autre, au contraire a l'lieure 
 
 Qui d£m£sur£ment 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 1'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 bonneur et gloire: 
 
 J'en surprends un lorsqu'il se psame 
 
 Le jour qu'il e'pouse sa femme, 
 
 L'autre le jour que plein de deuil 
 
 La sienne 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 pave et l'autre qui doit, 
 
 L'un en £te lorsqu'il moissonne, 
 
 L'autre en vendanges dans rautomne, 
 
 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 m^decine." 
 
 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 ad- 
 dresses the " teste a triple couronne," as well as the " forcat 
 de galere," who exclaims, u Laissez-moi vivre dans mes 
 
THE KIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. 
 
 105 
 
 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 bad opened one gen- 
 eral scene of melancholy and tribulation over Europe, and 
 given birth to that dismal skeleton of death, which still terri- 
 fies 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 ! 
 
 THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. 
 
 Peter Hetlin 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. We have nearly outlived 
 their divinity, but not their politics. Metaphysical absurdi- 
 ties 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 pro- 
 gress 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 pre- 
 fixed 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. 
 
 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 
 
106 THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. 
 
 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 com- 
 paring 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 dedica- 
 tion to the son and the nephew of Heylin. Roused now into 
 action, the indignant Barnard soon produced a more com- 
 plete 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. The long smothered family grudge, the suppressed 
 mortifications of literary pride, after the subterraneous grum- 
 blings of twenty years, now burst out, and the volcanic par- 
 ticles 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 de- 
 scribing 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 un- 
 happy 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 intrusted him w r ith 
 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 RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. 
 
 107 
 
 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." 
 
 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. 
 
 It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arith- 
 metical 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 intreated 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 im- 
 perfect ; 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 bis 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 
 
108 
 
 THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. 
 
 his severity, his additions were generous, though he used the 
 precaution of carefully distinguishing by "distinct para- 
 graphs " 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 com- 
 pliment. 
 
 The narrative may now proceed in Vernon's details of his 
 doleful mortifications, in being "altered and mangled" by 
 Dr. Barnard. 
 
 "Instead of thanks from him (Dr. Barnard), and the re- 
 turn 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 Iiodie mihi discerperis — so my papers came home miser- 
 ably clawed, blotted, and blurred ; whole sentences dismem- 
 bered, 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 sick- 
 ness, 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." 
 
THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. 
 
 109 
 
 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 accusa- 
 tion 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 waters 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 appropri- 
 ated 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 does not know what is ex- 
 cerpting. 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 qitam 
 stultam loquacitatem." 
 
 In his turn he accuses Vernon of being a perpetual tran- 
 scriber, 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 
 
110 
 
 THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. 
 
 Bhifts, 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, some- 
 times for twenty pages and more, at other times fifteen, ordi- 
 narily nine arid 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 tedi- 
 ous suit my father had for several years about a lease at 
 Norton." 
 
 In his raillery of Vernon's affected metaphors and com- 
 parisons, "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 animce sint 
 cequales ? — whether souls be alike ? But there's a difference 
 between the spirits of Elijah and Elisha : so small a prophet 
 with so great an 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, 
 
OF 'LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 Ill 
 
 that is not only lame (as the honest bookseller said), bat 
 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 doth of Tib. Gracchus, 
 ' that he is a bold undertaker and rash talker of those mat- 
 ters 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 prob* 
 ably 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 ! 
 
 OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 The " Methode pour etudier VHistoire" 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 se- 
 cret 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 origi- 
 nality 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 ro- 
 mances — of those on literary subjects — on alchymy, or the 
 hermetic philosophy; of those who have written on appari- 
 tions, visions, &c. ; an historical treatise on the secret of con- 
 
112 
 
 OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 fession, &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 sar- 
 casm, 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 com- 
 posed a work on U Usage des Romans, in which he gaily 
 impugned the authenticity of all history, to prove himself 
 not to have been the author, ambi-dexterously published an- 
 other of V Histoire justifiee contre les Romans ; and perhaps 
 it was not his fault that the attack was spirited, and the justi- 
 fication 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 u 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 ob- 
 
OF LENGLET DU FEESNOY. 
 
 113 
 
 noxious passages : it is certain that Gros de Boze, in a dis- 
 sertation on the Janus of the ancients in this work, actually 
 erased a high commendation of himself,* which Lenglet hud, 
 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 him- 
 self 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 night-cap 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 resti- 
 tuted 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 clandes- 
 tinely. 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 
 
 * This fact appears in the account of the minuter erasures. 
 VOL. iv. 8 
 
114 
 
 OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 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 ; an event more extraordinary 
 in the history of French bibliography than in our own. 
 The curious may now find all these cancel sheets, or castra- 
 tions, 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 biblio- 
 graphical record.* , 
 
 This Methode, after several later editions, was still en- 
 larging itself by fresh supplements ; and having been trans- 
 lated 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 ^Eson, it had its 
 veins filled with green juices ; and thus his old work was 
 always undergoing the magic process of rejuvenescence. f 
 
 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 defi- 
 
 * The castrations are in Beyeri Memorial historico-critica Librorum vario- 
 rum, p. 166. The bruises are carefully noted in the Catalogue of the Duke 
 de la Valliere, 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 orig- 
 inal manuscript exists in various copies, which were afterwards dis- 
 covered. The minuter corrections, in the Duke de la Valliere's catalogue, 
 furnish a most enlivening article in the dryness of bibliography. 
 
 t 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. 
 
OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 115 
 
 ciency of judgment in several works of acknowledged utility; 
 and his critical opinions, his last editor has shown, have, foi 
 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 connection 
 with some preceding inquiry. As there is an association of 
 ideas, so in literary history there is an association of re- 
 search ; and a very judicious writer may thus be impelled 
 to compose on subjects which may be deemed strange or in- 
 judicious. 
 
 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 Im- 
 maculate 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 appari- 
 tions and revelations recorded were against all the rules of 
 apparitions and revelations which he had painfully dis- 
 covered. 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 
 
116 
 
 OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 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, fyc," 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 
 oV Amour, that work of love and chivalry, in which his fancy 
 was now so deeply imbedded ; while the subject of Romance 
 itself naturally led to the taste of romantic productions which 
 appeared in " X' Usage des Romans," and its accompanying 
 copious nomenclature of all romances and romance-writers, 
 ancient and modern. Our vivacious Abbe had been be- 
 wildered by his delight in the works of a chemical philo- 
 sopher ; and though he did not believe in the existence of 
 apparitions, and certainly was more than a skeptic in history, 
 yet it is certain that the " grande ouvre " 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 tym- 
 pany, 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 Philosophic 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 com- 
 
OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 117 
 
 municated the secret of infusing young blood into old veins, 
 with a notion that he could renovate that which admits of no 
 second creation.* 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 princi- 
 pal works. 
 
 Our Abbe promised to write his own life, and his pug- 
 nacious 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.f 
 
 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 de- 
 scribes his occupations by a paraphrastical delicacy of lan- 
 guage, which an Englishman might not have so happily 
 composed. The Minister for foreign affairs, the Marquis de 
 
 * 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 
 Eawleigh, which may be curious. 
 
 t This anonymous work of " Mdmoires 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 Sgavans was too ascetic 
 in this opinion. Etoit-ce la peine defaire un livre pour apprendre au public 
 gu'un homme de lettres fut espion, escroc, bizarre, fougueux,cynique, incapable 
 d'amitie, de decence, de soumission aux Mx? cfc. Yet they do not pretend 
 that the bibliography of Lenglet du Fresnoy is at all deficient in curiosity. 
 
118 
 
 OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 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 pur- 
 loining 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 Vi- 
 enna 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 in- 
 sinuated 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 pre- 
 ferring 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 
 
OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY. 
 
 119 
 
 was every morning occupied in working on his " Tablettes 
 Chronologiques," a work not worthy of alarming the govern- 
 ment ; that he spent his evenings at a violin player's married 
 to a French woman, and returned home at eleven. As soon 
 as our historian had discovered that the poet was a brother 
 spy and news-monger 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 mu- 
 tual 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 Brus- 
 sels, 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 tc 
 invent crimes, as if they themselves w T ere criminals. 
 
 But to return to our Lenglet. Had he composed his own 
 
120 
 
 THE DICTIONARY OF TREVOUX. 
 
 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 Pa-sionei 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 sacri- 
 ficed 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 him- 
 self without reserve on all things, and on all persons, seasoned 
 with secret and literary anecdotes. He refused all the con- 
 veniences 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. 
 
 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 liter- 
 ary association of ideas which should accompany every man 
 of letters in his tours, abroad or at home. A mind well in- 
 formed cannot travel without discovering that there are ob- 
 
THE DICTIONARY OF TREVOUX. 
 
 121 
 
 jects constantly presenting themselves, which suggest literary, 
 historical, and moral facts. My friend writes, " As you pro- 
 ceed 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 Tre- 
 voux, 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 tins 
 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 continu- 
 ally 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 Due du Maine, as prince sovereign of 
 Dombes, transferring to this little town of Trevoux not only 
 his parliament and other public institutions, but also estab- 
 lishing 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 
 
122 
 
 THE DICTIONARY OF TEEVOUX. 
 
 notice ; so that it became a favourite with many good writers, 
 who appear to have had no other connection 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 cares 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. 
 
 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 an- 
 nouncement that this dictionary was formed on a plan sug- 
 gested by their patron, did little more than pillage Furetiere, 
 and rummage Basnage, and produced three new folios with- 
 out any novelties ; they pleased the Due du Maine, and no 
 one else. This was in 1704. Twenty years after, it was 
 republished and improved ; and editions increasing, the vol- 
 umes succeeded each other, till it reached to its present mag- 
 nitude and value in eight large folios, in 1771, the only edi- 
 tion 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 com- 
 monplace 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 en- 
 tire 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 winch the plagiary much more than the 
 
THE DICTIONARY OF TREVOUX. 
 
 123 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand 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 ap- 
 peared, 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 de- 
 livered to Monsieur Lautour, richly bound and free of car- 
 riage ; 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, 
 
124 
 
 THE DICTIONARY OF TEEVOUX. 
 
 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 after- 
 wards 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 con- 
 sulted, for widely has science enlarged its domains and cor- 
 rected 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 Lan- 
 
QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 125 
 
 guage it bears a peculiar feature, which has been presumptu- 
 ously dropped in the Dictionnaire de PAcademie ; 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 quo- 
 tations from the classical French writers — an improvement 
 which was probably suggested by the English Dictionary of 
 Johnson. One nation improves by another. 
 
 QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 It is, perhaps, somewhat mortifying in our literary re- 
 searches 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 con- 
 tinental 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 " Musse Anglicanas ; " and when Boileau 
 was told of the public funeral of Dryden, he was pleased 
 with the national honours bestowed on genius, but he de- 
 clared 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 Vir- 
 tues and Vices." It is a duodecimo, printed at Paris, of 109 
 pages, 1610, with this title, Characteres de Vertus et de 
 Vices ; tires de VAnglois 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 1' Anglois jamai s 
 
12G QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 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, re- 
 mains 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 ama- 
 teur historian. 
 
 Father Quadrio's Delia Storia e deW ragione <f ogni Poe- 
 sia, — is a gigantic work, which could only have been pro- 
 jected 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 knowl- 
 edge 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 volumi- 
 nous 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 
 
QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 127 
 
 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 Para- 
 dise — 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, there- 
 fore, occasioned the errors, sometimes very ridiculous ones, 
 of foreign writers respecting our authors. Even the lively 
 Chaudon, in his " Dictionnaire Hi^torique," 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!* 
 
 Of all these foreign authors, none has more egregiously 
 failed than this good Father Quadrio. In this universal his- 
 tory 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 Ingles!,'* f we find the following list of English 
 poets. 
 
 " Of John Gower ; whose rhymes and verses are preserved 
 
 * 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 Four 
 tenth, or the Great; and for the English, under Charles the Second! 
 
 f Quadrio, vol. ii. p. 416. 
 
128 
 
 QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 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 dis- 
 covers a host of English poets — in Waller, Duke of Buck- 
 ingham, 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 Qua- 
 drio's notions are derived from Voltaire, whom, perhaps, he 
 boldly translates. Instead of improving our drama, he con- 
 ducted it a totale rovina nelle sue farse monstruose, die 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 Qua- 
 drio. Dryden is also mentioned ; but the only drama speci- 
 
QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 129 
 
 fied 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 w T ere 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 signalized 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 
 
 VOL. iv. 9 
 
130 QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETEY. 
 
 greatest comic geniuses; for, alluding to our diversity of 
 action in comedy, he mentions in his fifth volume, page 148, — 
 "II celebre Benjanson, nella sua commedia intitolato Barto- 
 lommeo Foicere, e in quella altra commedia intitolato Tpsum 
 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 Shad- 
 well's comedy of Epsom Wells. The Italian critic had tran- 
 scribed 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' o gni 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 unques- 
 tionably 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 univer- 
 
" POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." 
 
 131 
 
 sally conceded to the Italian nation themselves, appears to 
 belong to us ! For we, it appears, while others were dan- 
 dling 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 Fan- 
 toccini, surpassed, and must ever surpass the puny efforts of 
 a doll-loving people ! 
 
 "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 osten- 
 sible pretext, while the secret motive was usually political. 
 The historians, who view in religious wars only religion 
 
132 
 
 "POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." 
 
 itself, have written large volume?, in which we may never 
 discover that they have either been a struggle to obtain pre- 
 dominance, 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 ex- 
 isted, 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 martyro- 
 logy 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 narra- 
 tives, 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." Dodd's narratives are not less pathetic : for the 
 situation of the catholic, who had to secrete himself, as well 
 
« POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." 
 
 133 
 
 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 Presby- 
 terians, blackens them for political devils. He is the Spag- 
 nolet of history, delighting himself with horrors at which the 
 painter himself must have started. He tells of their " oppo- 
 sitions" 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 refor- 
 mation itself needed to be reformed. They wearied the im- 
 patient 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 min- 
 isters. 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 
 
134 
 
 "POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." 
 
 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 pres- 
 byters 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, 1662: 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 father- 
 land, 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 
 
"POLITICAL RELIGIONISM.' 
 
 135 
 
 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 his- 
 tory of " the like " might not be curtailed in the telling, op- 
 posed 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 seques- 
 tered, harassed, &c, in the late Times." Walker is himself 
 astonished at the size of his volume, the number of his suffer- 
 ers, 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 dis- 
 cover that the heads of all parties are of the same hot tem- 
 perament, and observe the same evil conduct in similar situa- 
 tions ; 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 
 
136 
 
 "POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." 
 
 eee the French catholics cutting out the tongues of the prot- 
 estants, that they might no longer protest ; the haughty Lu- 
 ther 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 retracta- 
 tions ; 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 monaste- 
 ries, from the axiom that when the rookery was destroyed, 
 the rooks would never return ; when we find his recent apol- 
 ogist admiring, while he apologizes 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 mo- 
 tives 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 gov- 
 ernment considered the reformed as rebels, whom it was not 
 safe to readmit 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 
 
" POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." 
 
 137 
 
 I destroyed him not, that heresy has now become strong, 
 which I am convinced might have been stifled with him in 
 its birth." * The whole conduct of Charles the Fifth in this 
 mighty revolution, was, from its beginning, censured by con- 
 temporaries 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 pre- 
 dominant 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 elec- 
 toral princes to ruin them, and to abolish their right of elec- 
 tion. 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 realized." f 
 
 Good men of both parties, mistaking the nature of these 
 religious wars, have drawn horrid inferences ! The " dragon- 
 nades " 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 
 
 * Llorente's Critical History of the Inquisition 
 
 t Naude, Considerations Politiques, p. 115. See a curious note in 
 Harte's Life of Gustavus Adolphus, ii. 129. 
 
138 
 
 " POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." 
 
 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 op- 
 posite 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 protes- 
 tants, who there are numerous, declared that they were per- 
 secuted for religion, and their cry, echoed by their brethren 
 the dissenters, resounded in this country. We have not for- 
 gotten the ferment it raised here ; much was said, and some- 
 thing was done. Our minister however persisted in declaring 
 that it was a mere political affair. It is clear that our gov- 
 ernment was right on the cause, and those zealous complain- 
 ants 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 inci- 
 dent 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 
 elegancies 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 re- 
 ligion 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 
 
TOLERATION. 
 
 139 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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 fol- 
 lowers. 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;* yet an expression employed in the nuptial 
 parable of the great supper, when the hospitable lord com- 
 manded the servant, finding that he had still room to accom- 
 modate 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 pro- 
 
 * Bishop Barlow's " Several Miscellaneous and Weighty Cases of Con- 
 science Resolved, 1692." His " Case of a Toleration in Matters of Re- 
 ligion," 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. 
 
140 
 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 duced 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.* The caution of both writers 
 in publishing in foreign places, however, indicates the pru- 
 dence which it was deemed necessary to observe in writing 
 in favour of toleration. 
 
 These were the first philosophical attempts ; but the earli- 
 est 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 Hol- 
 land. 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 was Jeremy Taylor, in his " Dis- 
 course on the Liberty of Prophesying," 1647, and Bishop 
 Hall, who had pleaded the cause of moderation in a discourse 
 about the same period. | Locke had no doubt examined all 
 
 * In the article Sancterius. Note F. 
 
 f 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 tol- 
 eration, so delicate and so obscure did this subject then appear! In 1651, 
 they translated the liberal treatise of Grotius, De imperio Summarum Potes- 
 tatum 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 ! 
 
TOLERATION. 
 
 141 
 
 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 Amster- 
 dam, 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 tolera- 
 tion.* 
 
 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. 
 
 * J. P. Rabaut, sur la Revolution Francaise, p. 27. 
 
142 
 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 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 contro- 
 versy 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 protes- 
 tants complained of the persecutions they suffered, the cath- 
 olics, 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 de- 
 pended ! " When the Reformation penetrated into Switzer- 
 land, 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 Creis- 
 sier 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 innova- 
 tion, he gave his voice in favour of the existing form of wor- 
 ship ; 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 liberalizes like a 
 modern philosopher : he accuses " the jealousy of our clergy, 
 
TOLERATION. 
 
 143 
 
 who had degraded themselves into intriguers ; and like me- 
 chanics 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 incon- 
 gruous that a church, which does not pretend to be infallible, 
 should constrain persons, under heavy penalties and punish- 
 ments, 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." * 
 
 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 expostula- 
 tion, in his own heart he had anathematized 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 any army ! When the 
 catholic monarch issued this declaration for " liberty of con- 
 science," the Jekyll of his day observed, that " it was but 
 scaffolding : they intend to build another house ; and when 
 
 * Life of James the Second, from his own papers, ii. 114. 
 
144 
 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 that house (Popery) is built, they will take down the scaf- 
 fold." * 
 
 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 Ed- 
 wards," 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 suf- 
 fered ; assuming the highest possible power of civil govern- 
 ment, 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 con- 
 ceive 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 persecu- 
 tions ! f The destroying angel, holding in one hand a cross, 
 
 * This was a Baron Wallop. From Dr. H. Sampson's Manuscript 
 Diary. 
 
 f 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 53d 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. 
 
TOLERATION. 
 
 1 15 
 
 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. 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 tor- 
 tures, 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 en- 
 lightened in their actions than ourselves ; that Trajan com- 
 manded 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 ex- 
 pressly forbad the execution of the Christians, who then 
 imagined that they were securing their salvation by martyr- 
 dom ; 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." * Such were the senti- 
 ments of Castelnau, in 1560. Amidst perplexities of state 
 necessity, and of our common humanity, the notion of tolera- 
 tion 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 in- 
 sinuated to the French monarch and his nation, that they 
 
 * M^moires de Michel de Castelnau, liv. i. c. 4. 
 VOL. iv. 10 
 
146 
 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 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 that frantic ob- 
 stinacy which marked the times ? I grieve that such senti- 
 ments 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 ;* 
 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 ap- 
 proximate to the ceremonies of the Roman church ; but the 
 synod, after holding about two hundred sessions, closed, 
 dividing men into universalists and semi-universalists, supra- 
 lapsarians 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 relig- 
 ious 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 
 * Life of Thuanus, by the Rev. J. Collinson, p. 115. 
 
TOLERATION. 
 
 147 
 
 strictly charged to suppress idolatry, and to destroy all the 
 monuments and incentives. The same duty was now incum- 
 bent 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* 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 tolera- 
 tion 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 estab- 
 lished episcopacy in Scotland, the presbyters passed an act 
 against the toleration of dissenters from presbyterian doc- 
 trines 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 pres- 
 byterians 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 pres- 
 byterians ! 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 ref- 
 ormation 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 ref- 
 
 * Dr. M'Crie's Life of John Knox, ii. 122. 
 
148 
 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 ormation ! * 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 detrac- 
 tion 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 
 
 * 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 Council 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 sub- 
 jects in matters of external religion is asserted ; the mischiefs and incon- 
 veniences 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, immor- 
 talized 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, con- 
 firms my suspicion, that toleration is condemned as an evil among some 
 protestants ! 
 
TOLERATION. 
 
 U9 
 
 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 pro- 
 fessor'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 op- 
 pressors, the Duke d'Alva and Philip the Second, from 
 which they had hardly recovered. 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 mis- 
 sionaries of the gospel had done what they ought. Lipsius 
 found himself sadly embarrassed when refuted by Theodore 
 Cornhert,* the firm advocate of political and religious free- 
 dom, 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 medi- 
 cines to expel poison. Jean de Serres, a warm Huguenot, 
 carried the principle of toleration so far in his " Inven- 
 taire generate 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
150 
 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 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 his- 
 torians incorporate their passions in their works, and view 
 ancient facts with modern eyes. 
 
 The protestant cannot grant toleration to the catholic, un- 
 less the catholic ceases to be a papist ; and the Arminian 
 church, which opened its wide bosom to receive every de- 
 nomination 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 augmented It was a word 
 which seemed of recent introduction, though the book is mod- 
 ern ! 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 prin- 
 ciples 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 accep- 
 tors of the same being, Saint Ambrose and Saint Martin 
 asserted the cause of offended humanity, and refused to com- 
 municate 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 
 * Dictionnaire de Trevoux ad vocem Tolerance. Printed in 1771. 
 
APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE. 151 
 
 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.* 
 
 In the preceding article, " Political Religionism," we have 
 shown how to provide against the possible evil of the tol- 
 erated becoming the tolerators ! Toleration has been sus- 
 pected 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 ! 
 
 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 revolt- 
 ing state expedients which a pretended instant necessity has 
 too often inflicted on that part of a nation which, like the 
 under-current, subterraneously works its way, and runs coun- 
 ter 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 
 
 * Sismondi, Hist, des Francais, i. 41. The charactei of the first person 
 who intrxluced civil persecution into the Christian church has been de- 
 scribed by Sulpicius Severus. See Dr. Maclaine's note in his translation 
 of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. 428. 
 
152 APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE. 
 
 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 inter- 
 course with the silent queen, and alarmed the French protes- 
 tants by abating their hopes, which long rested on the aid 
 of the English queen. 
 
 The following letter, dated 8th February, 1573, is ad- 
 dressed 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.* 
 Such minute particulars could only have been known to her- 
 self. 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 re.-ident 
 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 audi- 
 ence with his mother, who probably was still the directress 
 of his councils. 
 
 The French court now renewed their favourite project of 
 marrying the Duke d'Alencon with Elizabeth. They had 
 long wished to settle this turbulent spirit, and the negotiation 
 with Elizabeth had been broken off in consequence of the 
 massacre at Paris. They were somewhat uneasy lest he 
 should share the fate of his brother, the Duke of Anjou, who 
 
 * All the numerous letters which I have seen of Charles the Ninth, now 
 in the possession of Mr. Murray, are carefully signed by himself, and I 
 have also observed postscripts written with his own hand: they are always 
 countersigned by his secretary. I mention this circumstance, because, in 
 the Didionnaire Historique, it is said that Charles, who died young, was so 
 given up to the amusements of his age, that he would not even sign his 
 dispatches, and introduced the custom of secretaries subscribing for the 
 king. This voluminous correspondence shows the falsity of this statement. 
 History is too often composed of popular tales of this stamp. 
 
APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE. 
 
 153 
 
 had not long before been expedited on the same fruitless 
 errand ; and Elizabeth had already objected to the disparity 
 of their ages, the Duke of Alencon being only seventeen, and 
 the maiden queen six-and-thirty ; but Catharine observed, 
 that D' Alencon was only one year younger than his brother, 
 against whom this objection had not occurred to Elizabeth, 
 for he had been sent back upon another pretext — some diffi- 
 culty which the queen had contrived about his performing 
 mass in his own house. 
 
 After Catharine de Medicis had assured the Earl of Wor- 
 cester of her great affection for the Queen of England, and 
 her and the king's strict intention to preserve it, and that 
 they were therefore desirous of this proposed marriage 
 taking place, she took this opportunity of inquiring of the 
 Earl of Worcester the cause of the queen his mistress's 
 marked coolness toward them. The narrative becomes now 
 dramatic. 
 
 " On this Walsingham, who kept always close by the side 
 of the count, here took on himself to answer, acknowledging 
 that the said count had indeed been charged to speak on this 
 head ; and he then addressed some words in English to 
 Worcester. And afterwards the count gave to my lady and 
 mother to understand, that the queen his mistress had been 
 waiting for an answer on two articles ; the one concerning 
 religion, and the other for an interview. My lady and 
 mother instantly replied, that she had never heard any arti- 
 cles mentioned, on which she would not have immediately 
 satisfied the Sieur Walsingham, who then took up the word ; 
 first observing that the count was not accustomed to business 
 of this nature, but that he himself knew for certain that the 
 cause of this negotiation for marriage not being more ad- 
 vanced, was really these two unsettled points : that his mis- 
 tress still wished that the point of religion should be cleared 
 up ; for that they concluded in England that this business 
 was designed only to amuse and never to be completed (as 
 happened in that of my brother the Duke of Anjou) ; and 
 
154 
 
 APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE. 
 
 the other point concerned the interview between my brother 
 the Duke of Alencon ; because some letters which may have 
 been written between the parties * in such sort of matters, 
 could not have the same force which the sight and presence 
 of both the persons would undoubtedly have. But, he added, 
 another thing, which had also greatly retarded this business, 
 was what had happened lately in this kingdom ; and during 
 such troubles, proceeding from religion, it could not have 
 been well timed to have spoken with them concerning the 
 said marriage ; and that himself and those of his nation had 
 been in great fear in this kingdom, thinking that we intended 
 to extirpate all those of the said religion. On this, my lady 
 and mother answered him instantly and in order : That she 
 was certain that the queen his mistress could never like nor 
 value a prince who had not his religion at heart ; and who- 
 ever would desire to have this otherwise, would be depriving 
 him of what we hold dearest in this world ; That he might 
 recollect that my brother had always insisted on the freedom 
 of religion, and that it was from the difficulty of its public 
 exercise, which he always insisted on, which had broken off 
 this negotiation : the Duke d'Alencon will be satisfied when 
 this point is agreed on, and will hasten over to the queen, 
 persuaded that she will not occasion him the pain and the 
 shame of passing over the seas without happily terminating 
 this affair. In regard to what has occurred these latter days, 
 that he must have seen how it happened by the fault of the 
 chiefs of those who remained here; for when the late admiral 
 was treacherously wounded at Notre Dame, he knew the 
 affliction it threw us into (fearful that it might have occa- 
 sioned great troubles in this kingdom), and the diligence we 
 used to verify judicially whence it proceeded; and the veri- 
 
 * These love-letters of Alencon to our Elizabeth are noticed by Camden, 
 ■who observes, that the queen became wearied by receiving so many; and 
 to put an end to this trouble, she consented that the young duke should 
 come over, conditionally, that he should not be offended if her suitor should 
 return home suitless. 
 
APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE. 
 
 155 
 
 fication was nearly finished, when they were so forgetful, as 
 to raise a conspiracy, to attempt the lives of myself, my lady 
 and mother, and my brothers, and endanger the whole state ; 
 which was the cause, that to avoid this, I was compelled, to 
 my very great regret, to permit what had happened in this 
 city ; but as he had witnessed, I gave orders to stop, as soon 
 as possible, this fury of the people, and place every one in 
 repose. On this, the Sieur Walsingham replied to my lady 
 and mother, that the exercise of the said religion had been 
 interdicted in this kingdom. To which she also answered, 
 that this had not been done but for a good and holy purpose ; 
 namely, that the fury of the catholic people might the sooner 
 be allayed, who else had been reminded of the past calami- 
 ties, and would again have been let loose against those of 
 the said religion, had they continued to preach in this king- 
 dom. Also should these once more fix on any chiefs, which 
 I will prevent as much as possible, giving him clearly and 
 pointedly to understand, that what is done here is much the 
 same as what has been done, and is now practised by the 
 queen his mistress in her kingdom. For she permits the 
 exercise but of one religion, although there are many of her 
 people who are of another ; and having also, during her reign, 
 punished those of her subjects whom she found seditious and 
 rebellious. It is true this has been done by the laws, but I 
 indeed could not act in the same manner ; for finding myself 
 in such imminent peril, and the conspiracy raised against me 
 and mine, and my kingdom, ready to be executed, I had no 
 time to arraign and try in open justice as much as I wished, 
 but was constrained, to my very great regret, to strike the 
 blow (lascher le main) in what has been done in this city." 
 
 This letter of Charles the Ninth, however, does not here 
 conclude. " My lady and mother " plainly acquaints the Earl 
 of Worcester and Sir Francis Walsingham, that her son had 
 never interfered between their mistress and her subjects, and 
 in return expects the same favour ; although, by accounts 
 they had received from England, many ships were arming to 
 
156 APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE. 
 
 assist their rebels at Rochelle. " My lady and mother " ad- 
 vances another step, and declares that Elizabeth by treaty is 
 bound to assist her son against his rebellious subjects ; and 
 they expect, at least, that Elizabeth will not only stop these 
 armaments in all her ports, but exemplarily punish the offend- 
 ers. I resume the letter. 
 
 "And on hearing this, the said Walsingham changed col- 
 our, and appeared somewhat astonished, as my lady and 
 mother well perceived by his face ; and on this he requested 
 the Count of Worcester to mention the order which he knew 
 the queen his mistress had issued to prevent these people 
 from assisting those of La Rochelle ; but that in England, so 
 numerous were the seamen and others who gained their live- 
 lihood by maritime affairs, and who would starve without the 
 entire freedom of the seas, that it was impossible to interdict 
 them." 
 
 Charles the Ninth incloses the copy of a letter he had 
 received from London, in part agreeing with an account the 
 ambassador had sent to the king, of an English expedition 
 nearly ready to sail for La Rochelle, to assist his rebellious 
 subjects. He is still further alarmed, that Elizabeth foments 
 the wartegeux, and assists underhand the discontented. He 
 urges the ambassador to hasten to the queen, to impart these 
 complaints in the most friendly way, as he knows the ambas- 
 sador can well do, and as, no doubt, Walsingham will have 
 already prepared her to receive. Charles entreats Elizabeth 
 to prove her good faith by deeds and not by words ; to act 
 openly on a point which admits of no dissimulation. The 
 best proof of her friendship will be the marriage ; and the 
 ambassador, after opening this business to her chief ministers, 
 who the king thinks are desirous of this projected marriage, 
 is then "to acquaint the queen with what has passed between 
 her ambassadors and myself." 
 
 Such is the first letter on English affairs which Charles the 
 Ninth dispatched to his ambassador, after an awful silence of 
 6ix months, during which time La Motte Fenelon was not 
 
PREDICTION. 157 
 
 admitted into the presence of Elizabeth. The apology for 
 the massacre of St. Bartholomew comes from the king him- 
 self, and contains several remarkable expressions, which are 
 at least divested of that style of bigotry and exultation we 
 might have expected : on the contrary, this sanguinary and 
 inconsiderate young monarch, as he is represented, writes in 
 a subdued and sorrowing tone, lamenting his hard necessity, 
 regretting he could not have recourse to the laws, and appeal- 
 ing to others for his efforts to check the fury of the people, 
 which he himself had let loose. Catharine de Medicis, who 
 had governed him from the tender age of eleven years, when 
 he ascended the throne, might unquestionably have persuaded 
 him that a conspiracy was on the point of explosion. Charles 
 the Ninth died young, and his character is unfavourably 
 viewed by the historians. In the voluminous correspondence 
 which I have examined, could we judge by state letters of 
 the character of him who subscribes them, we must form a 
 very different notion ; they are so prolix, and so earnest, that 
 one might conceive they were dictated by the young monarch 
 himself ! 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 In a curious treatise on " Divination," or the knowledge 
 of future events, Cicero has preserved a complete account of 
 the state-contrivances which were practised by the Roman 
 government, to instil among the people those hopes and fears 
 by which they regulated public opinion. The pagan creed, 
 now become obsolete and ridiculous, has occasioned this 
 treatise to be rarely consulted ; it remains, however, as a 
 chapter in the history of man ! 
 
 To these two books of Cicero on " Divination," perhaps a 
 third might be added, on political and moral prediction. 
 The principles which may even raise it into a science are 
 
158 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 self-evident ; they are drawn from the heart of man, and they 
 depend on the nature and connection of human events ! We 
 presume we shall demonstrate the positive existence of such 
 a faculty ; a faculty which Lord Bacon describes of " making 
 things future and remote as present." The aruspex, 
 the augur, and the astrologer, have vanished with their own 
 superstitions ; but the moral and the political predictor, pro- 
 ceeding on principles authorized by nature and experience, 
 has become more skilful in his observations on the pheno- 
 mena of human history; and it has often happened 
 that a tolerable philosopher has not made an indifferent 
 prophet. 
 
 No great political or moral revolution has occurred which 
 has not been accompanied by its prognostic; and men of a 
 philosophic cast of mind in their retirement, freed from the 
 delusions of parties and of sects, at once intelligent in the 
 quicquid agunt homines, while they are withdrawn from their 
 conflicting interests, have rarely been confounded by the 
 astonishment which overwhelms those who, absorbed in active 
 life, are the mere creatures of sensation, agitated by the 
 shadows of truth, the unsubstantial appearances of things! 
 Intellectual nations are advancing in an eternal circle of 
 events and passions which succeed each other, and the last is 
 necessarily connected with its antecedent ; the solitary force 
 of some fortuitous incident only can interrupt this concate- 
 nated progress of human affairs. 
 
 That every great event has been accompanied by a pres- 
 age or prognostic, has been observed by Lord Bacon. " The 
 shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics 
 of state-tempests ; hollow blasts of wind seemingly at a dis- 
 tance, and secret swellings of the sea, often precede a storm." 
 Such were the prognostics discerned by the politic Bishop 
 Williams in Charles the First's time, who clearly foresaw 
 and predicted the final success of the Puritanic party in our 
 country ; attentive to his own security, he abandoned the 
 government and sided with the rising opposition, at the 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 159 
 
 moment when such a change in public affairs was by no 
 means apparent.* 
 
 In this spirit of foresight our contemplative antiquary 
 Dugdale must have anticipated the scene which was ap- 
 proaching in 1641, in the destruction of our ancient monu- 
 ments in cathedral churches. He hurried on his itinerant 
 labours of taking draughts and transcribing inscriptions, as 
 he says, " to preserve them for future and better times/' 
 Posterity owes to the prescient spirit of Dugdale the ancient 
 Monuments of England, which bear the marks of the haste, 
 as well as the zeal, which have perpetuated them. 
 
 Continental writers formerly employed a fortunate ex- 
 pression, when they wished to have an Historia Reforma- 
 tionis ante Reformationem : this history of the Reformation 
 would have commenced at least a century before the Refor- 
 mation itself! A letter from Cardinal Julian to Pope 
 Eugenius the Fourth, written a century before Luther ap- 
 peared, clearly predicts the Reformation and its conse- 
 quences. He observed that the minds of men were ripe for 
 something tragical ; he felt the axe striking at the root, and 
 the tree beginning to bend, and that his party, instead of 
 propping it, were hastening its fall.f In England, Sir 
 Thomas More was not less prescient in his views ; for when 
 his son Roper was observing to him, that the Catholic 
 religion, under " the Defender of the Faith," was in a most 
 flourishing state, the answer of More was an evidence of 
 political foresight, — " Truth, it is, son Roper ! and yet I pray 
 God that we may not live to see the day that we would 
 gladly be at league and composition with heretics, to let them 
 have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would 
 be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves." 
 Whether our great chancellor predicted from a more inti- 
 
 * See Rushworth, vol. i. p. 420. His language was decisive. 
 
 t This letter is in the works of iEneas Sylvius ; a copious extract is 
 given by Bossuet, in his " Variations." See also Mosheim, Ce:it. xiii 
 part ii. chap. 2, note m. 
 
160 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 mate knowledge of the king's character, or from some 
 private circumstances which may not have been recorded 
 for our information, of which I have an obscure suspicion, 
 remains to be ascertained. The minds of men of great 
 political sagacity were unquestionably at that moment full of 
 obscure indications of the approaching change; Erasmus, 
 when at Canterbury before the tomb of Becket, observing it 
 loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished that those had 
 been distributed among the poor, and that the shrine had 
 been only adorned with boughs and flowers ; " For," said he, 
 "those who have heaped up all this mass of treasure will 
 one day be plundered, and fall a prey to those who are in 
 power ; " — a prediction literally fulfilled about twenty years 
 after it was made. The unknown author of the Visions of 
 Piers Ploughman, who wrote in the reign of Edward the 
 Third, surprised the world by a famous prediction of the fall 
 of the religious houses from the hand of a king. The event 
 was realized, two hundred years afterwards, by our Henry 
 the Eighth. The protestant writers have not scrupled to 
 declare, that in this instance he was divino numine afflatus. 
 But moral and political prediction is not inspiration ; the one 
 may be wrought out by man, the other descends from God. 
 The same principle which led Erasmus to predict that those 
 who were "in power" would destroy the rich shrines, 
 because no other class of men in society could mate with so 
 mighty a body as the monks, conducted the author of Piers 
 Ploughman to the same conclusion ; and since power only 
 could accomplish that great purpose, he fixed on the highest 
 as the most likely ; and thus the wise prediction was, so long 
 after, literally accomplished ! 
 
 Sir Walter Rawleigh foresaw the future consequences of 
 the separatists and the sectaries in the national church, and 
 the very scene his imagination raised in 1530 has been ex- 
 hibited, to the letter of his description, two centuries after 
 the prediction ! His memorable words are, "Time will even 
 bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God would be 
 
PKEDICTION. 
 
 161 
 
 turned out of churches into barns, and from thence again into 
 the fields and mountains, and under hedges — all order of 
 discipline and church-government left to newness of opinion 
 and men's fancies, and as many kinds of religion spring up 
 as there are parish-churches within England." We are 
 struck by the profound genius of Tacitus, who clearly fore- 
 saw the calamities which so long ravaged Europe on the fall 
 of the Roman Empire, in a work written five hundred years 
 before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, 
 he observed, " When the Romans shall be hunted out from 
 those countries which they have conquered, what will then 
 happen ? The revolted people, freed from their master 
 oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their 
 neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among all 
 these nations." 
 
 We are told that Solon at Athens, contemplating on the 
 port and citadel of Munychia, suddenly exclaimed, "How 
 blind is man to futurity ! Could the Athenians foresee what 
 mischief this will do their city, they would even eat it with 
 their own teeth, to get rid of it ! " — a prediction verified more 
 than two hundred years afterwards ! Thales desired to be 
 buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing that that 
 very spot would in time be the forum. Charlemagne, in his 
 old age, observing from the window of a castle a Norman 
 descent on his coast, tears started in the eyes of the aged 
 monarch. He predicted that since they dared to threaten 
 his dominions while he was yet living, what would they do 
 when he should be no more ! — a melancholy prediction, says 
 De Foix, of their subsequent incursions, and of the pro- 
 tracted calamities of the French nation during a whole 
 century ! 
 
 There seems to be something in minds, which take in ex- 
 tensive views of human nature, which serves them as a kind 
 of divination, and the consciousness of this faculty has even 
 been asserted by some. Cicero appeals to Atticus, how he 
 had always judged of the affairs of the republic as a good 
 
 VOL. IV. 11 
 
162 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 diviner ; and that its overthrow had happened, as he had 
 foreseen, fourteen years before.* Cicero had not only pre- 
 dicted what happened in his own times, but also what 
 occurred long after, according to the testimony of Cornelius 
 Nepos. The philosopher, indeed, affects no secret revelation, 
 nor visionary second-sight ; he honestly tells us that this art 
 had been acquired merely by study and the administration 
 of public affairs, while he reminds his friend of several 
 remarkable instances of his successful predictions. " I do 
 not divine human events by the arts practised by the augurs, 
 but I use other signs." Cicero then expresses himself with 
 the guarded obscurity of a philosopher who could not openly 
 ridicule the prevailing superstitions ; but we perfectly com- 
 prehend the nature of his " signs," when, in the great pending 
 event of the rival conflicts of Pompey and of Caesar, he 
 shows the means he used for his purpose. " On one side I 
 consider the humour and genius of Caesar, and on the other 
 the condition and the manner of civil wars."f In a word, 
 the political diviner foretold events by their dependence on 
 general causes, while the moral diviner, by his experience of 
 the personal character, anticipated the actions of the indi- 
 vidual. Others, too, have asserted the possession of this 
 faculty. Du Vair, a famous chancellor of France, imagined 
 the faculty was intuitive with him : by his own experience he 
 had observed the results of this curious and obscure faculty, 
 and at a time when the history of the human mind was so 
 imperfectly comprehended, it is easy to account for the 
 apparent egotism of this grave and dignified character. 
 " Born," says he, " with constitutional infirmity, a mind and 
 body but ill adapted to be laborious, with a most treacherous 
 memory, enjoying no gift of nature, yet able at all times to 
 exercise a sagacity so great, that I do not know, since I have 
 reached manhood, that any thing of importance has happened 
 to the state, to the public, or to myself in particular, which I 
 
 * Ep. ad Att. Lib. x. Ep. 4. 
 t Ep. ad Att. Lib. vi. Ep. 6. 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 163 
 
 had not foreseen." * This faculty seems to be described by 
 a remarkable expression employed by Thucydides in his 
 character of Themistocles, of which the following is given as 
 a close translation : " By a species of sagacity peculiarly 
 his own, for which he was in no degree indebted either to 
 early education or after study, he was supereminently happy 
 in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but 
 little time for deliberation ; at the same time that he far sur- 
 passed all in his deductions of the future from the past ; or 
 was the best guesser of the future from the past." | Should 
 this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever con- 
 sidered as a science, we can even furnish it with a denomina- 
 tion ; for the writer of the life of Sir Thomas Browne, pre- 
 fixed to his works, in claiming the honour of it for that 
 philosopher, calls it "the Stochastic," a term derived from 
 the Greek and from archery, meaning, " to shoot at a mark." 
 This eminent genius, it seems, often " hit the white." Our 
 biographer declares, that " though he were no prophet, yet in 
 that faculty which comes nearest to it, he excelled, i. e. the 
 Stochastic, wherein he was seldom mistaken as to future 
 events, as well public as private." 
 
 We are not, indeed, inculcating the fanciful elements of an 
 occult art. We know whence its principles may be drawn ; 
 and we may observe how it was practised by the wisest 
 among the ancients. Aristotle, who collected all the curious 
 knowledge of his times, has preserved some remarkable 
 opinions on the art of divination. In detailing the various 
 subterfuges practised by the pretended diviners of his day, 
 he reveals the secret principle by which one of them regu- 
 lated his predictions. He frankly declared that the future 
 being always very obscure, while the past was easy to know, 
 
 * This remarkable confession I find in Menage's Observations sur la 
 Langue Francoise, Part II. p. 110. 
 
 t Oiice'ia yap t-vveoei, Kal aire 7rpojj.a&cbv eg avrrjv ovdev, ovt' eiupa&uv^ 
 tuv re napaxpr/fia 6V eXaxioTqg fiovTifje KparioTOC yvupuv, koI tuv iizKkbv- 
 tg>v kmTTTiclarov rov yev7]ao{j.ivov apioToe elmoTrjc. — Thucydides, lib. i. c 
 138. 
 
164 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 his predictions had never the future in view ; for he decided 
 from the past as it appeared in human affair.-, which, how- 
 ever, lie concealed from the multitude.* Such is the true 
 principle by which a philosophical historian may become a 
 skilful diviner. 
 
 Human affairs make themselves ; they grow out of one 
 another, with slight variations ; and thus it is that they usu- 
 ally happen as they have happened. The necessary de- 
 pendence of effects on causes, and the similarity of human 
 interests and human passions, are confirmed by comparative 
 parallels with the past. The philosophic sage of holy writ 
 truly deduced the important principle, that "the thing that 
 hath been is that which shall be." The vital facts of history, 
 deadened by the touch of chronological antiquarianism. are 
 restored to animation when we comprehend the principles 
 which necessarily terminate in certain results, and discover 
 the characters among mankind who are the usual actors in 
 these scenes. The heart of man beats on the same eternal 
 springs ; and whether he advances or retrogrades, he cannot 
 escape out of the march of human thought. Hence, in the 
 most extraordinary revolutions, we discover that the time 
 and the place only have changed ; for even when events are 
 not strictly parallel, we detect the same conducting principles. 
 Scipio Ammirato, one of the great Italian historians, in his 
 curious discourses on Tacitus, intermingles ancient examples 
 with the modern ; that, he says, all may see how the truth 
 of things is not altered by the changes and diversities of time. 
 Machiavel drew his illustrations of modern history from the 
 ancient. 
 
 When the French revolution recalled our attention to a 
 similar eventful period in our own history, the neglected 
 volumes which preserved the public and private history of 
 our Charles the First and Cromwell, were collected with 
 eager curiosity. Often the scene existing before us, even 
 the very personages themselves, opened on us in these for- 
 * Arist. Rhet. lib. vii. c 5. 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 165 
 
 gotten pages. But as the annals of human nature did not 
 commence with those of Charles the First, we took a still 
 more retrograde step, and it was discovered in this wider 
 range, that in the various governments of Greece and Rome, 
 the events of those times had been only reproduced. Among 
 them the same principles had terminated in the same results, 
 and the same personages had figured in the same drama. 
 This strikingly appeared in a little curious volume, entitled, 
 " Essai sur l'Histoire de la Revolution Francoise, par une 
 Societe d'Auteurs Latins," published at Paris in 1801. This 
 " Society of Latin Authors," who have written so inimitably 
 the history of the French revolution, consist of the Roman 
 historians themselves ! By extracts ingeniously applied, the 
 events of that melancholy period are so appositely described, 
 indeed so minutely narrated, that they will not fail to surprise 
 those who are not accustomed to detect the perpetual paral- 
 lels which we meet with in philosophical history. 
 
 Many of these crises in history are close resemblances of 
 each other. Compare the history of "The League" in 
 France with that of our own civil wars. We are struck by 
 similar occurrences performed by the same political charac- 
 ters who played their part on both those great theatres of 
 human action. A satirical royalist of those times has com- 
 memorated the motives, the incidents, and the personages in 
 the " Satire Menippee de la Vertu du Catholicon d'Es- 
 pagne ; " and this famous " Satire Menippee " is a perfect 
 Hudibras in prose ! The writer discovers all the bitter ridicule 
 of Butler in his ludicrous and severe exhibition of the " Etats 
 de Paris," while the artist who designed the satirical prints 
 becomes no contemptible Hogarth. So much are these public 
 events alike in their general spirit and termination, that they 
 have afforded the subject of a printed but unpublished volume, 
 entitled " Essai sur les Revolutions." * The whole work 
 
 * This work was printed in London as a Jirst volume, but remained 
 unpublished. This singularly curious production was suppressed, but 
 reprinted at Paris. It has suffered the most cruel mutilations. I read 
 
166 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 was modelled on this principle. " It would be possible," says 
 the eloquent writer, " to frame a table or chart in which aU 
 the given imaginable events of the history of a people would 
 be reduced to a mathematical exactness." The conception 
 is fanciful, but its foundation lies deep in truth. 
 
 A remarkable illustration of the secret principle divulged 
 by Aristotle, and described by Thucydides, appears in the 
 recent confession of a man of genius among ourselves. When 
 Mr. Coleridge was a political writer in the Morning Post and 
 Courier, at a period of darkness and utter confusion, that 
 writer was then conducted by a tract of light, not revealed to 
 ordinary journalists, on the Napoleonic empire. " Of that 
 despotism in masquerade " he decided by " the state of Rome 
 under the first Caesars ; " and of the Spanish American Rev- 
 olution, by taking the war of the United Provinces with 
 Philip the Second, as the groundwork of the comparison. 
 " On every great occurrence," he says, " I endeavoured to 
 discover, in past history, the event that most nearly re- 
 sembled it. I procured the contemporary historians, memo- 
 rialists, and pamphleteers. Then fairly subtracting the points 
 of difference from those of likeness, as the balance favoured 
 the former or the latter, I conjectured that the result would 
 be the same or different. In the essays ' On the probable 
 final Restoration of the Bourbons,' I feel myself authorized 
 to affirm, by the effect produced on many intelligent men, 
 that were the dates wanting, it might have been suspected 
 that the essays had been written within the last twelve 
 months." * 
 
 In moral predictions on individuals, many have discovered 
 the future character. The revolutionary character of Cardi- 
 nal de Retz, even in his youth, was detected by the sagacity 
 
 with surprise and instruction, the single copy which I was assured was 
 the only one saved from the havoc of the entire edition. The writer was 
 the celebrated Chateaubriand. 
 
 * Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life 
 and Opinions. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 1807. Vol. i. p. 214. 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 167 
 
 of Mazarin. He then wrote the history of the conspiracy 
 of Fiesco with such vehement admiration of his hero, that the 
 Italian politician, after its perusal, predicted that the young 
 author would he one of the most turbulent spirits of the age ! 
 The father of Marshal Biron, even amid the glory of his son, 
 discovered the cloud which, invisible to others, was to ob- 
 scure it. The father, indeed, well knew the fiery passions 
 of his son. " Biron," said the domestic seer, " I advise thee, 
 when peace takes place, to go and plant cabbages in thy gar- 
 den, otherwise I warn thee, thou wilt lose thy head on a 
 scaffold ! " Lorenzo de' Medici had studied the temper of 
 his son Piero ; for Guicciardini informs us, that he had often 
 complained to his most intimate friends, that " he foresaw the 
 imprudence and arrogance of his son would occasion the 
 ruin of his family." There is a remarkable prediction of 
 James the First, of the evils likely to ensue from Laud's 
 violence, in a conversation given by Hacket, which the king 
 held with Archbishop Williams. When the king was hard 
 pressed to promote Laud, he gave his reasons why he in- 
 tended to " keep Laud back from all place of rule and au- 
 thority, because I find he hath a restless spirit, and cannot 
 see when matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and 
 to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his own 
 brain, which endangers the steadfastness of that which is in 
 a good pass. I speak not at random ; he hath made himself 
 known to me to be such an one." James then gives the cir- 
 cumstances to which he alludes ; and at length, when, still 
 pursued by the archbishop, then the organ of Buckingham, 
 as usual, this king's good nature too easily yielded ; he did 
 not, however, without closing with this prediction : " Then 
 take him to you ! — but, on my soul, you will repent it ! " The 
 future character of Cromwell was apparent to two of our 
 great politicians. " This coarse unpromising man," said 
 Lord Falkland, pointing to Cromwell, " will be the first per- 
 son in the kingdom, if the nation comes to blows ! " And 
 Archbishop Williams told Charles the First confidentially, 
 
168 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 " There was that in Cromwell which foreboded something 
 dangerous, and wished his majesty would either win him 
 over to him, or get him taken off." The Marquis of Welles- 
 ley's incomparable character of Bonaparte predicted his fall 
 when highest in his glory ; that great statesman then poured 
 forth the sublime language of philosophical prophecy. " His 
 eagerness of power is so inordinate ; his jealousy of independ- 
 ence so fierce ; his keenness of appetite so feverish in all 
 that touches his ambition, even in the most trifling things, 
 that he must plunge into dreadful difficulties. He is one of 
 an order of minds that by nature make for themselves great 
 reverses." 
 
 Lord Mansfield was once asked, after the commencement 
 of the French revolution, when it would end ? His lordship 
 replied, " It is an event without precedent, and therefore, 
 without prognostic" The truth, however, is, that it had both. 
 Our own history had furnished a precedent in the times of 
 Charles the First. And the prognostics were so redundant, 
 that a volume might be collected of passages from various 
 writers who had predicted it. However ingenious might be 
 a history of the Reformation before it occurred, the evidence 
 could not be more authentic and positive than that of the 
 great moral and political revolution which we have witnessed 
 in our own days. 
 
 A prediction, which Bishop Butler threw out in a sermon 
 before the House of Lords, in 1741, does honour to his po- 
 litical sagacity, as well as to his knowledge of human na- 
 ture ; he calculated that the irreligious spirit would produce, 
 some time or other, political disorders, similar to those which, 
 in the seventeenth century, had arisen from religious fanati- 
 cism. " Is there no danger," he observed, " that all this may 
 raise somewhat like that levelling spirit, upon atheistical prin- 
 ciples, which in the last age prevailed upon enthusiastic ones ? 
 Not to speak of the possibility that different sorts of people 
 may unite in it upon these contrary principles ! " All this 
 literally has been accomplished ! Leibnitz, indeed, foresaw 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 1G9 
 
 the results of those selfish, and at length demoralizing, opin- 
 ions, which began to prevail through Europe in his day. 
 These disorganizing principles, conducted by a political sect, 
 who tried " to be worse than they could be," as old Mon- 
 taigne expresses it ; a sort of men who have been audaciously 
 congratulated as " having a taste for evil ; " exhibited to the 
 astonished world the dismal catastrophe the philosopher pre- 
 dicted. I shall give this remarkable passage. " I find that 
 certain opinions approaching those of Epicurus and Spinoze, 
 are, little by little, insinuating themselves into the minds of 
 the great rulers of public affairs, who serve as the guides of 
 others, and on whom all matters depend ; besides, these opin- 
 ions are also sliding into fashionable books, and thus they are 
 preparing all things to that general revolution which 
 menaces Europe ; destroying those generous sentiments of 
 the ancients, Greek and Roman, which preferred the love of 
 country and public good, and the cares of posterity, to fortune 
 and even to life. Our public spirits,* as the English call 
 them, excessively diminish, and are no more in fashion, and 
 will be still less while the least vicious of these men preserve 
 only one principle, which they call honour; a principle 
 which only keeps them from not doing what they deem a 
 low action, while they openly laugh at the love of country — 
 ridicule those who are zealous for public ends — and when a 
 well-intentioned man asks what will become of their pos- 
 terity, they reply, ' Then, as now ! ' But it may happen to 
 these persons themselves to have to endure those evils which 
 they believe are reserved for others. If this epidemical and 
 intellectual disorder could be corrected, whose bad effects are 
 already visible, those evils might still be prevented ; but if 
 it proceeds in its growth, Providence will correct man by the 
 very revolution which must spring from it. Whatever may 
 happen indeed, all must turn out as usual, for the best in 
 
 * Public spirit, and public spirits, were about the year 1700, household 
 words with us. Leibnitz was struck by their significance, but it might 
 now puzzle us to find synonyms, or even to explain the very terms them- 
 selves. 
 
170 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 general, at the end of the account, although this cannot hap- 
 pen without the punishment of those who contribute even to 
 general good by their evil actions." The most superficial 
 reader will hardly require a commentary on this very remark- 
 able pa-sage ; he must instantly perceive how Leibnitz, in 
 the seventeenth century, foresaw what has occurred in the 
 eighteenth ; and the prediction has been verified in the his- 
 tory of the actors in the late revolution, while the result, 
 which we have not perhaps yet had, according to Leibnitz's 
 own exhilarating system of optimism, is an eduction of good 
 from evil. 
 
 A great genius, who was oppressed by malignant rivals in 
 his own times, has been noticed by Madame de Stael, as hav- 
 ing left behind him an actual prophecy of the French revolu- 
 tion : this was Guibert, who, in his Commentary on Folard's 
 Polybius, published in 1727, declared, that u a conspiracy is 
 actually forming in Europe, by means at once so subtle and 
 efficacious, that I am sorry not to have come into the world 
 thirty years later to witness its result. It must be confessed 
 that the sovereigns of Europe wear very bad spectacles. 
 The proofs of it are mathematical, if such proofs ever were, 
 of a conspiracy." Guibert unquestionably foresaw the anti- 
 monarchical spirit gathering up its mighty wings, and rising 
 over the universe! but could not judge of the nature of 
 the impulse which he predicted ; prophesying from the 
 ideas in his luminous intellect, he seems to have been far 
 more curious about, than certain of, the consequences. Rous- 
 seau even circumstantially predicted the convulsions of mod- 
 ern Europe. He stood on the crisis of the French revolu- 
 tion, which he vividly foresaw, for he seriously advised the 
 higher classes of society to have their children taught some 
 useful trade ; a notion highly ridiculed on the first appearance 
 of the Emile : bat at its hour the awful truth struck ! He, 
 too, foresaw the horrors of that revolution ; for he announced 
 that Emile designed to emigrate, because, from the moral 
 state of the people, a virtuous revolution had become impos- 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 171 
 
 Bible.* The eloquence of Burke was often oracular ; and a 
 speech of Pitt, in 1800, painted the state of Europe as it was 
 only realized fifteen years afterwards. 
 
 But many remarkable predictions have turned out to be 
 false. Whenever the facts on which the prediction is raised 
 are altered in their situation, what was relatively true ceases 
 to operate as a general principle. For instance, to that strik- 
 ing anticipation which Rousseau formed of the French revo- 
 lution, he added, by way of note, as remarkable a prediction 
 on monarchy. Je t! ens pour impossible que les grandes mo- 
 narchies de V Europe aient encore long terns a durer ; toutes 
 ont brille et tout etat qui brille est sur son declin. The pre- 
 dominant anti-monarchical spirit among our rising generation 
 seems to hasten on the accomplishment of the prophecy ; but 
 if an important alteration has occurred in the nature of things, 
 we may question the result. If by looking into the past, 
 Rousseau found facts which sufficiently proved that nations 
 in the height of their splendour and corruption had closed 
 their career by falling an easy conquest to barbarous inva- 
 ders, who annihilated the most polished people at a single 
 blow ; we now find that no such power any longer exists in 
 the great family of Europe : the state of the question is there- 
 fore changed. It is now how corrupt nations will act against 
 corrupt nations equally enlightened ? But if the citizen of 
 Geneva drew his prediction of the extinction of monarchy in 
 Europe from that predilection for democracy which assumes 
 that a republic must necessarily produce more happiness to 
 the people than a monarchy, then we say that the fatal experi- 
 
 * This extraordinary passage is at the close of the third book of Emile, 
 to which I must refer the reader. It is curious, however, to observe, that 
 in 1760 Rousseau poured forth the following awful predictions, which were 
 considered quite absurd: — " Vous vous fiez a l'ordre actuel de la society, 
 sans songer que cet ordre est sujet a des revolutions inevitables — le grand 
 devient petit, le riche devieut pauvre, le monarque devient sujet— nous ap- 
 proihons tet tt de crise et du sieile des revolutions. Que fera done dans la 
 basses^e ce satrape que vous n'aurez eleve" que pour la grandeur? Que 
 fera dans la pauvrete\ ce publicain qui ne scait vivre que d'or? Que fera 
 d^pourvu de tout, ce fastueux imbecille qui ne sait point user de lui- 
 aaeme? " &c. &c. 
 
172 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 ment was again repeated since the prediction, and the fact 
 proved not true ! The excess of democracy inevitably termin- 
 ates in a monarchical state ; and were all the monarchies in 
 Eui-ope at present republics, a philosopher might safely pre- 
 dict the restoration of monarchy ! 
 
 If a prediction be raised on facts which our own prejudices 
 induce us to infer will exist, it must be chimerical. We have 
 an Universal Chronicle of the Monk Carion, printed in 1532, 
 in which he announces that the world was about ending, as 
 well as his chronicle of it ; that the Turkish empire would 
 not last many years ; that after the death of Charles the 
 Fifth the empire of Germany would be torn to pieces by the 
 Germans themselves. This monk will no longer pass for a 
 prophet ; he belongs to that class of historians who write to 
 humour their own prejudices, like a certain lady-prophetess, 
 who in 1811, predicted that grass was to grow in Cheapside 
 about this time ! The monk Carion, like others of greater 
 name, had miscalculated the weeks of Daniel, and wished 
 more ill to the Mahometans than suit the Christian cabinets 
 of Europe to inflict on them ; and, lastly, the monastic histo- 
 rian had no notion that it would please Providence to prosper 
 the heresy of Luther ! Sir James Mackintosh once observed, 
 " I am sensible, that in the field of political prediction, veteran 
 sagacity has often been deceived." Sir James alluded to the 
 memorable example of Harrington, who published a demon- 
 stration of the impossibility of reestablishing monarchy in 
 England, six months before the restoration of Charles the 
 Second ! But the author of the Oceana was a political fana- 
 tic, who ventured to predict an event, not by other similar 
 events, but by a theoretical principle which he had formed, 
 that " the balance of power depends on that of property." 
 Harrington,- in his contracted view of human nature, had 
 dropped out of his calculation all the stirring passions of 
 ambition and party, and the vacillations of the multitude. A 
 similar error of a great genius occurs in De Foe. " Child," 
 says Mr. George Chalmers, " foreseeing from experience that 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 173 
 
 men's conduct must finally be decided by their principles, 
 foretold the colonial revolt. De Foe, allowing his preju- 
 dices to obscure his sagacity, reprobated that suggestion, be- 
 cause he deemed interest a more strenuous prompter than 
 enthusiasm." The predictions of Harrington and De Foe 
 are precisely such as we might expect from a petty calculator 
 — a political economist, who can see nothing further than 
 immediate results ; but the true philosophical predictor was 
 Child, who had read the past. It is probable that the Amer- 
 ican emancipation from the mother-country of England was 
 foreseen, twenty or thirty years before it occurred, though 
 not perhaps by the administration. Lord Orford, writing in 
 1754 under the ministry of the Duke of Newcastle, blames 
 " The instructions to the governor of New York, which 
 seemed better calculated for the latitude of Mexico, and for a 
 Spanish tribunal, than for a free British settlement, and in 
 such opulence and such haughtiness, that suspicions had long 
 been conceived of their meditating to throw off the dependence 
 on their mother -country.'" If this was written at the time, as 
 the author asserts, it is a very remarkable passage, observes 
 the noble editor of his memoirs. The prognostics or presages 
 of this revolution, it may now be difficult to recover ; but it is 
 evident that Child, before the time when Lord Orford wrote 
 this passage, predicted the separation on true and philosoph- 
 ical principles. 
 
 Even when the event does not always justify the predic 
 tion, the predictor may not have been the less correct in his 
 principles of divination. The catastrophe of human life, and 
 the turn of great events, often prove accidental. Marshal 
 Biron, whom we have noticed, might have ascended the 
 throne instead of the scaffold ; Cromwell and De Retz might 
 have become only the favourite general, or the minister of 
 their sovereigns. Fortuitous events are not comprehended 
 in the reach of human prescience ; such must be consigned 
 to those vulgar superstitions which presume to discover the 
 'ssue of human events, without pretending to any human 
 
174 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 knowledge. There is nothing supernatural in the prescience 
 of the philosopher. 
 
 Sometimes predictions have been condemned as false ones, 
 which, when scrutinized, we can scarcely deem to have 
 failed: they may have been accomplished, and they may 
 again revolve on us. In 1749, Dr. Hartley published his 
 u Observations on Man ; " and predicted the fall of the exist- 
 ing governments and hierarchies in two simple propositions ; 
 among others — 
 
 Prop. 81. It is probable that all the civil governments 
 will be overturned. 
 
 Prop. 82. It is probable that the present forms of church- 
 government will be dissolved. 
 
 Many were alarmed at these predicted falls of church and 
 state. Lady Charlotte Went worth asked Hartley when 
 these terrible things would happen. The answer of the pre- 
 dictor was not less awful : " I am an old man, and shall not 
 live to see them ; but you are a young woman, and probably 
 will see them." In the subsequent revolutions of America 
 and of France, and perhaps now of Spain, we can hardly deny 
 that these predictions had failed. A fortuitous event has 
 once more thrown back Europe into its old corners : but we 
 still revolve in a circle, and what is now dark and remote 
 may again come round, when time has performed its great 
 cycle. There was a prophetical passage in Hooker's Eccle- 
 siastical Polity, regarding the church, which long occupied 
 the speculations of its expounders. Hooker indeed seemed 
 to have done what no predictor of events should do ; he 
 fixed on the period of its accomplishment. In 1597, he de- 
 clared that it would " peradventure fall out to be threescore 
 and ten years, or if strength do awe, into fourscore." Those 
 who had outlived the revolution in 1641, when the long par- 
 liament pulled down the ecclesiastical establishment, and sold 
 the church-lands, — a circumstance which Hooker had con- 
 templated — and were afterwards returned to their places on 
 the Restoration, imagined that the prediction had not yet 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 175 
 
 been completed, and were looking with great anxiety towards 
 the year 1G77, for the close of this extraordinary prediction! 
 When Bishop Barlow, in 1G75, was consulted on it, he en- 
 deavoured to dissipate the panic, by referring to an old 
 historian, who had reproached our nation for their proneness 
 to prophecies ! The prediction of the venerable Hooker in 
 truth had been fully accomplished, and the event had oc- 
 curred without Bishop Barlow having recurred to it; so 
 easy it seems to forget what we dislike to remember ! The 
 period of time was too literally taken ; and seems to have 
 been only the figurative expression of man's age in scriptural 
 language, which Hooker had employed ; but no one will 
 now deny that this prescient sage had profoundly foreseen 
 the results of that rising party, whose designs on church and 
 state were clearly depicted in his own luminous view. 
 
 The philosophical predictor, in foretelling a crisis, from 
 the appearance of things, will not rashly assign the period 
 of time ; for the crisis which he anticipates is calculated on 
 by that inevitable march of events which generate each other 
 in human affairs ; but the period is always dubious, being 
 either retarded or accelerated by circumstances of a nature 
 incapable of entering into this moral arithmetic. It is prob- 
 able, that a revolution, similar to that of France, would have 
 occurred in this country, had it not been counteracted by the 
 genius of Pitt. In 1618, it was easy to foretell by the polit- 
 ical prognostics, that a mighty war throughout Europe must 
 necessarily occur. At that moment, observes Bayle, the 
 house of Austria aimed at a universal monarchy ; the conse- 
 quent domineering spirit of the ministers of the emperor and 
 the king of Spain, combined with their determination to ex- 
 terminate the new religion, excited a reaction to this imperial 
 despotism ; public opinion had been suppressed, till every 
 people grew impatient ; while their sovereigns, influenced by 
 national feeling, were combining against Austria. But 
 Austria was a vast military power, and her generals were 
 the first of their class. The efforts of Europe would then be 
 
176 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 often repulsed ! This state of affairs prognosticated a long 
 war ! — and when at length it broke out it lasted thirty years ! 
 The approach and the duration of the war might have been 
 predicted ; but the period of its termination could not have 
 been foreseen. 
 
 There is, however, a spirit of political vaticination which 
 presumes to pass beyond the boundaries of human prescience ; 
 it has been often ascribed to the highest source of inspiration 
 by enthusiasts ; but since "the language of prophecy" has 
 ceased, such pretensions are not less impious than they are 
 unphilosophical. Knox the reformer possessed an extraor- 
 dinary portion of this awful prophetic confidence : he appears 
 to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of 
 some persons. We are told, that, condemned to a galley at 
 Rochelle, he predicted that " within two or three years he 
 should preach the gospel at Saint Giles's in Edinburgh ; " an 
 improbable event, which happened. Of Mary and Darnley, he 
 pronounced, that " as the king, for the queen's pleasure, had 
 gone to mass, the Lord, in his justice, would make her the 
 instrument of his overthrow." Other striking predictions of 
 the deaths of Thomas Maitland, and of Kirkaldy of Grange, 
 and the warning he solemnly gave to the Regent Murray not 
 to go to Linlithgow, where he was assassinated, occasioned a 
 barbarous people to imagine that the prophet Knox had re- 
 ceived an immediate communication from Heaven. A 
 Spanish friar and almanac-maker predicted, in clear and 
 precise words, the death of Henry the Fourth of France; 
 and Pieresc, though he had no faith in the vain science of 
 astrology, yet, alarmed at whatever menaced the life of a be- 
 loved monarch, consulted, with some of the king's friends, 
 and had the Spanish almanac laid before his majesty. That 
 high-spirited monarch thanked them for their solicitude, but 
 utterly slighted the prediction: the event occurred, and in 
 the following year the Spanish friar spread his own fame in 
 a new almanac. I have been occasionally struck at the 
 Jeremiads of honest George Withers, the vaticinating poet 
 
PREDICTION. 
 
 177 
 
 of our civil wars : some of his works afford many solemn 
 predictions. We may account for many predictions of this 
 class, without the intervention of any supernatural agency. 
 Among the busy spirits of a revolutionary age, the heads of 
 a party, such as Knox, have frequently secret communica- 
 tions with spies or with friends. In a constant source of 
 concealed information, a shrewd, confident, and enthusiastic 
 temper will find ample matter for mysterious prescience. 
 Knox exercised that deep sagacity which took in the most 
 enlarged views of the future, as appears by his Machiavelian 
 foresight on the barbarous destruction of the monasteries and 
 the cathedrals — " The best way to keep the rooks from re- 
 turning, is to pull down their nests" In the case of the 
 prediction of the death of Henry the Fourth, by the Spanish 
 friar, it resulted either from his being acquainted with the 
 plot, or from his being made an instrument for their purpose 
 by those who were. It appears that rumours of Henry's 
 assassination were rife in Spain and Italy before the event 
 occurred. Such vaccinators as George Withers will always 
 rise in those disturbed times which his own prosaic metre has 
 forcibly depicted : — 
 
 " It may be on that darkness, which they find 
 Within their hearts, a sudden light hath shin'd, 
 Making reflections of some things to come, 
 Which leave within them musings troublesome 
 To their weak spirits; or too intricate 
 For them to put in order, and relate. 
 They act as men in ecstasies have done — 
 Striving their cloudy visions to declare — 
 And I, perhaps, among these may be one 
 That was let loose for service to be done : 
 I blunder out what worldly-prudent men 
 Count madnesse." — P. 7.* 
 
 Separating human prediction from inspired prophecy, we 
 only ascribe to the faculties of man that acquired prescience 
 which we have demonstrated that some great minds have 
 
 * " A Dark Lantherne, offering a dim Discovery, intermixed with Re- 
 membrances, Predictions, &c. 1652." 
 vol. iv. 12 
 
178 
 
 PREDICTION. 
 
 unquestionably exercised. We have discovered its principles 
 in the necessary dependence of effects on general causes, and 
 we have shown that, impelled by the same motives, and cir- 
 cumscribed by the same passions, all human affairs revolve 
 in a circle ; and we have opened the true source of this yet 
 imperfect science of moral and political prediction, in an inti- 
 mate but a discriminative knowledge of the past. 
 
 Authority is sacred, when experience affords parallels and 
 analogies. If much which may overwhelm when it shall 
 happen can be foreseen, the prescient statesman and moralist 
 may provide defensive measures to break the waters, whose 
 streams they cannot always direct ; and venerable Hooker 
 has profoundly observed, that " the best things have been 
 overthrown, not so much by puissance and might of adversa- 
 ries, as through defect of council in those that should have 
 upheld and defended the same." * 
 
 The philosophy of history blends the past with the present, 
 and combines the present with the future : each is but a por- 
 tion of the other ! The actual state of a thing is necessarily 
 determined by its antecedent, and thus progressively through 
 the chain of human existence ; while " the present is always 
 full of the future," as Leibnitz has happily expressed the 
 idea. 
 
 A new and beautiful light is thus thrown over the annals 
 of mankind, by the analogies and the parallels of different 
 ages in succession. How the seventeenth century has influ- 
 enced the eighteenth ; and the results of the nineteenth as 
 they shall appear in the twentieth, might open a source of 
 
 * Hooker wrote this about 1560, and he wrote before the Sieele des Revo- 
 lutions had begun, even among ourselves ! He penetrated into this impor- 
 tant principle merely by the force of his own mediation. At this moment, 
 after more practical experience in political revolutions, a very intelligent 
 French writer, in a pamphlet, entitled " M. de Villele," says, " Experience 
 proclaims a great truth — namely, that revolutions themselves cannot suc- 
 ceed, except when they are favoured by a portion of the Government." 
 He illustrates the axiom by the different revolutions which have occurred 
 in his nation within these thirty years. It is the same truth, traced to its 
 source by another road. 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 170 
 
 predictions, to which, however difficult it might be to affix 
 their dates, there would be none in exploring into causes, and 
 tracing their inevitable effects. 
 
 The multitude live only among the shadows of things in 
 the appearances of the present ; the learned, busied with 
 the past, can only trace whence, and how, all comes ; but he 
 who is one of the people, and one of the learned, the true 
 philosopher, views the natural tendency and terminations 
 which are preparing for the future ! 
 
 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Modern philosophy, theoretical or experimental, only 
 amuses while the action of discovery is suspended or ad- 
 vances ; the interest ceases with the inquirer when the catas- 
 trophe is ascertained, as in the romance whose denouement 
 turns on a mysterious incident, which, once unfolded, all 
 future agitation ceases. But in the true infancy of science, 
 philosophers were as imaginative a race as poets : marvels 
 and portents, undemonstrable and undefinable, with occult 
 fancies, perpetually beginning and never ending, were de- 
 lightful as the shifting cantos of Ariosto. Then science 
 entranced the eye by its thaumaturgy ; when they looked 
 through an optic tube, they believed they were looking into 
 futurity; or, starting at some shadow darkening the glassy 
 globe, beheld the absent person ; while the mechanical inven- 
 tions of art were toys and tricks, with sometimes an autom- 
 aton, which frightened them with life. 
 
 The earlier votaries of modern philosophy only witnessed, 
 as Gaffarel calls his collection, " Unheard-of Curiosities." 
 This state of the marvellous, of which we are now for ever 
 deprived, prevailed among the philosophers and the virtuosi 
 in Europe, and with ourselves, long after the establishment 
 »f the Royal Society. Philosophy then depended mainly on 
 
180 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 authority — a single one however was sufficient : so that when 
 this had been repeated by fifty others, they had the authority 
 of fifty honest men — whoever the first man might have been ! 
 They were then a blissful race of children, rambling here and 
 there in a golden age of innocence and ignorance, where at 
 every step each gifted discoverer whispered to the few, some 
 half-concealed secret of nature, or played with some toy of 
 art ; some invention which with great difficulty performed 
 what, without it, might have been done with great ease. The 
 cabinets of the lovers of mechanical arts formed enchanted 
 apartments, where the admirers* feared to stir or look about 
 them ; while the philosophers themselves half imagined they 
 were the very thaumaturgi, for which the world gave the^n 
 too much credit, at least for their quiet ! Would we run 
 after the shadows in this gleaming land of moonshine, or 
 sport with these children in the fresh morning of science, ere 
 Aurora had scarcely peeped on the hills, we must enter into 
 their feelings, view with their eyes, and believe all they con- 
 fide to us ; and out of these bundles of dreams sometimes 
 pick out one or two for our own dreaming. They are the 
 fairy tales and the Arabian Nights' entertainments of science. 
 But if the reader is stubbornly mathematical and logical, he 
 will only be holding up a great torch against the muslin cur- 
 tain, upon which the fantastic shadows playing upon it must 
 vanish at the instant. It is an amusement which can only 
 take place by carefully keeping himself in the dark. 
 
 What a subject, were I to enter on it, would be the narra- 
 tives of magical writers ! These precious volumes have been 
 so constantly wasted by the profane, that now a book of real 
 magic requires some to find it, as well as a great magician to 
 use it. Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great, as he is 
 erroneously styled — for this sage only derived this enviable 
 epithet from his surname De Groot, as did Hugo Grotius — 
 this sage, in his " Admirable Secrets," delivers his opinion 
 that these books of magic should be most preciously pre- 
 served ; for, he prophetically added, the time is arriving 
 
DKEAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 181 
 
 when they would be understood ! It seems they were not 
 intelligible in the thirteenth century ; but if Albertus has not 
 miscalculated, in the present day they may be ! Magical 
 terms with talismanic figures may yet conceal many a secret; 
 gunpowder came down to us in a sort of anagram, and the 
 kaleidoscope, with all its interminable multiplications of forms, 
 lay at hand for two centuries in Baptista Porta's " Natural 
 Magic." The abbot Trithemius, in a confidential letter, hap- 
 pened to call himself a magician, perhaps at the moment he 
 thought himself one, and sent three or four leaves stuffed 
 with the names of devils and with their evocations. At the 
 death of his friend these leaves fell into the unworthy hands 
 of the prior, who was so frightened on the first glance at the 
 diabolical nomenclature, that he raised the country against 
 the abbot, and Trithemius was nearly a lost man ! Yet, after 
 all, this evocation of devils has reached us in his " Stegano- 
 graphia," and proves to be only one of this ingenious abbot's 
 polygraphic attempts at secret writing ; for he had flattered 
 himself that he had invented a mode of concealing his thoughts 
 from all the world, while he communicated them to a friend. 
 Roger Bacon promised to raise thunder and lightning, and 
 disperse clouds by dissolving them into rain. The first 
 magical process has been obtained by Franklin ; and the 
 other, of far more use to our agriculturists, may perchance be 
 found lurking in some corner which has been overlooked in 
 the " Opus majus " of our " Doctor mirabilis." Do we laugh 
 at their magical works of art ? Are we ourselves such indif- 
 ferent artists ? Cornelius Agrippa, before he wrote his 
 " Vanity of the Arts and Sciences," intended to reduce into 
 a system and method the secret of communicating with spirits 
 and demons. On good authority, that of Porphyrius, Psellus, 
 Plotinus, Jamblichus — and on better, were it necessary to 
 allege it — he was well assured that the upper regions of the 
 air swarmed with what the Greeks called dcemones, just as 
 our lower atmosphere is full of birds, our waters of fish, and 
 our earth of insects. Yet this occult philosopher, who knew 
 
182 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 perfectly eight languages, and married two wives, with whom 
 he had never exchanged a harsh word in any of them, was 
 everywhere avoided as having by his side, for his companion, 
 a personage no less than a demon ! This was a great black 
 dog ; whom he suffered to stretch himself out among his 
 magical manuscripts, or Re on his bed, often kissing and pat- 
 ting him, and feeding him on choice morsels. Yet for this, 
 would Paulus Jovius and all the world have had him put to 
 the ordeal of fire and fagot ! The truth was afterwards 
 boldly asserted by Wierus, his learned domestic, who be- 
 lieved that his master's dog was really nothing more than 
 what he appeared ! " I believe," says he, " that he was a 
 real natural dog ; he was indeed black, but of a moderate 
 size, and I have often led him by a string, and called him by 
 the French name Agrippa had given him, Monsieur ! and he 
 had a female who was called Mademoiselle ! I wonder how 
 authors of such great character should write so absurdly on 
 his vanishing at his death, noboby knows how ! " But as it 
 is probable that Monsieur and Mademoiselle must have gen- 
 erated some puppy demons, Wierus ought to have been more 
 circumstantial. 
 
 Albertus Magnus, for thirty years, had never ceased work- 
 ing at a man of brass, and had cast together the qualities of 
 his materials under certain constellations, which threw such 
 a spirit into his man of brass, that it was reported his growth 
 was visible ; his feet, legs, thighs, shoulders, neck, and head, 
 expanded, and made the city of Cologne uneasy at possessing 
 one citizen too mighty for them all. This man of brass, 
 when he reached his maturity, was so loquacious, that 
 Albert's master, the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas, one 
 day, tired of his babble, and declaring it was a devil, o~ 
 devilish, with his staff knocked the head off ; and, what was 
 extraordinary, this brazen man, like any human being thus 
 effectually silenced, " word never spake more." This inci- 
 dent is equally historical and authentic ; though whether 
 heads of brass can speak, and even prophecy, was indeed a 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 183 
 
 subject of profound inquiry, even at a later period. Naude, 
 who never questioned their vocal powers, and yet was puzzled 
 concerning the nature of this new species of animal, has no 
 doubt most judiciously stated the question. Whether these 
 speaking brazen heads had a sensitive and reasoning nature, 
 or whether demons spoke in them ? But brass has not the 
 faculty of providing its own nourishment, as we see in plants, 
 and therefore they were not sensitive ; and as for the act of 
 reasoning, these brazen heads presumed to know nothing but 
 the future : with the past and the present they seemed totally 
 unacquainted, so that their memory and their observation 
 were very limited ; and as for the future, that is always 
 doubtful and obscure — even to heads of brass ! This learned 
 man then infers, that " These brazen heads could have no 
 reasoning faculties, for nothing altered their nature ; they 
 said what they had to say, which no one could contradict ; 
 and having said their say, you might have broken the head 
 for any thing more that you could have got out of it. Had 
 they had any life in them, would they not have moved, as 
 well as spoken ? Life itself is but motion, but they had no 
 lungs, no spleen ; and, in fact, though they spoke, they had 
 no tongue. Was a devil in them ? I think not. Yet why 
 should men have taken all this trouble to make, not a man, 
 but a trumpet ? " 
 
 Our profound philosopher was right not to agitate the 
 question whether these brazen heads had ever spoken. Why 
 should not a man of brass speak, since a doll can whisper, a 
 statue play chess, and brass ducks have performed the whole 
 process of digestion ? Another magical invention has been 
 ridiculed with equal reason. A magician was annoyed, as 
 philosophers still are, by passengers in the street ; and he, 
 particularly so, by having horses led to drink under his 
 window. He made a magical horse of wood, according to 
 one of the books of Hermes, which perfectly answered its 
 purpose, by frightening away the horses, or rather the 
 grooms ! the wooden horse, no doubt, gave some palpable 
 
184 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 kick. The same magical story might have been told of Dr. 
 Franklin, who finding that under his window the passengers 
 had discovered a spot which they made too convenient for 
 themselves, he charged it with his newly-discovered electrical 
 fire. After a few remarkable incidents had occurred, which 
 at a former period would have lodged the great discoverer 
 of electricity in the Inquisition, the modern magician suc- 
 ceeded just as well as the ancient, who had the advantage 
 of conning over the books of Hermes. Instead of ridiculing 
 these works of magic, let us rather become magicians our- 
 selves ! 
 
 The works of the ancient alchemists have afforded num- 
 berless discoveries to modern chemists : nor is even their 
 grand operation despaired of. If they have of late not been 
 so renowned, this has arisen from a want of what Ashmole 
 calls " apertness ; " a qualification early inculcated among 
 these illuminated sages. We find authentic accounts of some 
 who have lived three centuries, with tolerable complexions, 
 possessed of nothing but a crucible and a bellows ! but they 
 were so unnecessarily mysterious, that whenever such a 
 person was discovered, he was sure in an instant to disappear, 
 and was never afterwards heard of. 
 
 In the " Liber Patris Sapientiae " this selfish cautiousness 
 is all along impressed on the student, for the accomplishment 
 of the great mystery. In the commentary on this precious 
 work of the alchemist Norton, who counsels, 
 
 " Be thou in a place secret, by thyself alone, 
 That no man see or hear what thou shalt say or done. 
 Trust not thy friend too much wheresoe'er thou go, 
 For he thou trustest best, sometyme may be thy foe." 
 
 Ashmole observes, that " Norton gives exceeding good ad- 
 vice to the student in this science where he bids him be 
 secret in the carrying on of his studies and operations, and 
 not to let any one know of his undertakings but his good 
 angel and himself: " and such a close and retired breast had 
 Norton's master, who, 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 185 
 
 " When men disputed of colours of the rose, 
 He would not speak, but kept himself full close ! " 
 
 We regret, that by each leaving all his knowledge to " his 
 good angel and himself," it has happened that " the good 
 angels " have kept it all to themselves ! 
 
 It cannot, however, be denied, that if they could not 
 always extract gold out of lead, they sometimes succeeded in 
 washing away the pimples on ladies' faces, notwithstanding 
 that Sir Kenelm Digby poisoned his most beautiful lady, 
 because, as Sancho would have said, he was one of those 
 who would " have his bread whiter than the finest wheaten." 
 Van Helmont, who could not succeed in discovering the true 
 elixir of life, however hit on the spirit of hartshorn, which 
 for a good while he considered was the wonderful elixir 
 itself, restoring to life persons who seemed to have lost it. 
 And though this delightful enthusiast could not raise a ghost, 
 yet he thought he had; for he raised something aerial from 
 spa-water, which mistaking for a ghost, he gave it that very 
 name ; a name which we still retain in gas, from the German, 
 geist, or ghost ! Paracelsus carried the tiny spirits about him 
 in the hilt of his great sword ! Having first discovered the 
 qualities of laudanum, this illustrious quack made use of it 
 as an universal remedy, and distributed it in the form of pills, 
 which he carried in the basket-hilt of his sword ; the opera- 
 tions he performed were as rapid as they seemed magical. 
 Doubtless we have lost some inconceivable secrets by some 
 unexpected occurrences, which the secret itself it would seem 
 ought to have prevented taking place. When a philosopher 
 had discovered the art of prolonging life to an indefinite 
 period, it is most provoking to find that he should have 
 allowed himself to die at an early age ! We have a very 
 authentic history from Sir Kenelm Digby himself, that when 
 he went in disguise to visit Descartes at his retirement at 
 Egmond, lamenting the brevity of life, which hindered 
 philosophers getting on in their studies, the French philoso- 
 pher assured him that " he had considered that matter ; to 
 
186 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 render a man immortal was what he^ could not promise, but 
 that he was very sure it was possible to lengthen out his life 
 to the period of the patriarchs." And when his death was 
 announced to the world, the Abbe Picot, an ardent disciple, 
 for a long time would not believe it possible ; and at length 
 insisted, that if it had occurred, it must have been owing to 
 some mistake of the philosopher's. 
 
 The late Holcroft, Loutherbourg, and Cos way, imagined 
 that they should escape the vulgar era of scriptural life by 
 reorganizing their old bones, and moistening their dry mar- 
 row ; their new principles of vitality were supposed by them 
 to be found in the powers of the mind ; this seemed more 
 reasonable, but proved to be as little efficacious as those other 
 philosophers, who imagine they have detected the hidden 
 principle of life in the eels frisking in vinegar, and allude to 
 • " the bookbinder who creates the book-worm ! " 
 
 Paracelsus has revealed to us one of the grandest secrets 
 of nature. When the world began to dispute on the very ex- 
 istence of the elementary folk, it was then that he boldly 
 offered to give birth to a fairy, and has sent down to posterity 
 the recipe. He describes the impurity which is to be trans- 
 muted into such purity, the gross elements of a delicate fairy, 
 which, fixed in a phial, placed in fuming dung, will in due 
 time settle into a full-grown fairy, bursting through its vit- 
 reous prison — on the vivifying principle by which the ancient 
 Egyptians hatched their eggs in ovens. I recollect, at Dr. 
 Farmer's sale, the leaf which preserved this recipe for mak- 
 ing a fairy, forcibly folded down by the learned commentator ; 
 from which we must infer the credit he gave to the experi- 
 ment. There was a greatness of mind in Paracelsus, who, 
 having furnished a recipe to make a fairy, had the delicacy 
 to fefrain from its formation. Even Baptista Porta, one of 
 the most enlightened philosophers, does not deny the possibil- 
 ity of engendering creatures, which, " at their full growth 
 shall not exceed the size of a mouse ;" but he adds " they 
 are only pretty little dogs to play with." Were these akin 
 to the fames of Paracelsus ? 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 187 
 
 They were well convinced of the existence of such ele- 
 mental beings ; frequent accidents in mines showed the 
 potency of the metallic spirits ; which so tormented the work- 
 men in some of the German mines, by blindness, giddiness, 
 and sudden sickness, that they have been obliged to abandon 
 mines well known to be rich in silver. A metallic spirit at 
 one sweep annihilated twelve miners, who were all found 
 dead together. The fact was unquestionable ; and the safety- 
 lamp was undiscovered. 
 
 Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than 
 that exquisite Palingenesis, as it has been termed from the 
 Greek, or a regeneration : or rather, the apparitions of ani- 
 mals, and plants. Schott, Kircher, Gaffarel, Borelli, Digby, 
 and the whole of that admirable school, discovered in the 
 ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised 
 up by the force of heat. Nothing, they say, perishes in na- 
 ture ; all is but a continuation, or a revival. The semina of 
 resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the blood 
 of man; the ashes of roses will again revive into roses, 
 though smaller and paler than if they had been planted ; un- 
 substantial and unodoriferous, they are not roses which grow 
 on rose-trees, but their delicate apparitions ; and, like appa- 
 ritions, they are seen but for a moment ! The process of the 
 Palingenesis, this picture of immortality, is described. These 
 philosophers having burnt a flower, by calcination disengaged 
 the salts from its ashes, and deposited them in a glass phial ; 
 a chemical mixture acted on it, till in the fermentation they 
 assumed a bluish and a spectral hue. This dust, thus excited 
 by heat, shoots upwards into its primitive forms ; by sympathy 
 the parts unite, and while each is returning to its destined 
 place, we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower, 
 arise ; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth 
 from its ashes. The heat passes away, the magical scene 
 declines, till the whole matter again precipitates itself into 
 the chaos at the bottom. This vegetable phoenix lies thus 
 concealed in its cold ashes, till the presence of heat produces 
 
18S DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 this resurrection — in its absence it returns to its death. Thus 
 the dead naturally revive ; and a corpse may give out its 
 shadowy reanirnation, when not too deeply buried in the 
 earth. Bodies corrupted in their graves have risen, particu- 
 larly the murdered; for murderers are apt to bury their vic- 
 tims in a slight and hasty manner. Their salts, exhaled in 
 vapour by means of their fermentation, have arranged them- 
 selves on the surface of the earth, and formed those phantoms, 
 which at night have often terrified the passing spectator, as 
 authentic history witnesses. They have opened the graves 
 of the phantom, and discovered the bleeding corpse beneath; 
 hence it is astonishing how many ghosts may be seen at 
 night, after a recent battle, standing over their corpses ! On 
 the same principle, my old philosopher Gaffarel conjectures 
 on the raining of frogs ; but these frogs, we must conceive, 
 can only be the ghosts of frogs ; and Gaffarel himself has 
 modestly opened this fact by a " peradventure." A more 
 satisfactory origin of ghosts modern philosophy has not 
 afforded. 
 
 And who does not believe in the existence of ghosts ? for, 
 as Dr. More forcibly says, " That there should be so univer- 
 sal a fame and fear of that which never was, nor is, nor can 
 be ever in the world, is to me the greatest miracle of all. If 
 there had not been, at some time or other, true miracles, it 
 had not been so easy to impose on the people by false. The 
 alchemist would never go about to sophisticate metals to 
 pass them off for true gold and silver, unless that such 
 a thing was acknowledged as true gold and silver in the 
 world." 
 
 The pharmacopoeia of those times combined more of 
 inorals with medicine than our own. They discovered that 
 the agate rendered a man eloquent and even witty ; a laurel 
 leaf placed on the centre of the skull, fortified the memory ; 
 the brains of fowls, and birds of swift wing, wonderfully 
 helped the imagination. All such specifics have now disap- 
 peared, and have greatly reduced the chances of an invalid 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 recovering that which perhaps he never possessed. Lentils 
 and rape-seed were a certain cure for the smallpox, and very 
 obviously — their grains resembling the spots of this disease. 
 They discovered that those who lived on " fair " plants be- 
 came fair, those on fruitful ones were never barren; on the 
 principle that Hercules acquired his mighty strength by feed- 
 ing on the marrow of lions. But their talismans, provided 
 they were genuine, seem to have been wonderfully operative ; 
 and had we the same confidence, and melted down the guin- 
 eas we give physicians, engraving on them talismanic figures, 
 I would answer for the good effects of the experiment. 
 Naude, indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of 
 talismans, in his defence of Virgil, accused of being a magi- 
 cian : the poet it seems, cast into a well a talisman of a horse- 
 leech, graven on a plate of gold, to drive away the great 
 number of horse-leeches which infested Naples. Naude 
 positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such 
 occult virtues : Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as 
 Naude should have gone this length, giving the lie to so many 
 authentic authors ; and Naude's paradox is, indeed, as strange 
 as his denial ; he suspects the thing is not true because it is 
 so generally told ! "It leads one to suspect," says he, "as 
 animals are said to have been driven away from so many 
 places by these talismans, whether they were ever driven from 
 any one place." Gaffarel, suppressing by his good temper 
 his indignant feelings at such reasoning, turns the paradox 
 on its maker: "As if, because of the great number of battles 
 that Hannibal is reported to have fought with the Romans, 
 we might not, by the same reason, doubt whether he fought 
 any one with them." The reader must be aware that the 
 strength of the argument lies entirely with the firm believer 
 in talismans. Gaffarel, indeed, who passed his days in col- 
 lecting " Curiosites inouies," is a most authentic historian of 
 unparalleled events, even in his own times ! Such as that 
 heavy rain in Poitou, Avhich showered down " petites besti- 
 oles," little creatures like bishops with their mitres, and monks 
 
100 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 with their capuchins over their heads ; it is true, afterwards 
 they all turned into butterflies ! 
 
 The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early 
 virtuosi, were the baby-houses of philosophers. Baptista 
 Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old Ashmole, were they now 
 living, had been enrolled among the quiet members of " The 
 Society of Arts," instead of flying in the air, collecting "a 
 wing of the Phoenix, as tradition goes ; " or catching the dis- 
 jointed syllables of an old doting astrologer. But these 
 early dilettanti had not derived the same pleasure from the 
 useful inventions of the aforesaid " Society of Arts," as they 
 received from what Cornelius Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, 
 calls "things vain and superfluous, invented to no other end 
 but for pomp and idle pleasure." Baptista Porta was more 
 skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in 
 his day. Having founded the Academy degli Oziosi, he held 
 an inferior association in his own house, called di Secreti, 
 where none was admitted but those elect who had communi- 
 cated some secret ; for, in the early period of modern art and 
 science, the slightest novelty became a secret, not to be con- 
 fided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably a fine 
 genius, as his works still show; but it was his misfortune that 
 he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the 
 art of divination. He considered himself a prognosticator ; 
 and, what was more unfortunate, some eminent persons really 
 thought he was. Predictions and secrets are harmless, pro- 
 vided they are not believed ; but his Holiness finding Porta's 
 were, warned him that magical sciences were great hin- 
 drances to the study of the Bible, and paid him the compli- 
 ment to forbid his prophesying. Porta's genius was now 
 limited, to astonish, and sometimes to terrify, the more in- 
 genious part of / Secreti. On entering his cabinet, some 
 phantom of an attendant was sure to be hovering in the air, 
 moving as he who entered moved ; or he observed in some 
 mirror that his face was twisted on the wrong side of his 
 shoulders, and did not quite think that all was right when he 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 191 
 
 clapped his hand on it ; or passing through a darkened apart- 
 ment a magical landscape burst on him, with human beings 
 in motion, the boughs of trees bending, and the very clouds 
 passing over the sun ; or sometimes banquets, battles, and 
 hunting-parties, were in the same apartment. "All these 
 spectacles my friends have witnessed ! " exclaims the self- 
 delighted Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out 
 of the same cup which he had used, they were mortified with 
 wonder ; for he drank wine, and they only water ! or on a 
 summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he would 
 freeze his guests with cold air in the room ; or, on a sudden, 
 let off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, 
 and a cat tied on his back ; shrill was the sound, and awful 
 was the concussion ; so that it required strong nerves, in an 
 age of apparitions and devils, to meet this great philosopher 
 when in his best humour. Albertus Magnus entertained the 
 Earl of Holland, as that earl passed through Cologne, in a 
 severe winter, with a warm summer scene, luxuriant in fruits 
 and flowers. The fact is related by Trithemius — and this 
 magical scene connected with his vocal head, and his books 
 De Secretis Mulierum, and De Mirabilibus, confirmed the 
 accusations they raised against the great Albert, for being a 
 magician. His apologist, Theophilus Raynaud, is driven so 
 hard to defend Albertus, that he at once asserts, the winter 
 changed to summer, and the speaking head, to be two in- 
 famous flams ! He will not believe these authenticated facts, 
 although he credits a miracle which proves the sanctity of 
 Albertus, — after three centuries, the body of Albert the 
 Great remained as sweet as ever! 
 
 "Whether such enchauntments," as old Mandeville cau- 
 tiously observeth, two centuries preceding the days of Porta, 
 were "by craft or by nygromancye, I wot nere." But 
 that they were not unknown to Chaucer, appears in his 
 " Frankelein's Tale," where, minutely describing them, he 
 communicates the same pleasure he must himself have re- 
 ceived from the ocular illusions of " the Tregetoure," or 
 
192 
 
 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 <; Jogelour." Chaucer ascribes the miracle to a " naturall 
 magique ! " in which, however, it was as unsettled, whether 
 the " Prince of Darkness " was a party concerned. 
 
 " For I am siker that there he sciences 
 By which men maken divers apparences 
 Swiche as thise subtil tregetoures play. 
 For oft at festes have I wel herd say 
 That tregetoures, within an halle large, 
 Have made come in a water and a barge, 
 And in the halle rowen up and doun. 
 Sometime hath semed come a grim leoun, 
 And sometime floures spring as in a mede, 
 Sometime a vine and grapes white and rede, 
 Sometime a castel al of lime and ston, 
 And whan hem liketh voideth it anon: 
 Thus semeth it to every mannes sight." 
 
 Bishop Wilkins's museum was visited by Evelyn, who 
 describes the sort of curiosities which occupied and amused 
 the children of science. " Here, too, there was a hollow 
 statue, which gave a voice, and uttered words by a long con- 
 cealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through 
 it at a good distance : " a circumstance, which, perhaps, they 
 were not then aware revealed the whole mystery of the 
 ancient oracles, which they attributed to demons, rather than 
 to tubes, pulleys, and wheels. The learned Charles Patin, 
 in his scientific travels, records, among other valuable pro- 
 ductions of art, a cherry-stone, on which were engraven 
 about a dozen and a half of portraits ! Even the greatest of 
 human geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, to attract the royal 
 patronage, created a lion which ran before the French mon- 
 arch, dropping fleurs de Us from its shaggy breast. And 
 another philosopher who had a spinet which played and 
 stopped at command, might have made a revolution in the 
 arts and sciences, had the half-stifled child that was concealed 
 in it not been forced, unluckily, to crawl into day-light, and 
 thus it was proved that a philosopher might be an impostor! 
 
 The arts, as well as the sciences, at the first institution of 
 the Royal Society, were of the most amusing class. The 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 103 
 
 famous Sir Samuel Moreland had turned his house into an 
 enchanted palace. Every thing was full of devices, which 
 showed art and mechanism in perfection : his coach carried 
 a travelling kitchen ; for it had a fireplace and grate, with 
 which he could make a soup, broil cutlets, and roast an egg ; 
 and he dressed his meat by clock-work. Another of these 
 virtuosi, who is described as " a gentleman of superior order, 
 and whose house was a knick-knackatory," valued himself on 
 his multifarious inventions, but most in " sowing salads in the 
 morning, to be cut for dinner." The house of Winstanley, 
 who afterwards raised the first Eddystone light-house, must 
 have been the wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an 
 old slipper, purposely lying in your way, up started a ghost 
 before you ; or if you sat down in a certain chair, a couple 
 of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in. There 
 was an arbour in the garden, by the side of a canal ; you 
 had scarcely seated yourself when you were sent out afloat 
 to the middle of the canal — from whence you could not 
 escape till this man of art and science wound you up to the 
 arbour. What was passing at the " Royal Society," was 
 also occurring at the " Academie des Sciences " at Paris. 
 A great and gouty member of that philosophical body, on the 
 departure of a stranger, would point to his legs to show the 
 impossibility of conducting him to the door ; yet the aston- 
 ished visitor never failed finding the virtuoso waiting for 
 him on the outside, to make his final bow ! While the visitor 
 was going down stairs, this inventive genius was descending 
 with great velocity in a machine from the window : so that 
 he proved, that if a man of science cannot force nature to 
 walk down stairs, he may drive her out at the window ! 
 
 If they travelled at home, they set off to note down 
 prodigies. Dr. Plott, in a magnificent project of journeying 
 through England, for the advantage of "Learning and 
 Trade," and the discovery of "Antiquities and other Curi- 
 osities," for which he solicited the royal aid which Leland 
 enjoyed, among other notable designs, discriminates a class 
 
 vol. iv. 13 
 
194 
 
 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thus : " Next I shall inquire of animals ; and first of strange 
 people." — " Strange accidents that attend corporations or 
 families, as that the deans of Rochester ever since the foun- 
 dation by turns have died deans and bishops ; the bird with 
 a white breast that haunts the family of Oxenham near 
 Exeter just before the death of any of that family ; the 
 bodies of trees that are seen to swim in a pool near Brereton 
 in Cheshire, a certain warning to the heir of that honourable 
 family to prepare for the next world." And such remark- 
 ables as "Number of children, such as the Lady Temple, 
 who before she died saw seven hundred descended from her." 
 This fellow of the Royal Society, who lived nearly to 1700, 
 was requested to give an edition of Pliny : we have lost the 
 benefit of a most copious commentary ! Bishop Hall went 
 to " the Spa." The wood about that place was haunted not 
 only by " freebooters, but by wolves and witches ; although 
 these last are oft-times but one." They were called loups- 
 garoux ; and the Greeks, it seems, knew them by the name 
 of TiVKuvdpunoL, men-wolves ; witches that have put on the 
 shapes of those cruel beasts. " We sawe a boy there, whose 
 half-face was devoured by one of them near the village ; 
 yet so, as that the eare was rather cut than bitten off." 
 Rumour had spread that the boy had had half his face de- 
 voured ; when it was examined, it turned out that his ear 
 had only been scratched ! However, there can be no doubt 
 of the existence of " witch-wolves ; " for Hall saw at Lim- 
 burgh " one of those miscreants executed, who confessed on 
 the wheel to have devoured two-and-forty children in that 
 form." They would probably have found it difficult to have 
 summoned the mothers who had lost the children. But 
 observe our philosopher's reasoning: "It would aske a large 
 volume to scan this problem of lycanthropy." He had labo- 
 riously collected all the evidence, and had added his argu- 
 ments: the result offers a curious instance of acute reasoning 
 on a wrong principle.* 
 * Hall's postulate is, that God's work could not admit of any substan 
 
DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 195 
 
 Men of science and art then passed their days in a bustle 
 of the marvellous. I will furnish a specimen of philosoph- 
 ical correspondence in a letter to old John Aubrey. The 
 writer betrays the versatility of his curiosity by very oppo- 
 site discoveries. " My hands are so full of work that I have 
 no time to transcribe for Dr. Henry More an account of the 
 Barnstable apparition — Lord Keeper North would take it 
 kindly from you — give a sight of this letter from Barnstable 
 to Dr. Whitchcot." He had lately heard of a Scotchman 
 who had been carried by fairies into France ; but the purpose 
 of his present letter is to communicate other sort of appari- 
 tions than the ghost of Barnstable. He had gone to Glas- 
 tonbury, " to pick up a few berries from the holy thorn which 
 flowered every Christmas day." The original thorn had 
 been cut down by a military saint in the civil wars ; but the 
 trade of the place was not damaged, for they had contrived 
 not to have a single holy thorn, but several, " by grafting and 
 inoculation." He promises to send these "berries;" but 
 requests Aubrey to inform "that person of quality who 
 had rather have a bush, that it was impossible to get one for 
 him. I am told," he adds, "that there is a person about 
 Glastonbury who hath a nursery of them, which he sells for 
 a crown a piece," but they are supposed not to be " of the 
 right kind." 
 
 The main object of this letter is the writer's " suspicion of 
 gold in this country ; " for which he offers three reasons. 
 Tacitus says there was gold in England, and that Agrippa 
 came to a spot where he had a prospect of Ireland — from 
 
 tial change, which is above the reach of all infernal powers ; but " Herein 
 the divell plays the double sophister; the sorcerer with sorcerers. Hee 
 both deludes the witch's conceit and the beholder's eyes." In a word, 
 Hall believes in what he cannot understand ! Yet Hall will not believe one 
 of the Catholic miracles of "the Virgin of Lou vain," though Lipsius had 
 written a book to commemorate "the goddess," as Hall sarcastically calls 
 her. Hall was told, with great indignation, in the shop of the bookseller 
 of Lipsius, that when James the First had just looked over this work, he 
 flung it down, vociferating " Damnation to him that made it, and to him 
 that believes it! " 
 
196 DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which place he writes; secondly, that "an honest man" had 
 in this spot found stones from which he had extracted good 
 gold, and that he himself " had seen in the broken stones a 
 clear appearance of gold ; " and thirdly, " there is a story 
 which goes by tradition in that part of the country, that in 
 the hill alluded to there was a door into a hole, that when 
 any wanted money they used to go and knock there, that a 
 woman used to appear, and give to such as came. At a 
 time one by greediness or otherwise gave her offence, she 
 flung to the door, and delivered this old saying, still remem- 
 bered in the country : 
 
 ' When all the Daws be gone and dead, 
 Then .... Hill shall shine gold red.' 
 
 My fancy is, that this relates to an ancient family of this 
 name, of which there is now but one man left, and he not 
 likely to have any issue." These are his three reasons ; and 
 some mines have perhaps been opened with no better ones ! 
 But let us not imagine that this great naturalist was credu- 
 lous ; for he tells Aubrey that " he thought it was but a monk- 
 ish tale, forged in the abbey, so famous in former time ; but 
 as I have learned not to despise our forefathers, I question 
 whether this may not refer to some rich mine in the hill, 
 formerly in use, and now lost. I shall shortly request you to 
 discourse with my lord about it, to have advice, &c. In the 
 mean time it will be best to keep all private for his majesty's 
 service, his lordship's, and perhaps some private person's 
 benefit." But he has also positive evidence : " A mason not 
 long ago coming to the renter of the abbey for a freestone, 
 and sawing it, out came divers pieces of gold of £3 10s. 
 value apiece, of ancient coins. The stone belonged to some 
 chimney-work ; the gold was hidden in it, perhaps when the 
 Dissolution was near." This last incident of finding coins 
 in a chimney-piece, which he had accounted for very ration- 
 ally, serves only to confirm his dream, that they were coined 
 out of the gold of the mine in the hill ; and he becomes 
 
ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 197 
 
 more urgent for " a private search into these mines, which I 
 have, I think, a way to." In the postscript he adds an 
 account of a well, which by washing wrought a cure on a 
 person deep in the king's evil. " I hope you don't forget 
 your promise to communicate whatever thing you have, 
 relating to your Idea." 
 
 This promised Idea of Aubrey may be found in his MSS., 
 under the title of " The Idea of Universal Education." 
 However whimsical, one would like to see it. Aubrey's life 
 might furnish a volume of these Philosophical dreams ; he 
 was a person who from his incessant bustle and insatiable 
 curiosity was called " The Carrier of Conceptions of the 
 Royal Society." Many pleasant nights were " privately " 
 enjoyed by Aubrey and his correspondent about the " Mine 
 in the Hill ; " Ashmole's manuscripts at Oxford contain a 
 collection of many secrets of the Rosicrucians ; one of the 
 completest inventions is " a Recipe how to walk invisible." 
 Such were the fancies which rocked the children of science 
 in their cradles ! and so feeble were the steps of our curious 
 infancy ! — But I start in my dreams ! dreading the reader 
 may also have fallen asleep ! 
 
 " Measure is most excellent," says one of the oracles ; " to 
 which also we being in like manner persuaded, O most 
 friendly and pious Asclepiades, here finish " — the dreams at 
 the dawn of philosophy! 
 
 ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR 
 
 Literary forgeries recently have been frequently in- 
 dulged in, and it is urged that they are of an innocent nature ; 
 but impostures more easily practised than detected leave their 
 mischief behind, to take effect at a distant period ; and as I 
 shall show, may entrap even the judicious ! It may require 
 no high exertion of genius to draw up a grave account of an 
 
198 
 
 ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 ancient play-wright whose name has never reached us, or to 
 give an extract from a volume inaccessible to our inquiries : 
 and, as dulness is no proof of spuriousness, forgeries, in 
 time, mix with authentic documents. 
 
 We have ourselves witnessed versions of Spanish and 
 Portuguese poets, which are passed on their unsuspicious 
 readers without difficulty, but in which no parts of the pie- 
 tended originals can be traced ; and to the present hour, 
 whatever antiquaries may affirm, the poems of Chatterton 
 and Ossian are veiled in mystery ! 
 
 If we possessed the secret history of the literary life of 
 George Steevens, it would display an unparalleled series 
 of arch deception and malicious ingenuity. He has been 
 happily characterized by Gifford, as " the Puck of Commen- 
 tators \ " Steevens is a creature so spotted over with literary 
 forgeries and adulterations, that any remarkable one about 
 the time he flourished may be attributed to him. They were 
 the habits of a depraved mind, and there was a darkness in 
 his character many shades deeper than belonged to Puck ; 
 even in the playfulness of his invention, there was usually a 
 turn of personal malignity, and the real object was not so 
 much to raise a laugh, as to " grin horribly a ghastly smile,'* 
 on the individual. It is more than rumoured, that he carried 
 his ingenious malignity into the privacies of domestic life ; 
 and it is to be regretted, that Mr. Nichols, who might have 
 furnished much secret history of this extraordinary literary 
 forger, has, from delicacy, mutilated his collective vigour. 
 
 George Steevens usually commenced his operations by 
 opening some pretended discovery in the evening papers, 
 which were then of a more literary cast than they are at 
 present ; the St. James's Chronicle, the General E vening 
 Post, or the Whitehall, were they not dead in body and in 
 spirit, would now bear witness to his successful efforts. The 
 late Mr. Boswell told me, that Steevens frequently wrote 
 notes on Shakspeare, purposely to mislead or entrap Malone, 
 and obtain for himself an easy triumph in the next edition ! 
 
ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 199 
 
 Steevens loved to assist the credulous in getting up for them 
 some strange new thing, dancing (hem about with a Will-o'- 
 the-wisp — now alarming them by a shriek of laughter ! and 
 now like a grinning Pigwigging sinking them chin-deep into 
 a quagmire ! Once he presented them with a fictitious por- 
 trait of Shakspeare, and when the brotherhood were suffi- 
 ciently divided in their opinions, he pounced upon them with 
 a demonstration, that every portrait of Shakspeare partook 
 of the same doubtful authority ! Steevens usually assumed 
 a nom de guerre of Collins, a pseudo-commentator, and some- 
 times of Amner, who was discovered to be an obscure puri- 
 tanic minister who never read text or notes of a play-wright, 
 whenever he explored into a "thousand notable secrets" with 
 which he has polluted the pages of Shakspeare ! The mar- 
 vellous narrative of the upas-tree of Java, which Darwin 
 adopted in his plan of " enlisting imagination under the 
 banner of science," appears to have been another forgery 
 which amused our " Puck." It was first given in the London 
 Magazine, as an extract from a Dutch traveller, but the ex- 
 tract was never discovered in the original author, and " the 
 effluvia of this noxious tree, which through a district of 
 twelve or fourteen miles had killed all vegetation, and had 
 spread the skeletons of men and animals, affording a scene 
 of melancholy beyond what poets have described, or painters 
 delineated," is perfectly chimerical. A splendid flim-flam ! 
 When Dr. Berkenhout was busied in writing, without much 
 knowledge or skill, a history of our English authors, Steevens 
 allowed the good man to insert a choice letter by George 
 Peele, giving an account of a " merry meeting at the Globe," 
 wherein Shakspeare said Ben Jonson and Ned Alleyne are 
 admirably made to perform their respective parts. As the 
 nature of the " Biographia Literaria" required authorities, 
 Steevens ingeniously added, " Whence I copied this letter I 
 do not recollect." However, he well knew it came from the 
 " Theatrical Mirror," where he had first deposited the precious 
 original, to which he had unguardedly ventured to affix the 
 
200 
 
 ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 date of 1600 ; unluckily, Peele was discovered to have died 
 two years before he wrote his own letter ! The date is 
 adroitly dropped in Berkenhout ! Steevens did not wish to 
 refer to his original, which I have often seen quoted as 
 authority. One of these numerous forgeries of our Puck 
 appears in an article in Isaac Reed's catalogue, art. 8708. 
 " The Boke of the Soldan, conteyninge strange matters 
 touchynge his lyfe and deathe, and the ways of his course, in 
 two partes, 1 2mo.," with this marginal note by Reed — " The 
 foregoing was written by George Steevens, Esq. from whom 
 I received it. It was composed merely to impose on ' a lit- 
 erary friend,' and had its effect ; for he was so far deceived 
 as to its authenticity that he gave implicit credit to it, and put 
 down the person's name in whose possession the original 
 books were supposed to be." 
 
 One of the sort of inventions which I attribute to Steevens 
 has been got up with a deal of romantic effect, to embellish 
 the poetical life of Milton ; and unquestionably must have 
 sadly perplexed his last matter-of-fact editor, who is not a 
 man to comprehend a flim-flam ! — for he has sanctioned the 
 whole fiction, by preserving it in his biographical narrative ! 
 The first impulse of Milton to travel in Italy is ascribed to 
 the circumstance of his having been found asleep at the foot 
 of a tree in the vicinity of Cambridge, when two foreign 
 ladies, attracted by the loveliness of the youthful poet, 
 alighted from their carriage, and having admired him for 
 some time as they imagined unperceived, the youngest, who 
 was very beautiful, drew a pencil from her pocket, and hav- 
 ing written some lines, put the paper with her trembling hand 
 into his own ! But it seems, — for something was to account 
 how the sleeping youth could have been aware of these 
 minute particulars, unless he had been dreaming them, — that 
 the ladies had been observed at a distance by some friends 
 of Milton, and they explained to him the whole silent adven- 
 ture. Milton on opening the paper read four verses from 
 Guarini, addressed to those "human stars," his own eyes! 
 
ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 201 
 
 On this romantic adventure, Milton set off for Italy, to dis- 
 cover the fair " incognita," to which undiscovered lady we 
 are told we stand indebted for the most impassioned touches 
 in the Paradise Lost ! We know how Milton passed his 
 time in Italy, with Dati, and Gaddi, and Frescobaldi, and 
 other literary friends, amidst its academies, and often busied 
 in book-collecting. Had Milton's tour in Italy been an ad- 
 venture of knight-errantry, to discover a lady whom he had 
 never seen, at least he had not the merit of going out of the 
 direct road to Florence and Rome, nor of having once alluded 
 to this Dame de ses pensees, in his letters or inquiries among 
 his friends, who would have thought themselves fortunate to 
 have introduced so poetical an adventure in the numerous 
 canzoni they showered on our youthful poet. 
 
 This historiette, scarcely fitted for a novel, first appeared 
 where generally Steevens's literary amusements were carried 
 on, in the General Evening Post, or the St. James's Chron- 
 icle : and Mr. Todd, in the improved edition of Milton's Life, 
 obtained this spurious original, where the reader may find it; 
 but the more curious part of the story remains to be told. 
 Mr. Todd proceeds, " The preceding highly-coloured relation, 
 however, is not singular ; my friend, Mr. Walker, points out 
 to me a counterpart in the extract from the preface to Poesies 
 de Marguerite- Eleanor e Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville, 
 Poke Francois du XV. Siecle. Paris, 1803." 
 
 And true enough we find among " the family traditions " 
 of the same Clotilde, that Justine de Levis, great-grand- 
 mother of this unknown poetess of the fifteenth century, 
 walking in a forest, witnessed the same beautiful spectacle 
 which the Italian Unknown had at Cambridge ; never was 
 such an impression to be effaced, and she could not avoid 
 leaving her tablets by the side of the beautiful sleeper, de- 
 claring her passion in her tablets by four Italian verses I 
 The very number our Milton had meted to him ! Oh ! these 
 four verses ! they are as fatal in their number as the date of 
 Peele's letter proved to George Steevens ! Something still 
 
202 
 
 ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 escapes in the most ingenious fabrication which serves to de- 
 compose the materials. It is well our veracious historian 
 dropped all mention of Guarini — else that would have given 
 that coup de grace — a fatal anachronism ! However, his 
 invention supplied him with more originality than the adop- 
 tion of this story and the four verses would lead us to 
 infer. He tells us how Petrarch was jealous of the genius 
 of his Clotilde's grandmother, and has even pointed out a 
 sonnet which, "among the traditions of the family," was ad- 
 dressed to her ! He narrates, that the gentleman, when he 
 fairly awoke, and had read the "four verses," set off for Italy, 
 which he run over till he found Justine, and Justine found 
 him, at a tournament at Modena ! This parallel adventure 
 disconcerted our two grave English critics — they find a tale 
 which they wisely judge improbable, and because they dis- 
 cover the tale copied, they conclude that "it is not singular!" 
 This knot of perplexity is, however, easily cut through, if we 
 substitute, which we are fully justified in, for " Poete du XV. 
 Siecle "— " du XIX. Siecle ! " The " Poesies " of Clotilde 
 are as genuine a fabrication as Chatterton's ; subject to the 
 same objections, having many ideas and expressions which 
 which were unknown in the language at the time they are 
 pretended to have been composed, and exhibiting many imi- 
 tations of Voltaire and other poets. The present story of the 
 four Italian verses, and the beautiful Sleeper, would be quite 
 sufficient evidence of the authenticity of " the family tradi- 
 tions" of Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville, and also of 
 Monsieur De Surville himself ; a pretended editor, who is 
 said to have found by mere accident the precious manuscript, 
 and while he was copying for the press, in 1793, these pretty 
 poems, for such they are, of his grande tante, was shot in the 
 reign of terror, and so completely expired, that no one could 
 ever trace his existence ! The real editor, who we must 
 presume to be the poet, published them in 1803. 
 
 Such, then, is the history of a literary forgery ! A Puck 
 composes a short romantic adventure, which is quietly thrown 
 
ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 203 
 
 out to the world in a newspaper or a magazine ; some col* 
 lector, such as the late Mr. Bindley, who procured for Mr. 
 Todd his original, as idle at least as he is curious, houses the 
 forlorn fiction — and it enters into literary history ! A French 
 Chatterton picks up the obscure tale, and behold, astonishes 
 the literary inquirers of the very country whence the im- 
 posture sprung ! But the four Italian verses, and the Sleep- 
 ing Youth! Oh! Monsieur Vanderbourg ! for that gentle- 
 man is the ostensible editor of Clotilde's poesies of the fif- 
 teenth century, some ingenious persons are unlucky in this 
 world ! Perhaps one day we may yet discover that this 
 " romantic adventure " of Milton and Justine de Levis is not 
 so original as it seems — it may lie hid in the Astree of 
 D'Urfe, or some of the long romances of the Scuderies, 
 whence the English and the French Chattertons may have 
 drawn it. To such literary inventors we say with Swift: — 
 
 " Such are your tricks ; 
 
 But since you hatch, pray own your chicks ! " 
 
 Will it be credited that for the enjoyment of a temporary 
 piece of malice, Steevens would even risk his own reputation 
 as a poetical critic ? Yet this he ventured, by throwing out 
 of his edition the poems of Shakspeare, with a remarkable 
 hypercriticism, that "the strongest act of parliament that 
 could be framed would fail to compel readers into their 
 service." Not only he denounced the sonnets of Shakspeare, 
 but the sonnet itself, with an absurd question, " What has 
 truth or nature to do with Sonnets ? " The secret history of 
 this unwarrantable mutilation of a great author by his editor 
 was, as I was informed by the late Mr. Boswell, merely done 
 to spite his rival commentator Malone, who had taken extra- 
 ordinary pains in their elucidation. Steevens himself had 
 formerly reprinted them, but when Malone from these sonnets 
 claimed for himself one ivy leaf of a commentator's pride, 
 behold, Steevens in a rage would annihilate even Shakspeare 
 himself, that he might gain a triumph over Malone ! In the 
 
204 
 
 ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. 
 
 same spirit, but with more caustic pleasantry, he opened a 
 controversy with Malone respecting Shakspeare's wife ! It 
 seems that the poet had forgotten to mention his wife in his 
 copious will ; and his recollection of Mrs. Shakspeare seems 
 to mark the slightness of his regard, for he only introduced 
 by an interlineation, a legacy to her of his "second best bed 
 with the furniture " — and no;hing more! Malone naturally 
 inferred that the poet had forgot her, and so recollected her 
 as more strongly to mark how little he esteemed her. He 
 had already, as it is vulgarly expressed, " cut her off, not 
 indeed with a shilling, but with an old bed ! " All this seems 
 judicious, till Steevens asserts the conjugal affection of the 
 bard, tells us, that the poet having, when in health, provided 
 for her by settlement, or knowing that her father had already 
 done so, (circumstances entirely conjectural,) he bequeathed 
 to her at his death, not merely an old piece of furniture, but, 
 perhaps, as a mark of peculiar tenderness, 
 
 " The very bed that on his bridal night 
 Received him to the arms of Belvidera! " 
 
 Steevens's severity of satire marked the deep malevolence 
 of his heart ; and Murphy has strongly portrayed him in his 
 address to the Malevoli. 
 
 Such another Puck was Horace Walpole ! The King of 
 Prussia's " Letter" to Rousseau, and "The Memorial" pre- 
 tended to have been signed by noblemen and gentlemen, were 
 fabrications, as he confesses, only to make mischief. It well 
 became him, whose happier invention, the Castle of Otranto, 
 was brought forward in the guise of forgery, so unfeelingly 
 tc have reprobated the innocent inventions of a Chatterton. 
 
 We have Pucks busied among our contemporaries : who- 
 ever shall discover their history will find it copious though 
 intricate; the malignity at least will exceed, tenfold, the 
 merriment. 
 
LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 205 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 The preceding article has reminded me of a subject by no 
 means incurious to the lovers of literature. A large volume 
 might be composed on literary impostors ; their modes of 
 deception, however, were frequently repetitions ; particularly 
 those at the restoration of letters, when there prevailed a 
 mania for burying spurious antiquities, that they might after- 
 wards be brought to light to confound their contemporaries. 
 They even perplex us at the present day. More sinister 
 forgeries have been performed by Scotchmen, of whom 
 Archibald Bower, Lauder, and Macpherson, are well known. 
 
 Even harmless impostures by some unexpected accident 
 have driven an unwary inquirer out of the course. George 
 Steevens must again make his appearance for a memorable 
 trick played on the antiquary Gough. This was the famous 
 tombstone on which was engraved the drinking-horn of 
 Hardyknute, to indicate his last fatal carouse ; for this royal 
 Dane died drunk ! To prevent any doubt, the name, in 
 Saxon characters, was sufficiently legible. Steeped in pickle 
 to hasten a precocious antiquity, it was then consigned to the 
 corner of a broker's shop, where the antiquarian eye of 
 Gough often pored on the venerable odds and ends ; it per- 
 fectly succeeded on the " Director of the Antiquarian So- 
 ciety." He purchased the relic for a trifle, and dissertations 
 of a due size were preparing for the Archasologia ! * Gough 
 never forgave himself nor Steevens for this flagrant act of 
 inepitude. On every occasion in the Gentleman's Magazine, 
 when compelled to notice this illustrious imposition, he 
 
 * I have since been informed that this famous invention was originally 
 a flim-flam of a Mr. Thomas White, a noted collector and dealer in anti- 
 quities. But it was Steevens who placed it in the broker's shop, where he 
 was certain of catching the antiquary. When the late Mr. Pegge, a pro- 
 found brother, was preparing to write a dissertation on it, the first inventor 
 of the flam stepped forward to save any further tragical termination; the 
 wicked wit had already succeeded too well ! 
 
200 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 always struck out his own name, and muffled himself up 
 under his titular office of " The Director ! " Gough never 
 knew that this " modern antique " was only a piece of retalia- 
 tion. In reviewing Masters's Life of Baker he found two 
 heads, one scratched down from painted glass by George 
 Steevens, who would have passed it off for a portrait of one 
 of our kings. Gough, on the watch to have a fling at George 
 Steevens, attacked his graphic performance, and reprobated 
 a portrait which had nothing human in it ! Steevens vowed, 
 that, wretched as Gough deemed his pencil to be, it should 
 make " The Director " ashamed of his own eyes, and be fairly 
 taken in by something scratched much worse. Such was the 
 origin of his adoption of this fragment of a chimney-slab, 
 which I have seen, and with a better judge wondered at 
 the injudicious antiquary, who could have been duped by 
 flie slight and ill-formed scratches, and even with a false 
 spelling of the name, which however succeeded in being 
 passed off as a genuine Saxon inscription: but he had 
 counted on his man.* The trick is not so original as it 
 seems. One De Grassis had engraved on marble the epitaph 
 of a mule, which he buried in his vineyard : some time after, 
 having ordered a new plantation on the spot, the diggers 
 could not fail of disinterring what lay ready for them. The 
 inscription imported that one Publius Grassus had raised this 
 monument to Ins mule ! De Grassis gave it out as an odd 
 coincidence of names, and a prophecy about his own mule ! 
 
 * The stone may be found in the British Museum. HARDENVT is the 
 reading on the Harthacnut stone; but the true orthography of the name is 
 FIARBAENVT. 
 
 Sylvanus Urban, my once excellent and old friend, seems a trifle un- 
 courteous on this grave occasion — He tells us, however, that " The history 
 of this wanton trick, with a facsimile of Schnebbelie's drawing, may be 
 seen in his volume Ix. p. 217." He says that this wicked contrivance of 
 George Steevens was to entrap this famous draftsman ! Does Sylvanus 
 then deny that "the Director" was not also "entrapped? " and that he 
 always struck out his own name in the proof-sheets of the Magazine, sub- 
 stituting his official designation, by which the whole society itself seemed 
 to screen " the Director! " 
 
LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 207 
 
 It was a simple joke ! The marble was thrown by, and no 
 more thought of. Several years after it rose into celebrity, 
 for with the erudite it then passed for an ancient inscription, 
 and the antiquary Poracchi inserted the epitaph in his work 
 on " Burials." Thus De Grassis and his mule, equally 
 respectable, would have come down to posterity, had not the 
 story by some means got wind ! An incident of this nature 
 is recorded in Portuguese history, contrived with the inten- 
 tion to keep up the national spirit, and diffuse hopes of the 
 new enterprise of Vasco de Gama, who had just sailed on a 
 voyage of discovery to the Indies. Three stones were dis- 
 covered near Cintra, bearing in ancient characters a Latin 
 inscription ; a sibylline oracle addressed prophetically " To 
 the inhabitants of the West ! " stating that when these three 
 stones shall be found, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Tagus, 
 should exchange their commodities ! This was the pious 
 fraud of a Portuguese poet, sanctioned by the approbation 
 of the king. When the stones had lain a sufficient time in 
 the damp earth, so as to become apparently antique, our poet 
 invited a numerous party to a dinner at his country-house ; 
 in the midst of the entertainment a peasant rushed in, an- 
 nouncing the sudden discovery of this treasure ! The in- 
 scription was placed among the royal collections as a sacred 
 curiosity ! The prophecy was accomplished, and the oracle 
 was long considered genuine ! 
 
 In such cases no mischief resulted ; the annals of mankind 
 were not confused by spurious dynasties and fabulous chro- 
 nologies ; but when literary forgeries are published by those 
 whose character hardly admits of a suspicion that they are 
 themselves the impostors, the difficulty of assigning a motive 
 only increases that of forming a decision ; to adopt or reject 
 them may be equally dangerous. 
 
 In this class we must place Annius of Viterbo, who pub- 
 lished a pretended collection of historians of the remotest 
 antiquity, some of whose names had descended to us in the 
 works of ancient writers, while their works themselves had 
 
208 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 been lost. Afterwards he subjoined commentaries to confirm 
 their authority by passages from known authors. These at 
 first were eagerly accepted by the learned ; the blunders of 
 the presumed editor, one of which was his mistaking the 
 right name of the historian he forged, were gradually de- 
 tected, till at length the imposture was apparent ! The pre- 
 tended originals were more remarkable for their number 
 than their volume ; for the whole collection does not exceed 
 171 pages, which lessened the difficulty of the forgery; 
 while the commentaries which were afterwards published, 
 must have been manufactured at the same time as the text. 
 In favour of Annius, the high rank he occupied at the Roman 
 court, his irreproachable conduct, and his declaration that he 
 had recovered some of these fragments at Mantua, and that 
 others had come from Armenia, induced many to credit 
 these pseudo-historians. A literary war soon kindled ; 
 Niceron has discriminated between four parties engaged in 
 this conflict. One party decried the whole of the collection 
 as gross forgeries ; another obstinately supported their au- 
 thenticity ; a third decided that they were forgeries before 
 Annius possessed them, who was only credulous; while a 
 fourth party considered them as partly authentic, and 
 ascribed their blunders to the interpolations of the editor, to 
 increase their importance. Such as they were, they scattered 
 confusion over the whole face of history. The false Berosus 
 opens his history before the deluge, when, according to him, 
 the Chaldeans through preceding ages had faithfully pre- 
 served their historical evidences ! Annius hints, in his 
 commentary, at the archives and public libraries of the 
 Babylonians: the days of Noah comparatively seemed 
 modern history with this dreaming editor. Some of the 
 fanciful writers of Italy were duped : Sansovino, to delight 
 the Florentine nobility, accommodated them with a new title 
 of antiquity in their ancestor Noah, Imperatore e monarcha 
 delle genti, visse e mori in quelle parti. The Spaniards com- 
 plained that in forging these fabulous origins of different 
 
LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 209 
 
 nations, a new series of kings from the ark of Noah had been 
 introduced by some of their rhodoraontade historians to pol- 
 lute the sources of their history. Bodin's otherwise valuable 
 works are considerably injured by Annius's supposititious 
 discoveries. One historian died of grief, for having raised 
 his elaborate speculations on these fabulous originals ; and 
 their credit was at length so much reduced, that Pignoria 
 and Maffei both announced to their readers that they had 
 not referred in their works to the pretended writers of An- 
 nius ! Yet, to the present hour, these presumed forgeries 
 are not always given up. The problem remains unsolved 
 — and the silence of the respectable Annius, in regard to the 
 forgery, as well as what he affirmed when alive, leave us in 
 doubt whether he really intended to laugh at the world by 
 these fairy tales of the giants of antiquity. Sanchoniathon, 
 as preserved by Eusebius, may be classed among these an- 
 cient writings, or forgeries, and has been equally rejected 
 and defended. 
 
 Another literary forgery, supposed to have been grafted 
 on those of Annius, involved the Inghirami family. It was 
 by digging in their grounds that they discovered a number 
 of Etruscan antiquities, consisting of inscriptions, and also 
 fragments of a chronicle, pretended to have been composed 
 sixty years before the vulgar era. The characters on the 
 marbles were the ancient Etruscan, and the historical work 
 tended to confirm the pretended discoveries of Annius. They 
 were collected and enshrined in a magnificent folio by Cur- 
 tius Inghirami, who, a few years after, published a quarto 
 volume exceeding one thousand pages to support their au- 
 thenticity. Notwithstanding the erudition of the forger, 
 these monuments of antiquity betrayed their modern condi- 
 ment. There were uncial letters which no one knew ; but 
 these were said to be undiscovered ancient Etruscan charac- 
 ters ; it was more difficult to defend the small italic letters, 
 for they were not used in the age assigned to them ; besides 
 that there were dots on the letter i, a custom not practised 
 
 VOL. IV. 14 
 
210 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 till the eleventh century. The style was copied from the 
 Latin of the Psalms and the Breviary ; but Inghirami dis- 
 covered that there had been an intercourse between the 
 Etruscans and the Hebrews, and that David had imitated 
 the writings of Noah and his descendants ! Of Noah the 
 chronicle details speeches and anecdotes ! 
 
 The Romans, who have preserved so much of the Etrus* 
 cans, had not, however, noticed a single fact recorded in 
 these Etruscan antiquities. Inghirami replied, that the 
 manuscript was the work of the secretary of the college of 
 the Etrurian augurs, who alone was permitted to draw his 
 materials from the archives, and who, it would seem, was 
 the only scribe who has favoured posterity with so much 
 secret history. It was urged in favour of the authenticity 
 of these Etruscan monuments, that Inghirami was so young 
 an antiquary at the time of the discovery, that he could not 
 even explain them ; and that when fresh researches were 
 made on the spot, other similar monuments were also disin- 
 terred, where evidently they had long lain ; the whole affair, 
 however contrived, was confined to the Inghirami family. 
 One of them, half a century before, had been the librarian 1 
 of the Vatican, and to him is ascribed the honour of the 
 forgeries which he buried where he was sure they would be 
 found. This, however, is a mere conjecture ! Inghirami, 
 who published and defended their authenticity, was not con- 
 cerned in their fabrication ; the design was probably merely 
 to raise the antiquity of Volaterra, the family estate of the 
 Inghirami ; and for this purpose one of its learned branches 
 had bequeathed his posterity a collection of spurious historical 
 monuments, which tended to overturn all received ideas on 
 the first ages of history.* 
 
 It was probably such impostures, and those of false de- 
 
 * The volume of these pretended Antiquities is entitled Elruscarum An- 
 tiquitatum Fragmenta, fo. Franc. 1637. That which Inghirami published 
 to defend their authenticity is in Italian, Discorso sopra V Opposizioni faite 
 alV Antichita Toscane, ito. Firenze, 1645. 
 
LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 211 
 
 cretals of Isidore, which were forged for the maintenance 
 of the papal supremacy, and for eight hundred years formed 
 the fundamental basis of the canon law, the discipline of the 
 church, and even the faith of Christianity, which led to the 
 monstrous pyrrhonism of father Hardouin, who, with im- 
 mense erudition, had persuaded himself, that, excepting the 
 Bible and Homer, Herodotus, Plautus, Pliny the elder, with 
 fragments of Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, all the remains of 
 classical literature were forgeries of the thirteenth and four- 
 teenth centuries ! In two dissertations he imagined that he 
 had proved that the iEneid was not written by Virgil, nor 
 the Odes of Horace by that poet. Hardouin was one of 
 those wrong-headed men, who once having fallen into a delu- 
 sion, whatever afterwards occurs to them on their favourite 
 subject only tends to strengthen it. He died in his own faith ! 
 He seems not to have been aware, that by ascribing such 
 prodigal inventions as Plutarch, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, 
 and other historians, to the men he did, he was raising up an 
 unparalleled age of learning and genius when monks could 
 only write meagre chronicles, while learning and genius them- 
 selves lay in an enchanted slumber with a suspension of all 
 their vital powers. 
 
 There are numerous instances of the forgeries of smaller 
 documents. The Prayer-Book of Columbus, presented to 
 him by the Pope, which the great discoverer of a new world 
 bequeathed to the Genoese republic, has a codicil in his own 
 writing as one of the leaves testifies, but as volumes com- 
 posed against its authenticity deny. The famous description 
 in Petrarch's Virgil, so often quoted, of his first rencontre 
 with Laura in the church of St. Clair on a Good Friday, 
 6 April, 1327, it has been recently attempted to be shown is 
 a forgery. By calculation, it appears that the 6 April, 1327, 
 fell on a Monday ! The Good Friday seems to have been a 
 blunder of the manufacturer of the note. He was entrapped 
 by reading the second sonnet, as it appears in the printed 
 editions ! 
 
212 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 u Era il giorno ch' al sol si scolorana 
 Per la pieta del suo fattore i rai." 
 
 " It was on the day when the rays of the sun were obscured 
 by compassion for his Maker." The forger imagined this 
 description alluded to Good Friday and the eclipse at the 
 Crucifixion. But how stands the passage in the MS. in 
 the Imperial Library of Vienna, which Abbe Costaing has 
 found ? 
 
 " Era il giorno ch' al sol di color raro 
 Parve la pieta da suo fattore, ai rai 
 Quand Io fu preso; e non mi guardai 
 Che ben vostri occhi dentro mi legaro." 
 
 " It was on the day that I was captivated, devotion for its 
 Maker appeared in the rays of a brilliant sun, and I did not 
 well consider that it was your eyes that enchained me ! " 
 
 The first meeting, according to the Abbe Costaing, was 
 not in a church, but in a meadow — as appears by the ninety- 
 first sonnet. The Laura of Sade was not the Laura of Pe- 
 trarch ; but Laura de Baux, unmarried, and who died young, 
 residing in the vicinity of Vaucluse. Petrarch had often 
 viewed her from his own window, and often enjoyed her so- 
 ciety amidst her family.* If the Abbe Costaing's discovery 
 be confirmed, the good name of Petrarch is freed from the 
 idle romantic passion for a married woman. It would be cu- 
 rious if the famous story of the first meeting with Laura in 
 the church of St. Clair originated in the blunder of the forg- 
 er's misconception of a passage which was incorrectly printed, 
 as appears by existing manuscripts ! 
 
 Literary forgeries have been introduced into bibliography ; 
 dates have been altered ; fictitious titles affixed ; and books 
 
 * I draw this information from a little "new year's gift," which my 
 learned friend, the Rev. S. Weston, presented to his friends in 1822, enti- 
 tled " A Visit to Vaucluse," accompanied by a Supplement. He derives 
 his account apparently from a curious publication of L'Abbe" Costaing de 
 Pusigner d' Avignon, which I with other inquirers have not been able to 
 procure, but which it is absolutely necessary to examine, before we can 
 decide on the very curious but unsatisfactory accounts we have hitherto 
 possessed of the Laura of Petrarch. 
 
LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 213 
 
 have been reprinted, either to leave out or to interpolate 
 whole passages ! I forbear entering minutely into this part 
 of the history of literary forgery, for this article has already 
 grown voluminous. When we discover, however, that one of 
 the most magnificent of amateurs, and one of the most crit- 
 ical of bibliographers, were concerned in a forgery of this 
 nature, it may be useful to spread an alarm among collectors. 
 The Duke de la Valliere, and the Abbe de St. Leger, once 
 concerted together to supply the eager purchaser of literary 
 rarities with a copy of De Tribus Impostoribus, a book, by 
 the date, pretended to have been printed in 1598, though, 
 probably, a modern forgery of 1698. The title of such a 
 work had long existed by rumour, but never was a copy seen 
 by man ! Works printed with this title have all been 
 proved to be modern fabrications. A copy, however, of the 
 introuvable original was sold at the Duke de la Valliere's 
 sale ! The history of this volume is curious. The Duke 
 and the Abbe having manufactured a text, had it printed in 
 the old Gothic character, under the title De Tribus Imposto- 
 ribus. They proposed to put the great bibliopolist, De Bure, 
 in good humour, whose agency would sanction the imposture. 
 They were afterwards to dole out copies at twenty-five louis 
 each, which would have been a reasonable price for a book 
 which no one ever saw ! They invited De Bure to dinner, 
 flattered and cajoled him, and, as they imagined at a moment 
 they had wound him up to their pitch, they exhibited their 
 manufacture; the keen-eyed glance of the renowned cata- 
 loguer of the " Bibliographic Instructive " instantly shot like 
 lightning over it, and, like lightning, destroyed the whole edi- 
 tion. He not only discovered the forgery, but reprobated it ! 
 He refused his sanction ; and the forging Duke and Abbe, in 
 confusion, suppressed the livre introuvable ; but they owed 
 a grudge to the honest bibliographer, and attempted to write 
 down the work whence the De Bures derive their fame. 
 
 Among the extraordinary literary impostors of our age, if 
 we except Lauder, who, detected by the Ithuriel pen of 
 
214 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 Bishop Douglas, lived to make his public recantation of his 
 audacious forgeries, and Chatterton, who has buried his inex- 
 plicable story in his own grave ; a tale, which seems but half 
 told : we must place a man well known in the literary world 
 under the assumed name of George Psalmanazar. He com- 
 posed his autobiography as the penance of contrition, not to 
 be published till he was no more, when all human motives 
 have ceased which might cause his veracity to be suspected. 
 The life is tedious ; but I have curiously traced the progress 
 of the mind in an ingenious imposture, which is worth pre- 
 servation. The present literary forgery consisted of personat- 
 ing a converted islander of Formosa: a place then little known 
 but by the reports of the Jesuits, and constructing a language 
 and a history of a new people, and a new religion, entirely 
 of his own invention ! This man was evidently a native of 
 the south of France ; educated in some provincial college of 
 the Jesuits, where he had heard much of their discoveries of 
 Japan ; he had looked over their maps, and listened to their 
 comments. He forgot the manner in which the Japanese 
 wrote ; but supposed, like orientalists, they wrote from the 
 right to the left, which he found difficult to manage. He set 
 about excogitating an alphabet ; but actually forgot to give 
 names to his letters, which afterwards baffled him before 
 literary men. 
 
 He fell into gross blunders ; having inadvertently affirmed 
 that the Formosans sacrificed eighteen thousand male infants 
 annually, he persisted in not lessening the number. It was 
 proved to be an impossibility in so small an island, without 
 occasioning a depopulation. He had made it a principle in 
 this imposture never to vary when he had once said a thing. 
 All this was projected in haste, fearful of detection by those 
 about him. 
 
 He was himself surprised at his facility of invention, and 
 the progress of his forgery. He had formed an alphabet, a 
 considerable portion of a new language, a grammar, a new 
 division of the year into twenty months, and a new religion ! 
 
LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 215 
 
 He had accustomed himself to write his language ; but being 
 an inexpert writer with the unusual way of writing back- 
 wards, he found this so difficult, that he was compelled to 
 change the complicated forms of some of his letters. He now 
 finally quitted his home, assuming the character of a Forin- 
 osan convert, who had been educated by the Jesuits. He was 
 then in his fifteenth or sixteenth year. To support his new 
 character, he practised some religious mummeries ; he was 
 seen worshipping the rising and setting sun. He made a 
 prayer-book with rude drawings of the sun, moon, and stars, 
 to which he added some gibberish prose and verse, written in 
 his invented character, muttering or chanting it, as the hu- 
 mour took him. His custom of eating raw flesh seemed to 
 assist his deception more than the sun and moon. 
 
 In a garrison at Sluys he found a Scotch regiment in the 
 Dutch pay ; the commander had the curiosity to invite our 
 Formosan to confer with Lines, the chaplain to his regiment. 
 This Innes was probably the chief cause of the imposture 
 being carried to the extent it afterwards reached. Innes 
 was a clergyman, but a disgrace to his cloth. As soon as he 
 fixed his eye on our Formosan, he hit on a project ; it was 
 nothing less than to make Psalmanazar the ladder of his own 
 ambition, and the stepping-place for him to climb up to a 
 good living! Innes was a worthless character ; as afterwards 
 appeared, when by an audacious imposition Innes practised 
 on the Bishop of London, he avowed himself to be the author 
 of an anonymous work, entitled "A Modest Inquiry after 
 Moral Virtue ; " for this he obtained a good living in Essex : 
 the real author, a poor Scotch clergyman, obliged him after- 
 wards to disclaim the work in print, and to pay him the 
 profit of the edition which Innes had made ! He lost his 
 character, and retired to the solitude of his living; if not 
 penitent, at least mortified. 
 
 Such a character was exactly adapted to become the foster- 
 father of imposture. Innes courted the Formosan, and 
 easily won on the adventurer, who had hitherto in vain 
 
216 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 sought for a patron. Meanwhile no time was lost by Innes 
 to inform the unsuspicious and generous Bishop of London 
 of the prize he possessed — to convert the Formosan was his 
 ostensible pretext ; to procure preferment his concealed mo- 
 tive. It is curious enough to observe, that the ardour of 
 conversion died away in Innes, and the most marked neglect 
 of his convert prevailed, while the answer of the bishop was 
 protracted or doubtful. He had at first proposed to our 
 Formosan impostor to procure his discharge, and convey him 
 to England ; this was eagerly consented to by our pliant ad- 
 venturer. A few Dutch schellings, and fair words, kept him 
 in good humour ; but no letter coming from the bishop, there 
 were fewer words, and not a stiver ! This threw a new light 
 over the character of Innes to the inexperienced youth. 
 Psalmanazar sagaciously now turned all his attention to some 
 Dutch ministers ; Innes grew jealous lest they should pluck 
 the bird which he had already in his net. He resolved to 
 baptize the impostor — which only the more convinced Psal- 
 manazar that Innes was one himself ; for before this time 
 Innes had practised a stratagem on him, which had clearly 
 shown what sort of a man his Formosan was. 
 
 This stratagem was this : he made him translate a passage 
 in Cicero, of some length, into his pretended language, and 
 give it him in writing ; this was easily done by Psalmanazar's 
 facility of inventing characters. After Innes had made him 
 construe it, he desired to have another version of it on an- 
 other paper. The proposal, and the arch manner of making 
 it, threw our impostor into the most visible confusion. He 
 had had but a short time to invent the first paper, less to 
 recollect it ; so that in the second transcript not above half 
 the words were to be found which existed in the first. Innes 
 assumed a solemn air, and Psalmanazar was on the point of 
 throwing himself on his mercy, but Innes did not wish to 
 unmask the impostor ; he was rather desirous of fitting the 
 mask closer to his face. Psalmanazar, in this hard trial, had 
 given evidence of uncommon facility, combined with a singu- 
 
LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 217 
 
 lar memory. Innes cleared his brow, smiled with a friendly 
 look, and only hinted in a distant manner, that he ought to 
 be careful to be better provided for the future ! An advice 
 which Psalmanazar afterwards bore in mind, and at length 
 produced the forgery of an entire new language ; and which, 
 he remarkably observes, " by what I have tried since I came 
 into England, I cannot say but I could have compassed it 
 with less difficulty than can be conceived had I applied closely 
 to it." When a version of the catechism was made into the 
 pretended Formosan language, which was submitted to the 
 judgment of the first scholars, it appeared to them gram- 
 matical, and was pronounced to be a real language, from the 
 circumstance that it resembled no other ! and they could not 
 conceive that a stripling could be the inventor of a language. 
 If the reader is curious to examine this extraordinary im- 
 posture, I refer him to that literary curiosity, "An Historical 
 and Geographical Description of Formosa, with Accounts of 
 the Religion, Customs and Manners of the Inhabitants, by 
 George Psalmanazar, a Native of the said Isle," 1704; with 
 numerous plates, wretched inventions ! of their dress ! relig- 
 ious ceremonies ! their tabernacle and altars to the sun, the 
 moon, and the ten stars ! their architecture ! the viceroy's 
 castle ! a temple ! a city house ! a countryman's house ! and 
 the Formosan alphabet ! In his conferences before the 
 Royal Society with a Jesuit just returned from China, the 
 Jesuit had certain strong suspicions that our hero was an 
 impostor. The good father remained obstinate in his own 
 conviction, but could not satisfactorily communicate it to 
 others ; and Psalmanazar, after politely asking pardon for 
 the expression, complains of the Jesuit that " he lied most 
 impudently" mentitur impudentissime ! Dr. Mead absurdly 
 insisted Psalmanazar was a Dutchman or a German ; some 
 thought him a Jesuit in disguise, a tool of the non-jurors ; 
 the catholics thought him bribed by the protestants to expose 
 their church ; the presbyterians that he was paid to explode 
 their doctrine, and cry up episcopacy ! This fabulous history 
 
218 
 
 LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 of Formosa seems to have been projected by his artful 
 prompter Lines, who put Varenius into Psalmanazar's 
 hands to assist him; trumpeted forth in the domestic and 
 foreign papers an account of this converted Formosan ; mad- 
 dened the booksellers to hurry the author, who was scarcely 
 allowed two months to produce this extraordinary volume ; 
 and as the former accounts which the public possessed of 
 this island were full of monstrous absurdities and contradic- 
 tions, these assisted the present imposture. Our forger 
 resolved not to describe new and surprising things as they 
 had done, but rather studied to clash with them, probably 
 that he might have an opportunity of pretending to correct 
 them. The first edition was immediately sold; the world 
 was more divided than ever in opinion ; in a second edition 
 he prefixed a vindication ! — the unhappy forger got about 
 twenty guineas for an imposture, whose delusion spread 
 far and wide ! Some years afterwards Psalmanazar was 
 engaged in a minor imposture ; one man had persuaded him 
 to father a white composition called the Formosan japan f 
 which was to be sold at a high price ! It was curious for its 
 whiteness, but it had its faults. The project failed, and 
 Psalmanazar considered the miscarriage of the white For- 
 mosan japan as a providential warning to repent of all his 
 impostures of Formosa ! 
 
 Among these literary forgeries may be classed several 
 ingenious ones fabricated for a political purpose. We had 
 certainly numerous ones during our civil wars in the reign 
 of Charles the First. This is not the place to continue the 
 controversy respecting the mysterious Eikon Basilike, which 
 has been ranked among them, from the ambiguous claim of 
 Gauden. A recent writer who would probably incline not 
 to leave the monarch, were he living, not only his head but 
 the little fame he might obtain by the " Verses " said to be 
 written by him at Carisbrooke Castle, would deprive him 
 also of these. Henderson's death-bed recantation is also 
 reckoned among them ; and we have a large collection of 
 
OF LITERARY FILCHERS. 
 
 219 
 
 "Letters of Sir Henry Martin to his Lady of Delight," 
 which were the satirical effusions of a wit of that day, but by 
 the price they have obtained, are probably considered as 
 genuine ones, and exhibit an amusing picture of his loose 
 rambling life.* There is a ludicrous speech of the strange 
 Earl of Pembroke, which was forged by the inimitable 
 Butler; and Sir John Birkenhead, a great humourist and 
 wit, had a busy pen in these spurious letters and speeches. 
 
 OF LITERARY FILCHERS. 
 
 An honest historian at times will have to inflict severe 
 strokes on his favourites. This has fallen to my lot, for in 
 the course of my researches, I have to record that we have 
 both forgers and purloiners, as well as other more obvious 
 impostors, in the republic of letters ! The present article 
 descends to relate anecdotes of some contrivances to possess 
 our literary curiosities by other means than by purchase; 
 and the only apology which can be alleged for the splendida 
 peccata, as St. Austin calls the virtues of the heathen, of the 
 present innocent criminals, is their excessive passion for lit- 
 erature, and otherwise the respectability of their names. 
 According to Grose's " Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar 
 Tongue," we have had celebrated collectors, both in the 
 learned and vulgar idioms. But one of them, who had some 
 reasons too to be tender on this point, distinguished this mode 
 of completing his collections, not by book-stealing, but by 
 book-coveting. On some occasions, in mercy, we must allow 
 of softening names. Were not the Spartans allowed to steal 
 from one another, and the bunglers only punished ? 
 
 It is said that Pinelli made occasional additions to his lit- 
 erary treasures sometimes by his skill in an art which lay 
 
 * Since this was published I have discovered that Harry Martin's Let- 
 ters are not forgeries, but I cannot immediately recover my authority. 
 
220 
 
 OF LITERARY FILCHERS. 
 
 much more in the hand than in the head : however, as Pinelli 
 never stirred out of his native city but once in his lifetime, 
 when the plague drove him from home, his field of action was* 
 so restricted, that we can hardly conclude that he could have 
 been so great an enterpriser in this way. No one can have 
 lost their character by this sort of exercise in a confined 
 circle, and be allowed to prosper ! A light-fingered Mercury 
 would hardly haunt the same spot : however, this is as it may 
 be ! It is probable that we owe to this species of accumula- 
 tion many precious manuscripts in the Cottonian collection. 
 It appears by the manuscript note-book of Sir Nicholas 
 Hyde, chief justice of the King's Bench from the second to 
 the seventh year of Charles the First, that Sir Robert Cotton 
 had in his library, records, evidences, leger-books, original 
 letters, and other state papers, belonging to the king ; for the 
 attorney-general of that time, to prove this, showed a copy 
 of the pardon which Sir Robert had obtained from King 
 James for embezzling records, &c* 
 
 Gough has more than insinuated that Rawlinson and his 
 friend Umfreville "lie under very strong suspicions;" and 
 he asserts that the collector of the Wilton treasures made as 
 free as Dr. Willis with his friend's coins. But he has also 
 put forth a declaration relating to Bishop More, the famous 
 collector, that " the bishop collected his library by plundering 
 those of the clergy in his diocese ; some he paid with sermons 
 or more modern books ; others, less civilly, only with a quid 
 illiterati cum libris ? " This plundering then consisted rather 
 of cajoling others out of what they knew not how to value ; 
 and this is an advantage which every skilful lover of books 
 must enjoy over those whose apprenticeship has not expired. 
 I have myself been plundered by a very dear friend of some 
 such literary curiosities, in the days of my innocence and of 
 his precocity of knowledge. However, it does appear that 
 Bishop More did actually lay violent hands in a snug corner 
 on some irresistible little charmer ; which we gather from a 
 * Lansdowne MSS. 888, in the former printed catalogue, art. 79. 
 
OF LITERARY FILCHERS. 
 
 221 
 
 precaution adopted by a friend of the bishop, who one day 
 was found busy in hiding his rarest hooks, and locking up as 
 many as he could. On being asked the reason of this odd 
 occupation, the bibliopolist ingenuously replied, " The Bishop 
 of Ely dines with me to-day." This fact is quite clear, and 
 here is another as indisputable. Sir Robert Saville writing 
 to Sir Robert Cotton, appointing an interview with the 
 founder of the Bodleian Library, cautions Sir Robert, that 
 " If he held any book so dear as that he would be loath to 
 lose it, he should not let Sir Thomas out of his sight, but set 
 ' the boke ' aside beforehand." A surprise and detection of 
 this nature has been revealed in a piece of secret history by 
 Amelot de la Houssaie, which terminated in very important 
 political consequences. He assures us that the personal 
 dislike which Pope Innocent X. bore to the French had 
 originated in his youth, when cardinal, from having been de- 
 tected in the library of an eminent French collector, of having 
 purloined a most rare volume. The delirium of a collector's 
 rage overcame even French politesse ; the Frenchman not 
 only openly accused his illustrious culprit, but was resolved 
 that he should not quit the library without replacing the pre- 
 cious volume — from accusation and denial both resolved to try 
 their strength : but in this literary wrestling-match the book 
 dropped out of the cardinal's robes ! — and from that day he 
 hated the French — at least their more curious collectors ! 
 
 Even an author on his dying bed, at those awful moments, 
 should a collector be by his side, may not be considered secure 
 from his too curious hands. Sir William Dugdale possessed 
 the minutes of King James's life, written by Camden, till 
 within a fortnight of his death ; as also Camden's own life, 
 which he had from Hacket, the author of the folio life of 
 Bishop Williams : who, adds Aubrey, " did filch it from Mr. 
 Camden, as he lay a dying ! " He afterwards corrects his 
 information, by the name of Dr. Thorndyke, which, however, 
 equally answers our purpose, to prove that even dying authors 
 may dread such collectors ! 
 
222 
 
 OF LITERARY FILCHERS. 
 
 The medallists have, I suspect, been more predatory than 
 these subtracters of our literary treasures ; not only from the 
 facility of their conveyance, but from a peculiar contrivance 
 which of all those things which admit of being secretly pur- 
 loined, can only be practised in this department — for they can 
 steal and no human hand can search them with any possi- 
 bility of detection ; they can pick a cabinet and swallow the 
 curious things, and transport them with perfect safety, to be 
 digested at their leisure. An adventure of this kind hap- 
 pened to Baron Stosch, the famous antiquary. It was in 
 looking over the gems of the royal cabinet of medals, that 
 the keeper perceived the loss of one ; his place, his pension, 
 and his reputation, were at stake; and he insisted that Baron 
 Stosch should be most minutely examined ; in this dilemma, 
 forced to confession, this erudite collector assured the keeper 
 of the royal cabinet, that the strictest search would not avail : 
 " Alas, sir ! I have it here within," he said, pointing to his 
 breast — an emetic was suggested by the learned practitioner 
 himself, probably from some former experiment. This was 
 not the first time that such a natural cabinet had been in- 
 vented ; the antiquary Vaillant, when attacked at sea by an 
 Algerine, zealously swallowed a whole series of Syrian kings ; 
 when he landed at Lyons, groaning with his concealed treas- 
 ure, he hastened to his friend, his physician, and his brother 
 antiquary Dufour, — who at first was only anxious to inquire 
 of his patient, whether the medals were of the higher empire? 
 Vaillant showed two or three, of which nature had kindly 
 relieved him. A collection of medals was left to the city of 
 Exeter, and the donor accompanied the bequest by a clause 
 in his will, that should a certain antiquary, his old friend and 
 rival, be desirous of examining the coins, he should be watched 
 by two persons, one on each side. La Croze informs us in 
 his life, that the learned Charles Patin, who has written a 
 work on medals, was one of the present race of collectors : 
 Patin offered the curators of the public library at Basle to 
 draw up a catalogue of the cabinet of Amerback there pre- 
 
OF LITERARY FILCHERS. 
 
 223 
 
 served, containing a good number of medals ; but they would 
 have been more numerous, had the catalogue-writer not dimin- 
 ished both them and his labour, by sequestrating some of the 
 most rare, which was not discovered till this plunderer of 
 antiquity was far out of their reach. 
 
 When Gough touched on this odd subject in the first edi- 
 tion of his " British Topography," " An Academic," in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1772, insinuated that this 
 charge of literary pilfering was only a jocular one ; on which 
 Gough, in his second edition, observed that this was not the 
 case, and that "one might point out enough light-Jingered 
 antiquaries in the present age, to render such a charge 
 extremely probable against earlier ones." The most extra- 
 ordinary part of this slight history is, that our public de- 
 nouncer some time after proved himself to be one of these 
 " light-fingered antiquaries : " the deed itself, however, was 
 more singular than disgraceful. At the disinterment of the 
 remains of Edward the First, around which thirty years ago 
 assembled our most erudite antiquaries, Gough was observed, 
 as Steevens used to relate, in a wrapping great-coat of un- 
 usual dimensions ; that witty and malicious " Puck," so capa- 
 ble himself of inventing mischief, easily suspected others, and 
 divided his glance as much on the living piece of antiquity as 
 on the elder. In the act of closing up the relics of royalty, 
 there was found wanting an entire fore-finger of Edward the 
 First ; and as the body was perfect when opened, a murmur 
 of dissatisfaction was spreading, when " Puck " directed their 
 attention to the great antiquary in the watchman's great-coat 
 — from whence — too surely was extracted Edward the First's 
 great fore-finger ! — so that " the light-fingered antiquary " was 
 recognized ten years after he denounced the race, when he 
 came to " try his hand." * 
 
 * It is probable that this story of Gough's pocketing the fore-finger of 
 Edward the First, was one of the malicious inventions of George Steevens, 
 after he discovered that the antiquary was among the few admitted to the 
 untombing of the royal corpse ; Steevens himself was not there ! Sylvanua 
 
224 
 
 OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 The history of Lord Bacon would be that of the intellec- 
 tual faculties, and a theme so worthy of the philosophical 
 biographer remains yet to be written. The personal narra- 
 tive of this master-genius or inventor must forever be 
 separated from the scala intellectus he was perpetually 
 ascending : and the domestic history of this creative mind 
 must be consigned to the most humiliating chapter in the 
 volume of human life ; a chapter already sufficiently en- 
 larged, and which has irrefutably proved how the greatest 
 minds are not freed from the infirmities of the most vulgar. 
 
 The parent of our philosophy is now to be considered in 
 a new light, one which others do not appear to have observed. 
 My researches into contemporary notices of Bacon have 
 often convinced me that his philosophical works, in his own 
 days and among his own countrymen, were not only not 
 comprehended, but often ridiculed, and sometimes reprobated ; 
 that they were the occasion of many slights and mortifications 
 which this depreciated man endured ; but that from a very 
 early period in his life, to that last record of his feelings 
 which appears in his will, this " servant of posterity," as he 
 prophetically called himself, sustained his mighty spirit with 
 the confidence of his own posthumous greatness. Bacon cast 
 his views through the maturity of ages, and perhaps amidst 
 the skeptics and the rejectors of his plans, may have felt at 
 
 Urban (the late respected John Nichols) who must know much more than 
 he cares to record of " Puck," — has, howevei*, given the following " secret 
 history" of what he calls " ungentlemanly and unwarrantable attacks" 
 on Gough, by Steevens. It seems that Steevens was a collector of the 
 works of Hogarth, and while engaged in forming his collection, wrote an 
 abrupt letter to Gough to obtain from him some early impressions, by pur- 
 chase or exchange. Gough resented the manner of his address by a rough 
 refusal, for it is admitted to have been " a peremptory one." Thus arose 
 the implacable vengeance of Steevens, who used to boast that all the mis- 
 chievous tricks he played on the grave antiquary, who was rarely over- 
 kind to any one, was but a pleasant kind of revenge. 
 
OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 225 
 
 times all that idolatry of fame, which has now consecrated 
 his philosophical works. 
 
 At college, Bacon discovered how " that scrap of Grecian 
 knowledge, the peripatetic philosophy," and the scholastic 
 babble, could not serve the ends and purposes of knowledge ; 
 that syllogisms were not thing*, and that a new logic might 
 teach us to invent and judge by induction. He found that 
 theories were to be built upon experiments. When a young 
 man, abroad, he began to make those observations on nature, 
 which afterwards led on to the foundations of the new 
 philosophy. At sixteen, he philosophized; at twenty-six, he 
 had framed his system into some form ; and after forty years 
 of continued labours, unfinished to his last hour, he left 
 behind him sufficient to found the great philosophical refor- 
 mation. 
 
 On his entrance into active life, study was not however his 
 prime object. With his fortune to make, his court connec- 
 tions and his father's example opened a path for ambition. 
 He chose the practice of common law as his means, while 
 his inclinations were looking upwards to political affairs as 
 his end. A passion for study however had strongly marked 
 him ; he had read much more than was required in his pro- 
 fessional character, and this circumstance excited the mean 
 jealousies of the minister Cecil, and the attorney-general 
 Coke. Both were mere practical men of business, whose 
 narrow conceptions and whose stubborn habits assume, that 
 whenever a man acquires much knowledge foreign to his 
 profession, he will know less of professional knowledge than 
 he ought. These men of strong minds, yet limited capaci- 
 ties, hold in contempt all studies alien to their habits. 
 
 Bacon early aspired to the situation of solicitor-general ; 
 the court of Elizabeth was divided into factions ; Bacon 
 adopted the interests of the generous Essex, which were in- 
 imical to the party of Cecil. The queen, from his boyhood, 
 was delighted by conversing with her " young lord-keeper," 
 as she early distinguished the precocious gravity and the in- 
 
 VOL. IV. 15 
 
226 
 
 OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 genious turn of mind of the future philosopher. It was un- 
 questionably to attract her favour, that Bacon presented to 
 the queen his " Maxims and Elements of the Common Law," 
 not published till after his death. Elizabeth suffered her 
 minister to form her opinions on the legal character of Bacon. 
 It was alleged that Bacon was addicted to more general 
 pursuits than law, and the miscellaneous books which he was 
 known to have read confirmed the accusation. This was 
 urged as a reason why the post of solicitor-general should 
 not be conferred on a man of speculation, more likely to dis- 
 tract than to direct her affairs. Elizabeth, in the height of 
 that political prudence which marked her character, was 
 swayed by the vulgar notion of Cecil, and believed that 
 Bacon, who afterwards filled the situation both of solicitor- 
 general and lord chancellor, was "a man rather of show 
 than of depth." We have recently been told by a great 
 lawyer, that " Bacon was a master." 
 
 On the accession of James the First, when Bacon still 
 found the same party obstructing his political advancement, 
 he appears, in some momentary fit of disgust, to have medi- 
 tated on a retreat into a foreign country; a circumstance 
 which has happened to several of our men of genius, during 
 a fever of solitary indignation. He was for some time thrown 
 out of the sunshine of life, but he found its shade more fitted 
 for contemplation ; and, unquestionably, philosophy was 
 benefited by his solitude at Gray's Inn. His hand was 
 always on his work, and better thoughts will find an easy 
 entrance into the mind of those who feed on their thoughts, 
 and live amidst their reveries. In a letter on this occasion, 
 he writes, " My ambition now I shall only put upon my pen, 
 whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit, of 
 the times succeeding." And many years after, when he 
 had finally quitted public life, he told the king, " I would live 
 to study, and not study to live : yet I am prepared for date 
 obolum Belisario ; and, I that have borne a bag, can bear a 
 wallet." 
 
OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 227 
 
 Ever were the times succeeding in his mind. In that 
 delightful Latin letter to Father Fulgentio, where, with the 
 simplicity of true grandeur, he takes a view of all his works, 
 and in which he describes himself as " one who served pos- 
 terity," in communicating his past and his future designs, he 
 adds that " they require some ages for the ripening of them." 
 There, while he despairs of finishing what was intended for 
 the sixth part of his Instauration, how nobly he despairs ! 
 " Of the perfecting this I have cast away all hopes ; but in 
 future ages, perhaps, the design may bud again." And he 
 concludes by avowing, that the zeal and constancy of his 
 mind in the great design, after so many years, had never 
 become cold and indifferent. He remembers how, forty 
 years ago, he had composed a juvenile work about those 
 things, which with confidence, but with too pompous a title, 
 he had called Temporis Partus Maximus ; the great birth 
 of time ! Besides the public dedication of his Novum 
 Organum to James the First, he accompanied it with a 
 private letter. He wishes the king's favour to the work, 
 which he accounts as much as a hundred years' time ; for he 
 adds, " I am persuaded the work will gain upon men's minds 
 in ages." 
 
 In his last will appears his remarkable legacy of fame. 
 " My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to 
 mine own countrymen, after some time be past over." 
 Time seemed always personated in the imagination of our 
 philosopher, and with time he wrestled with a consciousness 
 of triumph. 
 
 I shall now bring forward sufficient evidence to prove how 
 little Bacon was understood, and how much he was even 
 despised, in his philosophical character. 
 
 In those prescient views by which the genius of Verulam 
 has often anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of 
 succeeding times, there was one important object which even 
 his foresight does not appear to have contemplated. Lord 
 Bacon did not foresee that the English language would one 
 
228 
 
 OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 day be capable of embalming all that philosophy can discover, 
 or poetry can invent ; that his country would at length pos- 
 sess a national literature of its own, and that it would exult 
 in classical compositions which might be appreciated with the 
 finest models of antiquity. His. taste was far unequal to his 
 invention. So little did he esteem the language of his coun- 
 try, that his favourite works are composed in Latin ; and he 
 was anxious to have what he had written in English pre- 
 served in that" universal language which may last as long as 
 books last." It would have surprised Bacon to have been 
 told, that the most learned men in Europe have studied Eng- 
 lish authors to learn to think and to write. Our philosopher 
 was surely somewhat mortified, when in his dedication of the 
 Essays he observed, that " of all my other works my Essays 
 have been most current ; for that, as it seems, they come 
 home to men's business and bosoms." It is too much to hope 
 to find in a vast and profound inventor a writer also who be- 
 stows immortality on his language. The English language 
 is the only object in his great survey of art and of nature, 
 which owes nothing of its excellence to the genius of Bacon. 
 
 He had reason indeed to be mortified at the reception of 
 his philosophical works ; and Dr. Rawley, even some years 
 after the death of his illustrious master, had occasion to ob- 
 serve, that " His fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign 
 parts abroad than at home in his own nation ; thereby veri- 
 fying that divine sentence, a prophet is not without honour, 
 save in his own country and in his own house." Even the 
 men of genius, who ought to have comprehended this new 
 source of knowledge thus opened to them, reluctantly entered 
 into it ; so repugnant are we suddenly to give up ancient 
 errors which time and habit have made a part of ourselves. 
 Harvey, who himself experienced the sluggish obstinacy of 
 the learned, which repelled a great but a novel discovery, 
 could however in his turn deride the amazing novelty of 
 Bacon's Novum Organum. Harvey said to Aubrey, that 
 " Bacon was no great philosopher ; he writes philosophy like 
 
OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 229 
 
 a lord chancellor." It has been suggested to me that Bacon's 
 philosophical writings have been much overrated. — His ex 
 perimental philosophy from the era in which they were pro- 
 duced must be necessarily defective : the time he gave to 
 them could only have been had at spare hours ; but like the 
 great prophet on the mount, Bacon was doomed to view the 
 land afar, which he himself could never enter. 
 
 Bacon found but small encouragement for his new learning 
 among the most eminent scholars, to whom he submitted his 
 early discoveries. A very copious letter by Sir Thomas 
 Bodley on Bacon's desiring him to return the manuscript of 
 the Cogitata et Visa, some portion of the Novum Organum, 
 has come down to us ; it is replete with objections to the new 
 philosophy. " I am one of that crew," says Sir Thomas, 
 " that say we possess a far greater holdfast of certainty in 
 the sciences than you will seem to acknowledge." He gives 
 a hint too that Solomon complained " of the infinite making 
 of books in his time ; " that all Bacon delivers is only " by 
 averment without other force of argument, to disclaim all our 
 axioms, maxims, &c. left by tradition from our elders unto 
 us, which have passed all probations of the sharpest wits 
 that ever were ; " and he concludes, that the end of all Ba- 
 con's philosophy, by " a fresh creating new principles of 
 sciences, would be to be dispossessed of the learning we 
 have ; " and he fears that it would require as many ages as 
 have marched before us that knowledge should be perfectly 
 achieved. Bodley truly compares himself to " the carrier's 
 horse, which cannot blanch the beaten way in which I was 
 trained." * 
 
 Bacon did not lose heart by the timidity of the " carrier's 
 horse : " a smart vivacious note in return shows his quick ap- 
 prehension. 
 
 " As I am going to my house in the country, I shall want 
 my papers, which I beg you therefore to return. You are 
 slothful, and you help me nothing, so that I am half in con- 
 * This letter may be found in Reliquiae Bodleiarue, p. 369. 
 
230 
 
 OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 ceit you affect not the argument ; for myself I know well you 
 love and affect. I can say no more, but non canimus surdis, 
 respondent omnia sylvce. If you be not of the lodgings 
 chalked up, whereof I speak in my preface, I am but to pass 
 by your door. But if I had you a fortnight at Gorhambury, 
 I would make you tell another tale ; or else I would add a 
 cogitation against libraries, and be revenged on you that 
 way." 
 
 A keen but playful retort of a great author too conscious 
 of his own views to be angry with his critic ! The singular 
 phrase of the lodgings chalked up is a sarcasm explained by 
 this passage in " The Advancement of Learning." " As 
 Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of the 
 French for Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands 
 to mark up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight ; so 
 I like better that entry of truth that cometh peaceably with 
 chalk to mark up those minds which are capable to lodge and 
 harbour it, than that which cometh with pugnacity and con- 
 tention." * The threatened agitation against libraries must 
 have caused Bodley's cheek to tingle. 
 
 Let us now turn from the scholastic to the men of the 
 world, and we shall see what sort of notion these critics en- 
 tertained of the philosophy of Bacon. Chamberlain writes, 
 " This week the lord chancellor hath set forth his new work, 
 called Instauratio Magna, or a kind of Novum Organum of 
 all philosophy. In sending it to the king, he wrote that he 
 wished his majesty might be so long in reading it as he hath 
 been in composing and polishing it, which is well near thirty 
 years. I have read no more than the bare title, and am not 
 greatly encouraged by Mr. Cuffe's judgment,! wno having 
 long since perused it, gave this censure, that " a fool could 
 
 # I have been favoured with this apt illustration by an anonymous com- 
 municator, who dates from the " London University." I request him to 
 accept my grateful acknowledgments. 
 
 t Henry Cuffe, secretary to Robert, Earl of Essex, and executed, being 
 concerned in his treason. A man noted for his classical acquirements and 
 his genius, who perished early in life. 
 
OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 231 
 
 not have written such a work, and a wise man would not.'' 
 A month or two afterwards we find that " the king cannot 
 forbear sometimes in reading the lord chancellor's last book 
 to say, that it is like the peace of God, that surpasseth all un- 
 derstanding." 
 
 Two years afterwards the same letter-writer proceeds with 
 another literary paragraph about Bacon. " This lord busies 
 himself altogether about books, and hath set out two lately, 
 Historia Ventorum, and De Vita et Morte, with promise of 
 more. I have yet seen neither of them, because I have not 
 leisure ; but if the life of Henry the Eighth (the Seventh), 
 which they say he is about, might come out after his own 
 manner (meaning his Moral Essays), I should find time and 
 means enough to read it." When this history made its ap- 
 pearance, the same writer observes, " My Lord Verulam's 
 history of Henry the Seventh is come forth ; I have not 
 read much of it, but they say it is a very pretty book." * 
 
 Bacon, in his vast survey of human knowledge, included 
 even its humbler provinces, and condescended to form a col- 
 lection of apophthegms : his lordship regretted the loss of a 
 collection made by Julius Cassar, while Plutarch indiscrimi- 
 nately drew much of the dregs. The wits, who could not 
 always comprehend his plans, ridiculed the sage. I shall now 
 quote a contemporary poet, whose works, for by their size 
 they may assume that distinction, were never published. A 
 Dr. Andrews wasted a sportive pen on fugitive events ; but 
 though not always deficient in humour and wit, such is the 
 freedom of his writings, that they will not often admit of 
 quotation. The following is indeed but a strange pun on 
 Bacon's title, derived from the town of St. Alban's and his 
 collection of apophthegms : — 
 
 ON LORD BACON PUBLISHING APOPHTHEGMS. 
 
 u When learned Bacon wrote Essays, 
 He did deserve and hath the praise ; 
 
 * Chamberlain adds the price of this moderate-sized folio, which was 
 six shillings. 
 
232 
 
 OF LORD BACON AT HOME. 
 
 But now he writes bis Apophthegms, 
 
 Surely he dozes or he dreams ; 
 
 One said, St. Albans now is grown unable, 
 
 And is in the high-road way — to Dunstable [i. e. Dunce-table], 
 
 To the close of his days were Lord Bacon's philosophical 
 pursuits still disregarded and depreciated by ignorance and 
 envy, in the forms of friendship or rivality. I shall now 
 give a remarkable example. Sir Edward Coke was a mere 
 great lawyer, and, like all such, had a mind so walled in by 
 law-knowledge, that in its bounded views it shut out the hori- 
 zon of the intellectual faculties, and the whole of his philos- 
 ophy lay in the statutes. In the library at Holkham there 
 must be found a presentation copy of Lord Bacon's Novum 
 Organum, the Listauratio Magna, 1620. It was given to 
 Coke, for it bears the following note on the title-page in the 
 writing of Coke : — 
 
 Edw. Coke, Ex dono authoris. 
 
 Auctori consilium: 
 Instaurare paras veterum documenta sophorum; 
 Instaura leges, justitiamque prius. 
 
 The verses not only reprove Bacon for going out of his pro- 
 fession, but must have alluded to his character as a preroga- 
 tive lawyer, and his corrupt administration of the chancery. 
 The book was published in October, 1620, a few months be- 
 fore the impeachment. And so far one may easily excuse 
 the causticity of Coke ; but how he really valued the philos- 
 ophy of Bacon appears by this : in this first edition there is 
 a device of a ship passing between Hercules's pillars ; the 
 plus ultra, the proud exultation of our philosopher. Over 
 this device Coke has written a miserable distich in English, 
 which marks his utter contempt of the philosophical pursuits 
 of his illustrious rival. This ship passing beyond the col- 
 umns of Hercules, he sarcastically conceits as " The Ship of 
 Fools," the famous satire of the German Sebastian Brandt, 
 translated by Alexander Barclay. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH. 233 
 
 " R deserveth not to be read in schools, 
 But to be freighted in the Ship of Fools." 
 
 Such then was the fate of Lord Bacon ; a history not 
 written by his biographers, but which may serve as a com- 
 ment on that obscure passage dropped from the pen of his 
 chaplain, and already quoted, that he was more valued abroad 
 than at home. 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF THE DEATH OF QUEEN 
 ELIZABETH. 
 
 It is an extraordinary circumstance in our history, that 
 the succession to the English dominion, in two remarkable 
 cases, was never settled by the possessors of the throne 
 themselves during their lifetime; and that there is every 
 reason to believe that this mighty transfer of three kingdoms 
 became the sole act of their ministers, who considered the 
 succession merely as a state expedient. Two of our most 
 able sovereigns found themselves in this predicament : Queen 
 Elizabeth and the Protector Cromwell ! Cromwell probably 
 had his reasons not to name his successor ; his positive elec- 
 tion would have dissatisfied the opposite parties of his gov- 
 ernment, whom he only ruled while he was able to cajole 
 them. He must have been aware that latterly he had need 
 of conciliating all parties to his usurpation, and was probably 
 as doubtful on his death-bed whom to appoint his successor, 
 as at any other period of his reign. Ludlow suspects that 
 Cromwell was " so discomposed in body or mind, that he 
 could not attend to that matter ; and whether he named any 
 one is to me uncertain." All that we know is the report of 
 ihe Secretary Thurlow and his chaplains, who, when the pro- 
 tector lay in his last agonies, suggested to him the propriety 
 of choosing his eldest son, and they tell us that he agreed to 
 this choice. Had Cromwell been in his senses, he would 
 
234 SECRET HISTORY OF THE 
 
 have probably fixed on Henry, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, 
 rather than on Richard, or possibly had not chosen either of 
 his sons ! 
 
 Elizabeth, from womanish infirmity, or from state-reasons, 
 could not endure the thoughts of her successor ; and long 
 threw into jeopardy the politics of all the cabinets of Europe, 
 each of which had its favourite candidate to support. The 
 legitimate heir to the throne of England was to be the 
 creature of her breath, yet Elizabeth would not speak him 
 into existence ! This had, however, often raised the discon- 
 tents of the nation, and we shall see how it harassed the 
 queen in her dying hours. It is even suspected that the 
 queen still retained so much of the woman, that she could 
 never overcome her perverse dislike to name a successor; so 
 that, according to this opinion, she died and left the crown to 
 the mercy of a party ! This would have been acting un- 
 worthy of the magnanimity of her great character — and as 
 it is ascertained that the queen was very sensible that she lay 
 in a dying state several days before the natural catastrophe 
 occurred, it is difficult to believe that she totally disregarded 
 so important a circumstance. It is therefore, reasoning a 
 'priori, most natural to conclude that the choice of a successor 
 must have occupied her thoughts, as well as the anxieties of 
 her ministers ; and that she would not have left the throne 
 in the same unsettled state at her death, as she had per- 
 severed in during her whole life. How did she express her- 
 self when bequeathing the crown to James the First, or did 
 she bequeathe it at all ? 
 
 In the popular pages of her female historian, Miss Aikin 
 has observed, that " the closing scene of the long and event- 
 ful life of Queen Elizabeth was marked by that peculiarity 
 of character and destiny which attended her from the cradle, 
 and pursued her to the grave." The last days of Elizabeth 
 were indeed most melancholy — she died a victim of the 
 higher passions, and perhaps as much of grief as of age, 
 refusing all remedies and even nourishment. But in all the 
 
DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 235 
 
 published accounts, I can nowhere discover how she con- 
 ducted herself respecting the circumstance of our present 
 inquiry. The most detailed narrative, or as Gray the poet 
 calls it, "the Earl of Monmouth's odd account of Queen 
 Elizabeth's death," is the one most deserving notice ; and 
 there we find the circumstance of this inquiry introduced. 
 The queen at that moment was reduced to so sad a state, that 
 it is doubtful whether her majesty was at all sensible of the 
 inquiries put to her by her ministers respecting the succes- 
 sion. The Earl of Monmouth says, " On Wednesday, the 
 23d of March, she grew speechless. That afternoon, by 
 signs, she called for her council, and by putting her hand to 
 her head when the King of Scots was named to succeed her, 
 they all knew he was the man she desired should reign after 
 her." Such a sign as that of a dying woman putting her 
 hand to her head was, to say the least, a very ambiguous 
 acknowledgment of the right of the Scottish monarch to the 
 English throne. The "odd" but very naive account of 
 Robert Cary, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, is not furnished 
 with dates, nor with the exactness of a diary. Something 
 might have occurred on a preceding day which had not 
 reached him. Camden describes the death-bed scene of 
 Elizabeth ; by this authentic writer it appears that she had 
 confided her state-secret of the succession to the lord admiral 
 (the Earl of Nottingham) ; and when the earl found the 
 queen almost at her extremity, he communicated her majesty's 
 secret to the council, who commissioned the lord admiral, the 
 lord keeper, and the secretary, to wait on her majesty, and 
 acquaint her that they came in the name of the rest to learn 
 her pleasure in reference to the succession. The queen was 
 then very weak, and answered them with a faint voice, that 
 3he had already declared, that as she held a regal sceptre, so 
 she desired no other than a royal successor. When the 
 secretary requested her to explain herself, the queen said, 
 " I would have a king succeed me ; and who should that be 
 but my nearest kinsman, the King of Scots ? " Here this 
 
236 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF THE 
 
 state conversation was put an end to by the interference of the 
 archbishop advising her majesty to turn her thoughts to God. 
 " Never," she replied, " has ray mind wandered from him." 
 
 An historian of Camden's high integrity would hardly 
 have forged a fiction to please the new monarch : yet Camden 
 has not been referred to on this occasion by the exact Birch, 
 who draws his information from the letters of the French 
 ambassador, Villeroy ; information which it appears the 
 English ministers had confided to this ambassador ; nor do 
 we get any distinct ideas from Elizabeth's more recent 
 popular historian, who could only transcribe the account of 
 Cary. He had told us a fact which he could not be mistaken 
 in, that the queen fell speechless on Wednesday, 23d of 
 March, on which day, however, she called her council, and 
 made that sign with her hand, which, as the lords chose to 
 understand, for ever united the two kingdoms. But the 
 noble editor of Cary's Memoirs (the Earl of Cork and 
 Orrery) has observed, that u the speeches made for Elizabeth 
 on her death-bed are all forged." Echard, Rapin, and a 
 long string of historians, make her say faintly (so faintly 
 indeed that it could not possibly be heard,) " I will that a 
 king succeed me, and who should that be but my nearest 
 kinsman, the King of Scots ? " A different account of this 
 matter will be found in the following memoirs. " She was 
 speechless, and almost expiring, when the chief counsellors 
 of state were called into her bed-chamber. As soon as they 
 were perfectly convinced that she could not utter an articulate 
 word, and scarce could hear or understand one, they named 
 the King of Scots to her, a liberty they dared not to have 
 taken if she had been able to speak ; she put her hand to her 
 head, which was probably at that time in agonizing pain. 
 The lords, who interpreted her signs just as they pleased, 
 were immediately convinced that the motion of her hand to 
 her head was a declaration of James the Sixth as her suc- 
 cessor. What was this but the unanimous interpretation of 
 persons who were adoring the rising sun ? " 
 
DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 237 
 
 This is lively and plausible ; but the noble editor did not 
 recollect that, " the speeches made by Elizabeth on her 
 death-bed," which he deems " forgeries," in consequence of 
 the circumstance he had found in Cary's Memoirs, originate 
 with Camden, and were only repeated by Rapin, and 
 Echard, &c. I am now to confirm the narrative of the elder 
 historian, as well as the circumstance related by Cary, 
 describing the sign of the queen a little differently, which 
 happened on Wednesday 23d. A hitherto unnoticed docu- 
 ment pretends to give a fuller and more circumstantial 
 account of this affair, which commenced on the preceding 
 day, when the queen retained the power of speech ; and it 
 will be confessed that the language here used has all that 
 loftiness and brevity which was the natural style of this 
 queen. I have discovered a curious document in a manu- 
 script volume formerly in the possession of Petyt, and seem- 
 ingly in his own handwriting. I do not doubt its authenticity, 
 and it could only have come from some of the illustrious 
 personages who were the actors in that solemn scene, prob- 
 ably from Cecil. This memorandum is entitled 
 
 " Account of the last words of Queen Elizabeth about her 
 Successor. 
 
 " On the Tuesday before her death, being the twenty-third 
 of March, the admiral being on the right side of her bed, the 
 lord keeper on the left, and Mr. Secretary Cecil (afterwards 
 Earl of Salisbury) at the bed's feet, all standing, the lord 
 admiral put her in mind of her speech concerning the suc- 
 cession had at Whitehall, and that they, in the name of all 
 the rest of her council, came unto her to know her pleasure 
 who should succeed ; whereunto she thus replied : 
 
 "I told you my seat had been the seat of kings, and I will 
 have no rascal to succeed me. And who should succeed me 
 but a king ? 
 
 " The lords not understanding this dark speech, and look- 
 ing one on the other ; at length Mr. Secretary boldly asked 
 her what she meant by those words, that no rascal should 
 
238 SECRET HISTORY OF THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 succeed her. Whereto she replied, that her meaning was, 
 that a king should succeed: and who, quoth she, should that 
 be but our cousin of Scotland ? 
 
 " They asked her whether that were her absolute resolu- 
 tion ? whereto she answered, 1 pray you trouble me no more ; 
 for I will have none but him. With which answer they 
 departed. 
 
 " Notwithstanding, after again, about four o'clock in the 
 afternoon the next day, being Wednesday, after the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, and other divines, had been with her, 
 and left her in a manner speechless, the three lords aforesaid 
 repaired unto her again, asking her if she remained in her 
 former resolution, and who should succeed her ? but not 
 being able to speak, was asked by Mr. Secretary in this 
 sort, ' We beseech your majesty, if you remain in your 
 former resolution, and that you would have the king of Scots 
 to succeed you in your kingdom, show some sign unto us : 
 whereat, suddenly heaving herself upwards in her bed, and 
 putting her arms out of bed, she held her hands jointly over 
 her head in manner of a crown ; whence as they guessed, 
 she signified that she did not only wish him the kingdom, 
 but desire continuance of his estate : after which they de- 
 parted, and the next morning she died. Immediately after 
 her death, all the lords, as well of the council as other noble- 
 men that were at the court, came from Richmond to White- 
 hall by six o'clock in the morning, where other noblemen 
 that were in London met them. Touching the succession, 
 after some speeches of divers competitors and matters of 
 state, at length the admiral rehearsed all the aforesaid prem- 
 ises which the late queen had spoken to him, and to the lord 
 keeper, and Mr. Secretary (Cecil,) with the manner thereof; 
 which they, being asked, did affirm to be true upon their 
 
 HONOUR." 
 
 Such is this singular document of secret history. I cannot 
 but value it as authentic, because the one part is evidently 
 alluded to by Camden, and the other is fully confirmed by 
 
JAMES THE FIRST, AS A FATHER AND A HUSBAND. 230 
 
 Cary ; and besides this, the remarkable expression of 
 " rascal " is found in the letter of the French ambassador. 
 There were two interviews with the queen, and Cary appears 
 only to have noticed the last on Wednesday, when the queen 
 lay speechless. Elizabeth all her life had persevered in an 
 obstinate mysteriousness respecting the succession, and it 
 harassed her latest moments. The second interview of her 
 ministers may seem to us quite supernumerary ; but Cary's 
 " putting her hand to her head," too meanly describes the 
 "joining her hands in manner of a crown." 
 
 JAMES THE FIRST, AS A FATHER AND A HUSBAND. 
 
 Calumnies and sarcasms have reduced the character of 
 James the First to contempt among general readers ; while 
 the narrative of historians, who have related facts in spite 
 of themselves, is in perpetual contradiction with their own 
 opinions. Perhaps no sovereign has suffered more by that 
 art, which is described by an old Irish proverb, of " killing a 
 man by lies." The surmises and the insinuations of one 
 party, dissatisfied with the established government in church 
 and state ; the misconceptions of more modern writers, who 
 have not possessed the requisite knowledge ; and the anony- 
 mous libels, sent forth at a particular period to vilify the 
 Stuarts ; all these cannot be treasured up by the philosopher 
 as the authorities of history. It is at least more honourable 
 to resist popular prejudice than to yield to it a passive obe- 
 dience ; and what we can ascertain, it would be a dereliction 
 of truth to conceal. Much can be substantiated in favour of 
 the domestic affections and habits of this pacific monarch ; 
 and those who are more intimately acquainted with the 
 secret history of the times will perceive how erroneously the 
 personal character of this sovereign is exhibited in our 
 popular historians, and often even among the few, who with 
 
240 JAMES THE FIRST, AS A FATHER AND A HUSBAND. 
 
 better information, have reechoed their preconceived opin- 
 ions. 
 
 Confining myself here to his domestic character, I shall 
 not touch on the many admirable public projects of this 
 monarch, which have extorted the praise, and even the ad- 
 miration, of some who have not spared their pens in his 
 disparagement. James the First has been taxed with pusil- 
 lanimity and foolishness ; this monarch cannot, however, be 
 reproached with having engendered them ! All his children, 
 in whose education their father was so deeply concerned, 
 sustained through life a dignified character, and a high spirit. 
 The short life of Henry was passed in a school of prowess, 
 and amidst an academy of literature. Of the king's paternal 
 solicitude, even to the hand and the letter-writing of Prince 
 Henry when young, I have preserved a proof in the article 
 of " The History of Writing-masters." Charles the First, in 
 his youth more particularly designed for a studious life, with 
 a serious character, was, however, never deficient in active 
 bravery and magnanimous fortitude. Of Elizabeth, the queen 
 of Bohemia, tried as she was by such vicissitudes of fortune, 
 it is much to be regretted that the interesting story remains 
 untold ; her buoyant spirits rose always above the perpetual 
 changes of a princely to a private state — a queen to an exile ! 
 The father of such children derives some distinction for capac- 
 ity, in having reared such a noble offspring ; and the king's 
 marked attention to the formation of his children's minds 
 was such as to have been pointed out by Ben Jonson, who, 
 in his " Gipsies Metamorphosed," rightly said of James, using 
 his native term, — 
 
 u You are an honest, good man, and have care of your Bearns " (bairns). 
 
 Among the flouts and gibes so freely bespattering the per- 
 sonal character of James the First, is one of his coldness and 
 neglect of his queen. It would, however, be difficult to 
 prove by any known fact, that James was not as indulgent 
 a husband, as he was a father. Yet even a writer so well 
 
JAMES THE FIRST, AS A FATHER AND A HUSBAND. 241 
 
 informed as Daines Barrington, who, as a lawyer, could not 
 refrain from lauding the royal sage during his visit to Den- 
 mark, on his marriage, for having borrowed three statutes 
 from the Danish code, found the king's name so provocative 
 of sarcasm, that he could not forbear observing, that James 
 "spent more time in those courts of judicature than in attend- 
 ing upon his destined consort." — " Men of all sorts have 
 taken a pride to gird at me," might this monarch have ex- 
 claimed. But every thing has two handles, saith the ancient 
 adage. Had an austere puritan chosen to observe that James 
 the First, when abroad, had lived jovially ; and had this 
 historian then dropped silently the interesting circumstance 
 of the king's " spending his time in the Danish courts of 
 judicature," the fact would have borne him out in his re- 
 proof ; and Francis Osborne, indeed, has censured James for 
 giving marks of his uxoriousness / There was no deficient 
 gallantry in the conduct of James the First to his queen ; 
 the very circumstance, that when the princess of Denmark 
 was driven by a storm back to Norway, the king resolved to 
 hasten to her, and consummate his marriage in Denmark, 
 was itself as romantic an expedition as afterwards was that 
 of his son's into Spain, and betrays no mark of that tame 
 pusillanimity with which he stands overcharged. 
 
 The character of the queen of James the First is some- 
 what obscure in our public history, for in it she makes no 
 prominent figure ; while in secret history she is more ap- 
 parent. Anne of Denmark was a spirited and enterprising 
 woman ; and it appears from a passage in Sully, whose au- 
 thority should weigh with us, although we ought to recollect 
 that it is the French minister who writes, that she seems to 
 have raised a court faction against James, and inclined to 
 favour the Spanish and catholic interests ; yet it may be 
 alleged as a strong proof of James's political wisdom, that 
 the queen was never suffered to head a formidable party, 
 though she latterly might have engaged Prince Henry in 
 that court-opposition. The bon-homie of the king, on this 
 
 VOL. IV. 16 
 
242 JAMES THE FIRST, AS A FATHER AND A HUSBAND. 
 
 subject, expressed with a simplicity of style, which, though it 
 may not be royal, is something better, appears in a letter to 
 the queen, which has been preserved in the appendix to Sir 
 David Dalrymple's collections. It is without date, but writ- 
 ten when in Scotland to quiet the queen's suspicions, that the 
 Earl of Mar, who had the care of Prince Henry, and whom 
 she wished to take out of his hands, had insinuated to the 
 king that her majesty was strongly disposed to any " popish 
 or Spanish course." This letter confirms the representation 
 of Sully ; but the extract is remarkable for the manly sim- 
 plicity of style which the king used. 
 
 " I say over again, leave these froward womanly apprehen- 
 sions, for I thank God, I carry that love and respect unto 
 you, which, by the law of God and nature, I ought to do to 
 my wife, and mother of my children ; but not for that ye are 
 a king's daughter ; for whether ye were a king's daughter, or 
 a cook's daughter, ye must be all alike to me, since my wife. 
 For the respect of your honourable birth and descent I mar- 
 ried you ; but the love and respect I now bear you is be- 
 cause that ye are my married wife, and so partaker of my 
 honour, as of my other fortunes. I beseech you excuse my 
 plainness in this, for casting up of your birth is a needless 
 impertinent argument to me (that is, not pertinent). God is 
 my witness, I ever preferred you to (for) my bairns, much 
 more than to a subject." 
 
 In an ingenious historical dissertation, but one perfectly 
 theoretical, respecting that mysterious transaction the Gowrie 
 conspiracy, Pinkerton has attempted to show that Anne of 
 Denmark was a lady somewhat inclined to intrigue, and that 
 " the king had cause to be jealous." He confesses that " he 
 cannot discover any positive charge of adultery against Anne 
 of Denmark, but merely of coquetry." * To what these 
 accusations amount it would be difficult to say. The progeny 
 
 * The historical dissertation is appended to the first volume of Mr. Mai - 
 colm Laing's " History of Scotland," who thinks that " it has placed that 
 obscure transaction in its genuine light." 
 
JAMES THE FIRST, AS A FATHER AND A HUSBAND. 243 
 
 of James the First sufficiently bespeak their family resem- 
 blance. If it be true, that " the king had ever reason to be 
 jealous," and yet that no single criminal act of the queen's 
 has been recorded, it must be confessed that one or both of 
 the parties were singularly discreet and decent ; for the king 
 never complained, and the queen was never accused, if we 
 except this burthen of an old Scottish ballad, 
 
 " the bonny Earl of Murray, 
 He was the queen's love." 
 
 Whatever may have happened in Scotland, in England the 
 queen appears to have lived occupied chiefly by the amuse- 
 ments of the court, and not to have interfered with the arcana 
 of state. She appears to have indulged a passion for the ele- 
 gancies and splendours of the age, as they were shown in 
 those gorgeous court masques with which the taste of James 
 harmonized, either from his gallantry for the queen, or his 
 own poetic sympathy. But this taste for court masques could 
 not escape the slur and scandal of the puritanic, and these 
 "high-flying fancies" are thus recorded by honest Arthur 
 Wilson, whom we summon into court as an indubitable wit- 
 ness of the mutual cordiality of this royal couple. In the 
 spirit of his party, and like Milton, he censures the taste, but 
 likes it. He says, " The court being a continued maskarado, 
 where she (the queen) and her ladies, like so many sea- 
 nymphs or Nereides, appeared often in various dresses, to the 
 ravishment of the beholders ; the king himself not being a 
 little delighted with such fluent elegancies as made the night 
 more glorious than the day." This is a direct proof that 
 James was by no means cold or negligent in his attentions to 
 his queen ; and the letter which has been given is the picture 
 of his mind. That James the First was fondly indulgent to 
 his queen, and could perform an act of chivalric gallantry 
 with all the generosity of passion, and the ingenuity of an 
 elegant mind, a pleasing anecdote which I have discovered in 
 an unpublished letter of the day will show. I give it in the 
 words of the writer. 
 
244 
 
 THE MAN OF ONE BOOK. 
 
 "August, 1613. 
 
 " At their last being at Theobalds, about a fortnight ago, 
 the queen, shooting at a deer, mistook her mark, and killed 
 Jewel, the king's most principal and special hound ; at which 
 he stormed exceedingly awhile ; but after he knew who did 
 it, he was soon pacified, and with much kindness wished her 
 not to be troubled with it, for he should love her never the 
 worse : and the next day sent her a diamond worth two 
 thousand pounds as a legacy from his dead dog. Love and 
 kindness increased daily between them." 
 
 Such is the history of a contemporary living at court, very 
 opposite to that representation of coldness and neglect with 
 which the king's temper has been so freely aspersed; and 
 such too is the true portrait of James the First in domestic 
 life. His first sensations were thoughtless and impetuous ; 
 and he would ungracefully thunder out an oath, which a puri- 
 tan would set down in his " tables," while he omitted to note 
 that this king's forgiveness and forgetfulness of personal 
 injuries were sure to follow the feeling they had excited. 
 
 THE MAN OF ONE BOOK. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, in his animated memoirs, has recently 
 acquainted us with a fact which may be deemed important in 
 the life of a literary man. He tells us, " We have been just 
 informed that Sir William Jones invariably read through 
 every year the works of Cicero, whose life indeed was the 
 great exemplar of his own." The same passion for the works 
 of Cicero has been participated by others. When the best 
 means of forming a good style were inquired of the learned 
 Arnauld, he advised the daily study of Cicero ; but it was ob- 
 served that the object was not to form a Latin, but a French 
 style : " In that case," replied Arnauld, " you must still read 
 Cicero." 
 
THE MAN OF ONE BOOK. 
 
 245 
 
 A predilection for some great author, among the vast num- 
 ber which must transiently occupy our attention, seems to be 
 the happiest preservative for our taste : accustomed to that 
 excellent author whom we have chosen for our favourite, we 
 may in this intimacy possibly resemble him. It is to be 
 feared, that if we do not form such a permanent attachment, 
 we may be acquiring knowledge, while our enervated taste 
 becomes less and less lively. Taste embalms the knowledge 
 which otherwise cannot preserve itself. He who has long 
 been intimate with one great author, will always be found to 
 be a formidable antagonist ; he has saturated his mind with 
 the excellencies of genius ; he has shaped his faculties insen- 
 sibly to himself by his model, and he is like a man who ever 
 sleeps in armour, ready at a moment ! The old Latin proverb 
 reminds us of this fact, Cave ab homine unius libri : Be cau- 
 tious of the man of one book ! 
 
 Pliny and Seneca give very safe advice on reading : that 
 we should read much, but not many books — but they had no 
 " monthly list of new publications ! " Since their days others 
 have favoured us with " Methods of Study," and " Catalogues 
 of Books to be read." Vain attempts to circumscribe that 
 invisible circle of human knowledge which is perpetually en- 
 larging itself! The multiplicity of books is an evil for the 
 many ; for we now find an helluo librorum not only among 
 the learned, but, with their pardon, among the unlearned; 
 for those who, even to the prejudice of their health, persist 
 only in reading the incessant book-novelties of our own time, 
 will after many years acquire a sort of learned ignorance. 
 We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be 
 read, rather than not to read them : such an art is practica- 
 ble. But amidst this vast multitude still let us be " the man 
 of one book," and preserve an uninterrupted intercourse with 
 that great author with whose mode of thinking we sympa- 
 thize, and whose charms of composition we can habitually 
 retain. 
 
 It is remarkable that every great writer appears to have a 
 
246 THE MAN OF ONE BOOK. 
 
 predilection for some favourite author ; and, with Alexander, 
 had they possessed a golden casket, would have enshrined 
 the works they so constantly turned over. Demosthenes felt 
 such delight in the history of Thucydides, that, to obtain a 
 familiar and perfect mastery of his style, he recopied his 
 history eight times ; while Brutus not only was constantly 
 perusing Polybius even amidst the most busy periods of his 
 life, but was abridging a copy of that author on the last awful 
 night of his existence, when on the following day he was to 
 try his fate against Antony and Octavius. Selim the Second 
 had the Commentaries of Caesar translated for his use ; and 
 it is recorded that his military ardour was heightened by the 
 perusal. We are told that Scipio Africanus was made a hero 
 by the writings of Xenophon. When Clarendon was em- 
 ployed in writing his history, he was in a constant study of 
 Livy and Tacitus, to acquire the full and flowing style of the 
 one, and the portrait-painting of the other : he records this 
 circumstance in a letter. V oltaire had usually on his table 
 the Athalie of Racine, and the Petit Careme of Massillon ; 
 the tragedies of the one were the finest model of French 
 verse, the sermons of the other of French prose. " Were I 
 obliged to sell my library," exclaimed Diderot, " I would keep 
 back Moses, Homer, and Richardson ; " and, by the eloge 
 which this enthusiastic writer composed on our English nov- 
 elist, it is doubtful, had the Frenchman been obliged to have 
 lost two of them, whether Richard-on had not been the elected 
 favourite. Monsieur Thomas, a French writer, who at times 
 displays high eloquence and profound thinking, Herault de 
 Sechelles tells us, studied chiefly one author, but that author 
 was Cicero ; and never went into the country unaccompanied 
 by some of his works. Fenelon was constantly employed on 
 his Homer ; he left a translation of the greater part of the 
 Odyssey, without any design of publication, but merely as an 
 exercise for style. Montesquieu was a constant student of 
 Tacitus, of whom he must be considered a forcible imitator. 
 He has, in the manner of Tacitus, characterized Tacitus : 
 
THE MAN OF ONE BOOK. 
 
 2 17 
 
 " That historian," he says, " who abridged every tiling, 
 because he saw every thing." The famous Bourdaloue re- 
 perused every year Saint Paul, Saint Chrysostom, and 
 Cicero. " These," says a French critic, " were the sources 
 of his masculine and solid eloquence." Grotius had such a 
 taste for Lucan, that he always carried a pocket edition about 
 him, and has been seen to kiss his hand-book with the rap- 
 ture of a true votary. If this anecdote be true, the elevated 
 sentiments of the stern Roman were probably the attraction 
 with the Batavian republican. The diversified reading of 
 Leibnitz is well known ; but he still attached himself to one 
 or two favourites : Virgil was always in his hand when at 
 leisure, and Leibnitz had read Virgil so often, that even in 
 his old age he could repeat whole books by heart ; Barclay's 
 Argenis was his model for prose ; when he was found dead 
 in his chair, the Argenis had fallen from his hands. Rabelais 
 and Marot w r ere the perpetual favourites of La Fontaine ; 
 from one he borrowed his humour, and from the other his 
 style. Quevedo was so passionately fond of the Don Quixote 
 of Cervantes, that often in reading that unrivalled work he 
 felt an impulse to burn his own inferior compositions : to be 
 a sincere admirer and a hopeless rival is a case of authorship 
 the hardest imaginable. Few writers can venture to antici- 
 pate the award of posterity ; yet perhaps Quevedo had not 
 even been what he was, without the perpetual excitement he 
 received from his great master. Horace was the friend of 
 his heart to Malherbe ; he laid the Roman poet on his pillow, 
 took him in the fields, and called his Horace his breviary. 
 Plutarch, Montaigne, and Locke, were the three authors con- 
 stantly in the hands of Rousseau, and he has drawn from 
 them the groundwork of his ideas in his Emile. The favour- 
 ite author of the great Earl of Chatham was Barrow ; and on 
 his style he had formed his eloquence, and had read his great 
 master so constantly, as to be able to repeat his elaborate ser- 
 mons from memory. The great Lord Burleigh always car- 
 ried Tully's Offices in his pocket ; Charles V. and Bonaparte 
 
248 
 
 A BIBLIOGNOSTE. 
 
 had Machiavel frequently in their hands ; and Davila was 
 the perpetual study of Hampden : he seemed to have discov- 
 ered in that historian of civil wars those which he anticipated 
 in the land of his fathers. 
 
 These facts sufficiently illustrate the recorded circum- 
 stance of Sir William Jones's invariable habit of reading his 
 Cicero through every year, and exemplify the happy result 
 for him, who, amidst the multiplicity of his authors, still con- 
 tinues in this way to be " the man of one book." 
 
 A BIBLIOGNOSTE. 
 
 A startling literary prophecy, recently sent forth from 
 our oracular literature, threatens the annihilation of public 
 libraries, which are one day to moulder away ! 
 
 Listen to the vaticinator ! " As conservatories of mental 
 treasures, their value in times of darkness and barbarity was 
 incalculable ; and even in these happier days, w T hen men are 
 incited to explore new regions of thought, they command 
 respect as depots of methodical and well-ordered references 
 for the researches of the curious. But what in one state of 
 society is invaluable, may at another be worthless ; and the 
 progress which the world has made within a very few cen- 
 turies has considerably reduced the estimation which is due 
 to such establishments. We will say more — " * but enough ! 
 This idea of striking into dust " the god of his idolatry," the 
 Dagon of his devotion, is sufficient to terrify the biblio- 
 grapher, who views only a blind Samson pulling down the 
 pillars of his temple ! 
 
 This future universal inundation of books, this superfluity 
 of knowledge, in billions, and trillions, overwhelms the imagi- 
 nation ! It is now about four hundred years since the art of 
 multiplying books has been discovered ; and an arithmetician 
 * Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxiv. 384. 
 
A BIBLIOGNOSTE. 
 
 2!9 
 
 has attempted to calculate the incalculable of these four 
 ages of typography, which he discovers have actually pro- 
 duced 3,641,960 works ! Taking each work at three volumes, 
 and reckoning only each impression to consist of thr< e 
 hundred copies, which is too little, the actual amount from 
 the presses of Europe will give to 1816—3,277,764,000 
 volumes ! each of which being an inch thick, if placed on a 
 line, would cover 6,069 leagues ! Leibnitz facetiously main- 
 tained that such would be the increase of literature, that 
 future generations would find whole cities insufficient to con- 
 tain their libraries. We are, however, indebted to the patri- 
 otic endeavours of our grocers and trunkmakers, alchemists 
 of literature ! they annihilate the gross bodies without in- 
 juring the finer spirits. We are still more indebted to that 
 neglected race, the bibliographers ! 
 
 The science of books, for so bibliography is sometimes 
 dignified, may deserve the gratitude of a public, who are yet 
 insensible of the useful zeal of those book-practitioners, the 
 nature of whose labours is yet so imperfectly comprehended. 
 Who is this vaccinator of the uselessness of public libraries ? 
 Is he a bibliognoste, or a bibliographe, or a bibliomane, or a 
 bibliophile, or a bibliotctphe ? A bibliotliecaire, or a bibliopole, 
 the prophet cannot be ; for the bibliotliecaire is too delight- 
 fully busied among his shelves, and the bibliopole is too 
 profitably concerned in furnishing perpetual additions, to 
 admit of this hyperbolical terror of annihilation ! * 
 
 Unawares, we have dropped into that professional jargon 
 which was chiefly forged by one who, though seated in the 
 "scorner's chair," was the Thaumaturgus of books and manu- 
 scripts. The Abbe Rive had acquired a singular taste and 
 curiosity, not without a fermenting dash of singular charla- 
 
 * Will this writer pardon me for ranking him, for a moment, among 
 those " generalizes " of the age who excel in what a critical friend has 
 happily discriminated as ambitions writing ; that is, writing on any topic, 
 and not least strikingly on that of which they know least; men otherwise 
 of fine taste, and who excel in every charm of composition. 
 
250 
 
 A BIBLIOGXOSTE. 
 
 tanerie, in bibliography : the little volumes he occasionally 
 put forth are things which but few hands have touched. He 
 knew well, that for some books to be noised about, they 
 should not be read : this was one of those recondite mysteries 
 of his, which we may have occasion further to reveal. This 
 bibliographical hero was librarian to the most magnificent of 
 book-collectors, the Duke de la Valliere. The Abbe Rive 
 was a strong but ungovernable brute, rabid, surly, but tres- 
 mordant. His master, whom I have discovered to have been 
 the partner of the cur's tricks, would often pat him ; and 
 when the bibliognost es, and the bibliomanes, were in the heat 
 of contest, let his " bull-dog " loose among them, as the duke 
 affectionately called his librarian. The " bull-dog " of biblio- 
 graphy appears, too, to have had the taste and appetite of 
 the tiger of politics, but he hardly lived to join the festival 
 of the guillotine. I judge of this by an expression he used 
 to one complaining of his parish priest, whom he advised to 
 give " une messe dans son ventre ! * He had tried to exhaust 
 his genius in La Chasse aux Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires 
 mal avises, and acted Cain with his brothers ! All Europe 
 was to receive from him new ideas concerning books and 
 manuscripts. Yet all his mighty promises fumed away in 
 projects ; and though he appeared for ever correcting the 
 blunders of others, this French Ritson left enough of his 
 own to afford them a choice of revenge. His style of criti- 
 cism was perfectly Ritsonian. He describes one of his rivals, 
 as Vinsolent et tres-insense auteur de V Almanack de Gotha, 
 on the simple subject of the origin of playing-cards! 
 
 The Abbe Rive was one of those men of letters, of whom 
 there are not a few who pass all their lives in preparations. 
 Dr. Dibdin, since the above was written, has witnessed the 
 confusion of the mind, and the gigantic industry of our bibliog- 
 noste, which consisted of many trunks full of memoranda. 
 The description will show the reader to what hard hunting 
 these book-hunters voluntarily doom themselves, with little 
 hope of obtaining fame ! " In one trunk were about six 
 
A BIFLIOGNOSTE. 
 
 251 
 
 thousand notices of MSS. of all ages. In another were 
 wedged about twelve thousand descriptions of books in all 
 languages, except those of French and Italian ; sometimes 
 with critical notes. In a third trunk was a bundle of papers 
 relating to the History of the Troubadours. In a fourth was 
 a collection of memoranda and literary sketches connected 
 with the invention of arts and sciences, with pieces exclu- 
 sively bibliographical. A fifth trunk contained between two 
 and three thousand cards, written upon each side, respecting 
 a collection of prints. In a sixth trunk were contained his 
 papers respecting earthquakes, volcanoes, and geographical 
 subjects." Thi3 Ajax flagellifer of the bibliographical tribe, 
 who was, as Dr. Dibdin observes, " the terror of his acquaint- 
 ance, and the pride of his patron," is said to have been in 
 private a very different man from his public character ; all 
 which may be true, without altering a shade of that public 
 character. The French revolution showed how men, mild 
 and even kind in domestic life, were sanguinary and ferocious 
 in their public. 
 
 The rabid Abbe Rive gloried in terrifying, without en- 
 lightening his rivals ; he exulted that he was devoting to 
 u the rods of criticism and the laughter of Europe the biblio- 
 poles" or dealers in books, who would not get by heart his 
 " Catechism " of a thousand and one questions and answers : 
 it broke the slumbers of honest De Bure, who had found that 
 life was already too short for his own " Bibliographie In- 
 structive." 
 
 The Abbe Rive had contrived to catch the shades of the 
 appellatives necessary to discriminate book-amateurs ; and 
 of the first term he is acknowledged to be the inventor. 
 
 A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title- 
 pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year 
 when printed ; the presses whence issued ; and all the 
 minutice of a book. 
 
 A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary 
 arrangements. 
 
 I 
 
252 
 
 A BIBLIOGXOSTE. 
 
 A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blun- 
 ders faster than he buys, cock-brained, and purse-heavy ! 
 
 A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the 
 class who appears to read them for his own pleasure. 
 
 A bibliotapke buries his books, by keeping them under 
 lock, or framing them in glass-cases. 
 
 I shall catch our bibliognoste in the hour of book-rapture ! 
 It will produce a collection of bibliographical writers, and 
 show to the second-sighted Edinburgher what human contri- 
 vances have been raised by the art of more painful writers 
 than himself — either to postpone the day of universal anni- 
 hilation, or to preserve for our posterity, three centuries 
 hence, the knowledge which now so busily occupies us, and 
 transmit to them something more than what Bacon calls, '"In- 
 ventories" of our literary treasures. 
 
 " Histories, and literary bibliotheques (or bibliothecas.) will 
 always present to us," says La Rive, " an immense harvest 
 of errors, till the authors of such catalogues shall be fully 
 impressed by the importance of their art ; and, as it were, 
 reading in the most distant ages of the future the literary 
 good and evil which they may produce, force a triumph 
 from the pure devotion to truth, in spite of all the disgusts 
 which their professional tasks involve ; still patiently endur- 
 ing the heavy chains which bind down those who give them- 
 selves up to this pursuit, with a passion which resembles 
 heroism. 
 
 "The catalogues of bibliotheques fixes (or critical, histor- 
 ical, and classified accounts of writers) have engendered that 
 enormous swarm of bibliographical errors, which have spread 
 their roots, in greater or less quantities, in all our bibliograph- 
 ers." He has here furnished a long list, which I shall pre- 
 serve in the note.* 
 
 * Ge?sner — Simler — Bellarmin— L' Abbe" — Mabillon — Montfaucon — Mo- 
 reri — Bayle — Baillet — Xiceron — Dupin — Cave — Warton — Casimir Oudin — 
 Le Long — Goujet — Wolfius — John Albert Fabricius — Argelati — Tiraboschi 
 —Nicholas Antonio — Walchius — Struvius — Brucker — Scheuchzer — Lin- 
 
A BIBLIOGNOSTE. 
 
 253 
 
 The list, though curious, is by no means complete. Snch 
 are the men of whom the Abbe Rive speaks with more 
 respect than his accustomed courtesy. " If such," says he, 
 B cannot escape from errors, who shall ? I have only marked 
 them out to prove the importance of bibliographical history. 
 A writer of this sort must occupy himself with more regard 
 for his reputation than his own profit, and yield himself up 
 entirely to the study of books." 
 
 The mere knowledge of books, which has been called an 
 erudition of title-pages, may be sufficient to occupy the life 
 of some ; and while the wits and " the million " are ridiculing 
 these hunters of editions, who force their passage through 
 secluded spots, as well as course in the open fields, it will be 
 found that this art of book-knowledge may turn out to be a 
 very philosophical pursuit, and that men of great name have 
 devoted themselves to labours, more frequently contemned 
 than comprehended. Apostolo Zeno, a poet, a critic, and a 
 true man of letters, considered it as no small portion of his 
 glory, to have annotated Fontanini, w T ho, himself an eminent 
 prelate, had passed his life in forming his Bibliotheca Italiana. 
 Zeno did not consider that to correct errors and to enrich by 
 information this catalogue of Italian writers was a mean task. 
 The enthusiasm of the Abbe Rive considered bibliography 
 as a sublime pursuit, exclaiming on Zeno's commentary on 
 Fontanini — " He chained together the knowledge of whole 
 generations for posterity, and he read in future ages." 
 
 There are few things by which we can so well trace the 
 history of the human mind as by a classed catalogue, with 
 dates of the first publication of books ; even the relative prices 
 of books at different periods, their decline and then their 
 rise, and again their fall, from a chapter in this history of the 
 
 naeus — Seguier — Haller — Adamson — Manget — Kestner — Eloy — Douglas — 
 Weidler — Hailbronner — Montucla — Lalande — Bailly — Quadrio — Morhoff — 
 Stollius — Funccius — Schelhorn — Engles — Beyer — Gerdesius— Vogts — 
 Freytag — David Clement — Chevillier — Maittaire — Orlandi — Prosper Mar- 
 chand — Schoeplin — De Boze — Abbe Sallier — and De Saint Leger. 
 
254 
 
 A BIBLIOGXOSTE. 
 
 human mind ; we become critics even by this literary chro- 
 nology, and this appraisement of auctioneers. The favourite 
 book of every age is a certain picture of the people. The 
 gradual depreciation of a great author marks a change in 
 knowledge or in taste. 
 
 But it is imagined that we are not interested in the history 
 of indifferent writers, and scarcely in that of the secondary 
 ones. If none but great originals should claim our attention, 
 in the course of two thousand years we should not count 
 twenty authors ! Every book, whatever be its character, 
 may be considered as a new experiment made by the human 
 understanding ; and as a book is a sort of individual repre- 
 sentation, not a solitary volume exists but may be personified, 
 and described as a human being. Hints start discoveries : 
 they are usually found in very different authors who could 
 go no further ; and the historian of obscure books is often 
 preserving for men of genius indications of knowledge, which 
 without his intervention we should not possess ! Many secrets 
 we discover in bibliography. Great writers, unskilled in this 
 science of books, have frequently used defective editions, as 
 Hume did the castrated Whitelocke ; or, like Robertson, they 
 are ignorant of even the sources of the knowledge they would 
 give the public ; or they compose on a subject which too late 
 they discover had been anticipated. Bibliography will show 
 what has been done, and suggest to our invention what is 
 wanted. Many have often protracted their journey in a 
 road which had already been worn out by the wheels which 
 had traversed it : bibliography unrolls the whole map of the 
 country we purpose travelling over — the post-roads and the 
 by-paths. 
 
 Every half-century, indeed, the obstructions multiply ; and 
 the Edinburgh prediction, should it approximate to the event 
 it has foreseen, may more reasonably terrify a far distant 
 posterity. Mazzuchelli declared, after his laborious re- 
 searches in Italian literature, that one of his more recent 
 predecessors, who had commenced a similar work, had col- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 255 
 
 lected notices of forty thousand writers — and yet, he adds, 
 my work must increase that number to ten thousand more ! 
 Mazzuchelli said this in 1753 ; and the amount of nearly a 
 century must now be added, for the presses of Italy have not 
 been inactive. 
 
 But the literature of Germany, of France, and of England, 
 has exceeded the multiplicity of the productions of Italy, and 
 an appalling population of authors swarm before the imagina- 
 tion. Hail then the peaceful spirit of the literary historian, 
 which sitting amidst the night of time, by the monuments of 
 genius, trims the sepulchral lamps of the human mind ! Hail 
 to the literary Reaumur, who by the clearness of his glasses 
 makes even the minute interesting, and reveals to us the 
 world of insects ! These are guardian spirits who, at the 
 close of every century standing on its ascent, trace out the 
 old roads we had pursued, and with a lighter line indicate the 
 new ones which are opening, from the imperfect attempts 
 and even the errors of our predecessors ! 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 A POLITICAL SKETCH. 
 
 Poland, once a potent and magnificent kingdom, when it 
 sunk into an elective monarchy, became " venal thrice an 
 age." That country must have exhibited many a diplomatic 
 scene of intricate intrigue, which although they could not ap- 
 pear in its public, have no doubt been often consigned to its 
 secret, history. With us the corruption of a rotten borough 
 has sometimes exposed the guarded proffer of one party, and 
 the dexterous chaffering of the other : but a master-piece of 
 diplomatic finesse and political invention, electioneering 
 viewed on the most magnificent scale, with a kingdom to be 
 canvassed, and a crown to be won and lost, or lost and won 
 in the course of a single day, exhibits a political drama, 
 
25G SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 which, for the honour and happiness of mankind, is of rare 
 and strange occurrence. There was one scene in this drama, 
 which might appear somewhat too large for an ordinary 
 theatre; the actors apparently were not less than fifty to a 
 hundred thousand ; twelve vast tents were raised on an ex- 
 tensive plain, a hundred thousand horses were in the environs 
 — and palatines and castellans, the ecclesiastical orders, with 
 the ambassadors of the royal competitors, all agitated by the 
 ceaseless motion of different factions during the six weeks of 
 the election, and of many preceding months of preconcerted 
 measures and vacillating opinions, now were all solemnly 
 assembled at the diet. — Once the poet, amidst his gigantic 
 conception of a scene, resolved to leave it out : 
 
 " So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain — 
 Then build a new, or act it in a plain I " 
 
 exclaimed " La Mancha's knight," kindling at a scene so 
 novel and so vast ! 
 
 Such an electioneering negotiation, the only one I am 
 acquainted with, is opened in the " Discours " of Choisnin, 
 the secretary of Montluc, bishop of Valence, the confidential 
 agent of Catharine de' Medici, and who was sent to intrigue 
 at the Polish diet, to obtain the crown of Poland for her son 
 the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry the Third. This bold 
 enterprise at first seemed hopeless, and in its progress en- 
 countered growing obstructions ; but Montluc was one of the 
 most finished diplomatists that the genius of the Gallic cabi- 
 net ever sent forth. He was nick-named in all the courts of 
 Europe, from the circumstance of his limping, " le Boiteux : " 
 our political bishop was in cabinet intrigues the Talleyrand 
 of his age, and sixteen embassies to Italy, Germany, Eng- 
 land, Scotland, and Turkey, had made this " connoisseur en 
 hommes " an extraordinary politician ! 
 
 Catharine de' Medici was infatuated with the dreams of 
 judicial astrology ; her pensioned oracles had declared that 
 she should live to see each of her sons crowned, by which 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 257 
 
 prediction probably they had only purposed to flatter her 
 pride and her love of dominion. They, however, ended in 
 terrifying the credulous queen ; and she dreading to witness 
 a throne, in France, disputed perhaps by fratricides, anx- 
 iously sought a separate crown for each of her three sons. 
 She had been trifled with in her earnest negotiations with 
 our Elizabeth ; twice had she seen herself baffled in her 
 views in the Dukes of Alencon and of Anjou. Catharine 
 then projected a new empire for Anjou, by incorporating 
 into one kingdom Algiers, Corsica, and Sardinia ; but the 
 other despot, he of Constantinople, Selim the Second, dissi- 
 pated the brilliant speculation of our female Machiavel. 
 Charles the Ninth was sickly, jealous, and desirous of remov- 
 ing from the court the Duke of Anjou, whom two victories 
 had made popular, though he afterwards sunk into a Sar- 
 danapalus. Montluc penetrated into the secret wishes of 
 Catharine and Charles, and suggested to them the possibility 
 of encircling the brows of Anjou with the diadem of Poland, 
 the Polish monarch then being in a state of visible decline. 
 The project was approved ; and, like a profound politician, 
 the bishop prepared for an event which might be remote, 
 and always problematical, by sending into Poland a natural 
 son of his, Balagny, as a disguised agent ; his youth, his 
 humble rank, and his love of pleasure, would not create any 
 alarm among the neighbouring powers, who were alike on 
 the watch to snatch the expected spoil ; but as it was neces- 
 sary to have a more dexterous politician behind the curtain, 
 he recommended his secretary, Choisnin, as a travelling 
 tutor to a youth who appeared to want one. 
 
 Balagny proceeded to Poland, where, under the veil of 
 dissipation, and in the midst of splendid festivities, with his 
 trusty adjutant, this hair-brained boy of revelry began to 
 weave those intrigues which were afterwards to be knotted, 
 or untied, by Montluc himself. He had contrived to be so 
 little suspected, that the agent of the emperor had often dis- 
 closed important secrets to his young and amiable friend. 
 
 VOL. iv. 17 
 
258 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 On the death of Sigisraond Augustus, Balagny, leaving 
 Choisnin behind to trumpet forth the virtues of Anjou, has- 
 tened to Paris to give an account of all which he had seen 
 or heard. But poor Choisnin found himself in a dilemma 
 among those who had so long listened to his panegyrics on 
 the humanity and meek character of the Duke of Anjou ; 
 for the news of St. Bartholomew's massacre had travelled 
 faster than the post ; and Choisnin complains that he wa3 
 now treated as an impudent liar, and the French prince as a 
 monster. In vain he assured them that the whole was an 
 exaggerated account, a mere insurrection of the people, or 
 the effects of a few private enmities, praying the indignant 
 Poles to suspend their decision till the bishop came : " At- 
 tendez le Boiteux ! " cried he, in agony. 
 
 Meanwhile, at Paris, the choice of a proper person for this 
 embassy had been difficult to settle. It was a business of 
 intrigue more than of form, and required an orator to make 
 speeches and addresses in a sort of popular assembly ; for 
 though the people, indeed, had no concern in the diet, yet 
 the greater and the lesser nobles and gentlemen, all electors, 
 were reckoned at one hundred thousand. It was supposed 
 that a lawyer who could negotiate in good Latin, and one, as 
 the French proverb runs, who could aller et parler, would 
 more effectually puzzle their heads, and satisfy their con- 
 sciences to vote for his client. Catharine at last fixed on 
 Montluc himself, from the superstitious prejudice, which, 
 however, in this case accorded with philosophical experience, 
 that " Montluc had ever been lucky in his negotiations." 
 
 Montluc hastened his departure from Paris ; and it ap- 
 pears that our political bishop had, by his skilful penetration 
 into the French cabinet, foreseen the horrible catastrophe 
 which occurred very shortly after he had left it ; for he had 
 warned the Count de Rochefoucault to absent himself ; but 
 this lord, like so many others, had no suspicions of the per- 
 fidious projects of Catharine and her cabinet. Montluc, 
 however, had not long been on his journey, ere the news 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 259 
 
 reached him, and it occasioned innumerable obstacles in his 
 progress, which even his sagacity had not calculated on. At 
 Strasburgh he had appointed to meet some able coadjutors, 
 among whom was the famous Joseph Scaliger ; but they 
 were so terrified by les Matinees Parisiennes, that Scaliger 
 flew to Geneva, and would not budge out of that safe cor- 
 ner : and the others ran home, not imagining that Montluc 
 would venture to pass through Germany, where the protest- 
 ant indignation had made the roads too hot for a catholic 
 bishop. But Montluc had set his cast on the die. He had 
 already passed through several hair-breadth escapes from 
 the stratagems of the Guise faction, who more than once 
 attempted to hang or drown the bishop, who, they cried out, 
 was a Calvinist ; the fears and jealousies of the Guises had 
 been roused by this political mission. Among all these 
 troubles and delays, Montluc was most affected by the ru- 
 mour that the election was on the point of being made, and 
 that the plague was universal throughout Poland, so that he 
 must have felt that he might be too late for the one, and too 
 early for the other. 
 
 At last Montluc arrived, and found that the whole weight 
 of this negotiation was to fall on his single shoulders ; and 
 further, that he was to sleep every night on a pillow of 
 thorns. Our bishop had not only to allay the ferment of 
 the popular spirit of the evangelicals, as the protestants were 
 then called, but even of the more rational catholics of Poland. 
 He had also to face those haughty and feudal lords, of whom 
 each considered himself the equal of the sovereign whom he 
 created, and whose avowed principle was, and many were 
 incorrupt, that their choice of a sovereign should be regulated 
 solely by the public interest ; and it was hardly to be ex- 
 pected that the emperor, the czar, and the king of Sweden, 
 would prove unsuccessful rivals to the cruel, and voluptuous, 
 and bigoted duke of Anjou, whose political interests were 
 too remote and novel to have raised any faction among these 
 independent Poles. 
 
2G0 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 The crafty politician had the art of dressing himself up in 
 all the winning charms of candour and loyalty ; a sweet flow 
 of honeyed words melted on his lips, while his heart, cold 
 and immovable as a rock, stood unchanged amidst the most 
 unforeseen difficulties. 
 
 The emperor had set to work the Abbe Cyre in a sort of 
 ambiguous character, an envoy for the nonce, to be acknowl- 
 edged or disavowed as was convenient ; and by his activity 
 he obtained considerable influence among the Lithuanians, 
 the Wallachians, and nearly all Prussia, in favour of the 
 Archduke Ernest. Two Bohemians, who had the advantage 
 of speaking the Polish language, had arrived with a state 
 and magnificence becoming kings rather than ambassadors. 
 The Muscovite had written letters full of golden promises to 
 the nobility, and was supported by a palatine of high charac- 
 ter ; a perpetual peace between two such great neighbours 
 was too inviting a project not to find advocates ; and this 
 party, Choisnin observes, appeared at first the most to be 
 feared. The King of Sweden was a close neighbour, who 
 had married the sister of their late sovereign, and his son 
 urged his family claims as superior to those of foreigners. 
 Among these parties was a patriotic one, who were desirous 
 of a Pole for their monarch ; a king of their father-land, 
 speaking their mother-tongue, one who would not strike at 
 the independence of his country, but preserve its integrity 
 from the stranger. This popular party was even agreeable 
 to several of the foreign powers themselves, who did not 
 like to see a rival power strengthening itself by so strict a 
 union with Poland ; but in this choice of a sovereign from 
 among themselves, there were at least thirty lords who equally 
 thought that they were the proper wood of which kings 
 should be carved out. The Poles therefore could not agree 
 on the Pole who deserved to be a Piaste ; an endearing title 
 for a native monarch, which originated in the name of the 
 family of the Piastis, who had reigned happily over the 
 Polish people for the space of five centuries ! The remem- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 2G1 
 
 brance of their virtues existed in the minds of the honest 
 Poles in this affectionate title, and their party were called 
 the Piastis. 
 
 Montluc had been deprived of the assistance he had 
 depended on from many able persons, whom the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew had frightened away from every French 
 political connection. He found that he had himself only to 
 depend on. We are told that he was not provided with the 
 usual means which are considered most efficient in elections, 
 nor possessed the interest nor the splendour of his powerful 
 competitors : he was to derive all his resources from diplo- 
 matic finesse. The various ambassadors had fixed and 
 distant residences, that they might not hold too close an 
 intercourse with the Polish nobles. Of all things, he was 
 desirous to obtain an easy access to these chiefs, that he 
 might observe, and that they might listen. He who would 
 seduce by his own ingenuity must come in contact with the 
 object he would corrupt. Yet Montluc persisted in not ap- 
 proaching them without being sought after, which answered 
 his purpose in the end. One favourite argument which our 
 Talleyrand had set afloat, was to show that all the benefits 
 which the different competitors had promised to the Poles 
 were accompanied by other circumstances which could not 
 fail to be ruinous to the country : while the offer of his 
 master, whose interests were remote, could not be adverse to 
 those of the Polish nation : so that much good might be 
 expected from him, without any fear of accompanying evil. 
 Montluc procured a clever Frenchman to be the bearer of 
 his first dispatch, in Latin, to the diet; which had hardly 
 assembled, ere suspicions and jealousies were already break- 
 ing out. The emperor's ambassadors had offended the pride 
 of the Polish nobles by travelling about the country without 
 leave, and resorting to the infanta; and besides, in some 
 intercepted letters the Polish nation was designated as gens 
 barbara et gens inepta. " I do not think that the said letter 
 was really written by the said ambassadors, who were states 
 
262 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 men too politic to employ such unguarded language," very 
 ingenuously writes the secretary of Montluc. However, it 
 was a blow levelled at the imperial ambassadors ; w 7 hile the 
 letter of the French bishop, composed "in a humble and 
 modest style," began to melt their proud spirits, and two 
 thousand copies of the French bishop's letter were eagerly 
 spread. 
 
 " But this good fortune did not last more than four-and- 
 twenty hours," mournfully writes our honest secretary ; " for 
 suddenly the news of the fatal day of St. Bartholomew 
 arrived, and every Frenchman was detested." 
 
 Montluc, in this distress, published an apology for les 
 Matinees Parisiennes, which he reduced to some excesses of 
 the people, the result of a conspiracy plotted by the protest- 
 ants ; and he adroitly introduced as a personage his master 
 Anjou, declaring that u he scorned to oppress a party whom 
 he had so often conquered with sword in hand." This 
 pamphlet, which still exists, must have cost the good bishop 
 some invention ; but in elections the lie of the moment serves 
 a purpose ; and although Montluc was in due time bitterly 
 recriminated on, still the apology served to divide public 
 opinion. 
 
 Montluc was a whole cabinet to himself: he dispersed 
 another tract in the character of a Polish gentleman, in 
 which the French interests were urged by such arguments, 
 that the leading chiefs never met without disputing; and 
 Montluc now found that he had succeeded in creating a 
 French party. The Austrian then employed a real Polish 
 gentleman to write for his party ; but this was too genuine a 
 production, for the writer wrote too much in earnest ; and in 
 politics we must not be in a passion. 
 
 The mutual jealousies of each party assisted the views of 
 our negotiator ; they would side with him against each other. 
 The archduke and the czar opposed the Turk ; the Musco- 
 vite could not endure that Sweden should be aggrandized 
 by this new crown ; and Denmark was still more uneasy. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 263 
 
 Montluc had discovered how every party had its vulnerable 
 point, by which it could be managed. The cards had now 
 got fairly shuffled, and he depended on his usual good play. 
 
 Our bishop got hold of a palatine to write for the French 
 cause in the vernacular tongue ; and appears to have held a 
 more mysterious intercourse with another palatine, Albert 
 Lasky. Mutual accusations were made in the open diet : 
 the Poles accused some Lithuanian lords of having con- 
 tracted certain engagements with the czar ; these in return 
 accused the Poles, and particularly this Lasky, with being 
 corrupted by the gold of France. Another circumstance 
 afterwards arose ; the Spanish ambassador had forty thou- 
 sand thalers sent to him, but which never passed the fron- 
 tiers, as this fresh supply arrived too late for the election. 
 "I believe," writes our secretary with great simplicity, 
 " that this money was only designed to distribute among the 
 trumpeters and the tabourines." The usual expedient in 
 contested elections was now evidently introduced ; our sec- 
 retary acknowledging that Montluc daily acquired new 
 supporters, because he did not attempt to gain them over 
 merely ly promises — resting his whole cause on this argu- 
 ment, that the interest of the nation was concerned in the 
 French election. 
 
 Still would ill fortune cross our crafty politician when 
 every thing was proceeding smoothly. The massacre was 
 refreshed with more damning particulars ; some letters were 
 forged, and others were but too true ; all parties, with rival 
 intrepidity, were carrying on a complete scene of deception. 
 A rumour spread that the French king disavowed his accred- 
 ited agent, and apologized to the emperor for having yielded 
 to the importunities of a political speculator, whom he was 
 now resolved to recall. This somewhat paralyzed the exer- 
 tions of those palatines who had involved themselves in the 
 intrigues of Montluc, who was now forced patiently to wait 
 for the arrival of a courier with renewed testimonials of his 
 diplomatic character from the French court. A great odium 
 
264 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 was cast on the French in the course of this negotiation by 
 a distribution of prints, which exposed the most inventive 
 cruelties practised by the Catholics on the Reformed ; such 
 as women cleaved in half* in the act of attempting to snatch 
 their children from their butchers ; while Charles the Ninth 
 and the Duke of Anjou were hideously represented in their 
 persons, and as spectators of such horrid tragedies, with 
 words written in labels, complaining that the executioners 
 were not zealous enough in this holy work. These prints, 
 accompanied by libels and by horrid narratives, inflamed the 
 popular indignation, and more particularly the women, who 
 were affected to tears, as if these horrid scenes had been 
 passing before their eyes. 
 
 Montluc replied to the libels as fast as they appeared, 
 while he skilfully introduced the most elaborate panegyrics 
 on the Duke of Anjou ; and in return for the caricatures, he 
 distributed two portraits of the king and the duke, to show 
 the ladies, if not the diet, that neither of these princes had 
 such ferocious and inhuman faces. Such are the small 
 means by which the politician condescends to work his great 
 designs ; and the very means by which his enemies thought 
 they should ruin his cause, Montluc adroitly turned to his 
 own advantage. Any thing of instant occurrence serves 
 electioneering purposes, and Montluc eagerly seized this 
 favourable occasion to exhaust his imagination on an ideal 
 sovereign, and to hazard, with address, anecdotes, whose 
 authenticity he could never have proved, till he perplexed 
 even unwilling minds to be uncertain whether that intolerant 
 and inhuman duke was not the most heroic and most mer- 
 ciful of princes. It is probable that the Frenchman abused 
 even the license of the French eloge, for a noble Pole told 
 Montluc that he was always amplifying his duke with such 
 ideal greatness, and attributing to him such immaculate pur- 
 ity of sentiment, that it was inferred there was no man in 
 Poland who could possibly equal him ; and that his declara- 
 tion, that the duke was not desirous of reigning over Poland 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 2G5 
 
 to possess the wealth and grandeur of the kingdom, and that 
 he was solely ambitious of the honour to be the head of such 
 a great and virtuous nobility, had offended many lords, who 
 did not believe that the duke sought the Polish crown merely 
 to be the sovereign of a virtuous people. 
 
 These Polish statesmen appear, indeed, to have been more 
 enlightened than the subtle politician perhaps calculated on ; 
 for when Montluc was over anxious to exculpate the Duke 
 of Anjou from having been an actor in the Parisian massacre, 
 a noble Pole observed, " That he need not lose his time at 
 framing any apologies ; for if he could prove that it was the 
 interest of the country that the duke ought to be elected their 
 king, it was all that was required. His cruelty, were it true, 
 would be no reason to prevent his election, for we have 
 nothing to dread from it : once in our kingdom, he will have 
 more reason to fear us than we him, should he ever attempt 
 our lives, our property, or our liberty." 
 
 Another Polish lord, whose scruples were as pious as his 
 patriotism was suspicious, however observed that, in his con- 
 ferences with the French bishop, the bishop had never once 
 mentioned God, whom all parties ought to implore to touch 
 the hearts of the electors, in their choice of God's " anointed." 
 Montluc might have felt himself unexpectedly embarrassed 
 at the religious scruples of this lord, but the politician was 
 never at a fault. " Speaking to a man of letters, as his 
 lordship was," replied the French bishop, " it was not for 
 him to remind his lordship what he so well knew ; but since 
 he had touched on the subject, he would, however, say, that 
 were a sick man desirous of having a physician, the friend 
 who undertook to procure one would not do his duty should 
 he say it was necessary to call in one whom God had chosen 
 to restore his health ; but another who should say that the 
 most learned and skilful is he whom God has chosen, would 
 oe doing the best for the patient, and evince most judgment. 
 By a parity of reason Ave must believe that God will not 
 send an angel to point out the man whom he would have his 
 
 I 
 
2G6 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 anointed; sufficient for us that God has given us a knowl- 
 edge of the requisites of a good king; and if the Polish 
 gentlemen choose such a sovereign, it will be him whom God 
 has chosen." This shrewd argument delighted the Polish 
 lord, who repeated the story in different companies, to the 
 honour of the bishop. " And in this manner," adds the 
 secretary with great naivete, " did the sieur, strengthened by 
 good arguments, divulge his opinions, which were received 
 by many, and run from hand to hand." 
 
 Montluc had his inferior manoeuvres. He had to equipoise 
 the opposite interests of the Catholics and the Evangelists, or 
 the Reformed : it was mingling fire and water without suffer- 
 ing them to hiss, or to extinguish one another. When the 
 imperial ambassadors gave fetes to the higher nobility only, 
 they consequently offended the lesser. The Frenchman gave 
 no banquets, but his house was open to all at all times, who 
 were equally welcome. "You will see that the fetes of the 
 imperialists will do them more harm than good," observed 
 Montluc to his secretary. 
 
 Having gained over by every possible contrivance a 
 number of the Polish nobles, and showered his courtesies 
 on those of the inferior orders, at length the critical moment 
 approached, and the finishing hand was to be put to the 
 work. Poland, with the appearance of a popular govern- 
 ment, was a singular aristocracy of a hundred thousand 
 electors, consisting of the higher and the lower nobility, and 
 the gentry ; the people had no concern with the government. 
 Yet still it was to be treated by the politician as a popular 
 government, where those who possessed the greatest influence 
 over such large assemblies were orators, and he who de- 
 livered himself with the most fluency, and the most pertinent 
 arguments, would infallibly bend every heart to the point he 
 washed. The French bishop depended greatly on the effect 
 which his oration was to produce when the ambassadors 
 were respectively to be heard before the assembled diet; the 
 great and concluding act of so many tedious and difficult 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 9G7 
 
 negotiations — "which had cost my master," writes the in- 
 genious secretary, " six months' daily and nightly labours ; 
 he had never been assisted or comforted by any but his poor 
 servants ; and in the course of these six months had written 
 ten reams of paper, a thing which for forty years he had not 
 used himself to." 
 
 Every ambassador was now to deliver an oration before 
 the assembled electors, and thirty-two copies were to be 
 printed to present one to each palatine, who in his turn was 
 to communicate it to his lords. But a fresh difficulty 
 occurred to the French negotiator; as he trusted greatly 
 to his address influencing the multitude, and creating a 
 popular opinion in his favour, he regretted to find that the 
 imperial ambassador would deliver his speech in the Bohe- 
 mian language, so that he would be understood by the greater 
 part of the assembly ; a considerable advantage over Mont- 
 luc, who could only address them in Latin. The inventive 
 genius of the French bishop resolved on two things which 
 had never before been practised : first, to have his Latin 
 translated into the vernacular idiom ; and, secondly, to print 
 an edition of fifteen hundred copies in both languages, and 
 thus to obtain a vast advantage over the other ambassadors 
 with their thirty-two manuscript copies, of which each copy 
 was used to be read to 1200 persons. The great difficulty 
 was to get it secretly translated and printed. This fell to the 
 management of Choisnin, the secretary. He set off to the 
 castle of the palatine, Solikotski, who was deep in the French 
 interest ; Solikotski dispatched the version in six days. 
 Hastening with the precious MS. to Cracow, Choisnin flew 
 to a trusty printer, with whom he was connected ; the sheets 
 were deposited every night at Choisnin's lodgings, and at the 
 end of a fortnight the diligent secretary conducted the 1500 
 copies in secret triumph to Warsaw. 
 
 Yet this glorious labour was not ended ; Montluc was in 
 no haste to deliver his wonder-working oration, on which the 
 fate of a crown seemed to depend. When his turn came to 
 
2G8 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 be heard, he suddenly fell sick ; for the fact was, that he 
 wished to speak last, which would give him the advantage 
 of replying to any objection raised by his rivals, and admit 
 also of an attack on their weak points. 
 
 He contrived to obtain copies of their harangues, and dis- 
 covered five points which struck at the French interest. Our 
 poor bishop had now to sit up through the night to rewrite 
 five leaves of his printed oration, and cancel five which had 
 been printed ; and worse ! he had to get them by heart, and 
 to have them translated and inserted, by employing twenty 
 scribes day and night. " It is scarcely credible what my 
 master went through about this time," saith the historian of 
 his " gestes." 
 
 The council or diet was held in a vast plain. Twelve 
 pavilions were raised to receive the Polish nobility and the 
 ambassadors. One of a circular form was supported by a 
 single mast, and was large enough to contain 6000 persons, 
 without any one approaching the mast nearer than by twenty 
 steps, leaving this space void to preserve silence ; the dif- 
 ferent orders were placed around ; the archbishop and the 
 bishops, the palatines, the castellans, each according to their 
 rank. During the six weeks of the sittings of the diet, 
 100,000 horses were in the environs, yet forage and every 
 sort of provisions abounded. There were no disturbances, 
 not a single quarrel occurred, although there wanted not in 
 that meeting for enmities of long standing. It was strange, 
 and even awful, to view such a mighty assembly preserving 
 the greatest order, and every one seriously intent on this 
 solemn occasion. 
 
 At length the elaborate oration was delivered : it lasted 
 three hours, and Choisnin assures us not a single auditor 
 felt weary. " A cry of joy broke out from the tent, and 
 was reechoed through the plain, when Montluc ceased: it 
 was a public acclamation ; and had the election been fixed 
 for that moment, when all hearts were warm, surely t he 
 duke had been chosen without a dissenting voice." Thus 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 269 
 
 writes, in rapture, the ingenuous secretary ; and in the spirit 
 of the times communicates a delightful augury attending this 
 speech, by which evidently was foreseen its happy termina- 
 tion. "Those who disdain all things will take this to be 
 a mere invention of mine," says honest Choisnin : " but true 
 it is, that while the said sieitr delivered his harangue, a lark 
 was seen all the while upon the mast of the pavilion, singing 
 and warbling, which was remarked by a great number of 
 lords, because the lark is accustomed only to rest itself on 
 the earth: the most impartial confessed this to be a good 
 augury.* Also it was observed, that when the other am- 
 bassadors were speaking, a hare, and at another time a hog, 
 ran through the tent; and when the Swedish ambassador 
 spoke, the great tent fell half-way down. This lark singing 
 all the while did no little good to our cause ; for many of the 
 nobles and gentry noted this curious particularity, because 
 when a thing which does not commonly happen occurs in a 
 public affair, such appearances give rise to hopes either of 
 good or of evil." 
 
 The singing of this lark in favour of the Duke of Anjou 
 is not so evident as the cunning trick of the other French 
 agent, the political Bishop of Valence, who now reaped the 
 full advantage of his 1500 copies over the thirty-two of his 
 rivals. Every one had the French one in hand or read it to 
 his friends ; while the others, in manuscript, were confined to 
 a very narrow circle. 
 
 The period from the 10th of April to the 6th of May, 
 when they proceeded to the election, proved to be an interval 
 of infinite perplexities, troubles, and activity ; it is probable 
 that the secret history of this period of the negotiations was 
 never written. The other ambassadors were for protracting 
 the election, perceiving the French interest prevalent : but 
 
 * Our honest secretary reminds me of a passage in GeofFroy of Mon- 
 mouth, who says, " at this place an eagle spoke while the wall of the town 
 tfas building; and indeed I should not have failed transmitting die speech to 
 posterity had I thought it true as the rest of the history." 
 
270 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 delay would not serve the purpose of Montluc, he not being 
 so well provided with friends and means on the spot as the 
 others were. The public opinion which he had succeeded in 
 creating, by some unforeseen circumstance, might change. 
 
 During this interval, the bishop had to put several agents 
 of the other parties hors de combat. He got rid of a formi- 
 dable adversary in the Cardinal Commendon, an agent of the 
 pope's, whom he proved ought not to be present at the elec- 
 tion, and the cardinal was ordered to take his departure. A 
 bullying colonel was set upon the French negotiator, and 
 went about from tent to tent with a list of the debts of the 
 Duke of Anjou, to show that the nation could expect nothing 
 profitable from a ruined spendthrift. The page of a Polish 
 count flew to Montluc for protection, entreating permission to 
 accompany the bishop on his return to Paris. The servants 
 of the count pursued the page ; but this young gentleman 
 had so insinuated himself into the favour of the bishop, that 
 he was suffered to remain. The next day the page desired 
 Montluc would grant him the full liberty of his religion being 
 an evangelical, that he might communicate this to his friends, 
 and thus fix them to the French party. Montluc was too 
 penetrating for this young political agent, whom he discov- 
 ered to be a spy, and the pursuit of his fellows to have been 
 a farce ; he sent the page back to his master, the evangelical 
 count, observing that such tricks were too gross to be played 
 on one who had managed affairs in all the courts of Europe 
 before he came into Poland. 
 
 Another alarm was raised by a letter from the grand vizier 
 of Selim the Second, addressed to the diet, in which he re- 
 quested that they would either choose a king from among 
 themselves, or elect the brother of the king of France. 
 Some zealous Frenchman at the Sublime Porte had offi- 
 ciously procured this recommendation from the enemy of 
 Christianity ; but an alliance with Mahometanism did no ser- 
 vice to Montluc, either with the catholics or the evangelicals. 
 The bishop was in despair, and thought that his handy-work 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 27] 
 
 of six months' toil and trouble was to be shook into pieces in 
 an hour. Montluc, being shown the letter, instantly insisted 
 that it was a forgery, designed to injure his master the duke. 
 The letter was attended by some suspicious circumstances ; 
 and the French bishop, quick at expedients, snatched at an 
 advantage which the politician knows how to lay hold of in 
 the chapter of accidents. " The letter was not sealed with 
 the golden seal, nor inclosed in a silken purse or cloth of 
 gold ; and further, if they examined the translation," he 
 said, " they would find that it was not written on Turkish 
 paper." This was a piece of the sieur's good fortune, for the 
 letter was not forged ; but owing to the circumstance that the 
 boyar of Wallachia had taken out t^ie letter to send a trans- 
 lation with it, which the vizier had omitted, it arrived without 
 its usual accompaniments ; and the courier, when inquired 
 after, was kept out of the way : so that, in a few days, noth- 
 ing more was heard of the great vizier's letter. " Such was 
 our fortunate escape," says the secretary, " from the friendly 
 but fatal interference of the sultan, than which the sieur 
 dreaded nothing so much." 
 
 Many secret agents of the different powers were spinning 
 their dark intrigues ; and often, when discovered or discon- 
 certed, the creatures were again at their " dirty work." These 
 agents were conveniently disavowed or acknowledged by their 
 employers. The Abbe Cyre was an active agent of the 
 emperor's, and though not publicly accredited was still hover- 
 ing about. In Lithuania he had contrived matters so well 
 as to have gained over that important province for the arch- 
 duke ; and was passing through Prussia to hasten to com- 
 municate with the emperor, but " some honest men," quelques 
 bons personnages, says the French secretary, and no doubt 
 some good friends of his master, " took him by surprise, and 
 laid him up safely in the castle of Marienburgh, where truly 
 he was a little uncivilly used by the soldiers, who rifled his 
 portmanteau and sent us his papers, when we discovered all 
 his foul practices." The emperor, it seems, was angry at the 
 
272 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 arrest of his secret agent ; but as no one had the power of 
 releasing the Abbe Cyre at that moment, what with receiving 
 remonstrances and furnishing replies, the time passed away, 
 and a very troublesome adversary was in safe custody during 
 the election. The dissensions between the catholics and the 
 evangelicals were always on the point of breaking out ; but 
 Montluc succeeded in quieting these inveterate parties by 
 terrifying their imaginations with sanguinary civil wars, and 
 invasions of the Turks and the Tartars. He satisfied the catho- 
 lics with the hope that time would put an end to heresy, and 
 the evangelicals were glad to obtain a truce from persecution. 
 The day before the election Montluc found himself so confi- 
 dent, that he dispatched a courier to the French court, and 
 expressed himself in the true style of a speculative politician, 
 that des douze tables du Damier nous en avons les Neufs as- 
 sures. 
 
 There were preludes to the election ; and the first was 
 probably in acquiescence with a saturnalian humour preva- 
 lent in some countries, where the lower orders are only 
 allowed to indulge their taste for the mockery of the great 
 at stated times and on fixed occasions. A droll scene of a 
 mock election, as well as combat, took place between the 
 numerous Polish pages, who, saith the grave secretary, are 
 still more mischievous than our own : these elected among 
 themselves four competitors, made a senate to burlesque the 
 diet, and went to loggerheads. Those who represented the 
 archduke were well beaten, the Swede was hunted down, 
 and for the Piastis, they seized on a cart belonging to a 
 gentleman, laden with provisions, broke it to pieces, and 
 burnt the axle-tree, which in that country is called a piasti, 
 and cried out The piasti is burnt ! nor could the senators at 
 the diet that day command any order or silence. The French 
 party wore white handkerchiefs in their hats, and they were 
 so numerous as to defeat the others. 
 
 The next day however opened a different scene ;• " the 
 nobles prepared to deliberate, and each palatine in his quar- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 273 
 
 ters was with his companions on their knees, and many with 
 tears in their eyes, chanting a hymn to the Holy Ghost ; it 
 must be confessed, that this looked like a work of God," says 
 our secretary, who probably understood the manoeuvring of 
 the mock combat, or the mock prayers, much better than we 
 may. Every thing tells at an election, burlesque or so- 
 lemnity ! 
 
 The election took place, and the Duke of Anjou was pro- 
 claimed King of Poland — but the troubles of Montluc did not 
 terminate. When they presented certain articles for his 
 signature, the bishop discovered that these had undergone 
 material alterations from the proposals submitted to him be- 
 fore the proclamation ; these alterations referred to a dis- 
 avowal of the Parisian massacre ; the punishment of its 
 authors, and toleration in religion. Montluc refused to sign, 
 and cross-examined his Polish friends about the original pro- 
 posals; one party agreed that some things had been changed, 
 but that they were too trivial to lose a crown for ; others 
 declared that the alterations were necessary to allay the 
 fears, or secure the safety, of the people. Our Gallic diplo- 
 matist was outwitted, and after all his intrigues and cunning, 
 he found that the crown of Poland was only to be delivered 
 on conditional terms. 
 
 In this dilemma, with a crown depending on a stroke of 
 his pen, — remonstrating, entreating, arguing, and still delay- 
 ing, like "Ancient Pistol " swallowing his leek, he witnessed 
 with alarm some preparations for a new election, and his 
 rivals on the watch with their protests. Montluc, in despair, 
 signed the conditions — " assured, however," says the secre- 
 tary, who groans over this finale, " that when the elected 
 monarch should arrive, the states would easily be induced to 
 correct them, and place things in statu quo, as before the 
 proclamation. I was not a witness, being then dispatched to 
 Paris with the joyful news, but I heard that the sieur evesque 
 it was thought would have died in this agony, of being re- 
 duced to the hard necessity either to sign, or to lose the fruits 
 
 VOL. IV. 18 
 
274 SECRET HISTORY OF AN ELECTIVE MONARCHY. 
 
 of his labours. The conditions were afterwards for a long 
 while disputed in France." De Thou informs us, in lib. lvii. 
 of his history, that Montluc after signing these conditions 
 wrote to his master, that he was not bound by them, because 
 they did not concern Poland in general, and that they had 
 compelled him to sign, what at the same time he had in- 
 formed them his instructions did not authorize. Such was 
 the true Jesuitic conduct of a gray-haired politician, who at 
 length found, that honest plain sense could embarrass and 
 finally entrap the creature of the cabinet, the artificial genius 
 of diplomatic finesse. 
 
 The secretary, however, views nothing but his master's 
 glory in the issue of this most difficult negotiation ; and the 
 triumph of Anjou over the youthful archduke, whom the 
 Poles might have moulded to their will, and over the King 
 of Sweden, who claimed the crown by his queen's side, and 
 had offered to unite his part of Livonia with that which the 
 Poles possessed. He labours hard to prove that the palatines 
 and the castellans were not pratiques, i. e. had their votes 
 bought up by Montluc, as was reported ; from their number 
 and their opposite interests, he confesses that the sieur evesque 
 slept little, while in Poland, and that he only gained over the 
 hearts of men by that natural gift of God, which acquired 
 him the title of the happy ambassador. He rather seems to 
 regret that France was not prodigal of her purchase-money, 
 than to affirm that all palatines were alike scrupulous of their 
 honour. 
 
 One more fact may close this political sketch ; a lesson of 
 the nature of court gratitude ! The French court affected to 
 receive Choisnin with favour, but their suppressed discontent 
 was reserved for "the happy ambassador!" Affairs had 
 changed; Charles the Ninth was dying, and Catharine de' 
 Medici in despair for a son, to whom she had sacrificed all ; 
 while Anjou, already immersed in the wantonness of youth 
 and pleasure, considered his elevation to the throne of Poland 
 as an N exile which separated him from his depraved enjoy- 
 
BUILDINGS IN THE METROPOLIS, ETC. 
 
 275 
 
 ments ! Montluc was rewarded only by incurring disgrace ; 
 Catharine de' Medici and the Duke of Anjou now looked 
 coldly on him, and expressed their dislike of his successful 
 mission. " The mother of kings," as Choisnin designates 
 Catharine de' Medici, to whom he addresses his Memoirs, 
 with the hope of awakening her recollections of the zeal, the 
 genius, and the success of his old master, had no longer any 
 use for her favourite ; and Montluc found, as the commen- 
 tator of Choisnin expresses in a few words, an important 
 truth in political morality, that " at court the interest of the 
 moment is the measure of its affections and its hatreds." * 
 
 BUILDINGS IN THE METROPOLIS, AND RESIDENCE 
 IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Recently more than one of our learned judges from the 
 bench have perhaps astonished their auditors by impressing 
 them with an old-fashioned notion of residing more on their 
 estates than the fashionable modes of life, and the esprit de 
 societe, now overpowering all other esprit, will ever admit. 
 These opinions excited my attention to a curious circum- 
 stance in the history of our manners — the great anxiety of 
 ur government, from the days of Elizabeth till much later 
 an those of Charles the Second, to preserve the kingdom 
 from the evils of an overgrown metropolis. The people 
 themselves indeed participated in the same alarm at the 
 growth of the city ; while, however, they themselves were 
 Derpetuating the grievance which they complained of. 
 
 It is amusing to observe, that although the government 
 
 * I have drawn up this article, for the curiosity of its subject and its 
 details, from the " Discours au vray de tout ce qui s'est fait et passe" pour 
 Pentiere Ne>ociation de l'Election du Roi de Pologne, divis^s en trois 
 livres, par Jehan Choisnin du Chatelleraud, nagueres Secretaire de M. 
 PEvesque de Valence, 1674." 
 
276 
 
 BUILDINGS IN THE METROPOLIS, 
 
 was frequently employing even their most forcible acts tc 
 restrict the limits of the metropolis, the suburbs were grad- 
 ually incorporating with the city, and Westminster at length 
 united itself to London. Since that happy marriage, their 
 fertile progenies have so blended together, that little Lou- 
 dons are no longer distinguishable from the ancient parent ; 
 we have succeeded in spreading the capital into a county, 
 and have verified the prediction of James the First, u that 
 England will shortly be London, and London England." 
 
 " I think it a great object," said Justice Best, in deliver- 
 ing his sentiments in favour of the Game Laws, " that gen- 
 tlemen should have a temptation to reside in the country, 
 amongst their neighbours and tenantry, whose interests must 
 be materially advanced by such a circumstance. The links 
 of society are thereby better preserved, and the mutual advan- 
 tages and dependence of the higher and lower classes on one 
 another are better maintained. The baneful effects of our 
 present system we have lately seen in a neighbouring coun- 
 try, and an ingenious French writer has lately shown the ill 
 consequences of it on the continent." * 
 
 These sentiments of a living luminary of the law afford 
 some reason of policy for the dread which our government 
 long entertained on account of the perpetual growth of the 
 metropolis ; the nation, like a hypochondriac, was ludicrously 
 terrified that their head was too monstrous for their body, 
 and that it drew all the moisture of life from the middle and 
 the extremities. Proclamations warned and exhorted ; but 
 the very interference of a royal prohibition seemed to render 
 the crowded city more charming. In vain the statute against 
 new buildings was passed by Elizabeth ; in vain during the 
 reigns of James the First, and both the Charleses, we find 
 proclamations continually issuing to forbid new erections. 
 
 James was apt to throw out his opinions in these frequent 
 addresses to the people, who never attended to them ; his 
 majesty notices " those swarms of gentry, who through the 
 * Morning Chronicle, January 23, 1820. 
 
AND RESIDENCE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 277 
 
 instigation of their wives, or to new-model and fashion their 
 daughters (who if they were unmarried, marred their repu- 
 tations, and if married, lost them,) did neglect their country 
 hospitality, and cumber the city, a general nuisance to the 
 kingdom." — He addressed the Star-chamber to regulate " the 
 exorbitancy of the new buildings about the city, which were 
 but a shelter for those who, when they had spent their estates 
 in coaches, lackeys, and fine clothes like Frenchmen, lived 
 miserably in their houses like Italians ; but the honour of 
 the English nobility and gentry is to be hospitable among 
 their tenants." Once conversing on this subject, the mon- 
 arch threw out that happy illustration, which has been more 
 than once noticed, that " Gentlemen resident on their estates 
 were like ships in port ; their value and magnitude were 
 felt and acknowledged ; but when at a distance, as their size 
 seemed insignificant, so their worth and importance were not 
 duly estimated." 
 
 A manuscript writer of the times complains of the break- 
 ing up of old family establishments, all crowding to " upstart 
 London." — "Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his 
 house, and an emperor in the streets ; not caring if they 
 sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a coach : giving 
 that allowance to horses and mares, that formerly maintained 
 houses full of men ; pinching many a belly to paint a few 
 backs, and burying all the treasures of the kingdom into a 
 few citizens' coffers ; their woods into wardrobes, their leases 
 into laces, and their goods and chattels into guarded coats 
 and gaudy toys." Such is the representation of an eloquent 
 contemporary ; and however contracted might have been his 
 knowledge of the principles of political economy, and of that 
 prosperity which a wealthy nation is said to derive from its 
 consumption of articles of luxury, the moral effects have not 
 altered, nor has the scene in reality greatly changed. 
 
 The government not only frequently forbade new build- 
 ings within ten miles of London, but sometimes ordered them 
 to be pulled down — after they had been erected for several 
 
278 
 
 BUILDINGS W THE METROPOLIS, 
 
 years. Every six or seven years, proclamations were issued. 
 In Charles the First's reign, offenders were sharply prose- 
 cuted by a combined operation, not only against houses, but 
 against persons.* Many of the nobility and gentry, in 1632, 
 were informed against for having resided in the city, con- 
 trary to the late proclamation. And the attorney-general 
 was then fully occupied in filing bills of indictment against 
 them, as well as ladies, for staying in town. The following 
 curious " information " in the Star-chamber will serve our 
 purpose. 
 
 The attorney-general informs his majesty, that both Eliz- 
 abeth and James, by several proclamations, had commanded 
 that " persons of livelihood and means should reside in their 
 counties, and not abide or sojourn in the city of London, so 
 that counties remain unserved.' , These proclamations were 
 renewed by Charles the First, who had observed "a greater 
 number of nobility and gentry, and abler sort of people, with 
 their families, had resorted to the cities of London and West- 
 minster, residing there, contrary to the ancient usage of the 
 English nation " — " by their abiding in their several coun- 
 ties where their means arise, they would not only have 
 served his majesty according to their ranks, but by their 
 housekeeping in those parts the meaner sort of people formerly 
 were guided, directed, and relieved''' He accuses them of 
 wasting their estates in the metropolis, which would employ 
 and relieve the common people in their several counties. 
 The loose and disorderly people that follow them, living in 
 and about the cities, are so numerous, that they are not easily 
 governed by the ordinary magistrates : mendicants increase 
 in great number — the prices of all commodities are highly 
 raised, &c. The king had formerly proclaimed that all 
 ranks who were not connected with public offices, at the 
 close of forty days' notice, should resort to their several coun- 
 ties, and with their families continue their residence there. 
 And his majesty further warned them " Not to put them- 
 * Rush worth, vol. ii. p.- 288. 
 
AND RESIDENCE IN THE COUNTRY. 27'J 
 
 selves to unnecessary charge in providing themselves to 
 return in winter to the said cities, as it was the king's firm 
 resolution to withstand such great and growing evil." The 
 information concludes with a most copious list of offenders, 
 among whom are a great number of nobility, and ladies and 
 gentlemen, who were accused of having lived in London for 
 several months after the given warning of forty days. It 
 appears that most of them, to elude the grasp of the law, had 
 contrived to make a show of quitting the metropolis, and, 
 after a short absence, had again returned ; " and thus the 
 service of your majesty and your people in the several coun- 
 ties have been neglected and undone." 
 
 Such is the substance of this curious information, which 
 enables us, at least, to collect the ostensible motives of this 
 singular prohibition. Proclamations had hitherto been con- 
 sidered little more than the news of the morning, and three 
 days afterwards were as much read as the last week's news- 
 papers. They were now, however, resolved to stretch forth 
 the strong arm of law, and to terrify by an example. The 
 constables were commanded to bring in a list of the names 
 of strangers, and the time they proposed to fix their resi- 
 dence in their parishes. A remarkable victim on this occa- 
 sion was a Mr. Palmer, a Sussex gentleman, who was brought 
 ore tenus into the Star-chamber for disobeying the procla- 
 mation for living in the country. Palmer was a squire of 
 £1000 per annum, then a considerable income. He appears 
 to have been some rich bachelor ; for in his defence he 
 alleged that he had never been married, never was a house- 
 keeper, and had no house fitting for a man of his birth to 
 reside in, as his mansion in the country had been burnt down 
 within two years. These reasons appeared to his judges to 
 aggravate rather than extenuate his offence ; and after a 
 long reprimand for having deserted his tenants and neigh- 
 bours, they heavily fined him in one thousand pounds.* 
 
 * From a manuscript letter from Sir George Gresley to Sir Thomas 
 Puckering, Nov. 1632. 
 
280 
 
 BUILDINGS IN THE METROPOLIS, 
 
 The condemnation of this Sussex gentleman struck a 
 terror through a wide circle of sojourners in the metropolis. 
 I find accounts, pathetic enough, of their " packing away on 
 all sides for fear of the worst ; " and gentlemen " grumbling 
 that they should be confined to their houses : " and this was 
 sometimes backed too by a second proclamation, respecting 
 "their wives and families, and also widows," which was 
 " durus sermo to the women. It is nothing pleasing to all," 
 says the letter-writer, "but least of all to the women." "To 
 encourage gentlemen to live more willingly in the country," 
 says another letter-writer, " all game-fowl, as pheasants, par- 
 tridges, ducks, as also hares, are this day by proclamation 
 forbidden to be dressed or eaten in any inn." Here we find 
 realized the argument of Mr. Justice Best, in favour of the 
 game-laws. 
 
 It is evident that this severe restriction must have pro- 
 duced great inconvenience to certain persons who found a 
 residence in London necessary for their pursuits. This 
 appears from the manuscript diary of an honest antiquary, 
 Sir Symonds d'Ewes ; he has preserved an opinion which, 
 no doubt, was spreading fast, that such prosecutions of the 
 attorney -general were a violation of the liberty of the sub- 
 ject. "Most men wondered at Mr. Noy, the attorney- 
 general being accounted a great lawyer, that so strictly took 
 away men's liberties at one blow, confining them to reside at 
 their own houses, and not permitting them freedom to live 
 where they pleased within the king's dominions. I was 
 myself a little startled upon the first coming out of the proc- 
 lamation ; but having first spoken with the Lord Coventry, 
 lord keeper of the great seal, at Islington, when I visited 
 him ; and afterwards with Sir William Jones, one of the 
 king's justices of the bench, about my condition and residence 
 at the said town of Islington, and they both agreeing that I 
 was not within the letter of the proclamation, nor the inten- 
 tion of it neither, I rested satisfied, and thought myself 
 secure, laying in all my provisions for housekeeping for the 
 
AND RESIDENCE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 281 
 
 year ensuing, and never imagined myself to be in danger, 
 till this unexpected censure of Mr. Palmer passed in the , 
 Star-chamber; so, having advised with my friends, I re- 
 solved for a remove, being much troubled not only with my 
 separation from Recordes, but with my wife, being great 
 with child, fearing a winter journey might be dangerous for 
 her.' , * He left Islington and the records in the Tower to 
 return to his country seat, to the great disturbance of his 
 studies. 
 
 It is, perhaps, difficult to assign the cause of this marked 
 anxiety of the government for the severe restriction of the 
 limits of the metropolis, and the prosecution of the nobility 
 and gentry to compel a residence on their estates. "What- 
 ever were the motives, they were not peculiar to the existing 
 sovereign, but remained transmitted from cabinet to cabinet, 
 and were even renewed under Charles the Second. At a 
 time when the plague often broke out, a close and growing 
 metropolis might have been considered to be a great evil ; a 
 terror expressed by the manuscript writer before quoted, 
 complaining of " this deluge of building, that we shall be all 
 poisoned with breathing in one another's faces." The police 
 of the metropolis was long imbecile, notwithstanding their 
 " strong watches and guards " set at times ; and bodies of 
 the idle and the refractory often assumed some mysteiious 
 title, and were with difficulty governed. We may conceive 
 the state of the police, when " London apprentices," growing 
 in number and insolence, frequently made attempts on Bride- 
 well, or pulled down houses. One day the citizens, in prov- 
 ing some ordnance, terrified the whole court of James the 
 First with a panic, that there was " a rising in the city." It 
 is possible that the government might have been induced to 
 pursue this singular conduct, for I do not know that it can be 
 paralleled, of pulling down new built houses by some prin- 
 ciple of political economy which remains to be explained, or 
 ridiculed, by our modern adepts. 
 
 * Harl. MSS. 6. fo. 152. 
 
282 
 
 BUILDINGS IN THE METROPOLIS, 
 
 It would hardly be supposed that the present subject may- 
 be enlivened by a poem, the elegance and freedom of which 
 may even now be admired. It is a great literary curiosity, 
 and its length may be excused for several remarkable points. 
 
 AN ODE, 
 
 BY SIR RICHARD FANSHAW, 
 
 Upon Occasion of his Majesty's Proclamation in the Tear 1630, commanding 
 
 the Gentry to reside upon their Estates in the Country. 
 
 " Now war is all the world about, 
 And every where Erinnys reigns; 
 Or of the torch so late put out 
 
 The stench remains. 
 Holland for many years hath been 
 Of christian tragedies the stage, 
 Yet seldom hath she played a scene 
 
 Of bloodier rage: 
 And France, that was not long compos'd, 
 With civil drums again resounds, 
 And ere the old are fully clos'd, 
 
 Receives new wounds. 
 The great Gustavus in the west 
 Plucks the imperial eagle's wing, 
 Than whom the earth did ne'er invest 
 
 A fiercer king. 
 Only the island which we sow, 
 A world without the world so far, 
 From present wounds, it cannot show 
 
 An ancient scar. 
 White peace, the beautifull'st of things, 
 Seems here her everlasting rest 
 To fix and spread the downy wings 
 
 Over the nest. 
 As when great Jove, usurping reign, 
 From the plagued world did her exile, 
 And tied her with a golden chain 
 
 To one blest isle, 
 Which in a sea of plenty swam, 
 And turtles sang on every bough, 
 A safe retreat to all that came, 
 
 As ours is now; 
 
AND RESIDENCE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Yet we, as if some foe were here, 
 Leave the despised fields to clowns, 
 And come to save ourselves, as 'twere 
 
 In walled towns. 
 Hither we bring wives, babes, rich clothes, 
 And gems — till now my soveraign 
 The growing evil doth oppose : 
 
 Counting in vain 
 His care preserves us from annoy 
 Of enemies his realms to invade, 
 Unless he force us to enjoy 
 
 The peace he made, 
 To roll themselves in envied leisure; 
 He therefore sends the landed heirs, 
 Whilst he proclaims not his own pleasure 
 
 So much was theirs. 
 The sap and blood of the land, which fled 
 Into the root, and choked the heart, 
 Are bid their quick'ning power to spread 
 
 Through every part. 
 'twas an act, not for my muse 
 To celebrate, nor the dull age, 
 Until the country air infuse 
 
 A purer rage. 
 And if the fields as thankful prove 
 For benefits received, as seed, 
 They will to 'quite so great a love 
 
 A Virgil breed. 
 Nor let the gentry grudge to go 
 Into those places whence they grew, 
 But think them blest they may do so. 
 
 Who would pursue 
 The smoky glory of the town, 
 That ma} r go till his native earth, 
 And by the shining fire sit down 
 
 Of his own hearth, 
 Free from the griping scrivener's bands, 
 And the more biting mercer's books; 
 Free from the bait of oiled hands, 
 
 And painted looks ? 
 The country too even chops for rain; 
 You that exhale it by your power, 
 Let the fat drops fall down again 
 
 In a full shower. 
 And you bright beauties of the time, 
 That waste yourselves here in a blaze, 
 Fix to your orb and proper clime 
 
 Your wandering rays. 
 
284 
 
 ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 Let no dark corner of the land 
 
 Be unembellish'd with one gem, 
 
 And those which here too thick do stand 
 
 Sprinkle on them. 
 Believe me, ladies, you will find 
 In that sweet life more solid joys, 
 More true contentment to the mind 
 
 Than all town-toys. 
 Nor Cupid there less blood doth spill, 
 But heads his shafts with chaster love, 
 Not feather' d with a sparrow's quill, 
 
 But of a dove. 
 There you shall hear the nightingale, 
 The harmless syren of the wood, 
 How prettily she tells a tale 
 
 Of rape and blood. 
 The lyric lark, with all beside 
 Of Nature's feather'd quire, and all 
 The commonwealth of flowers in 'ts pride 
 
 Behold you shall. 
 The lily queen, the royal rose, 
 The gilly-flower, prince of the blood! 
 The courtier tulip, gay in clothes, 
 
 The regal bud; 
 The violet purple senator, 
 How they do mock the pomp of state, 
 And all that at the surly door 
 
 Of great ones wait. 
 Plant trees you may, and see them shoot 
 Up with your children, to be served 
 To your clean boards, and the fairest fruit 
 
 To be preserved ; 
 And learn to use their several gums; 
 'Tis innocence in the sweet blood 
 Of cherry, apricots, and plums, 
 
 To be imbrued." 
 
 ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 The satires and the comedies of the age have been con- 
 sulted by the historian of our manners, and the features of 
 the times have been traced from those amusing records of 
 folly. Dames Barrington enlarged this field of domestic 
 
EOYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 28j 
 
 history, in his very entertaining "Observations on the Stat- 
 utes." Another source, which to me seems not to have been 
 explored, is the proclamations which have frequently issued 
 from our sovereigns, and were produced by the exigencies 
 of the times. 
 
 These proclamations, or royal edicts, in our country were 
 never armed with the force of laws — only as they enforce 
 the execution of laws already 'established ; and the procla- 
 mation of a British monarch may become even an illegal 
 act, if it be in opposition to the law of the land. Once 
 indeed it was enacted, under the arbitrary government of 
 Henry the Eighth, by the sanction of a pusillanimous par- 
 liament, that the force of acts of parliament should be given 
 to the king's proclamations ; and at a much later period, the 
 chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, was willing to have advanced 
 the king's proclamations into laws, on the sophistical maxim, 
 that " all precedents had a time when they began ; " but this 
 chancellor argued ill, as he was told with spirit by Lord 
 Coke, in the presence of James the First,* who probably 
 did not think so ill of the chancellor's logic. Blackstone, to 
 whom on this occasion I could not fail to turn, observes, on 
 the statute under Henry the Eighth, that it would have intro- 
 duced the most despotic tyranny, and must have proved fatal 
 to the liberties of this kingdom, had it not been luckily re- 
 pealed in the minority of his successor, whom he elsewhere 
 calls an amiable prince — all our young princes, we discover, 
 were amiable ! Blackstone has not recorded the subsequent 
 attempt of the lord chancellor under James the First, which 
 tended to raise proclamations to the nature of an ukase of 
 the autocrat of both the Russias. It seems that our national 
 freedom, notwithstanding our ancient constitution, has had 
 several narrow escapes. 
 
 Royal proclamations, however, in their own nature are 
 innocent enough ; for since the manner, time, and circum- 
 
 * The whole story is in 12 Co. 746. I owe this curious fact to the author 
 of Eunomus, ii. 116. 
 
286 
 
 ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 stances of putting laws in execution must frequently be left 
 to the discretion of the executive magistrate, a proclamation 
 that is not adverse to existing laws need not create any 
 alarm ; the only danger they incur is that they seem never 
 to have been attended to, and rather testified the wishes of 
 the government than the compliance of the subjects. They 
 were not laws, and were therefore considered as sermons or 
 pamphlets, or any thing forgotten in a week's time ! 
 
 These proclamations are frequently alluded to by the let- 
 ter writers of the times, among the news of the day, but 
 usually their royal virtue hardly kept them alive beyond the 
 week. Some on important subjects are indeed noticed in 
 our history. Many indications of the situation of affairs, the 
 feelings of the people, and the domestic history of our nation, 
 may be drawn from these singular records. I have never 
 found them to exist in any collected form, and they have 
 been probably only accidentally preserved. 
 
 The proclamations of every sovereign would characterize 
 his reign, and open to us some of the interior operations of 
 the cabinet. The despotic will, yet vacillating conduct of 
 Henry the Eighth, towards the close of his reign, may be 
 traced in a proclamation to abolish the translations of the 
 scriptures, and even the reading of Bibles by the people ; 
 commanding all printers of English books and pamphlets to 
 affix their names to them, and forbidding the sale of any 
 English books printed abroad. When the people were not 
 suffered to publish their opinions at home, all the opposition 
 flew to foreign presses, and their writings were then smug- 
 gled into the country in which they ought to have been 
 printed. Hence many volumes printed in a foreign type at 
 this period are found in our collections. The king shrunk 
 in dismay from that spirit of reformation which had only 
 been a party-business with him, and making himself a pope, 
 decided that nothing should be learnt but what he himself 
 deigned to teach ! 
 
 The antipathies and jealousies, which our populace too 
 
ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 287 
 
 long indulged by their incivilities to all foreigners, are char- 
 acterized by a proclamation issued by Mary, commanding 
 her subjects to behave themselves peaceably towards the 
 strangers coming with King Philip ; that noblemen and gen- 
 tlemen should warn their servants to refrain from " strife 
 and contention, either by outward deeds, taunting words, 
 unseemly countenance, by mimicking them, &c." The pun- 
 ishment not only " her grace's displeasure, but to be com- 
 mitted to prison without bail or mainprise." 
 
 The proclamations of Edward the Sixth curiously exhibit 
 the unsettled state of the reformation, where the rites and 
 ceremonies of Catholicism were still practised by the new 
 religionists, while an opposite party, resolutely bent on an 
 eternal separation from Rome, were avowing doctrines which 
 afterwards consolidated themselves into puritanism, and while 
 others were hatching up that demoralizing fanaticism, which 
 subsequently shocked the nation w r ith those monstrous sects, 
 the indelible disgrace of our country ! In one proclamation 
 the king denounces to the people " those who despise the 
 sacrament by calling it idol, or such other vile name." 
 Another is against such " as innovate any ceremony," and 
 who are described as " certain private preachers and other 
 laiemen, who rashly attempt of their own and singular wit 
 and mind, not only to persuade the people from the old and 
 accustomed rites and ceremonies, but also themselves bring 
 in new and strange orders according to their phantasies. 
 The which, as it is an evident token of pride and arrogancy, 
 so it tendeth both to confusion and disorder." Another 
 proclamation, to press "a godly conformity throughout his 
 realm," where we learn the following curious fact, of " divers 
 unlearned and indiscreet priests of a devilish mind and 
 intent, teaching that a man may forsake his wife and marry 
 another, his first wife yet living ; likewise that the wife may 
 do the same to the husband. Others that a man may have 
 two wives or more at once, for that these things are not pro- 
 hibited by God's law, but by the Bishop of Rome's law ; so 
 
288 
 
 ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 that by such evil and fantastical opinions some have not 
 been afraid indeed to marry and keep two wives." Here, as 
 in the bud, we may unfold those subsequent scenes of our 
 story, which spread out in the following century ; the branch- 
 ing out of the non-conformists into their various sects; and 
 the indecent haste of our reformed priesthood, who, in their 
 zeal to cast off the yoke of Rome, desperately submitted to 
 the liberty of having " two wives or more ! There is a 
 proclamation to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Satur- 
 days ; exhorted on the principle, not only that "men should 
 abstain on those days, and forbear their pleasures and the 
 meats wherein they have more delight, to the intent to sub- 
 due their bodies to the soul and spirit, but also for worldly 
 policy. To use fish for the benefit of the commonwealth, 
 and profit of many who be fishers and men using that trade, 
 unto the which this realm, in every part environed with the 
 seas, and so plentiful of fresh waters, be increased the nour- 
 ishment of the land by saving flesh." It did not seem to 
 occur to the king in council that the butchers might have 
 had cause to petition against this monopoly of two days in 
 the week granted to the fishmongers ; and much less, that it 
 was better to let the people eat flesh or fish as suited their 
 conveniency. In respect to the religious rite itself, it was 
 evidently not considered as an essential point of faith, since 
 the king enforces it on the principle, " for the profit and com- 
 modity of his realm." Burnet has made a just observation 
 on religious fasts.* 
 
 A proclamation against excess of apparel, in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, and renewed many years after, shows the luxury 
 of dress, which was indeed excessive : I shall shortly notice 
 it in another article. There is a curious one against the ico- 
 noclasts, or image-breakers and picture-destroyers, for which 
 the antiquary will hold her in high reverence. Her majesty 
 informs us, that " several persons, ignorant, malicious, or cov- 
 etous, of late years, have spoiled and broken ancient monu- 
 * History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 96, folio. 
 
ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 289 
 
 ments, erected only to show a memory to posterity, and not to 
 nourish any kind of superstition." The queen laments, that 
 what is broken and spoiled would be now hard to recover, but 
 advises her good people to repair them ; and commands them 
 in future to desist from committing such injuries. A more 
 extraordinary circumstance than the proclamation itself was 
 the manifestation of her majesty's zeal, in subscribing her name 
 with her own hand to every proclamation dispersed through- 
 out England. These image-breakers first appeared in Eliz- 
 abeth's reign ; it was afterwards that they flourished in all 
 the perfection of their handicraft, and have contrived that 
 these monuments of art shall carry down to posterity the 
 memory of their shame and of their age. These image- 
 breakers, so famous in our history, had already appeared 
 under Henry the Eighth, and continued their practical zeal, 
 in spite of proclamations and remonstrances, till they had ac- 
 complished their work. In 1641, an order was published by 
 the Commons, that they should " take away all scandalous 
 pictures out of churches : " but more was intended than was 
 expressed ; and we are told that the people did not at first 
 carry their barbarous practice against all Art, to the lengths 
 which they afterwards did, till they were instructed by pri- ' 
 rate information/ Dowsing' s Journal has been published, 
 and shows what the order meant ! He was their giant de- 
 stroyer ! Such are the Machiavelian secrets of revolutionary 
 governments ; they give a public order in moderate words, 
 but the secret one, for the deeds, is that of extermination ! It 
 was this sort of men who discharged their prisoners by giv- 
 ing a secret sign to lead them to their execution ! 
 
 The proclamations of James the First, by their number, 
 are said to have sunk their value with the people. He was 
 fond of giving them gentle advice ; and it is said by Wilson 
 that there was an intention to have this king's printed proc- 
 lamations bound up in a volume, that better notice might be 
 taken of the matters contained in them. There is more than 
 one to warn the people against " speaking too freely of mat 
 
 VOL. IV. 19 
 
290 
 
 ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 ters above their reach," prohibiting all "undutiful speeches." 
 I suspect that many of these proclamations are the cpmposi- 
 tion of the king's own hand ; he was often his own secretary. 
 There is an admirable one against private duels and chal- 
 lenges. The curious one respecting Cowell's " Interpreter " 
 is a sort of royal review of some of the arcana of state ; I 
 refer to the quotation.* 
 
 I will preserve a passage of a proclamation " against excess 
 of lavish and licentious speech." James was a king of words ! 
 
 "Although the commixture of nations, confluence of ambassadors, and 
 the relation which the affairs of our kingdoms have had towards the busi- 
 ness and interests of foreign states, have caused, during our regiment 
 (government,) a greater openness and liberty of discourse, even concerning 
 matters of state (which are no themes or subjects Jit for vulgar persons 
 or common meetings) than hath been in former times used or permitted; 
 and although in our own nature and judgment we do well allow of con- 
 venient freedom of speech, esteeming any over-curious or restrained hands 
 carried in that kind rather as a weakness, or else over-much severity of 
 government than otherwise; yet for as much as it is come to our ears, by 
 common report, that there is at this time a more licentious passage of 
 lavish discourse and bold censure in matters of state than is fit to be suffered: 
 We give this warning, &c, to take heed how they intermeddle by pen or 
 speech with causes of state and secrets of empire, either at home or abroad, 
 but contain themselves within that modest and reverent regard of matters 
 above their reach and calling; nor to give any manner of applause to such 
 discourse, without acquainting one of our privy council within the space 
 of twenty-four hours." 
 
 It seems that " the bold speakers," as certain persons were 
 then denominated, practised an old artifice of lauding his 
 majesty, while they severely arraigned the counsels of the 
 cabinet ; on this James observes, " Neither let any man mis- 
 take us so much as to think that by giving fair and specious 
 attributes to our person, they cover the scandals which they 
 otherwise lay upon our government, but conceive that we 
 make no other construction of them but as fine and artificial 
 glosses, the better to give passage to the rest of their imputa- 
 tions and scandals." 
 
 * I have noticed it in Calamities of Authors, ii. 246. 
 
ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 291 
 
 This was a proclamation in the eighteenth year of his 
 reign ; he repeated it in the nineteenth, and he might have 
 proceeded to " the crack of doom " with the same effect ! 
 
 Rushworth, in his second volume of Historical Collections, 
 has preserved a considerable number of the proclamations of 
 Charles the First, of which many are remarkable ; but lat- 
 terly they mark the feverish state of his reign. One regu- 
 lates access for cure of the king's evil — by which his majesty, 
 it appears, " hath had good success therein ; " but though 
 ready and willing as any king or queen of this realm ever 
 was to relieve the distresses of his good subjects, " his majesty 
 commands to change the seasons for his ' sacred touch ' from 
 Easter and Whitsuntide to Easter and Michaelmas, as times 
 more convenient for the temperature of the season," &c. 
 Another against " departure out of the realm without license." 
 One to erect an office " for the suppression of cursing and 
 swearing," to receive the forfeitures ; against " libellous and 
 seditious pamphlets and discourses from Scotland," framed 
 by factious spirits, and republished in London — this was in 
 1640 ; and Charles, at the crisis of that great insurrection in 
 which he was to be at once the actor and the spectator, fondly 
 imagined that the possessors of these " scandalous " pamphlets 
 would bring them, as he proclaimed " to one of his majesty's 
 justices of peace, to be by him sent to one of his principal 
 secretaries of state ! " 
 
 On the Restoration, Charles the Second had to court his 
 people by his domestic regulations. He early issued a re- 
 markable proclamation, which one would think reflected on 
 his favourite companions, and which strongly marks the 
 moral disorders of those depraved and wretched times. It 
 is against " vicious, debauched, and profane persons ! " who 
 are thus described : — 
 
 "A sort of men of whom we have heard much, and are sufficiently 
 ashamed ; who spend their time in taverns, tippling-houses, and debauches, 
 giving no other evidence of their affection to us but in drinking our health, and 
 inveighing against all others who are not of their own dissolute temper ; 
 
292 
 
 ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS. 
 
 and who, in truth, have more discredited our cause, by the license of their 
 manners and lives, than they could ever advance it by their affection or 
 courage. We hope all persons of honour, or in place and authority, will 
 so far as«ist us in discountenancing such men, that their discretion and 
 shame will persuade them to reform what their conscience would not; and 
 that the displeasure of good men towards them may supply what the laws 
 have not, and, it may be, cannot well provide against; there being by the 
 license and corruption of the times, and the depraved nature of man, many 
 enormities, scandals, and impieties in practice and manners, which laws 
 cannot icell describe, and consequently not enough provide against, which may, 
 by the example and severity of virtuous men, be easily discountenanced, 
 and by degrees suppressed." 
 
 Surely the gravity and moral severity of Clarendon dic- 
 tated this proclamation ! which must have afforded some 
 mirth to the gay, debauched circle, the loose cronies of 
 royalty ! 
 
 It is curious that, in 1660, Charles the Second issued a 
 long proclamation for the strict observance of Lent, and al- 
 leges for it the same reason as we found in Edward the 
 Sixth's proclamation, " for the good it produces in the em- 
 ployment of 'fishermen? .No ordinaries, taverns, &c. to make 
 any supper on Friday nights, either in Lent or out of Lent. 
 
 Charles the Second issued proclamations u to repress the 
 excess of gilding of coaches and chariots," to restrain the waste 
 of gold, which, as they supposed, by the excessive use of 
 gilding, had grown scarce. Against " the exportation and 
 the buying and selling of gold and silver at higher rates than 
 in our mint," alluding to a statute made in the ninth year of 
 Edward the Third, called the Statute of Money. Against 
 building in and about London and Westminster in 1661: 
 "The inconveniences daily growing by increase of new 
 buildings are, that the people increasing in such great num- 
 bers, are not well to be governed by the wonted officers : the 
 prices of victuals are enhanced ; the health of the subject 
 inhabiting the cities much endangered, and many good towns 
 and boroughs unpeopled, and in their trades much decayed — 
 frequent fires occasioned by timber-buildings." It orders to 
 build with brick and stone, " which would beautify, and make 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 293 
 
 an uniformity in the buildings ; and which are not only more 
 durable and safe against fire, but by experience are found to 
 be of little more if not less charge than the building with 
 timber''' We must infer that, by the general use of timber, 
 it had considerably risen in price, while brick and stone not 
 then being generally used, became as cheap as wood ! 
 
 The most remarkable proclamations of Charles the Second 
 are those which concern the regulations of coffee-houses, and 
 one for putting them down; to restrain the spreading of false 
 news, and licentious talking of state and government, the 
 speakers and the hearers were made alike punishable. This 
 was highly resented as an illegal act by the friends of civil 
 freedom ; who, however, succeeded in obtaining the freedom 
 of the coffee-houses, under the promise of not sanctioning 
 treasonable speeches. It was urged by the court lawyers, as 
 the high Tory, Roger North, tells us, that the retailing coffee 
 might be an innocent trade, when not used in the nature of a 
 common assembly to discourse of matters of state news and 
 great persons, as a means " to discontent the people." On 
 the other side, Kennet asserted that the discontents existed 
 before they met at the coffee-houses, and that the proclama- 
 tion was only intended to suppress an evil which was not to 
 be prevented. At this day we know which of those two 
 historians exercised the truest judgment. It was not the 
 coffee-houses which produced political feeling, but the re- 
 verse. Whenever government ascribes effects to a cause 
 quite inadequate to produce them, they are only seeking 
 means to hide the evil which they are too weak to suppress. 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 This is a subject which has been hitherto but imperfectly 
 comprehended even by some historians themselves ; and has 
 too often incurred the satire, and even the contempt, of those 
 
294 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 volatile spirits who play about the superficies of truth, want- 
 ing the industry to view it on more than one side ; and those 
 superficial readers who imagine that every tale is told when 
 it is written. 
 
 Secret history is the supplement of history itself, and is its 
 great corrector; and the combination of secret with public 
 history has in itself a perfection, which each taken separately 
 has not. The popular historian composes a plausible rather 
 than an accurate tale ; researches too fully detailed would 
 injure the just proportions, or crowd the bold design of the 
 elegant narrative ; and facts, presented as they occurred, 
 would not adapt themselves to those theoretical writers of 
 history who arrange events not in a natural, but in a sys- 
 tematic order. But in secret history we are more busied in 
 observing what passes than in being told of it. We are 
 transformed into the contemporaries of the writers, while we 
 are standing on the " vantage-ground " of their posterity ; 
 and thus what to them appeared ambiguous, to us has become 
 unquestionable ; what was secret to them has been confided 
 to us. They mark the beginnings, and we the ends. From 
 the fulness of their accounts we recover much which had 
 been lost to us in the general views of history, and it is by 
 this more intimate acquaintance with persons and circum- 
 stances, that we are enabled to correct the less distinct, and 
 sometimes the fallacious appearances in the page of the 
 popular historian. He who only views things in masses will 
 have no distinct notion of any one particular ; he may be a 
 fanciful or a passionate historian, but he is not the historian 
 who will enlighten while he charms. 
 
 But as secret history appears to deal in minute things, its 
 connection with great results is not usually suspected. The 
 circumstantiality of its story, the changeable shadows of its 
 characters, the redundance of its conversations, and the many 
 careless superfluities which egotism or vanity may throw 
 out, seem usually confounded with that small-talk familiarly 
 termed gossiping. But the gossiping of a profound poli- 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 295 
 
 tician, or a vivacious observer, in one of their letters, or in 
 their memoirs, often, by a spontaneous stroke, reveals the 
 individual, or by a simple incident unriddles a mysterious 
 event. We may discover the value of these pictures of hu- 
 man nature, with which secret history abounds, by an obser- 
 vation which occurred between two statesmen in office. 
 Lord Raby, our ambassador, apologized to Lord Boling- 
 broke, then secretary of state, for troubling him with the 
 minuter circumstances which occurred in his conferences ; in 
 reply, the minister requests the ambassador to continue 
 the same manner of writing, and alleges an excellent 
 reason : " Those minute circumstances give very great light 
 to the general scope and design of the persons negotiated 
 with. And I own that nothing pleases me more in that val- 
 uable collection of the Cardinal D'Ossat's letters, than the 
 naive descriptions which he gives of the looks, gestures, and 
 even tones of voice, of the persons he conferred with." I 
 regret to have to record the opinions of another noble author, 
 who recently has thrown out some degrading notions of secret 
 history, and particularly of the historians. I would have 
 silently passed by a vulgar writer, superficial, prejudiced, 
 and uninformed ; but as so many are yet deficient in correct 
 notions of secret history, it is but justice that their represent- 
 ative should be heard before they are condemned. 
 
 His lordship says, that " Of late the appetite for Remains 
 of all kinds has surprisingly increased. A story repeated by 
 the Duchess of Portsmouth's waiting- woman to Lord Roches- 
 ter's valet, forms the subject of investigation for a philosophical 
 historian ; and you may hear of an assembly of scholars and 
 authors discussing the validity of a piece of scandal invented 
 by a maid of honour more than two centuries ago, and re- 
 peated to an obscure writer by Queen Elizabeth's house- 
 keeper. It is a matter of the greatest interest to see the 
 letters of every busy trifler. Yet who does not laugh at such 
 men ? " This is the attack ! but as if some half truths, like 
 light through the cranny in a dark room, had just darted in 
 
296 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 a stream of atoms over this scoffer at secret history, he sud- 
 denly views his object with a very different appearance — for 
 his lordship justly concludes that " It must be confessed, 
 however, that knowledge of this kind is very entertaining ; 
 and here and there among the rubbish we find hints that 
 may give the philosopher a clue to important facts, and 
 afford to the moralist a better analysis of the human mind 
 than a whole library of metaphysics ! " The philosopher 
 may well abhor all intercourse with wits ! because the fac- 
 ulty of judgment is usually quiescent with them ; and in 
 their orgasm they furiously decry what in their sober senses 
 they as eagerly laud ! Let me inform his lordship, that 
 "the waiting- woman and the valet" of eminent persons are 
 sometimes no unimportant personages in history. By the 
 Memoir es de Mujis. De la Porte, premier valet-de-chambre de 
 Louis XIV. we learn what before "the valet" wrote had 
 not been known — the shameful arts which Mazarin allowed 
 to be practised, to give a bad education to the prince, and to 
 manage him by depraving his tastes. Madame de Motteville, 
 in her Memoirs, " the waiting lady " of our Henrietta, has 
 preserved for our own English history some facts which have 
 been found so essential to the narrative, that they are refer- 
 red to by our historians. In Gui Joly, the humble depend- 
 ant of Cardinal de Retz, we discover an unconscious but a 
 useful commentator on the memoirs of his master ; and the 
 most affecting personal anecdotes of Charles the First have 
 been preserved by Thomas Herbert, his gentleman in wait- 
 ing ; Clery, the valet of Louis the Sixteenth, with pathetic 
 faithfulness has shown us the man, in the monarch whom he 
 served ! 
 
 Of secret history there are obviously two species; it 
 is positive, or it is relative. It is positive, when the facts 
 are first given to the world ; a sort of knowledge which can 
 only be drawn from our own personal experience, or from 
 contemporary documents preserved in their manuscript state 
 in public or in private collections ; or it is relative, in pro- 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 297 
 
 portion to the knowledge of those to whom it is communi- 
 cated, and will be more or less valued, according to the 
 acquisitions of the reader ; and this inferior species of secret 
 history is drawn from rare and obscure books and other pub- 
 lished authorities, often as scarce as manuscripts. 
 
 Some experience I have had in those literary researches, 
 where curiosity, ever wakeful and vigilant, discovers among 
 contemporary manuscripts new facts ; illustrations of old 
 ones ; and sometimes detects, not merely by conjecture, the 
 concealed causes of many events ; often opens a scene in 
 which some well-known personage is exhibited in a new 
 character ; and thus penetrates beyond those generalizing 
 representations which satisfy the superficial, and often cover 
 the page of history with delusion and fiction. 
 
 It is only since the latter institution of national libraries 
 that these immense collections of manuscripts have been 
 formed ; with us they are an undescribable variety, usually 
 classed under the vague title of " state papers." The in- 
 structions of ambassadors, but more particularly their own 
 dispatches ; charters and chronicles brown with antiquity, 
 which preserve a world which had been else lost for us, like 
 the one before the deluge ; series upon series of private cor- 
 respondence, among which we discover the most confidential 
 communications, designed by the writers to have been de- 
 stroyed by the hand which received them ; memoirs of indi- 
 viduals by themselves or by their friends, such as are now 
 published by the pomp of vanity, or the faithlessness of their 
 possessors ; and the miscellaneous collections formed by all 
 kinds of persons, characteristic of all countries and of all 
 eras, materials for the history of man ! — records of the force 
 or of the feebleness of the human understanding, and still the 
 monuments of their passions ! 
 
 The original collectors of these dispersed manuscripts 
 were a race of ingenuous men ; silent benefactors of man- 
 kind, to whom justice has not yet been fully awarded ; but 
 in their fervour of accumulation, every thing in a manuscript 
 
298 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 state bore its spell ; acquisition was the sole point aimed at 
 by our early collectors, and to this these searching spirits 
 sacrificed their fortunes, their ease, and their days ; but life 
 would have been too short to 'have decided on the intrinsic 
 value of the manuscripts flowing in a stream to the collec- 
 tors ; and suppression, even of the disjointed reveries of 
 madmen, or the sensible madness of projectors, might have 
 been indulging a capricious taste, or what has proved more 
 injurious to historical pursuits, that party-feeling which has 
 frequently annihilated the memorials of their adversaries.* 
 
 These manuscript collections now assume a formidable 
 appearance. A toilsome march over these "Alps rising 
 over Alps!" a voyage in "a sea without a shore!" has 
 turned away most historians from their severer duties ; those 
 who have grasped at early celebrity have been satisfied to 
 have given a new form to, rather than contributed to the new 
 matter of history. The very sight of these masses of history 
 has terrified some modern historians. When Pere Daniel 
 undertook a history of France, the learned Boivin, the king's 
 librarian, opened for his inspection an immense treasure of 
 charters, and another of royal autograph letters, and another 
 of private correspondence ; treasures reposing in fourteen 
 hundred folios ! The modern historian passed two hours 
 impatiently looking over them, but frightened at another 
 plunge into the gulf, this Curtius of history would not immo- 
 late himself for his country ! He wrote a civil letter to the 
 librarian for his " supernumerary kindness," but insinuated 
 that he could write a very readable history without any fur- 
 ther aid of such paperasses or " paper-rubbish." Pere Dan- 
 iel, therefore, " quietly sat down to his history," copying 
 others — a compliment which was never returned by any one: 
 but there was this striking novelty in his " readable history," 
 that, according to the accurate computation of Count Bou- 
 lainvilliers, Pere Daniel's history of France contains ten 
 
 * See what 1 have said of " Suppressors and Dilapidators of Manu- 
 scripts," Vol. iii. p. 200. 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 299 
 
 thousand blunders ! The same circumstance has been told 
 me by a living historian of the late Gilbert Stuart ; who, on 
 some manuscript volumes of letters being pointed out to him 
 when composing his history of Scotland, confessed that " what 
 was already printed was more than he was able to read ! " 
 and thus much for his theoretical history, written to run 
 counter to another theoretical history, being Stuart versus 
 Robertson ! They equally depend on the simplicity of their 
 readers, and the charms of style ! Another historian, An- 
 quetil, the author of V Esprit de la Ligue, has described his 
 embarrassment at an inspection of the contemporary manu- 
 scripts of that period. After thirteen years of researches to 
 glean whatever secret history printed books afforded, the 
 author, residing in the country, resolved to visit the royal 
 library at Paris. Monsieur Melot receiving him with that 
 kindness, which is one of the official duties of the public 
 librarian towards the studious, opened the cabinets in which 
 were deposited the treasures of French history. — " This is 
 what you require ! come here at all times, and you shall be 
 attended ! " said the librarian to the young historian, who 
 stood by with a sort of shudder, while he opened cabinet 
 after cabinet. The intrepid investigator repeated his visits, 
 looking over the mass as chance directed, attacking one side, 
 and then flying to another. The historian, who had felt no 
 weariness during thirteen years among printed books, dis- 
 covered that he was now engaged in a task, apparently 
 always beginning, and never ending ! The " Esprit de la 
 Ligue " was however enriched by labours, which at the mo- 
 ment appeared so barren. 
 
 The study of these paperasses is not perhaps so disgusting 
 as the impatient Pere Daniel imagined ; there is a literary 
 fascination in looking over the same papers which the great 
 characters of history once held and wrote on ; catching from 
 themselves their secret sentiments ; and often detecting so 
 many of their unrecorded actions ! By habit the toil becomes 
 light; and with a keen inquisitive spirit even delightful! 
 
300 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 For what is more delightful to the curious than to make fresh 
 discoveries every day ? Addison has a true and pleasing 
 observation on such pursuits. " Our employments are con- 
 verted into amusements, so that even in those objects which 
 were indifferent, or even displeasing to us, the mind not only 
 gradually loses its aversion, but conceives a certain fondness 
 and affection for them." Addison illustrates this case by 
 one of the greatest geniuses of the age, who by habit took 
 incredible pleasure in searching into rolls and records, till he 
 preferred them to Virgil and Cicero ! The faculty of curios- 
 ity is as fervid, and even as refined in its search after truth, 
 as that of taste in the objects of imagination ; and the more 
 it is indulged, the more exquisitely it is enjoyed ! 
 
 The popular historians of England and of France have, 
 in truth, made little use of manuscript researches. Life is 
 very short for long histories ; and those who rage with an 
 avidity of fame or profit will gladly taste the fruit which they 
 cannot mature. Researches too remotely sought after, or too 
 slowly acquired, or too fully detailed, w r ould be so many 
 obstructions in the smooth texture of a narrative. Our 
 theoretical historians write from some particular and precon- 
 ceived result ; unlike Livy, and De Thou, and Machiavel, 
 who describe events in their natural order, these cluster them 
 together by the fanciful threads of some political or moral 
 theory, by which facts are distorted, displaced, and sometimes 
 altogether omitted ! One single original document has some- 
 times shaken into dust their palladian edifice of history. At 
 the moment Hume was sending some sheets of his history to 
 press, Murdin's State Papers appeared. And we are highly 
 amused and instructed by a letter of our historian to his rival, 
 Robertson, who probably found himself often in the same 
 forlorn situation. Our historian discovered in that collection 
 what compelled him to retract his preconceived system — he 
 hurries to stop the press, and paints his confusion and his 
 anxiety with all the ingenuous simplicity of his nature. 
 " We are all in the wrong ! " he exclaims. Of Hume I 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 301 
 
 have heard that certain manuscripts at the state-paper office 
 had been prepared for his inspection during a fortnight, but 
 he never could muster courage to pay his promised visit. 
 Satisfied with the common accounts, and the most obvious 
 sources of history, when librarian at the Advocates' Library, 
 where yet may be examined the books he used, marked by 
 his hand, he spread the volumes about the sofa, from which 
 he rarely rose to pursue obscure inquiries, or delay by fresh 
 difficulties the page which every day was growing under his 
 charming pen. A striking proof of his careless happiness I 
 discovered in his never referring to the perfect edition of 
 Whitelocke's Memorials of 1732, but to the old truncated 
 and faithless one of 1G82. 
 
 Dr. Birch was a writer with no genius for composition, but 
 one to whom British history stands more indebted than to 
 any superior author ; his incredible love of labour, in tran- 
 scribing with his own hand a large library of manuscripts 
 from originals dispersed in public and in private repositories, 
 has enriched the British Museum by thousands of the most 
 authentic documents of genuine secret history. He once 
 projected a collection of original historical letters, for which 
 he had prepared a preface, where I find the following pas- 
 sage : " It is a more important service to the public to con- 
 tribute something not before known to the general fund of 
 history, than to give new form and colour to what we are 
 already possessed of, by superadding refinement and orna- 
 ment, which too often tend to disguise the real state of the 
 facts ; a fault not to be atoned for by the pomp of style, or 
 even the fine eloquence of the historian." This was an 
 oblique stroke aimed at Robertson, to whom Birch had 
 generously opened the stores of history, for the Scotch his- 
 torian had needed all his charity ; but Robertson's attractive 
 inventions, and highly-finished composition, seduce the public 
 taste ; and we may forgive the latent spark of envy in the 
 honest feelings of the man, who was profoundly skilled in 
 delving in the native beds of ore, but not in fashioning it ; 
 
S02 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 and whose own neglected historical works, constructed on the 
 true principles of secret history, we may often turn over to 
 correct the erroneous, the prejudiced, and the artful accounts 
 of those who have covered their faults by "the pomp of 
 style, and the eloquence of the historian." 
 
 The large manuscript collections of original documents, 
 from whence may be drawn what I have called positive 
 secret history, are, as I observed, comparatively of modern 
 existence. Formerly they were widely dispersed in private 
 hands ; and the nature of such sources of historic discovery 
 but rarely occurred to our writers. Even had they sought 
 them, their access must have been partial and accidental. 
 Lord Hardwicke has observed, that there are still many 
 untouched manuscript collections within these kingdoms, 
 which, through the ignorance or inattention of their owners, 
 are condemned to dust and obscurity; but how valuable and 
 essential they may be to the interests of authentic history 
 and of sacred truth, cannot be more strikingly demonstrated 
 than in the recent publications of the Marlborough and the 
 Shrewsbury papers by Archdeacon Coxe.* The editor was 
 fully authorized to observe, " It is singular that those trans- 
 actions should either have been passed over in silence, or 
 imperfectly represented by most of our national historians." 
 Our modern history would have been a mere political 
 romance, without the astonishing picture of William and 
 his ministers, exhibited in those unquestionable documents. 
 Burnet was among the first of our modern historians who 
 showed the world the preciousness of such materials, in his 
 
 * The "Conway papers" remain unpublished. From what I have 
 already been favoured with the sight of, I may venture to predict that our 
 history may receive from them some important accession. The reader 
 may find a lively summary of the contents of these papers in Hoi-ace 
 Walpole's account of his visit to Ragley, in his letter to George Montague, 
 20th August, 1758. The Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, with whom the 
 Marquis of Hertford had placed the disposal of the Conway papers, is also 
 in possession of the Throckmorton papers, of which the reader may like- 
 wise observe a particular notice in Sir Henry Wotton's will, in Izaak 
 Walton's Lives. Unsunned treasures lie in the State-paper office. 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 303 
 
 History of the Reformation, which he largely drew from the 
 Cottonian Collection. Our early historians only repeated a 
 tale ten times told. Milton, who wanted not for literary 
 diligence, had no fresh stores to open for his History of Eng- 
 land ; while Hume dispatches, comparatively in a few pages, 
 a subject which has afforded to the fervent diligence of my 
 learned friend Sharon Turner, volumes precious to the anti- 
 quary, the lawyer, and the philosopher. 
 
 To illustrate my idea of the usefulness and of the absolute 
 necessity of secret history, I fix first on a public event, 
 and secondly on a public character ; both remarkable in our 
 own modern history, and both serving to expose the fallacious 
 appearances of popular history by authorities indisputably 
 genuine. The event is the Restoration of Charles the Sec- 
 ond ; and the character is that of Mary, the queen of Wil- 
 liam the Third. 
 
 In history the Restoration of Charles appears in all its 
 splendour — the king is joyfully received at Dover, and the 
 shore is covered by his subjects on their knees — crowds of 
 the great hurry to Canterbury — the army is drawn up, in 
 number and with a splendour that had never been equalled 
 — his enthusiastic reception is on his birthday, for that was 
 the lucky day fixed on for his entrance into the Metropolis — 
 in a word, all that is told in history describes a monarch the 
 most powerful and the most happy. One of the tracts of the 
 day, entitled " England's Triumph," in the mean quaintness 
 of the style of the times tells us, that " The soldiery, who had 
 hitherto made clubs trump, resolve now to enthrone the 
 king of hearts" Turn to the faithful memorialist, who so 
 well knew the secrets of the king's heart, and who was him- 
 self an actor behind the curtain ; turn to Clarendon, in his 
 own life ; and we shall find that the power of the king was 
 then as dubious as when he was an exile ; and his feelings 
 were so much racked, that he had nearly resolved on a last 
 flight. 
 
 Clarendon, in noticing the temper and spirit of that time, 
 
304 TRUE • SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 observes, " Whoever reflects upon all this composition of con- 
 tradictory wishes and expectations, must confess that the 
 king was not yet the master of the kingdom, nor his author- 
 ity and security such as the general noise and acclamation, 
 the bells and the bonfires, proclaimed it to be." — " The first 
 mortification the king met with as soon as he arrived at Can- 
 terbury, within three hours after he landed at Dover." Clar- 
 endon then relates how many the king found there, who, while 
 they waited with joy to kiss his hand, also came with impor- 
 tunate solicitations for themselves ; forced him to give them 
 present audience, in which they reckoned up the insupport- 
 able losses undergone by themselves or their fathers ; demand- 
 ing some grant, or promise of such or such offices ; some 
 even for more ! " pressing for two or three with such confi- 
 dence and importunity, and with such tedious discourses, that 
 the king was extremely nauseated with their suits, though 
 his modesty knew not how to break from them ; that he no 
 sooner got into his chamber, which for some hours he was 
 not able to do, than he lamented the condition to which 
 he found he must be subject ; and did, in truth, from that 
 minute, contract such a prejudice against some of those per- 
 sons." But a greater mortification was to follow, and one 
 which had nearly thrown the king into despair. 
 
 General Monk had from the beginning to this instant 
 acted very mysteriously, never corresponding with nor an- 
 swering a letter of the king's, so that his majesty was fre- 
 quently doubtful whether the general designed to act for him- 
 self or for the king : an ambiguous conduct which I attribute 
 to the power his wife had over him, who was in the opposite 
 interest. The general, in his rough way, presented him a 
 large paper, with about seventy names for his privy council, 
 of which not more than two were acceptable. " The king," 
 says Clarendon, " was in more than ordinary confusion, for 
 he knew not well what to think of the general, in whose ab- 
 solute power he was — so that at this moment his majesty was 
 almost alarmed at the demand and appearance of things." 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 305 
 
 The genera] afterwards undid this unfavourable appearance, 
 by acknowledging that the list was drawn up by his wife, 
 who had made him promise to present it ; but he permitted 
 his majesty to act as he thought proper. At that moment 
 General Monk was more king than Charles. 
 
 We have not yet concluded. When Charles met the army 
 at Blackheath, 50,000 strong, " he knew well the ill constitu- 
 tion of the army, the distemper and murmuring that was in 
 it, and how many diseases and convulsions their infant loy- 
 alty was subject to ; that how united soever their inclinations 
 and acclamations seemed to be at Blackheath, their affections 
 were not the same — and the very countenances there of many 
 officers, as well as soldiers, did sufficiently manifest that they 
 were drawn thither to a service they were not delighted in. 
 The old soldiers had little regard for their new officers ; and 
 it quickly appeared, by the select and affected mixtures of 
 sullen and melancholic parties of officers and soldiers." — And 
 then the chancellor of human nature adds, "And in this 
 melancholic and perplexed condition the king and all his 
 hopes stood, when he appeared most gay and exalted, and 
 wore a pleasantness in his face that became him, and looked 
 like as full an assurance of his security as was possible to 
 put on." It is imagined that Louis the Eighteenth would be 
 the ablest commentator on this piece of secret history, and 
 add another twin to Pierre de Saint Julien's " Gemelles ou 
 Pareiles," an old French treatise of histories which resemble 
 one another: a volume so scarce, that I have never met 
 with it. 
 
 Burnet informs us, that when Queen Mary held .the ad- 
 ministration of government during the absence of William, 
 it was imagined by some, that as " every woman of sense 
 loved to be meddling, they concluded that she had but a 
 small portion of it, because she lived so abstracted from all 
 affairs." He praises her exemplary behaviour ; " regular in 
 her devotions, much in her closet, read a great deal, was 
 often busy at work, and seemed to employ her time and 
 
 VOL. IV. 20 
 
30G 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 thoughts in any thing rather than matters of state. Her 
 conversation was lively and obliging ; every thing in her was 
 easy and natural. The king told the Earl of Shrewsbury, 
 that though he could not hit on the right way of pleasing 
 England, he was confident she would, and that we should all 
 be very happy under her." Such is the miniature of the 
 queen which Burnet offers ; we see nothing but her tranquil- 
 lity, her simplicity, and her carelessness, amidst the impor- 
 tant transactions passing under her eye ; but I lift the curtain 
 from a larger picture. The distracted state amidst which 
 the queen lived, the vexations, the secret sorrows, the agonies 
 and the despair of Mary in the absence of William, nowhere 
 appear in history ! and as we see, escaped the ken of the 
 Scotch bishop ! They were reserved for the curiosity and 
 instruction of posterity; and were found by Dalrymple, in 
 the letters of Mary to her husband, in king William's cabi- 
 net. It will be well to place under the eye of the reader the 
 suppressed cries of this afflicted queen at the time when 
 " every thing in her was so easy and natural, employing her 
 time and thoughts in any thing rather than matters of state — 
 often busy at work ! " 
 
 I shall not dwell on the pangs of the queen for the fate of 
 William — or her deadly suspicions that many were unfaithful 
 about her ; a battle lost might have been fatal ; a conspiracy 
 might have undone what even a victory had obtained ; the 
 continual terrors she endured were such, that we might be 
 at a loss to determine who suffered most, those who had been 
 expelled from, or those who had ascended, the throne. 
 
 So far was the queen from not " employing her thoughts " 
 on "matters of state," that every letter, usually written 
 towards evening, chronicles the conflicts of the day ; she 
 records not only events, but even dialogues and personal 
 characteristics ; hints her suspicions, and multiplies her fears ; 
 her attention was incessant — " I never write but what I think 
 others do not ; " and her terrors were as ceaseless, — " I pray 
 God, send you back quickly, for I see all breaking out into 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 .307 
 
 flames." The queen's difficulties were not eased by a single 
 confidential intercourse. On one occasion she observes, " As 
 I do not know what I ought to speak, and when not, 1 am as 
 silent as can be/' " I ever fear not doing well, and trust to 
 what nobody says but you. It seems to me that every one 
 is afraid of themselves. — I am very uneasy in one thing, 
 which is want of somebody to speak my mind freely to, for 
 it's a great constraint to think and be silent ; and there is 
 so much matter, that I am one of Solomon's fools, who am 
 ready to burst. I must tell you again how Lord Monmouth 
 endeavours to frighten me, and indeed things have but a 
 melancholy prospect." She had indeed reasons to fear Lord 
 Monmouth, who, it appears, divulged all the secrets of the 
 royal councils to Major Wildman, who was one of our old 
 republicans ; and, to spread alarm in the privy council, con- 
 veyed in lemon-juice all their secrets to France, often on the 
 very day they had passed in council ! They discovered the 
 fact, and every one suspected the other as the traitor ! Lord 
 Lincoln even once assured her, that "the Lord President 
 and all in general, who are in trust, were rogues." Her 
 council was composed of factions, and the queen's suspicions 
 were rather general than particular : for she observes on 
 them, " Till now I thought you had given me wrong charac- 
 ters of men ; but now I see they answer my expectation of 
 being as little of a mind as of a body." — For a final extract, 
 take this full picture of royal misery — " I must see company 
 on my set days ; I must play twice a week ; nay, I must 
 laugh and talk, though never so much against my will: I 
 believe I dissemble very ill to those who know me ; at least, 
 it is a great constraint to myself, yet I must endure it. All 
 my motions are so watched, and all I do so observed, that if 
 I eat less, or speak less, or look more grave, all is lost in the 
 opinion of the world ; so that I have this misery added to 
 that of your absence, that I must grin when my heart is 
 ready to break, and talk when my heart is so oppressed that 
 I can scarce breathe. I go to Kensington as often as I can 
 
308 
 
 TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 for air ; but then I never can be quite alone, neither can I 
 complain — that would be some ease ; but I have nobody 
 whose humour and circumstances agree with mine enough to 
 speak my mind freely to. Besides I must hear of business, 
 which being a thing I am so new in, and so unfit for, does 
 but break my brains the more, and not ease my heart." 
 
 Thus different from the representation of Burnet was the 
 actual state of Queen Mary : and I suspect that our warm 
 and vehement bishop had but little personal knowledge of 
 her majesty, notwithstanding the elaborate character of the 
 queen which he has given in her funeral eulogium. — He 
 must have known that she did not always sympathize with 
 his party-feelings ; for the queen writes, " The Bishop of 
 Salisbury has made a long thundering sermon this morning, 
 which he has been with me to desire to print ; which I could 
 not refuse, though I should not have ordered it, for reasons 
 which I told him." Burnet (whom I am very far from calling 
 what an inveterate Tory, Edward Earl of Oxford, does in 
 one of his manuscript notes, " that lying Scot ") unques- 
 tionably has told many truths in his garrulous page ; but the 
 cause in which he stood so deeply engaged, coupled to his 
 warm sanguine temper, may have sometimes dimmed his 
 sagacity, so as to have caused him to have mistaken, as in 
 the present case, a mask for a face, particularly at a time 
 when almost every individual appears to have worn one ! 
 
 Both these cases of Charles the Second and Queen Mary 
 show the absolute necessity of researches into secret history, 
 to correct the appearances and the fallacies which so often 
 deceive us in public history. 
 
 " The appetite for Remains," as the noble author whom I 
 have already alluded to calls it, may then be a very whole- 
 some one, if it provide the only materials by which our 
 popular histories can be corrected, and since it often infuses 
 a freshness into a story which, after having been copied 
 from book to book, inspires another to tell it for the tenth 
 time ! Thus are the sources of secret history unsuspected 
 
TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY. 
 
 309 
 
 by the idler and the superficial, among those masses of un- 
 touched manuscripts — that subterraneous history ! — which 
 indeed may terrify the indolent, bewilder the inexperienced, 
 and confound the injudicious, if they have not acquired the 
 knowledge which not only decides on facts and opinions, but 
 on the authorities which have furnished them. Popular his- 
 torians have written to their readers ; each with different 
 views, but all alike form the open documents of history ; 
 like fee'd advocates, they declaim, or like special pleaders, 
 they keep only on one side of their case : they are seldom 
 zealous to push on their cross-examinations ; for they come 
 to gain their cause, and not to hazard it ! 
 
 Time will make the present age as obsolete as the last, for 
 our sons will cast a new light over the ambiguous scenes 
 which distract their fathers ; they will know how some things 
 happened, for which we cannot account ; they will bear wit- 
 ness to how many characters we have mistaken ; they will 
 be told many of those secrets which our contemporaries hide 
 from us ; they will pause at the ends of our beginnings ; they 
 will read the perfect story of man, which can never be told 
 while it is proceeding. All this is the possession of posterity, 
 because they will judge without our passions; and all this 
 we ourselves have been enabled to possess by the secret 
 history of the last two ages! * 
 
 * Since this article has been sent to press I rise from reading one in 
 the Edinburgh Review on Lord Orford's and Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs. 
 This is one of the very rare articles which could only come from the hand 
 of a master, long exercised in the studies he criticizes. The critic, or 
 rather the historian, observes, that "of a period remarkable for the estab- 
 lishment of our present system of government, no authentic materials had 
 yet appeared. Events of public notoriety are to be found, though often 
 inaccurately told, in our common histories; but the secret springs of 
 action, the private views and motives of individuals, &c. are as little 
 known to us, as if the events to which they relate had taken place in 
 China or J:\pan." The clear, connected, dispassionate, and circumstan- 
 tial narrative, with which he has enriched the stores of English history, 
 is drawn from the sources of secrkt history ; from published memoirs and 
 contemporary correspondence. 
 
310 
 
 LITERARY RESIDENCES. 
 
 LITERARY RESIDENCES. 
 
 Men of genius have usually been condemned to compose 
 their finest works, which are usually their earliest ones, under 
 the roof of a garret ; and few literary characters have lived 
 like Pliny and Voltaire, in a villa or chateau of their own. 
 It has not therefore often happened, that a man of genius 
 could raise local emotions by his own intellectual suggestions. 
 Ariosto, who built a palace in his verse, lodged himself in a 
 small house, and found that stanzas and stones were not put 
 together at the same rate : old Montaigne has left a descrip- 
 tion of his library ; " over the entrance of my house, where I 
 view my court-yards, and garden, and at once survey all the 
 operations of my family ! " 
 
 There is, however, a feeling among literary men, of build- 
 ing up their own elegant fancies, and giving a permanency to 
 their own tastes ; we dwell on their favourite scenes as a 
 sort of portraits, and we eagerly collect those few prints, 
 which are their only vestiges. A collection might be formed 
 of such literary residences chosen for their amenity and their 
 retirement, and adorned by the objects of their studies ; from 
 that of the younger Pliny, who called his villa of literary 
 leisure by the endearing term of villula, to that of Cassio- 
 dorus, the prime minister of Theodoric, who has left so 
 magnificent a description of his literary retreat, where all 
 the elegancies of life were at hand ; where the gardeners 
 and the agriculturists laboured on scientific principles ; and 
 where, amidst gardens and parks, stood his extensive library, 
 with scribes to multiply his manuscripts ; — from Tycho 
 Brahe's, who built a magnificent astronomical house on an 
 island, which he named after the sole objects of his musings 
 Uranienburgh, or the castle of the heavens ; — to that of Eve- 
 lyn, who first began to adorn Wotton, by building " a little 
 study," till many years after he dedicated the ancient house 
 to contemplation, among the " delicious streams and venerable 
 
LITERARY RESIDENCES. 
 
 Sll 
 
 woods, the gardens, the fountains, and the groves, most tempt- 
 ing for a great person and a wanton purse ; and indeed gave 
 one of the first examples to that elegancy since so much in 
 vogue." — From Pope, whose little garden seemed to multiply 
 its scenes by a glorious union of nobility and literary men 
 conversing in groups ; — down to lonely Shenstone, whose 
 " rural elegance," as he entitles one of his odes, compelled 
 him to mourn over his hard fate, when 
 
 " Expense 
 
 Had lavish' d thousand ornaments, and taught 
 Convenience to perplex him, Art to pall, 
 Pomp to deject, and Beauty to displease." 
 
 We have all by heart the true and delightful reflection of 
 Johnson on local associations, when the scene we tread sug- 
 gests to us the men or the deeds, which have left their celeb- 
 rity to the spot. We are in the presence of their fame, and 
 feel its influence ! 
 
 A literary friend, whom a hint of mine had induced to 
 visit the old tower in the garden of BufFon, where the sage 
 retired every morning to compose, passed so long a time in 
 that lonely apartment, as to have raised some solicitude 
 among the honest folks of Montbar, who having seen " the 
 Englishman" enter, but not return, during a heavy thunder- 
 storm which had occurred in the interval, informed the good 
 mayor, who came in due form, to notify the ambiguous state 
 of the stranger. My friend is, as is well known, a genius of 
 that cast, who could pass two hours in the Tower of Bi(ffo?i, 
 without being aware that he had been all that time occupied 
 by suggestions of ideas and reveries, which in some minds 
 such a locality may excite. He was also busied with his 
 pencil ; for he has favoured me with two drawings of the 
 interior and the exterior of this old tower in the garden : the 
 nakedness within can only be compared to the solitude with- 
 out. Such was the studying-room of BufFon, where his eye 
 resting on no object, never interrupted the unity of his medi 
 tations on nature. 
 
312 
 
 LITERARY RESIDENCES. 
 
 In return for my friend's kindness, it has cost me, I think, 
 two hours, in attempting to translate the beautiful picture of 
 this literary retreat, which Vicq d'Azyr has finished with all 
 the warmth of a votary. "At Montbar, in the midst of an 
 ornamented garden, is seen an antique tower ; it was there 
 that BufFon wrote the History of Nature, and from that spot 
 his fame spread through the universe. There he came at 
 sunrise, and no one, however importunate, was suffered to 
 trouble him. The calm of the morning hour, the first war- 
 bling of the birds, the varied aspect of the country, all at 
 that moment which touched the senses, recalled him to his 
 model. Free, independent, he wandered in his walks ; there 
 was he seen with quickened or with slow steps, or standing 
 wrapped in thought, sometimes with his eyes fixed on the 
 heavens in the moment of inspiration, as if satisfied with the 
 thought that so profoundly occupied his soul ; sometimes, 
 collected within himself, he sought what would not always 
 be found; or at the moments of producing, he wrote, he 
 effaced, and rewrote, to efface once more ; thus he harmo- 
 nized, in silence, all the parts of his composition, which he 
 frequently repeated to himself, till, satisfied with his correc- 
 tions, he seemed to repay himself for the pains of his beauti- 
 ful prose, by the pleasure he found in declaiming it aloud. 
 Thus he engraved it in his .memory, and would recite it to 
 his friends, or induce some to read it to him. At those 
 moments he was himself a severe judge, and would again 
 recompose it, desirous of attaining to that perfection which 
 is denied to the impatient writer." 
 
 A curious circumstance, connected with local associations, 
 occurred to that extraordinary oriental student Fourmont. 
 Originally he belonged to a religious community, and never 
 failed in performing his offices ; but he was expelled by the 
 superior for an irregularity of conduct, not likely to have 
 become contagious through the brotherhood — he frequently 
 prolonged his studies far into the night, and it was possible 
 that the house might be burnt by such superfluity of learning. 
 
LITE R A RY R ESI DENCES. 
 
 3J3 
 
 Fourmont retreated to the college of Montaign, where he 
 occupied the very chambers which had formerly been those 
 of Erasmus ; a circumstance which contributed to excite his 
 emulation, and to hasten his studies. He who smiles at the 
 force of such emotions, only proves that he has not ex- 
 perienced what are real and substantial as the scene itself — 
 for those who are concerned in them. Pope, who had far 
 more enthusiasm in his poetical disposition than is generally 
 understood, was extremely susceptible of the literary associa- 
 tions with localities : one of the volumes of his Homer, was 
 begun and finished in an old tower over the chapel of Stanton 
 Harcourt ; and he has perpetuated the event, if not conse- 
 crated the place, by scratching with a diamond on a pane of 
 stained glass this inscription : — 
 
 " In the year 1718 
 Alexander Pope 
 Finished here 
 The fifth volume of Homer." * 
 
 It was the same feeling which induced him one day, when 
 taking his usual walk with Harte in the Haymarket, to desire 
 Harte to enter a little shop, where going up three pair of 
 stairs into a small room, Pope said, " In this garret Addison 
 wrote his Campaign ! " Nothing less than a strong feeling 
 impelled the poet to ascend this garret — it was a consecrated 
 spot to his eye ; and certainly a curious instance of the power 
 of genius contrasted with its miserable locality ! Addison, 
 whose mind had fought through " a campaign ! " in a garret, 
 could he have called about him "the pleasures of imagina- 
 tion," had probably planned a house of literary repose, 
 where all parts would have been in harmony with his 
 mind. 
 
 Such residences of men of genius have been enjoyed by 
 some ; and the vivid descriptions which they have left us 
 
 * On a late inquh-y it appears that this consecrated pane has been re- 
 moved — and the relic is said to be preserved at Nuneham. 
 
314 
 
 LITERARY RESIDENCES. 
 
 convey something of the delightfulness which charmed their 
 studious repose. 
 
 The Italian Paul Jovius has composed more than three 
 hundred concise eulogies of statesmen, warriors, and literary 
 men, of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries ; 
 but the occasion which induced him to compose them is per- 
 haps more interesting than the compositions. 
 
 Jovius had a villa, situated on a peninsula, bordered by 
 the lake of Como. It was built on the ruins of the villa of 
 Pliny, and in his time the foundations were still visible. 
 When the surrounding lake was calm, the sculptured marbles, 
 the trunks of columns, and the fragments of those pyramids 
 which had once adorned the residence of the friend of Trajan, 
 were still viewed in its lucid bosom. Jovius was the enthu- 
 siast of literature, and the leisure which it loves. He was 
 an historian, with the imagination of a poet, and though a 
 Christian prelate, almost a worshipper of the sweet fictions of 
 pagan mythology; and when his pen was kept pure from 
 satire or adulation, to which it was too much accustomed, it 
 becomes a pencil. He paints with rapture his gardens bathed 
 by the waters of the lake ; the shade and freshness of his 
 woods ; his green slopes ; his sparkling fountains, the deep 
 silence and calm of his solitude ! A statue was raised in his 
 gardens to Nature ! In his hall stood a fine statue of Apollo, 
 and the Muses around, with their attributes. His library 
 was guarded by a Mercury, and there was an apartment 
 adorned with Doric columns, and with pictures of the most 
 pleasing subjects dedicated to the Graces ! Such was the 
 interior! Without, the transparent lake here spread its 
 broad mirror, and there was seen luminously winding by 
 banks covered with olives and laurels ; in the distance, towns, 
 promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre, blushing with 
 vines, and the first elevation of the Alps, covered with 
 woods and pasture, and sprinkled with herds and flocks. 
 
 It was in a central spot of this enchanting habitation that 
 a cabinet or gallery was erected, where Jovius had collected 
 
LITERARY RESIDENCES. 
 
 315 
 
 with prodigal cost the portraits of celebrated men ; and it 
 was to explain and to describe the characteristics of these 
 illustrious names that he had composed his eulogies. This 
 collection became so remarkable, that the great men his 
 contemporaries presented our literary collector with their 
 own portraits, among whom the renowned Fernandez 
 Cortes sent Jovius his before he died, and probably others 
 who were less entitled to enlarge the collection ; but it is 
 equally probable that our caustic Jovius would throw them 
 aside. Our historian had often to describe men more famous 
 than virtuous ; sovereigns, politicians, poets, and philosophers, 
 men of all ranks, countries, and ages, formed a crowded 
 scene of men of genius or of celebrity; sometimes a few 
 lines compress their character, and sometimes a few pages 
 excite his fondness. If he sometimes adulates the living, we 
 may pardon the illusions of a contemporary ; but he has the 
 honour of satirizing some by the honest freedom of a pen 
 which occasionally broke out into premature truths. 
 
 Such was the inspiration of literature and leisure which 
 had embellished the abode of Jovius, and had raised in the 
 midst of the lake of Como a cabinet of portraits ; a noble 
 tribute to those who are " the salt of the earth." 
 
 We possess prints of Rubens's house at Antwerp. That 
 princely artist perhaps first contrived for his studio the cir- 
 cular apartment with a dome, like the rotunda of the Pan- 
 theon, where the light descending from an aperture or window 
 at the top, sent down a single equal light, — that perfection of 
 light which distributes its magical effects on the objects 
 beneath. Bellori describes it una stanza rotonda con un solo 
 occhio in cima ; the solo occhio is what the French term 
 ceil de bceuf; we ourselves want this single eye in our tech- 
 nical language of art. This was his precious museum, where 
 he had collected a vast number of books, which were inter- 
 mixed with his marbles, statues, cameos, intaglios, and all 
 that variety of the riches of art which he had drawn from 
 Rome : but the walls did not yield in value ; for they were 
 
316 
 
 LITERARY RESIDENCES. 
 
 covered by pictures of his own composition, or copies by his 
 own hand, made at Venice and Madrid, of Titian and Paul 
 Veronese. No foreigners, men of letters, or lovers of the 
 arts, or even princes, would pass through Antwerp without 
 visiting the house of Rubens, to witness the animated resi- 
 dence of genius, and the great man who had conceived the 
 idea. Yet, great as was his mind, and splendid as were the 
 habits of his life, he could not resist the entreaties of the 
 hundred thousand florins of our Duke of Buckingham, to 
 dispose of this studio. The great artist could not, however, 
 abandon for ever the delightful contemplations he was depriv- 
 ing himself of ; and as substitutes for the miracles of art he 
 had lost, he solicited and obtained leave to replace them by 
 casts which were scrupulously deposited in the places where 
 the originals had stood. 
 
 Of this feeling of the local residences of genius, the 
 Italians appear to have been, not perhaps more susceptible 
 than other people, but more energetic in their enthusiasm. 
 Florence exhibits many monuments of this sort. In the 
 neighbourhood of Santa Maria Novella, Zimmerman has 
 noticed a house of the celebrated Viviani, which is a singular 
 monument of gratitude to his illustrious master Galileo. 
 The front is adorned with the bust of this father of science, 
 and between the windows are engraven accounts of the dis- 
 coveries of Galileo ; it is the most beautiful biography of 
 genius ! Yet another still more eloquently excites our emo- 
 tions — the house of Michael Angelo : his pupils, in perpet- 
 ual testimony of their admiration and gratitude, have orna- 
 mented it with all the leading features of his life ; the very 
 soul of this vast genius put in action : this is more than bio- 
 graphy ! — it is living as with a contemporary ! 
 
WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 317 
 
 WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 
 
 The political economist replies that it is ! 
 
 One of our old dramatic writers, who witnessed the sin- 
 gular extravagance of dress among the modellers of fashion, 
 our nobility, condemns their " superfluous bravery," echoing 
 the popular cry, 
 
 " There are a sort of men, whose coining heads 
 Are mints of all new fashions, that have done 
 More hurt to the kingdom, by superfluous bravery, 
 Which the foolish gentry imitate, than a war 
 Or a long famine. All the treasure by 
 This foul excess is got into Ike merchants', 
 Embroiderers', silk-men' 's, jewellers' ', tailors' hands, 
 And the tJiird part of the land loo! the nobility 
 Engrossing titles only." 
 
 Our poet might have been startled at the reply of our 
 political economist. If the nobility, in follies such as these, 
 only preserved their " titles," while their " lands " were dis- 
 persed among the industrious classes, the people were not 
 sufferers. The silly victims ruining themselves by their 
 excessive luxury, or their costly dress, as it appears some 
 did, was an evil which, left to its own course, must check 
 itself ; if the rich did not spend, the poor would starve. 
 Luxury is the cure of that unavoidable evil in society — 
 great inequality of fortune ! Political economists therefore 
 tell us, that any regulations would be ridiculous which, as 
 Lord Bacon expresses it, should serve for " the repressing 
 of waste and excess by sumptuary laws." Adam Smith is 
 not only indignant at " sumptuary laws," but asserts, with a 
 democratic insolence of style, that " it is the highest imperti- 
 nence and presumption in kings and ministers to pretend to 
 watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain 
 their expense by sumptuary laws. They are themselves 
 always the greatest spendthrifts in the society ; let them 
 
318 WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 
 
 look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust 
 private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does 
 not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will." "We must 
 therefore infer, that governments by extravagance may ruin 
 a state, but that individuals enjoy the remarkable privilege 
 of ruining themselves, without injuring society ! Adam 
 Smith afterwards distinguishes two sorts of luxury : the one 
 exhausting itself in "durable commodities, as in buildings, 
 furniture, books, statues, pictures," will increase "the opu- 
 lence of a nation ; " but of the other, wasting itself in dress 
 and equipages, in frivolous ornaments, jewels, baubles, 
 trinkets, &c. he acknowledges " no trace or vestige would 
 remain ; and the effects of ten or twenty years' profusion 
 would be as completely annihilated as if they had never 
 existed." There is, therefore, a greater and a lesser evil in 
 this important subject of the opulent, unrestricted by any 
 law, ruining his whole generation. 
 
 "Where " the wealth of nations " is made the solitary 
 standard of their prosperity, it becomes a fertile source of 
 errors in the science of morals ; and the happiness of the in- 
 dividual is then too frequently sacrificed to what is called the 
 prosperity of the state. If an individual, in the pride of 
 luxury and selfism, annihilates the fortunes of his whole 
 generation, untouched by the laws as a criminal, he leaves 
 behind him a race of the discontented and the seditious, who, 
 having sunk in the scale of society, have to reascend from 
 their degradation by industry and by humiliation ; but for 
 the work of industry their habits have made them inexpert ; 
 and to humiliation, their very rank presents a perpetual 
 obstacle. 
 
 Sumptuary laws, so often enacted, and so often repealed, 
 and always eluded, were the perpetual, but ineffectual, 
 attempts of all governments, to restrain what, perhaps, 
 cannot be restrained — criminal folly ! And to punish a man 
 for having ruined himself would usually be to punish a most 
 contrite penitent. 
 
WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 319 
 
 It is not surprising that before "private vices were con- 
 sidered as public benefits," the governors of nations instituted 
 sumptuary laws — for the passion for pageantry, and an in- 
 credible prodigality in dress, were continually impoverishing 
 great families — more equality of wealth has now rather sub- 
 dued the form of private ruin than laid this evil domestic 
 spirit. The incalculable expenditure and the blaze of 
 splendour, of our ancestors, may startle the incredulity of 
 our elegantes. We find men of rank exhausting their wealth 
 and pawning their castles, and then desperately issuing from 
 them, heroes for a crusade, or brigands for their neighbour- 
 hood ! — and this frequently from the simple circumstance of 
 having for a short time maintained some gorgeous chivalric 
 festival on their own estates, or from having melted thousands 
 of acres into cloth of gold ; their sons were left to beg their 
 bread on the estates which they were to have inherited. 
 
 It was when chivalry still charmed the world by the re- 
 mains of its seductive splendours, towards the close of the 
 fifteenth century, that I find an instance of this kind occur- 
 ring in the Pas de Sandricourt, which was held in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the sieur of that name. It is a memorable 
 affair, not only for us curious inquirers after manners and 
 morals, but for the whole family of the Sandricourts ; for 
 though the said sieur is now receiving the immortality we 
 bestow on him, and la dame, who presided in that magnificent 
 piece of chivalry, was infinitely gratified, yet for ever after 
 was the lord of Sandricourt ruined — and all for a short, 
 romantic three months ! 
 
 This story of the chivalric period may amuse. A pas 
 d'armes, though consisting of military exercises and deeds 
 of gallantry, was a sort of festival distinct from a tourna- 
 ment. It signified a pas or passage to be contested by one or 
 more knights against all comers. It was necessary that the 
 road should be such that it could not be passed without encoun- 
 tering some guardian knight. The chevaliers who deputed 
 the pas hung their blazoned shields on trees, pales, or posts 
 
320 WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 
 
 raised for this purpose. The aspirants after chivalric honours 
 would strike with their lance one of these shields, and when 
 it rung, it instantly summoned the owner to the challenge. 
 A bridge or a road would sometimes serve for this military 
 sport, for such it was intended to be, whenever the heat of 
 the rivals proved not too earnest. The sieur of Sandricourt 
 was a fine-dreamer of feats of chivalry, and in the neigh- 
 bourhood of his castle he fancied that he saw a very spot 
 adapted for every game ; there was one admirably fitted for 
 the barrier of a tilting-match ; another embellished by a soli- 
 tary pine-tree ; another which was called the meadow of the 
 Thorn ; there was a carrefour, where, in four roads, four 
 knights might meet ; and, above all, there was a forest called 
 devoyable, having no path, so favourable for errant knights, 
 who might there enter for strange adventures, and, as chance 
 directed, encounter others as bewildered as themselves. Our 
 chivalric Sandricourt found nine young seigneurs of the 
 court of Charles the Eighth of France, who answered all his 
 wishes. To sanction this glorious feat it was necessary t 
 obtain leave from the king, and a herald of the Duke of 
 Orleans to distribute the cartel or challenge all over Franc" 
 announcing, that from such a day, ten young lords woul 
 stand ready to combat, in those different places, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Sandricourt's chateau. The names of this 
 flower of chivalry have been faithfully registered, and they 
 were such as instantly to throw a spark into the heart of 
 every lover of arms ! The world of fashion, that is, the 
 chivalric world, were set in motion. Four bodies of as- 
 sailants soon collected, each consisting of ten combatants. 
 The herald of Orleans having examined the arms of these 
 gentlemen, and satisfied himself of their ancient lineage, and 
 their military renown, admitted their claims to the proffered 
 honour. Sandricourt now saw with rapture the numerous 
 shields of the assailants placed on the sides of his portals, 
 and corresponding with those of the challengers which hung 
 above them. Ancient lords were elected judges of the feats 
 
WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 321 
 
 of the knights, accompanied by the ladies, for whose honour 
 only the combatants declared they engaged. 
 
 The herald of Orleans tells the history in no very intelli- 
 gible verse ; but the burden of his stanza is still 
 
 " Dupas d 1 armes du chasteau Sandricourt." 
 
 He sings, or says, 
 
 " Oncques, depuis le tempts du roi Artus, 
 Ne furent tant les armes exaulcees — 
 Maint chevaliers et preux entreprenans— 
 Princes plusieurs ont terres d^plac^es 
 Pour y venir dormer coups et pouss^es 
 Qui out £te' la tenus si de court 
 Que par force n'ont prises et passe*es 
 Les barriers, entries, et passdes 
 Du pas des armes du chasteau Sandricourt." 
 
 Doubtless there many a Roland met with his Oliver, and 
 could not pass the barriers. Cased as they were in steel, de 
 pied en cap, we presume that they could not materially in- 
 jure themselves ; yet, when on foot, the ancient judges dis- 
 covered such symptoms of peril, that on the following day 
 they advised our knights to satisfy themselves by fighting on 
 horseback. Against this prudential counsel for some time 
 they protested, as an inferior sort of glory. However, on 
 the next day, the horse combat was appointed in the carre- 
 four, by the pine-tree. On the following day they tried 
 their lances in the meadow of the Thorn ; but, though on 
 horseback, the judges deemed their attacks were so fierce, 
 that this assault was likewise not without peril ; for some 
 horses were killed, and some knights were thrown, and lay 
 bruised by their own mail ; but the barbed horses, wearing 
 only des chamfreins, head-pieces magnificently caparisoned, 
 found no protection in their ornaments. The last days were 
 passed in combats of two to two, or in a single encounter 
 a-foot, in the foret devoyable. These jousts passed without 
 any accident, and the prizes were awarded in a manner 
 equally gratifying to the claimants. The last day of the fes- 
 
 VOL. IV. 21 
 
322 WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 
 
 tival was concluded with a most sumptuous banquet. Two 
 noble knights had undertaken the humble office of maitres- 
 dholel ; and while the knights were parading in the foret 
 devoyable seeking adventures, a hundred servants were seen 
 at all points, carrying white and red hypocras, and juleps, 
 and strop de violars, sweetmeats, and other spiceries, to com- 
 fort these wanderers, who, on returning to the chasteau, found 
 a grand and plenteous banquet. The tables were crowded 
 in the court apartment, where some held one hundred and 
 twelve gentlemen, not including the dames and the demoi- 
 selles. In the halls, and outside of the chasteau, were other 
 tables. At that festival more than two thousand persons 
 were magnificently entertained free of every expense ; their 
 attendants, their armourers, their plumassiers, and others, 
 were also present. La Dame de Sandricourt, "fut moult 
 aise d'avoir donne dans son chasteau si belle, si magnifique, 
 et gorgiasse fete." Historians are apt to describe their per- 
 sonages as they appear, not as they are : if the lady of the 
 Sieur Sandricourt really was " moult aise " during these 
 gorgeous days, one cannot but sympathize with the lady, 
 when her loyal knight and spouse confessed to her, after the 
 departure of the mob of two thousand visitors, neighbours, 
 soldiers, and courtiers, — the knights challengers, and the 
 knights assailants and the fine scenes at the pine-tree ; the 
 barrier in the meadow of the Thorn ; and the horse-combat 
 at the carrefour ; and the jousts in the foret devoyable ; the 
 carousals in the castle-halls ; the jollity of the banquet 
 tables ; the morescoes danced till they were reminded " how 
 the waning night grew old ! " — in a word, when the costly 
 dream had vanished, — that he was a ruined man for ever, by 
 immortalizing his name in one grand chivalric festival ! The 
 Sieur de Sandricourt, like a great torch, had consumed him- 
 self in his own brightness ; and the very land on which the 
 famous Pas de Sandricourt was held — had passed away with 
 it ! Thus one man sinks generations by that wastefulness, 
 which a political economist would assure us was committing 
 
WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? $23 
 
 no injury to society ! The moral evil goes for nothing in 
 financial statements. 
 
 Similar instances of ruinous luxury we may find in the 
 prodigal costliness of dress through the reigns of Elizabeth, 
 James the First, and Charles the First. Not only in their 
 massy grandeur they outweighed us, but the accumulation 
 and variety of their wardrobe displayed such a gaiety of 
 fancy in their colours and their ornaments, that the drawing- 
 room in those days must have blazed at their presence, and 
 changed colours as the crowd moved. But if we may trust 
 to royal proclamations, the ruin was general among some 
 classes. Elizabeth issued more than one proclamation 
 against " the excess of apparel ! " and among other evils 
 which the government imagined this passion for dress occa- 
 sioned, it notices " the wasting and undoing of a great number 
 of young gentlemen, otherwise serviceable ; and that others, 
 seeking by show of apparel to be esteemed as gentlemen, 
 and allured by the vain show of these things, not only con- 
 sume their goods and lands, but also run into such debts and 
 shifts, as they cannot live out of danger of laws without 
 attempting of unlawful acts." The queen bids her own 
 household " to look unto it for good example to the realm ; 
 and all noblemen, archbishops, and bishops, all mayors, jus- 
 tices of peace, &c. should see them executed in their private 
 households." The greatest difficulty which occurred to reg- 
 ulate the wear of apparel was ascertaining the incomes of 
 persons, or in the words of the proclamation, " finding that it 
 is very hard for any man's state of living and value to be 
 truly understood by other persons." They were to be regu- 
 lated, as they appear " sessed in the subsidy books." But if 
 persons chose to be more magnificent in their dress, they 
 were allowed to justify their means : in that case, if allowed, 
 her majesty would not be the loser ; for they were to be 
 rated in the subsidy books according to such values as they 
 themselves offered as a qualification for the splendour of 
 their dress ! 
 
324 WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 
 
 In my researches among manuscript letters of the times, I 
 have had frequent occasion to discover how persons of con- 
 siderable rank appear to have carried their acres on their 
 backs, and with their ruinous and fantastical luxuries sadly 
 pinched their hospitality. It was this which so frequently 
 cast them into the nets of the " goldsmiths," and other trad- 
 ing usurers. At the coronation of James the First, I find 
 a simple knight whose cloak cost him five hundred pounds ; 
 but this was not uncommon. At the marriage of Elizabeth, 
 the daughter of James the First, " Lady Wotton had a 
 gown of which the embroidery cost fifty pounds a yard. 
 The Lady Arabella made four gowns, one of which cost 
 £1500. The Lord Montacute (Montague) bestowed £1500 
 in apparel for his two daughters. One lady, under the rank 
 of baroness, was furnished with jewels exceeding one hun- 
 dred thousand pounds ; " and the Lady Arabella goes beyond 
 her," says the letter-writer. " All this extreme costs and 
 riches makes us all poor," as he imagined ! I have been 
 amused in observing grave writers of state dispatches jocular 
 on any mischance or mortification to which persons are liable, 
 whose happiness entirely depends on their dress. Sir Dud- 
 ley Carleton, our minister at Venice, communicates, as an 
 article worth transmitting, the great disappointment incurred 
 by Sir Thomas Glover, " who was just come hither, and 
 had appeared one day like a comet, all in crimson velvet and 
 beaten gold, but had all his expectations marred on a sudden 
 by the news of Prince Henry's death." A similar mischance, 
 from a different cause, was the lot of Lord Hay, who made 
 great preparations for his embassy to France, which, how- 
 ever, were chiefly confined to his dress. He was to remain 
 there twenty days ; and the letter-writer maliciously ob- 
 serves, that " He goes with twenty special suits of apparel 
 for so many days' abode, besides his travelling robes ; but 
 news is very lately come that the French have lately altered 
 their fashion, whereby he must needs be out of countenance, 
 if he be not set out after the last edition ! " To find himself 
 
WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 325 
 
 out of fashion, with twenty suits for twenty days, was a mis- 
 chance his lordship had no right to count on ! 
 
 " The glass of fashion " was unquestionably held up by 
 two very eminent characters, Rawleigh and Buckingham ; 
 and the authentic facts recorded of their dress will suffi- 
 ciently account for the frequent " Proclamations " to control 
 that servile herd of imitators — the smaller gentry ! 
 
 There is a remarkable picture of Sir Walter, which will 
 at least serve to convey an idea of the gaiety and splendour 
 of his dress. It is a white satin pinked vest, close sleeved 
 to the wrist ; over the body a brown doublet, finely flowered 
 and embroidered with pearl. In the feather of his hat a large 
 ruby and pearl drop at the bottom of the sprig, in place of a 
 button ; his trunk or breeches, with his stockings and riband 
 garters, fringed at the end, all white, and buff shoes with 
 white riband. Oldys, who saw this picture, has thus de- 
 scribed the dress of Rawleigh. But I have some important 
 additions ; for I find that Rawleigh's shoes on great court 
 days were so gorgeously covered with precious stones, as to 
 have exceeded the value of six thousand six hundred pounds : 
 and that he had a suit of armour of solid silver, with sword 
 and belt blazing with diamonds, rubies and pearls, whose 
 value was not so easily calculated. Rawleigh had no patri- 
 monial inheritance ; at this moment he had on his back a 
 good portion of a Spanish galleon, and the profits of a mo- 
 nopoly of trade he was carrying on with the newly discov- 
 ered Virginia. Probably he placed all his hopes in his 
 dress ! The virgin queen, when she issued proclamations 
 against " the excess of apparel," pardoned, by her looks, that 
 promise of a mine which blazed in Rawleigh's ; and, parsi- 
 monious as she was, forgot the three thousand changes of 
 dresses which she herself left in the royal wardrobe. 
 
 Buckingham could afford to have his diamonds tacked so 
 loosely on, that when he chose to shake a few off on the 
 ground, he obtained all the fame he desired from the pickers- 
 ap, who were generally les dames 3e la cour ; for our duke 
 
326 WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONE'S SELF? 
 
 never condescended to accept what he himself had dropped. 
 His rloaks were trimmed with great diamond button-, and 
 diamond hat-bands, cockades and ear-rings yoked with great 
 ropes and knots of pearls. This was however but for ordi- 
 nary dances. " He had twenty-seven suits of clothes made 
 the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, silver, gold, 
 and gems, could contribute ; one of which was a white uncut 
 velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued 
 at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck 
 all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat, 
 and spurs." * In the masques and banquets with which 
 Buckingham entertained the court, he usually expended, for 
 the evening, from one to five thousand pounds. To others I 
 leave to calculate the value of money ; the sums of this gor- 
 geous wastefulness, it must be recollected, occurred before 
 this million age of ours. 
 
 If, to provide the means for such enormous expenditure, 
 Buckingham multiplied the grievances of monopolies; if he 
 pillaged the treasury for his eighty thousand pounds' coat ; if 
 Rawleigh was at length driven to his last desperate enter- 
 prise, to relieve himself of his creditors for a pair of six 
 thousand pounds' shoes — in both these cases, as in that of the 
 chivalric Sandricourt, the political economist may perhaps 
 acknowledge that there is a sort of luxury highly criminal. 
 All the arguments he may urge, all the statistical accounts 
 he may calculate, and the healthful state of his circulating 
 medium among " the merchants, embroiderers, silk-men, and 
 jewellers " — will not alter such a moral evil, which leaves an 
 eternal taint on " the wealth of nations ! " It is the prin- 
 ciple that " private vices are public benefits," and that men 
 may be allowed to ruin their generations without committing 
 any injury to society. 
 
 * The Jesuit Drexelius, in one of his religious dialogues, notices the 
 fact; hut I am referring to an Harleian manuscript, which confirms the 
 information of the Jesuit. 
 
DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN. 
 
 327 
 
 DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN. 
 
 TnosE who are unaccustomed to the labours of the closet 
 are unacquainted with the secret and silent triumphs obtained 
 in the, pursuits of studious men. That aptitude, which in 
 poetry is sometimes called inspiration, in knowledge we may 
 call sagacity ; and it is probable, that the vehemence of the 
 one does not excite more pleasure than the still tranquillity 
 of the other: they are both, according to the strict significa- 
 tion of the Latin term from whence we have borrowed ours 
 of invention, a finding out, the result of a combination which 
 no other has formed but ourselves. 
 
 I will produce several remarkable instances of the felicity 
 of this aptitude of the learned in making discoveries which 
 could only have been effectuated by an uninterrupted inter- 
 course with the objects of their studies, making things remote 
 and dispersed, familiar and present. 
 
 One of ancient date is better known to the reader than 
 those I am preparing for him. When the magistrates of 
 Syracuse were showing to Cicero the curiosities of the place, 
 he desired to visit the tomb of Archimedes ; but, to his sur- 
 prise, they acknowledged that they knew nothing of any such 
 tomb, and denied that it ever existed. The learned Cicero, 
 convinced by the authorities of ancient writers, by the verses 
 of the inscription which he remembered, and the circum- 
 stance of a sphere with a cylinder being engraven on it, re- 
 quested them to assist him in the search. They conducted 
 the illustrious but obstinate stranger to their most ancient 
 burying-ground : amidst the number of sepulchres, they ob- 
 served a small column overhung with brambles — Cicero, 
 looking on while they were clearing away the rubbish, sud- 
 denly exclaimed, " Here is the thing we are looking for ! " 
 His eye had caught the geometrical figures on the tomb, and 
 the inscription soon confirmed his conjecture. Cicero long 
 after exulted in the triumph of this discovery. " Thus ! " he 
 
328 
 
 DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN. 
 
 says, "one of the noblest cities of Greece, and once the 
 most learned, had known nothing of the monument of its 
 most deserving and ingenious citizen, had it not been discov- 
 ered to them by a native of Arpinum!" 
 
 The great French antiquary, Peiresc, exhibited a singular 
 combination of learning, patient thought, and luminous sagac- 
 ity, which could restore an " airy nothing " to " a local habi- 
 tation and a name." There was found on an amethyst, and 
 the same afterwards occurred on the front of an ancient 
 temple, a number of marks, or indents, which had long per- 
 plexed inquirers, more particularly as similar marks or in- 
 dents were frequently observed in ancient monuments. It 
 was agreed on, as no one could understand them, and all 
 would be satisfied, that they were secret hieroglyphics. It 
 occurred to Peiresc, that these marks were nothing more 
 than holes for small nails, which had formerly fastened little 
 lamina, which represented so many Greek letters. This 
 hint of his own suggested to him to draw lines from one hole 
 to another ; and he beheld the amethyst reveal the name of 
 the sculptor, and the frieze of the temple the name of the 
 god ! This curious discovery has been since frequently ap- 
 plied ; but it appears to have originated with this great anti- 
 quary, who by his learning and sagacity explained a supposed 
 hieroglyphic, which had been locked up in the silence of 
 seventeen centuries.* 
 
 Learned men, confined to their study, have often rectified 
 the errors of travellers ; they have done more, they have 
 found out paths for them to explore, or opened seas for 
 them to navigate. The situation of the vale of Tempe 
 had been mistaken by modern travellers ; and it is sin- 
 gular, observes the Quarterly Reviewer, yet not so singu- 
 
 * The curious reader may view the marks, and the manner in -which 
 the Greek characters were made out, in the preface to Hearne's " Curious 
 Discourses." The amethyst proved more difficult than the frieze, from 
 the circumstance, that in engraving on the stone the letters must be re- 
 versed. 
 
DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN. 329 
 
 lar as it appears to that elegant critic, that the only good 
 directions for finding it had been given by a person who was 
 never in Greece. Arthur Browne, a man of letters of Trin- 
 ity College, Dublin — it is gratifying to quote an Irish phi- 
 losopher and man of letters, from the extreme rarity of the 
 character — was the first to detect the inconsistencies of 
 Pococke and Busching, and to send future travellers to look 
 for Tempe in its real situation, the defiles between Ossa and 
 Olympus ; a discovery subsequently realized. When Dr. 
 Clarke discovered an inscription purporting that the pass 
 of Tempe had been fortified by Cassius Longinus, Mr. "\Yal- 
 pole, with equal felicity, detected, in Caesar's History of the 
 Civil War, the name and the mission of this very person. 
 
 A living geographer, to whom the world stands deeply in- 
 debted, does not read Herodotus in the original ; yet, by the 
 exercise of his extraordinary aptitude, it is well known that 
 he has often corrected the Greek historian, explained ob- 
 scurities in a text which he never read, by his own happy 
 conjectures, and confirmed his own discoveries by the sub- 
 sequent knowledge which modern travellers have afforded. 
 
 Gray's perseverance in studying the geography of India 
 and of Persia, at a time when our country had no immediate 
 interests with those ancient empires, would have been placed 
 by a cynical observer among the curious idleness of a mere 
 man of letters. These studies were indeed prosecuted, as 
 Mr. Mathias observes, " on the disinterested principles of 
 liberal investigation, not on those of policy, nor of the regu- 
 lation of trade, nor of the extension of empire, nor of per- 
 manent establishments, but simply and solely on the grand 
 view of what is, and of what is past. They were the re- 
 searches of a solitary scholar in academical retirement." 
 Since the time of Gray, these very pursuits have been 
 carried on by two consummate geographers, Major Rennel 
 and Dr. Vincent, who have opened to the classical and the 
 political reader all he wished to learn, at a time when India 
 and Persia had become objects interesting and important to 
 
330 
 
 DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN. 
 
 us. The fruits of Gray's learning, long after their author 
 was no more, became valuable ! 
 
 The studies of the "solitary scholar" are always useful to 
 the world, although they may not always be timed to its 
 present wants ; with him, indeed, they are not merely de- 
 signed for this purpose. Gray discovered India for himself; 
 but the solitary pursuits of a great student, shaped to a par- 
 ticular end, will never fail being useful to the world ; though 
 it may happen, that a century may elapse between the pe- 
 riods of the discovery and its practical utility. 
 
 Halley's version of an Arabic MS. on a mathematical sub- 
 ject, offers an instance of the extraordinary sagacity I am 
 alluding to ; it may also serve as a demonstration of the 
 peculiar and supereminent advantages possessed by mathe- 
 maticians, observes Mr. Dugald Stewart, in their fixed rela- 
 tions, which form the objects of their science, and the corre- 
 spondent precision in their language and reasonings: — as 
 matter of literary history, it is highly curious. Dr. Bernard 
 accidentally discovered in the Bodleian library an Arabic 
 version of Apollonius de Sectione Rationis, which he deter- 
 mined to translate in Latin, but only finished about a tenth 
 part. Halley, extremely interested by the subject, but with 
 an entire ignorance of the Arabic language, resolved to com- 
 plete the imperfect version ! Assisted only by the manuscript 
 which Bernard had left, it served him as a key for investi- 
 gating the sense of the original ; he first made a list of those 
 words wherever they occurred, with the train of reasoning in 
 which they were involved, to decipher, by these very slow 
 degrees, the import of the context ; till at last Halley suc- 
 ceeded in mastering the whole work, and in bringing the 
 translation, without the aid of any one, to the form in which 
 he gave it to the public ; so that we have here a difficult 
 work translated from the Arabic, by one who was in no man- 
 ner conversant with the language, merely by the exertion of 
 his sagacity ! 
 
 I give the memorable account, as Boyle has delivered it, 
 
DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN. 
 
 331 
 
 of the circumstances which led Harvey to the discovery of 
 the circulation of the blood. 
 
 " I remember that when I asked our famous Harvey, in 
 the only discourse I had with him, which was but a little 
 while before he died, what were the things which induced 
 him to think of a circulation of the blood, he answered me, 
 that when he took notice that the valves in the veins of so 
 many parts of the body were so placed that they gave free 
 passage to the blood towards the heart, but opposed the pas- 
 sage of the venal blood the contrary way, he was invited to 
 think that so provident a cause as nature had not placed so 
 many valves without design ; and no design seemed more 
 probable than that, since the blood could not well, because of 
 the interposing valves, be sent by the veins to the limbs, it 
 should be sent through the arteries and return through the 
 veins, whose valves did not oppose its course that way." 
 
 The reason here ascribed to Harvey seems now so very 
 natural and obvious, that some have been disposed to ques- 
 tion his claim to the high rank commonlv assigned to him 
 among the improvers of science ! Dr. William Hunter has 
 said, that after the discovery of the valves in the veins, which 
 Harvey learned while in Italy from his master, Fabricius ab 
 Aquapendente, the remaining step might easily have been 
 made by any person of common abilities. " This discovery," 
 he observes, " set Harvey to work upon the use of the heart 
 and vascular system in animals ; and in the course of some 
 years, he was so happy as to discover, and to prove beyond 
 all possibility of doubt, the circulation of the blood." He 
 afterwards expresses his astonishment that this discovery 
 should have been left for Harvey, though he acknowledges 
 it occupied "a course of years;" adding that " Providence 
 meant to reserve it for him, and would not let men see what 
 was before them, nor understand what they read.' 1 It is re- 
 markable that when great discoveries are effected, their sim- 
 plicity always seems to detract from their originality ; on 
 these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus ! 
 
332 
 
 DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN. 
 
 It is said that a recent discovery, which ascertains that the 
 Niger empties itself into the Atlantic Ocean, was really an- 
 ticipated by the geographical acumen of a student at Glasgow, 
 who arrived at the same conclusion by a most persevering 
 investigation of the works of travellers and geographers, an- 
 cient and modern, and by an examination of African cap- 
 tives ; and had actually constructed, for the inspection of 
 government, a map of Africa, on which he had traced the 
 entire course of the Niger from the interior. 
 
 Franklin conjectured the identity of lightning and of elec- 
 tricity, before he had realized it by decisive experiment. 
 The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before 
 there was any appearance of its being electrified. One very 
 promising cloud had passed over it without any effect. Just 
 as he was beginning to despair of his contrivance he observed 
 some loose threads of the hempen string to stand erect, and 
 to avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on 
 a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance, 
 he immediately presented his knuckle to the key! And let 
 the reader judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have felt 
 at that moment when the discovery was complete ! We owe 
 to Priestley this admirable narrative — the strong sensation 
 of delight which Franklin experienced as his knuckle touched 
 the key, and at the moment when he felt that a new world 
 was opening, might have been equalled, but it was probably 
 not surpassed, when the same hand signed the long-disputed 
 independence of his country ! 
 
 When Leibnitz was occupied in his philosophical reason- 
 ings on his Law of Continuity, his singular sagacity enabled 
 him to predict a discovery which afterwards was realized — 
 he imagined the necessary existence of the polypus ! 
 
 It has been remarked of Newton, that several of his slight 
 hints, some in the modest form of queries, have been ascer- 
 tained to be predictions, and among others that of the inflam- 
 mability of the diamond ; and many have been eagerly seized 
 jpon as indisputable axioms. A hint at the close of his Op- 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 333 
 
 tics, that " If natural philosophy should be continued to be 
 improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philos- 
 ophy would be enlarged also," is perhaps among the most 
 important of human discoveries — it gave rise to Hartley's 
 Physiological Theory of the Mind. The queries, the hints, 
 the conjectures of Newton, display the most creative sagac- 
 ity ; and demonstrate in what manner the discoveries of re- 
 tired men, while they bequeathe their legacies to the world, 
 afford to themselves a frequent source of secret and silent 
 triumphs. 
 
 SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 A periodical critic, probably one of the juniors, has 
 thrown out a startling observation. " There is," says this 
 literary senator, " something melancholy in the study of bio- 
 graphy, because it is — a history of the dead ! " A truism and 
 a falsity mixed up together is the temptation with some mod- 
 ern critics to commit that darling sin of theirs — novelty and 
 originality ! But we really cannot condole with the read- 
 ers of Plutarch for their deep melancholy ; we who feel our 
 spirits refreshed, amidst the mediocrity of society, when we 
 are recalled back to the men and the women who were ! illus- 
 trious in every glory ! Biography with us is a reunion with 
 human existence in its most excellent state ! and we find 
 notlring dead in the past, while we retain the sympathies 
 which only require to be awakened. 
 
 It would have been more reasonable had the critic discov- 
 ered that our country has not yet had her Plutarch, and that 
 our biography remains still little more than a mass of compi- 
 lation. 
 
 In this study of biography there is a species which has not 
 yet been distinguished — biographies composed by some do- 
 mestic friend, or 1>y some enthusiast who works with love. 
 A term is unquestionably wanted for this distinct class. The 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Germans seem to have invented a platonic one, drawn from 
 the Greek psyche, or the soul ; for they call this the psycho- 
 logical life. Another attempt has been made, by giving it 
 the scientific term of idiosyncrasy, to denote a peculiarity of 
 disposition. I would call it sentimental biography ! 
 
 It is distinct from a chronological biography, for it searches 
 for the individual's feelings amidst the ascertained facts of his 
 life ; so that facts, which occurred remotely from each other, 
 are here brought at once together. The detail of events 
 which completes the chronological biography, contains many 
 which are not connected with the peculiarity of the character 
 itself. The sentimental is also distinct from the auto-biogra- 
 phy, however it may seem a part of it. Whether a man be 
 entitled to lavish his panegyric on himself, I will not decide ; 
 but it is certain that he risks every thing by appealing to a 
 solitary and suspected witness. 
 
 We have two lives of Dante, one by Boccaccio and the 
 other by Leonardo Aretino, both interesting : but Boccaccio's 
 is the sentimental life ! 
 
 Aretino, indeed, finds fault, but with all the tenderness 
 possible, with Boccaccio's affectionate sketch, Origine, Vita, 
 Studi e Costumi del clarissimo Dante, &c. " Origin, Life, 
 Studies and Manners, of the illustrious Dante," &c. " It 
 seems to me," he says, " that our Boccaccio, dolcissimo e 
 suavissimo uomo, sweet and delightful man ! has written the 
 life and manners of this sublime poet, as if he had been com- 
 posing the Filocolo, the Filostrato, or the Fiametta," the 
 romances of Boccaccio — "for all breathes of love and sighs, 
 and is covered with warm tears, as if a man were born in 
 this world only to live among the enamoured ladies and the 
 gallant youths of the ten amorous days of his hundred 
 novels." 
 
 Aretino, who wanted not all the feeling requisite for the 
 delightful " costumi e studi " of Boccaccio's Dante, modestly 
 requires that his own life of Dante should be considered as a 
 supplement to, not as a substitute for, Boccaccio's. Pathetic 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 335 
 
 with all the sorrows, and eloquent with all the remonstrances 
 of a fellow-citizen, Boccaccio while he wept, hung with anger 
 over his country's shame in its apathy for the honour of its 
 long-injured exile. Catching inspiration from the breathing 
 pages of Boccaccio, it inclines one to wish that we possessed 
 two biographies of an illustrious favourite character ; the one 
 strictly and fully historical, the other fraught with those very 
 feelings of the departed, which we may have to seek in vain 
 for, in the circumstantial and chronological biographer,. Boc- 
 caccio, indeed, was overcome by his feelings. He either 
 knew not, or he omits the substantial incidents of Dante's 
 life ; while his imagination throws a romantic tinge on occur- 
 rences raised on slight, perhaps on no foundation. Boccaccio 
 narrates a dream of the mother of Dante so fancifully poeti- 
 cal, that probably Boccaccio forgot that none but a dreamer 
 could have told it. Seated under a high laurel-tree, by the 
 side of a vast fountain, the mother dreamt that she gave birth 
 to her son ; she saw him nourished by its fruit, and refreshed 
 by the clear waters; she soon beheld him a shepherd; 
 approaching to pluck the boughs, she saw him fall ! When 
 he rose he had ceased to be a man, and was transformed into 
 a peacock ! Disturbed by her admiration, she suddenly 
 awoke ; but when the father found that he really had a son, 
 in allusion to the dream he called him Dante — or given I e 
 meritamente ; peroccke ottimamente, siccome si vedra proce- 
 dendo, segui al nome V effetto : " and deservedly ! for greatly, 
 as we shall see, the effect followed the name ! " At nine 
 years of age, on a May-day, whose joyous festival Boccaccio 
 beautifully describes, when the softness of the heavens re- 
 adorning the earth with its mingled flowers, waved the green 
 boughs, and made all things smile, Dante mixed with the 
 boys and girls in the house of the good citizen who on that 
 day gave the feast, beheld little Brice, as she was familiarly 
 called, but named Beatrice. The little Dante might have 
 seen her before, but he loved her then, and from that day 
 never ceased to love ; and thus Dante nella pargoletta eta 
 
336 
 
 SENTIMENTAL BIO GRAF IT Y. 
 
 fatto oV amove ferventissimo servidore ; so fervent a servant 
 to Love in an age of childhood ! Boccaccio appeals to Dante's 
 own account of his long passion, and his constant sighs, in 
 the Vita Nuova. No look, no word, no sign, sullied the 
 purity of his passion ; but in her twenty-fourth year died " la 
 bellissima Beatrice." Dante is then described as more than 
 inconsolable ; his eyes were long two abundant fountains of 
 tears ; careless of life, he let his beard grow wildly, and to 
 others appeared a savage meagre man, whose aspect was so 
 changed, that while this weeping life lasted, he was hardly 
 recognized by his friends ; all looked on a man so entirely 
 transformed, with deep compassion. Dante, won over by 
 those who could console the inconsolable, was at length 
 solicited by his relations to marry a lady of his own condition 
 in life ; and it was suggested that as the departed lady had 
 occasioned him such heavy griefs, the new one might open a 
 source of delight. The relations and friends of Dante gave 
 him a wife that his tears for Beatrice might cease. 
 
 It is supposed that this marriage proved unhappy. Boc- 
 caccio, like a pathetic lover rather than biographer, exclaims, 
 Oh menti cieche ! Oh tenebrosi intelletti I Oh argomenti vani 
 di mold mortali, quante sono le ruiscite in assai cose contra- 
 rie a' nostri avvisi ! &c. " Oh blind men ! Oh dark minds ! 
 Oh vain arguments of most mortals, how often are the results 
 contrary to our advice ! Frequently it is like leading one 
 who breathes the soft air of Italy to refresh himself in the 
 eternal shades of the Rhodopean mountains. What physician 
 would expel a burning fever with fire, or put in the shivering 
 marrow of the bones snow and ice ? So certainly shall it 
 fare with him, who with a new love, thinks to mitigate the 
 old. Those who believe this know not the nature of love, nor 
 how much a second passion adds to the first. In vain would 
 we assist or advise this forceful passion, if it has struck its 
 root near the heart of him who long has loved." 
 
 Boccaccio has beguiled my pen for half-an-hour with all 
 the loves and fancies which sprung out of his own affectionate 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 and romantic heart. What airy stuff has he woven into the 
 "Vita" of Dante! this sentimental biography! Whether 
 he knew but little of the personal history of the great man 
 whom he idolized, or whether the dream of the mother — the 
 May-day interview with the little Brice, and the rest of 
 the children — and the effusions on Dante's marriage, were 
 grounded on tradition, one would not harshly reject such 
 tender incidents.* But let it not be imagined that the heart 
 of Boccaccio was only susceptible to amorous impressions — 
 bursts of enthusiasm and eloquence, which only a man of 
 genius is worthy of receiving, and only a man of genius is 
 capable of bestowing — kindle the masculine patriotism of his 
 bold, indignant spirit ! 
 
 Half a century had elapsed since the death of Dante, and 
 still the Florentines showed no sign of repentance for their 
 ancient hatred of their persecuted patriot, nor any sense of 
 the memory of the creator of their language, whose immor- 
 tality had become a portion of their own glory. Boccaccio, 
 impassioned by all his generous nature, though he regrets he 
 could not raise a statue to Dante, has sent down to posterity 
 more than marble, in the " life." I venture to give the lofty 
 and bold apostrophe to his fellow-citizens; but I feel that 
 even the genius of our language is tame by the side of the 
 harmonized eloquence of the great votary of Dante ! 
 
 " Ungrateful country ! what madness urged thee, when thy 
 dearest citizen, thy chief benefactor, thy only poet, with un- 
 accustomed cruelty was driven to flight ! If this had hap- 
 pened in the general terror of that time, coming from evil 
 counsels, thou mightest stand excused ; but when the passion 
 
 * "A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante," in English, printed 
 in Italy, has just reached me. I am delighted to find that this biography 
 of Love, however romantic, is true ! In his ninth year, Dante was a lover 
 and a poet ! The tender sonnet, free from all obscurity, which he com- 
 posed on Beatrice, is preserved in the above singular volume. There can 
 be no longer any doubt of the story of Beatrice; but the sonnet and the 
 passion must be " classed among curious natural phenomena," or how far 
 apocryphal, remains for future inquiry. 
 
 VOL. iv. 22 
 
338 
 
 SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ceased, didst thou repent ? didst thou recall him ? Bear with 
 me, nor deem it irksome from me, who am thy son, that thus 
 I collect what just indignation prompts me to speak, as a 
 man more desirous of witnessing your amendment, than of 
 beholding you punished ! Seems it to you glorious, proud of 
 so many titles and of such men, that the one whose like no 
 neighbouring city can show, you have chosen to chase from 
 among you ? With what triumphs, with what valorous citi- 
 zens, are you splendid ? Your wealth is a removable and 
 uncertain thing ; your fragile beauty will grow old ; your 
 delicacy is shameful and feminine ; but these make you noticed 
 by the false judgments of the populace ! Do you glory in 
 your merchants and your artists ? I speak imprudently ; but 
 the one are tenaciously avaricious in their servile trades ; and 
 Art, which once was so noble, and became a second nature, 
 struck by the same avarice, is now as corrupted, and nothing 
 worth ! Do you glory in the baseness and the listlessness of 
 those idlers, who, because their ancestors are remembered, 
 attempt to raise up among you a nobility to govern you, ever 
 by robbery, by treachery, by falsehood! Ah! miserable 
 mother ! open thine eyes ; cast them with some remorse on 
 what thou hast done, and blush, at least, reputed wise as thou 
 art, to have had in your errors so fatal a choice ! Why not 
 rather imitate the acts of those cities who so keenly disputed 
 merely for the honour of the birthplace of the divine Homer ? 
 Mantua, our neighbour, counts as the greatest fame which 
 remains for her, that Virgil was a Mantuan ! and holds his 
 very name in such reverence, that not only in public places, 
 but in the most private, we see his sculptured image ! You 
 only, while you were made famous by illustrious men, you 
 only have shown no care for your great poet. Your Dante 
 Alighieri died in exile, to which you Unjustly, envious of his 
 greatness, destined him ! A crime not to be remembered, 
 that the mother should bear an envious malignity to the vir- 
 tues of a son ! Now cease to be unjust ! He cannot do you 
 that, now dead, which living he never did do to you ! He 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 339 
 
 lies under another sky than yours, and you never can see him 
 again, but on that day, when all your citizens shall view him, 
 and the great Remunerator shall examine, and shall punish ! 
 If anger, hatred, and enmity are buried with a man, as it is be- 
 lieved, begin then to return to yourself ; begin to be ashamed 
 to have acted against your ancient humanity ; begin, then, to 
 wish to appear a mother, and not a cold negligent step-dame. 
 Yield your tears to your son ; yield your maternal piety to 
 him whom once you repulsed, and, living, cast away from 
 you ! At least think of possessing him dead, and restore 
 your citizenship, your award, and your grace, to his memory. 
 He was a son who held you in reverence, and though long an 
 exile, he always called himself, and would be called a Floren- 
 tine ! He held you ever above all others ; ever he loved 
 you ! What will you then do ? Will you remain obstinate 
 in iniquity? Will you practise less humanity than the bar- 
 barians ? You wish that the world should believe that you 
 are the sister of famous Troy, and the daughter of Rome ; 
 assuredly the children should resemble their fathers and their 
 ancestors. Priam, in his misery, bought the corpse of Hector 
 with gold ; and Rome would possess the bones of the first 
 Scipio, and removed them from Linternum, those bones, 
 which, dying, so justly he had denied her. Seek then to be 
 the true guardian of your Dante, claim him ! show this humane 
 feeling, claim him ! you may securely do this : I am certain 
 he will not be returned to you ; but thus at once you may 
 betray some mark of compassion, and, not having him again, 
 still enjoy your ancient cruelty ! Alas ! what comfort am I 
 bringing you ! I almost believe, that if the dead could feel, 
 the body of Dante would not rise to return to you, for he is 
 lying in Ravenna, whose hallowed soil is everywhere covered 
 with the ashes of saints. Would Dante quit this blessed 
 company to mingle with the remains of those hatreds and in- 
 iquities which gave him no rest in life ? The relics of Dante, 
 even among the bodies of emperors and of martyrs, and of 
 their illustrious ancestors, is prized as a treasure, for there 
 
340 SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 his works are looked on with admiration ; those works of 
 which you have not yet known to make yourselves worthy. 
 His birthplace, his origin, remains for you, spite of your 
 ingratitude ! and this Ravenna envies you, while she glories 
 in your honours, which she has snatched from you through 
 ages yet to come ! " 
 
 Such was the deep emotion which opened Boccaccio's 
 heart in this sentimental biography, and which awoke even 
 shame and confusion in the minds of the Florentines ; they 
 blushed for their old hatreds, and, with awakened sympathies, 
 they hastened to honour the memory of their great bard. By 
 order of the city, the Divina Commedia Avas publicly read 
 and explained to the people. Boccaccio, then sinking under 
 the infirmities of age, roused his departing genius : still was 
 there marrow in the bones of the aged lion, and he engaged 
 in the task of composing his celebrated Commentaries on the 
 Divina Commedia. 
 
 In this class of sentimental biography I would place a spe- 
 cies which the historian Carte noticed in his literary travels 
 on the Continent, in pursuit of his historical design. He 
 found, preserved among several ancient families of France, 
 their domestic annals. "With a warm, patriotic spirit, 
 worthy of imitation, they have often carefully preserved in 
 their families the acts of their ancestors." This delight and 
 pride of the modern Gauls in the great and good deeds 
 .of their ancestors, preserved in domestic archives, will be 
 ascribed to their folly or their vanity ; yet in that folly there 
 may be so much wisdom, and in that vanity there may be so 
 much greatness, that the one will amply redeem the other. 
 
 This custom has been rarely adopted among ourselves ; 
 we have, however, a few separate histories of some ancient 
 families, as those of Mordaunt, and of Warren. One of the 
 most remarkable is "A Genealogical History of the House of 
 Yvery, in its different branches of Yvery, Luvel, Perceval, 
 and Gournay." Two large volumes, closely printed,* ex- 
 
 * This work was published in 1742, and the scarcity of these volumes 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 341 
 
 patiating on the characters and events of a single family with 
 the grave pomp of a herald, but more particularly the idolatry 
 of the writer for ancient nobility, and his contempt for that 
 growing rank in society whom he designates as " New Men," 
 provoked the ridicule at least of the aspersed.* This extra- 
 ordinary work, notwithstanding its absurdities in its general 
 result, has left behind a deep impression. Drawn from the 
 authentic family records, it is not without interest that we toil 
 through its copious pages ; we trace with a romantic sym- 
 pathy the fortunes of the descendants of the House of Yvery, 
 from that not-forgotten hero le vaillant Perceval chevalier 
 de la Table Honde, to the Norman Baron Asselin, surnamed 
 the Wolf, for his bravery or his ferocity ; thence to the Cav- 
 alier of Charles the First, Sir Philip Perceval, who, having 
 gloriously defended his castle, was at length deprived of his 
 lordly possessions, but never of his loyalty, and died obscurely 
 in the metropolis, of a broken heart, till we reach the polished 
 nobleman, the Lord Egmont of the Georges. 
 
 The nation has lost many a noble example of men and 
 women acting a great part on great occasions, and then re- 
 treating to the shade of privacy ; and we may be confident 
 that many a name has not been inscribed on the roll of national 
 glory only from wanting a few drops of ink ! Such domestic 
 annals may yet be viewed in the family records at Appleby 
 Castle ! Anne, Countess of Pembroke, was a glorious woman, 
 
 was felt in Granger's day, for they obtained then the considerable price of 
 four guineas; some time ago a fine copy was sold for thirty at a sale, and 
 a cheap copy was offered to me at twelve guineas. These volumes should 
 contain seventeen portraits. The first was written by Mr. Anderson, who, 
 dying before the second appeared, Lord Egmont, from the materials An- 
 derson had left, concluded his family history — con amove. 
 
 * Mr. Anderson, the writer of the first volume, was a feudal enthusiast; 
 he has thrown out an odd notion that the commercial, or the wealthy class, 
 had intruded on the dignity of the ancient nobility; but as wealth has 
 raised such high prices for labour, commodities, &c. it had reached its 
 neplus ultra, and commerce could be carried on no longer! He has ven- 
 tured on this amusing prediction, "As it is, therefore, evident that new 
 men will never rise again in any age with such advantages of wealth, at least 
 in considerable numbers, their party will gradually decrease." 
 
342 
 
 SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 the descendant of two potent northern families, the Veteri- 
 ponts and the Cliffords. — She lived in a state of regal magni- 
 ficence and independence, inhabiting five or seven castles ; 
 yet though her magnificent spirit poured itself out in her ex- 
 tended charities, and though her independence mated that of 
 monarchs, yet she herself, in her domestic habits, lived as a 
 hermit in her own castles ; and though only acquainted with 
 her native language, she had cultivated her mind in many 
 parts of learning ; and as Donne, in his way, observes, " she 
 knew how to converse of every thing ; from predestination to 
 slea-silk." Her favourite design was to have materials col- 
 lected for the history of those two potent northern families to 
 whom she was allied ; and at a considerable expense she 
 employed learned persons to make collections for this pur- 
 pose, from the records in the Tower, the Rolls, and other 
 depositories of manuscripts : Gilpin had seen three large 
 volumes fairly transcribed. Anecdotes of a great variety of 
 characters, who had exerted themselves on very important 
 occasions, compose these family records — and induce one to 
 wish that the public were in possession of such annals of the 
 domestic life of heroes and of sages, who have only failed in 
 obtaining an historian ! * 
 
 A biographical monument of this nature, which has passed 
 through the press, will sufficiently prove the utility of this 
 class of sentimental biography. It is the life of Robert Price, 
 a Welsh lawyer, and an ancestor of the gentleman whose in- 
 genuity, in our days, has refined the principles of the Pictu- 
 resque in Art. This life is announced as " printed by the 
 appointment of the family ; " but it must not be considered 
 merely as a tribute of private affection ; and how we are at 
 this day interested in the actions of a Welsh lawyer in the 
 reign of William the Third, whose name has probably never 
 been consigned to the page of history, remains to be told. 
 
 * Much curious matter about the old Countess of Westmoreland and 
 her seven castles may be found in Whitaker's History of Craven, and in 
 Pennant. 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 343 
 
 Robert Price, after having served Charles the Second, lived 
 latterly in the eventful times of William the Third — he was 
 probably of Tory principles, for on the arrival of the Dutch 
 prince, he was removed from the attorney-generalship of 
 Glamorgan. The new monarch has been accused of favour- 
 itism, and of an eagerness in showering exorbitant grants on 
 some of his foreigners, which soon raised a formidable oppo- 
 sition in the jealous spirit of Englishmen. The grand favour- 
 ite, William Bentinck, after being raised to the Earldom of 
 Portland, had a grant bestowed on him of three lordships, in 
 the county of Denbigh. The patriot of his native country — 
 a title which the Welsh had already conferred on Robert 
 Price — then rose to assert the rights of his father-land, and 
 his speeches are as admirable for their knowledge as their 
 spirit. "The submitting of 1500 freeholders to the will of a 
 Dutch lord was," as he sarcastically declared, " putting them 
 in a worse posture than their former estate, when under 
 William the Conqueror and his Norman lords. England 
 must not be tributary to strangers — we must, like patriots, 
 stand by our country — otherwise, when God shall send us a 
 Prince of Wales, he may have such a present of a crown 
 made him as a Pope did to King John, who was surnamed 
 Sans-terre, and was by his father made Lord of Ireland, 
 which grant was confirmed by the Pope, who sent him a 
 crown of peacocks' feathers, in derogation of his power, and 
 the poverty of his country." Robert Price asserted that the 
 king could not, by the Bill of Rights, alien or give away the 
 inheritance of a prince of Wales without the consent of par- 
 liament. He concluded a copious and patriotic speech, by 
 proposing that an address be presented to the king, to put an 
 immediate stop to the grant now passing to the Earl of Port- 
 land for the lordships, &c. 
 
 This speech produced such an effect, that the address was 
 carried unanimously ; and the king, though he highly resented 
 the speech of Robert Price, sent a civil message to the com- 
 mons, declaring that he should not have given Lord Portland 
 
344 
 
 SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 those lands, had he imagined the House of Commons could 
 have been concerned ; " I will therefore recall the grant ! " 
 On receiving the royal message, Robert Price drew up a reso- 
 lution to which the house assented, that " to procure or pass 
 exorbitant grants by any member of the privy council, &c. 
 was a high crime and misdemeanor." The speech of Robert 
 Price contained truths too numerous and too bold to suffer 
 the light during that reign ; but this speech against foreigners 
 wad printed the year after King William's death, with this 
 title, " Gloria Cambrice, or the speech of a bold Briton in 
 parliament, against a Dutch Prince of "Wales," with this 
 motto, Opposuit et Vicit. Such was the great character of 
 Robert Price, that he was made a Welsh judge by the very 
 sovereign whose favourite plans he had so patriotically 
 thwarted. 
 
 Another marked event in the life of this English patriot 
 was a second noble stand he made against the royal author- 
 ity, when in opposition to the public good. The secret history 
 of a quarrel between George the First and the Prince of 
 Wales, afterwards George the Second, on the birth of a son, 
 appears in this life ; and when the prince in disgrace left the 
 palace, his royal highness proposed taking his children and 
 the princess with him ; but the king detained the children, 
 claiming the care of the royal offspring as a royal prerogative. 
 It now became a legal point to ascertain " whether the edu- 
 cation of his majesty's grandchildren, and the care of their 
 marriages, &c. belonged of right to his majesty as king of 
 this realm, or not ? " Ten of the judges obsequiously allowed 
 of the prerogative to the full. Robert Price and another 
 judge decided that the education, &c. was the right of the 
 father, although the marriages was that of his majesty as king 
 of this realm, yet not exclusive of the prince, their father. 
 He assured the king, that the ten obsequious judges had no 
 authority to support their precipitate opinion ; all the books 
 and precedents cannot form a prerogative for the king of this 
 realm to have the care and education of his grandchildren 
 
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 345 
 
 during the life and without the consent of their father — a 
 prerogative unknown to the laws of England! He pleads 
 for the rights of a father, with the spirit of one who feels 
 them, as well as with legal science and historical knowledge. 
 
 Such were the two great incidents in the life of this Welsh 
 judge ! Yet, had the family not found one to commemorate 
 these memorable events in the life of their ancestor, we had 
 lost the noble picture of a constitutional interpreter of the 
 laws, an independent country gentleman, and an Englishman 
 jealous of the excessive predominance of ministerial or royal 
 influence. 
 
 Cicero, and others, have informed us that the ancient his- 
 tory of Rome itself was composed out of such accounts of 
 private families, to which, indeed, we must add those annals 
 or registers of public events which unquestionably were pre- 
 served in the archives of the Temples by the Priests. But 
 the history of the individual may involve public interest, 
 whenever the skill of the writer combines with the impor- 
 tance of the event. Messala, the orator, gloried in having 
 composed many volumes of the genealogies of the Nobility 
 of Rome ; and Atticus wrote the genealogy of Brutus to 
 prove him descended from Junius Brutus, the expulsor of the 
 Tarquins, aud founder of the Republic, near five hundred 
 years before. 
 
 Another class of this sentimental biography was projected 
 by the late Elizabeth Hamilton. This was to have consisted 
 of a series of w 7 hat she called comparative biography, and an 
 ancient character was to have been paralleled by a modern 
 one. Occupied by her historical romance with the character 
 of Agrippina, she sought in modern history for a partner of 
 hei own sex, and " one who, like her, had experienced vicis- 
 situdes of fortune ; " and she found no one better qualified 
 than the princess palatine, Elizabeth, the daughter of James 
 the First. Her next life was to have been that of Seneca, 
 with " the scenes and persons of which her life of Agrippina 
 had familiarized her ; " and the contrast or the parallel was 
 
346 
 
 LITERARY PARALLELS. 
 
 to have been Locke ; which, well managed, she thought, would 
 have been sufficiently striking. It seems to me, that it would 
 rather have afforded an evidence of her invention ! Such a 
 biographical project reminds one of Plutarch's Parallel.-, and 
 might incur the danger of displaying more ingenuity than 
 truth. The sage of Cheronea must often have racked his 
 invention to help out his parallels, bending together, to make 
 them similar, the most unconnected events and the mo.-t dis- 
 tinct feelings ; and, to keep his parallels in two straight lines, 
 he probably made a free use of augmentatives and diminu- 
 tives to help out his pair, who might have been equal, and 
 yet not alike ! 
 
 Our Father-land is prodigal of immortal names, or names 
 which might be made immortal ; Gibbon once contemplated 
 with complacency, the very ideal of sentimental biogra- 
 phy, and we may regret that he has only left the project ! 
 " I have long revolved in my mind a volume of biographical 
 writing ; the lives or rather the characters of the most emi- 
 nent persons in arts and arms, in church and state, who have 
 flourished in Britain, from the reign of Henry the Eighth to 
 the present age. The subject would afford a rich display of 
 human nature and domestic history, and powerfully address 
 itself to the feelings of every Englishman." 
 
 LITERARY PARALLELS. 
 
 An opinion on this subject in the preceding article has led 
 me to a further investigation. It may be right to acknowl- 
 edge that so attractive is this critical and moral amusement 
 of comparing great characters with one another, that, among 
 others, Bishop Hurd once proposed to write a book of Paral- 
 lels, and has furnished a specimen in that of Petrarch and 
 Rousseau, and intended for another that of Erasmus with 
 Cicero. It is amusing to observe how a lively and subtle 
 
LITERARY PARALLELS. 
 
 341 
 
 mind can strike out resemblances, and make contraries ac- 
 cord, and at the same time it may show the pinching difficul- 
 ties through which a parallel is pushed, till it ends in a 
 paradox. 
 
 Ilurd says of Petrarch and Rousseau — " Both were im- 
 pelled by an equal enthusiasm, though directed towards dif- 
 ferent objects : Petrarch's towards the glory of the Roman 
 name, Rousseau's towards his idol of a state of nature ; the 
 one religious, the other un esprit fort ; but may not Pe- 
 trarch's spite to Babylon be considered, in his time, as a 
 species of free-thinking " — and concludes, that " both were 
 mad, but of a different nature." Unquestionably there were 
 features much alike, and almost peculiar to these two literary 
 characters ; but I doubt if Hurd has comprehended them in 
 the parallel. 
 
 I now give a specimen of those parallels which have done 
 so much mischief in the literary world, when drawn by a 
 hand which covertly leans on one side. An elaborate one of 
 this sort was composed by Longolius or Longuel, between 
 Budyeus and Erasmus.* This man, though of Dutch origin, 
 affected to pass for a Frenchman, and, to pay his court to his 
 chosen people, gives the preference obliquely to the French 
 Budaeus ; though, to make a show of impartiality, he acknowl- 
 edges that Francis the First had awarded it to Erasmus ; but 
 probably he did not infer that kings were the most able re- 
 viewers ! This parallel was sent forth during the lifetime of 
 both these great scholars, who had long been correspondents, 
 but the publication of the parallel interrupted their friendly 
 intercourse. Erasmus returned his compliments and thanks 
 to Longolius, but at the same time insinuates a gentle hint, 
 that he was not overpleased. "What pleases me most," 
 Erasmus writes, "is the just preference you have given Bu- 
 dseus over me ; I confess you are even too economical in 
 your praise of him, as you are too prodigal in mine. I thank 
 you for informing me what it is the learned desire to find in 
 * It is noticed by Jortin in his Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 160. 
 
348 
 
 LITERARY PARALLELS. 
 
 me ; my self-love suggests many little excuses, with which, 
 you observe, I am apt to favour my defects. If I am care- 
 less, it arises partly from my ignorance, and more from my 
 indolence ; I am so constituted, that I cannot conquer my na- 
 ture ; I precipitate rather than compose, and it is far more 
 irksome for me to revise than to write." 
 
 This parallel between Erasmus and Budaeus, though the 
 parallel itself was not of a malignant nature, yet disturbed 
 the quiet, and interrupted the friendship of both. When 
 Longolius discovered that the Parisian surpassed the Hol- 
 lander in Greek literature and the knowledge of the civil 
 law, and wrote more learnedly and laboriously, how did this 
 detract from the finer genius and the varied erudition of the 
 more delightful writer? The parallelist compares Erasmus 
 to " a river swelling its ,waters and often overflowing its 
 banks; Budceus rolled on like a majestic stream, ever re- 
 straining its waves within its bed. The Frenchman has 
 more nerve, and blood, and life, and the Hollander more ful- 
 ness, freshness, and colour." 
 
 The taste for biographical parallels must have reached us 
 from Plutarch ; and there is something malicious in our na- 
 ture which inclines us to form comparative estimates, usually 
 with a view to elevate one great man at the cost of another, 
 whom we would secretly depreciate. Our political parties at 
 home have often indulged in these fallacious parallels, and 
 Pitt and Fox once balanced the scales, not by the standard 
 weights and measures which ought to have been used, but by 
 the adroitness of the hand that pressed down the scale. In 
 literature, these comparative estimates have proved most pre- 
 judicial. A finer model exists not than the parallel of Dry- 
 den and Pope, by Johnson ; for, without designing any undue 
 preference, his vigorous judgment has analyzed them by his 
 contrasts, and has rather shown their distinctness than their 
 similarity. But literary parallels usually end in producing 
 parties ; and, as I have elsewhere observed, often originate 
 in undervaluing one man of genius, for his deficiency in some 
 
THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 349 
 
 eminent quality possessed by the other man of genius ; they 
 not unfrequently proceed from adverse tastes, and are formed 
 with the concealed design of establishing some favourite one. 
 The world of literature has been deeply infected with this 
 folly. Virgil probably was often vexed in his days by a par- 
 allel with Homer, and the Homerians combated with the 
 Virgilians. Modern Italy was long divided into such liter- 
 ary sects : a perpetual skirmishing is carried on between the 
 Ariostoists and the Tassoists ; and feuds as dire as those 
 between two Highland clans were raised concerning the 
 Petrarchists and the Chiabrerists. Old Corneille lived to 
 bow his venerable genius before a parallel with Racine ; and 
 no one has suffered more unjustly by such arbitrary criticisms 
 than Pope, for a strange unnatural civil war has often been 
 renewed between the Drydenists and the Popeists. Two 
 men of great genius should never be depreciated by the mis- 
 applied ingenuity of a parallel ; on such occasions we ought 
 to conclude magis pares quam similes. 
 
 THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 
 
 As a literary curiosity, I notice a subject which might 
 rather enter into the history of religion. It relates to the 
 extraordinary state of our English Bibles, which were for 
 some time suffered to be so corrupted that no books ever yet 
 swarmed with such innumerable errata ! 
 
 These errata unquestionably were in great part voluntary 
 commissions, passages interpolated, and meanings forged for 
 certain purposes ; sometimes to sanction the new creed of a 
 half-hatched sect, and sometimes with an intention to destroy 
 all scriptural authority by a confusion, or an omission of 
 texts — the whole was left open to the option or the malignity 
 of the editors, who, probably, like certain ingenious wine- 
 merchants, contrived to accommodate " the waters of life " to 
 
350 THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 
 
 their customers' peculiar taste. They had also a project of 
 printing Bibles as cheaply and in a form as contracted as 
 they possibly could for the common people ; and they pro- 
 ceeded till it nearly ended with having no Bible at all : and, 
 as Fuller, in his " Mixt Contemplations on better Times," 
 alluding to this circumstance, with not one of his lucky quib- 
 bles, observes, " The small price of the Bible has caused the 
 small prizing of the Bible." 
 
 This extraordinary attempt on the English Bible began 
 even before Charles the First's dethronement, and probably 
 arose from an unusual demand for Bibles, as the sectarian 
 fanaticism was increasing. Printing of English Bibles was 
 an article of open trade ; every one printed at the lowest 
 price, and as fast as their presses would allow. Even those 
 who were dignified as " his Majesty's Printers " were among 
 these manufacturers ; for we have an account of a scandalous 
 omission by them of the important negative in the seventh 
 commandment ! The Printers were summoned before the 
 court of High Commission, and this not served to bind them 
 in a fine of three thousand pounds ! A prior circumstance, 
 indeed, had occurred, which induced the government to be 
 more vigilant on the Biblical Press. The learned Usher, 
 one day hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, entered the 
 shop of one of the stationers, as booksellers were then called, 
 and inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when he 
 came to look for his text, to his astonishment and horror, He 
 discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible ! This 
 gave the first occasion of complaint to the king of the insuf- 
 ferable negligence and incapacity of the London press : and, 
 says the manuscript writer of this anecdote, first bred that 
 great contest which followed, between the University of 
 Cambridge and the London stationers, about the right of 
 printing Bibles.* 
 
 The secret bibliographical history of these times would 
 show the extraordinary state of the press in this new trade 
 * Harl. MS. 6395. 
 
THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 351 
 
 of Bible?. The writer of a curious pamphlet exposes the 
 combination of those called the king's printers, with their 
 contrivances to keep up the prices of Bibles ; their corre- 
 spondence with the booksellers of Scotland and Dublin, by 
 which means they retained the privilege in their own hands : 
 the king's London printers got Bibles printed cheaper at 
 Edinburgh. In 1629, when folio Bibles were wanted, the 
 Cambridge printers sold them at ten shillings in quires ; on 
 this the Londoners set six printing-houses at work, and, to 
 annihilate the Cambridgians, printed a similar folio Bible, 
 but sold with it five hundred quarto Roman Bibles, and five 
 hundred quarto English, at five shillings a book ; which 
 proved the ruin of the folio Bibles, by keeping them down 
 under the cost price. Another competition arose among 
 those who printed English Bibles in Holland, in duodecimo, 
 with an English colophon, for half the price even of the 
 lowest in London. Twelve thousand of these duodecimo 
 Bibles, with notes, fabricated in Holland, usually by our 
 fugitive sectarians, were seized by the king's printers, as 
 contrary to the statute.* Such was this shameful war of 
 Bibles — folios, quartos, and duodecimos, even in the days of 
 Charles the First. The public spirit of the rising sects was 
 the real occasion of these increased demands for Bibles. 
 
 During the civil wars they carried on the same open trade 
 and competition, besides the private ventures of the smuggled 
 Bibles. A large impression of these Dutch English Bibles 
 were burnt by order of the Assembly of Divines, for these 
 three errors: — 
 
 Gen. xxxvi. 24. — This is that ass that found rulers in the 
 wilderness — for mule. 
 
 * " Scintilla, or a light broken into darke Warehouses; of some Printers, 
 sleeping Stationers, and combining Booksellers ; in which is only a touch 
 of their forestalling and ingrossing of Books in Pattents, and raysing them 
 to excessive prises. Left to the consideration of the high and honourable 
 House of Parliament, now assembled. London: No where to be sold, but 
 some where to be given. 1641." 
 
So2 TIIE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 
 
 Ruth iv. 13. — The Lord gave her corruption — for con- 
 ception. 
 
 Luke xxi. 28. — Look up, and lift up your hands, for your 
 condemnation draweth nigh — for redemption. 
 
 These errata were none of the printer's ; but, as a writer 
 of the times expresses it, " egregious blasphemies, and dam- 
 nable errata" of some sectarian, or some Bellamy editor of 
 that day ! 
 
 The printing of Bibles at length was a privilege conceded 
 to one William Bentley ; but he was opposed by Hills and 
 Field; and a paper war arose, in which they mutually 
 recriminated on each other, with equal truth. 
 
 Field printed in 1653 what was called the Pearl Bible; 
 alluding, I suppose, to that diminutive type in printing, for it 
 could not derive its name from its worth. It is a twenty- 
 fours ; but to contract the mighty book into this dwarfishness, 
 all the original Hebrew text prefixed to the Psalms, explain- 
 ing the occasion and the subject of their composition, is 
 wholly expunged. This Pearl Bible, which may be in- 
 spected among the great collection of our English Bibles at 
 the British Museum, is set off by many notable errata, of 
 which these are noticed : — 
 
 Romans vi. 13. — Neither yield ye your members as in- 
 struments of righteousness unto sin — for unrighteousness. 
 
 First Corinthians vi. 9. — Know ye not that the unrighteous 
 shall inherit the kingdom of God ? — for shall not inherit. 
 
 This erratum served as the foundation of a dangerous 
 doctrine ; for many libertines urged the text from this cor- 
 rupt Bible against the reproofs of a divine. 
 
 This Field was a great forger ; and it is said that he re- 
 ceived a present of £1500 from the Independents to corrupt 
 a text in Acts vi. 3, to sanction the right of the people to 
 appoint their own pastors. The corruption was the easiest 
 possible ; it was only to put a ye instead of a we ; so that the 
 right in Field's Bible emanated from the people, not from the 
 apostles. The only account I recollect of this extraordi- 
 
THE PEAKL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 353 
 
 nary state of our Bibles is a happy allusion in a line of 
 Butler :— 
 
 " Religion spawn'd a various rout 
 Of petulant, capricious sects, 
 The maggots of corrupted texts." 
 
 In other Bibles by Hills and Field we may find such 
 abundant errata, reducing the text to nonsense or to blasphe- 
 my, making the Scriptures contemptible to the multitude, who 
 came to pray, and not to scoff. 
 
 It is affirmed, in the manuscript account already referred 
 to, that one Bible swarmed with six thousand faults ! Indeed, 
 from another source we discover that " Sterne, a solid scholar, 
 was the first who summed up the three thousand and six hun- 
 dred faults, that were in our printed Bibles of London." * 
 If one book can be made to contain near four thousand errors, 
 little ingenuity was required to reach to six thousand ; but 
 perhaps this is the first time so remarkable an incident in the 
 history of literature has ever been chronicled. And that 
 famous edition of the Vulgate by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, a 
 memorable book of blunders, which commands such high 
 prices, ought now to fall in value, before the pearl Bible, in 
 twenty -fours, of Messrs. Hills and Field ! 
 
 Mr. Field, and his worthy coadjutor, seem to have carried 
 the favour of the reigning powers over their opponents ; for 
 I find a piece of their secret history. They engaged to pay 
 £500 per annum to some, " whose names I forbear to men- 
 tion," warily observes the manuscript writer ; and above 
 £100 per annum to Mr. Marchmont Needham and his wife, 
 out of the profits of the sales of their Bibles ; deriding, insult- 
 ing, and triumphing over others, out of their confidence in 
 their great friends and purse, as if they were lawless and free, 
 both from offence and punishment.f This Marchmont Need- 
 ham is sufficiently notorious, and his secret history is probably 
 true ; for in a Mercurius Politicus of this unprincipled Cob 
 
 * G. Garrard's Letter to the Earl of Strafford, vol. i. p. 208. 
 f Harl. MS. 7580. 
 VOL. IV. 23 
 
354 THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 
 
 bett of his day, I found an elaborate puff of an edition, pub- 
 lished by the annuity-grantor to this Worthy and his Wife! 
 
 Not only had the Bible to surfer these indignities of size and 
 price, but the Prayer-book was once printed in an illegible 
 and worn-out type ; on which the printer being complained 
 of, he stoutly replied, that " it was as good as the price 
 afforded ; and being a book which all persons ought to have 
 by heart, it was no matter whether it was read or not, so that 
 it was worn out in their hands." The puritans seem not to 
 have been so nice about the source of purity itself. 
 
 These hand-bibles of the sectarists, with their six thousand 
 errata, like the false Duessa, covered their crafty deformity 
 with a fair raiment ; for when the great Selden, in the assem- 
 bly of divines, delighted to confute them in their own learn- 
 ing, he would say, as Whitelock reports, when they had cited 
 a text to prove their assertion, " Perhaps in your little 
 pocket-bible with gilt leaves," which they would often pull 
 out and read, " the translation may be so, but the Greek or 
 the Hebrew signifies this." 
 
 While these transactions were occurring, it appears that 
 the authentic translation of the Bible, such as we now have 
 it, by the learned translators in James the First's time, was 
 suffered to lie neglected. The copies of the original manu- 
 script were in the possession of two of the king's printers, 
 who, from cowardice, consent, and connivance, suppressed 
 the publication ; considering that a Bible full of errata, and 
 often, probably, accommodated to the notions of certain sec- 
 tarists, was more valuable than one authenticated by the 
 hierarchy ! Such was the state of the English Bible till 
 ] 660 ! * 
 
 The proverbial expression of chapter and verse seems 
 peculiar to ourselves, and, I suspect, originated in the puri- 
 tanic period, probably just before the civil wars under Charles 
 the First, from the frequent use of appealing to the Bible on 
 
 * See the London Printers' Lamentation on the Press oppressed. Harl. 
 Coll. iii. 280. 
 
THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA. 355 
 
 the most frivolous occasions, practised by those whom South 
 calls " those mighty men at chapter and verse." With a sort 
 of religious coquetry, they were vain of perpetually opening 
 their gilt pocket Bibles ; they perked them up with such self- 
 sufficiency and perfect ignorance of the original, that the 
 learned Selden found considerable amusement in going to 
 their " assembly of divines," and puzzling or confuting them, 
 as w r e have noticed. A ludicrous anecdote on one of these 
 occasions is given by a contemporary, which shows how 
 admirably that learned man amused himself with this " as- 
 sembly of divines ! " They were discussing the distance 
 between Jerusalem and Jericho, with a perfect ignorance of 
 sacred or of ancient geography ; one said it was twenty miles, 
 another ten, and at last it was concluded to be only seven, 
 for this strange reason, that fish was brought from Jericho to 
 Jerusalem market ! Selden observed, that " possibly the fish 
 in question was salted," and silenced these acute disputants. 
 
 It would probably have greatly discomposed these " chap- 
 ter and verse " men, to have informed them that the Scrip- 
 tures had neither chapter nor verse ! It is by no means 
 clear how the holy writings were anciently divided, and still 
 less how quoted or referred to. The honour of the invention 
 of the present arrangement of the Scriptures is ascribed to 
 Robert Stephens, by his son, in the preface to his Concord- 
 ance, a task which he performed during a journey on horse- 
 back from Paris to London, in 1551 ; and whether it was 
 done as Yorick would in his Shandean manner lounging on 
 his mule, or at his intermediate baits, he has received all 
 possible thanks for this employment of his time. Two years 
 afterwards he concluded with the Bible. But that the 
 honour of every invention may be disputed, Sanctus Pagni- 
 nus's Bible, printed at Lyons in 1527, seems to have led the 
 way to these convenient divisions ; Stephens however im- 
 proved on Pagninus's mode of paragraphical marks and 
 marginal verses ; and our present " chapter and verse," 
 more numerous and more commodiously numbered, were 
 
356 
 
 VIEW OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF THE 
 
 the project of this learned printer, to recommend his edition 
 of the Bible; trade and learning were once combined! 
 Whether in this arrangement any disturbance of the conti- 
 nuity of the text has followed, is a subject not fitted for my 
 inquiry. 
 
 VIEW OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF THE STATE 
 OF RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS. 
 
 Looking over the manuscript diary of Sir Symonds 
 d'Ewes, I was struck by a picture of the domestic religious 
 life which at that period was prevalent among families. Sir 
 Symonds was a sober antiquary, heated with no fanaticism, 
 yet I discovered in his diary that he was a visionary in his 
 constitution, macerating his body by private fasts, and spirit- 
 ualizing in search of secret signs. These ascetic penances 
 were afterwards succeeded in the nation, by an era of hypo- 
 critical sanctity ; and we may trace this last stage of insanity 
 and of immorality, closing with impiety. This would be a 
 dreadful picture of religion, if for a moment we supposed that 
 it were religion; that consolatory power which has its 
 source in our feelings, and according to the derivation of its 
 expressive term, binds men together. With us it was sec- 
 tarism, whose origin and causes we shall not now touch on, 
 which broke out into so many monstrous shapes, when every 
 pretended reformer was guided by his own peculiar fancies : 
 we have lived to prove that folly and wickedness are rarely 
 obsolete. 
 
 The age of Sir Symonds d'Ewes, who lived through the 
 times of Charles the First, was religious ; for the character 
 of this monarch had all the seriousness and piety not found 
 in the bonhomie, and careless indecorums of his father, whose 
 manners of the Scottish court were moulded on the gaieties 
 of the French, from the ancient intercourse of the French 
 
STATE OF RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS. 
 
 357 
 
 and Scottish governments. But this religious age of Charles 
 the First presents a strange contrast with the licentiousness 
 which subsequently prevailed among the people : there seems 
 to be a secret connection between a religious and an irrelig- 
 ious period : the levity of popular feeling is driven to and 
 fro by its reaction ; when man has been once taught to con- 
 temn his mere humanity, his abstract fancies open a secret 
 bye-path to his presumed salvation ; he wanders till he is 
 lost — he trembles till he dotes in melancholy — he raves till 
 truth itself is no longer immutable. The transition to a very 
 opposite state is equally rapid and vehement. Such is the 
 history of man when his religion is founded on misdirected 
 feelings, and such too is the reaction so constantly operating 
 in all human affairs. 
 
 The writer of this diary did not belong to those non-con- 
 formists who arranged themselves in hostility to the estab- 
 lished religion and political government of our country. A 
 private gentleman and a phlegmatic antiquary, Sir Symonds 
 withal was a zealous Church-of-England protestant. Yet 
 amidst the mystical allusions of an age of religious contro- 
 versies, we see these close in the scenes we are about to 
 open, and find this quiet gentleman tormenting himself, and 
 his lady, by watching for " certain evident marks and signs 
 of an assurance for a better life ; " with I know not how 
 many distinct sorts of " Graces." 
 
 I give an extract from the manuscript diary : — 
 
 " I spent this day chiefly in private fasting, prayer, and other religious 
 exercises. This was the first time that I ever practised this duty, having 
 always before declined it, by reason of the papists' superstitious abuses of it 
 I had partaken formerly of public fasts, but never knew the use and benefit 
 of the same duty performed alone in secret, or with others of mine own 
 family in private. In these particulars, I had my knowledge much en- 
 larged by the religious converse I enjoyed at Albury-Lodge, for there also 
 I shortly after entered upon framing an evidence of marks and signs for my 
 assurance of a better life. 
 
 " I found much benefit of my secret fasting, from a learned discom-se on 
 fasting by Mr. Henry Mason, and obseiwed his rule, that Christians ought 
 to sit sometimes apart for their ordinary humiliation and fasting, and so 
 
358 VIEW OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF THE 
 
 intend to continue the same course as long as my health will permit me 
 Yet did I vary the times and duration of my fasting. At first, before I 
 had finished the marks and si<jns of my assurance of a better life, which 
 scrutimj and search cost me some threescore days of fasting, I performed it 
 sometimes twice in the space of five weeks, then once each month, or a 
 little sooner or later, and then also I sometimes ended the duties of the 
 day, and took some little food about three of the clock in the afternoon. 
 But for divers years last past, I constantly abstained from all food the 
 whole day. I fasted till supper-time, about six in the evening, and spent 
 ordinarily about eight or nine hours in the performance of re'igious duties; 
 one part of which was prayer and confession of sins, to which end I wrote 
 down a catalogue of cdl my known sins, orderly. These were all sins of 
 infirmity ; for, through God's grace, I was so far from allowing myself in 
 the practice and commission of any actual sin, as I durst not take upon 
 me any controversial sins, as usury, carding, dicing, mixt dancing, and the 
 like, because I was in mine own judgment persuaded they were unlawful. 
 Till I had finished my assurance first in English and afterwards in Latin, 
 with a large and an elaborate preface in Latin also to it ; I spent a great 
 part of the day at that work, &c. 
 
 " Saturday, December 1, 1627, I devoted to my usual course of secret 
 fasting, and drew divers signs of my assurance of a better life, from the 
 grace of repentance, having before gone through the graces of knowledge, 
 faith, hope, love, zeal, patience, humility, and joy; and drawing several 
 marks from them on like days of humiliation for the greater part. My 
 dear wife beginning also to draw most certain signs of her own future hap- 
 piness after death from several graces. 
 
 "January 19, 1628. — Saturday I spent in secret humiliation and fastings, 
 and finished my whole assurance to a better life, consisting of three score 
 and four signs, or marks drawn from several graces. I made some small 
 alterations in the signs afterwards; and when I turned them into the Latin 
 tongue, I enriched the margent with further proofs and authorities. I found 
 much comfort and reposedness of spirit from them, which shows the 
 devilish sophisms of the papists, anabaptists, and pseudo-Lutherans, and 
 profane atheistical men, who say that assurance brings forth presumption, 
 and a careless wicked life. True, when men pretend to the end, and not 
 use the means. 
 
 " My wife joined with me in a private day of fasting, and drew several 
 signs and marks by my help and assistance, for her assurance to a better 
 life." 
 
 This was an era of religious diaries, particularly among 
 the non-conformists ; but they were, as we see, used by- 
 others. Of the Countess of Warwick, who died in 1678, we 
 are told that " she kept a diary, and took counsel Avith two 
 persons, whom she called her soul's friends" She called 
 
STATE OF RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS 
 
 359 
 
 prayers hearts-ease, for such she found them. " Her own 
 lord, knowing her hours of prayers, once conveyed a godly 
 minister into a secret place within hearing, who, being a man 
 very able to judge, much admired her humble fervency ; for 
 in praying she prayed aloud ; but when she did not with an 
 audible voice, her sighs and groans might be heard at a good 
 distance from the closet." We are not surprised to discover 
 this practice of religious diaries among the more puritanic 
 sort: what they were we may gather from this description 
 of one. Mr. John Janeway " kept a diary, in which he 
 wrote down every evening what the frame of his spirit had 
 been all that day ; he took notice what incomes he had, what 
 profit he received in his spiritual traffic : what returns came 
 from that far country ; what answers of prayer, what dead- 
 ness and flatness of spirit," &c. And so we find of Mr. 
 John Carter, that " He kept a day-book and cast up his 
 accounts with God every day." * To such worldly notions 
 had they humiliated the spirit of religion ; and this style, 
 and this mode of religion, has long been continued among us 
 even among men of superior acquisitions : as witness the 
 " Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies " of a learned physician 
 within our own times, Dr. Rutty, which is a great curiosity 
 of the kind. 
 
 Such was the domestic state of many well-meaning fami- 
 lies : they were rejecting with the utmost abhorrence every 
 resemblance to what they called the idolatry of Rome, while, 
 in fact, the gloom of the monastic cell was settling over the 
 houses of these melancholy puritans. Private fasts were 
 more than ever practised; and a lady, said to be eminent for 
 her genius and learning, who outlived this era, declared that 
 she had nearly lost her life through a prevalent notion that 
 no fat person could get to heaven; and thus spoiled and 
 wasted her body through excessive fastings. A quaker, to 
 prove the text that " Man shall not live by bread alone, but 
 
 * The Lives of sundry eminent Persons in this later Age; by Samuel 
 Clarke. Folio, 1683. A rare volume, with curious portraits. 
 
3G0 VIEW OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF THE 
 
 by the word of God," persisted in refusing his meals. The 
 literal text proved for him a dead letter, and this practical 
 commentator died by a metaphor. This quaker, however, 
 was not the only victim to the letter of the text ; for the 
 famous Origen, by interpreting in too literal a way the 12th 
 verse of the 19th of St. Matthew, winch alludes to those 
 persons who become eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, 
 with his own hands armed himself against himself, as is 
 sufficiently known. " Retournons a nos moutons ! " The 
 parliament afterwards had both periodical and occasional 
 fasts ; and Charles the First opposed " the hypocritical fast 
 of every Wednesday in the month, by appointing one for the 
 second Friday ; " the two unhappy parties, who were hun- 
 gering and thirsting for each other's blood, were fasting in 
 spite one against the other ! 
 
 Without inquiring into the causes, even if w r e thought that 
 we could ascertain them, of that frightful dissolution of 
 religion which so long prevailed in our country, and of which 
 the very corruption it has left behind still breeds in monstrous 
 shapes, it will be sufficient to observe that the destruction of 
 the monarchy and the ecclesiastical order was a moral earth- 
 quake, overturning all minds, and opening all changes. A 
 theological logomachy was substituted by the sullen and 
 proud ascetics who ascended into power. These, without 
 wearying themselves, wearied all others, and triumphed over 
 each other by their mutual obscurity. The two great giants 
 in this theological war were the famous Richard Baxter and 
 Dr. Owen. They both wrote a library of books ; but the 
 endless controversy between them was the extraordinary and 
 incomprehensible subject, wiiether the death of Christ was 
 solutio ejusdem, or only tanfundem ; that is, whether it was a 
 payment of the very thing, which by law we ought to have 
 paid, or of something held by God to be equivalent. Such 
 was the point on which this debate between Owen and 
 Baxter lasted without end. 
 
 Yet these metaphysical absurdities were harmless, com 
 
 • V 
 
STATE OF RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS. 
 
 301 
 
 pared to what was passing among the more hot fanatics, who 
 were for acting the wild fancies which their melancholy 
 brains engendered ; men, who from the places into which 
 they had thrust themselves, might now be called u the higher 
 orders of society!" These two parties alike sent forth an 
 evil spirit to walk among the multitude. Every one would 
 become his own law-maker, and even his own prophet ; the 
 meanest aspired to give his name to his sect. All things 
 were to be put in motion according to the St. Vitus's dance 
 of the last new saint. " Away with the Law ! which cuts 
 off a man's legs and then bids him walk ! " cried one from 
 his pulpit. " Let believers sin as fast as they will, they have 
 a fountain open to wash them," declared another teacher. 
 We had the Brownists, from Robert Brown, the Vaneists, 
 from Sir Harry Vane, then we sink down to Mr. Traske, 
 Mr. Wilkinson, Mr. Robinson, and H. N., or Henry 
 Nicholas, of the Family of Love, besides Mrs. Hutchinson, 
 and the Grindletonian family, who preferred " motions to 
 motives," and conveniently assumed that " their spirit is not 
 to be tried by the Scripture, but the Scripture by their 
 spirit." Edwards, the author of " Gangrcena," the adversary 
 of Milton, whose work may still be preserved for its curio- 
 sity, though immortalized by the scourge of genius, has fur- 
 nished a list of about two hundred of such sects in these 
 times. A divine of the church of England observed to a 
 great sectary, " You talk of the idolatry of Rome ; but 
 each of you, whenever you have made and set up a calf, will 
 dance about it." 
 
 This confusion of religions, if, indeed, these pretended 
 modes of faith could be classed among religions, disturbed 
 the consciences of good men, who read themselves in and out 
 of their vacillating creed. It made, at last, even one of the 
 puritans themselves, who had formerly complained that they 
 had not enjoyed sufficient freedom under the bishops, cry out 
 against " this cursed intolerable toleration." And the fact is, 
 that when the presbyterians had fixed themselves into the 
 
3G2 
 
 VIEW OF A PAKTICULAR PERIOD OF THE 
 
 government, they published several treatises against tolera- 
 tion ! The parallel between these wild notions of reform, and 
 those of another character, run closely together. About this 
 time, well-meaning persons, who were neither enthusiasts 
 from the ambition of founding sects, nor of covering their 
 immorality by their impiety, were infected with the religiosa 
 insania. One case may stand for many. A Mr. Greswold, 
 a gentleman of Warwickshire, whom a Brownist had by de- 
 grees enticed from his parish church, was afterwards per- 
 suaded to return to it — but he returned with a troubled mind, 
 and lost in the prevalent theological contests. A horror of 
 his future existence shut him out, as it were, from his present 
 one : retiring into his own house, with his children, he ceased 
 to communicate with the living world. He had his food put 
 in at the window ; and when his children lay sick, he admit- 
 ted no one for their relief. His house, at length, was forced 
 open ; and they found two children dead, and the father con- 
 fined to his bed. He had mangled his Bible, and cut out the 
 titles, contents, and every thing but the very text itself ; for it 
 seems that he thought that every thing human was sinful, and 
 he conceived that the titles of the books and the contents of 
 the chapters, were to be cut out of the sacred Scriptures, as 
 having been composed by men.* 
 
 More terrible it was when the insanity, which had hitherto 
 been more confined to the better classes, burst forth among 
 the common people. Were we to dwell minutely on this 
 period, we should start from the picture with horror: we 
 might, perhaps, console ourselves with a disbelief of its truth; 
 but the drug, though bitter in the mouth, we must sometimes 
 digest. To observe the extent to which the populace can 
 proceed, disfranchised of law and religion, will always leave 
 a memorable recollection. 
 
 What occurred in the French revolution had happened 
 here — an age of impiety ! Society itself seemed dissolved, 
 for every tie of private affection and of public duty was un- 
 
 * The Hypocrite discovered and cured, by Sam. Torshall, 4to. 6144. 
 
STATE OF RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS. 
 
 3G3 
 
 loosened. Even nature was strangely violated ! From the 
 first opposition to the decorous ceremonies of the national 
 church, by the simple puritans, the next stage was that of 
 ridicule, and the last of obloquy. They began by calling the 
 surplice a linen rag on the back ; baptism a Christ's cross on 
 a baby's face ; and the organ was likened to the bellow, the 
 grunt, and the barking of the respective animals. They ac- 
 tually baptized horses in churches at the fonts ; and the jest 
 of that day was, that the Reformation was now a thorough 
 one in England, since our horses went to church.* St. 
 Paul's cathedral was turned into a market, and the aisles, 
 the communion table, and the altar, served for the foulest 
 purposes. The liberty which every one now assumed of de- 
 livering his own opinions, led to acts so execrable, that I can 
 find no parallel for them except in the mad times of the 
 French Revolution. Some maintained that there existed no 
 distinction between moral good and moral evil ; and that 
 every man's actions were prompted by the Creator. Prosti- 
 tution was professed as a religious act; a glazier was de- 
 clared to be a prophet, and the woman he cohabited with was 
 said to be ready to lie in of the Messiah. A man married 
 his father's wife. Murders of the most extraordinary nature 
 were occurring ; one woman crucified her mother ; another, 
 in imitation of Abraham, sacrificed her child ; we hear, too, 
 of parricides. Amidst the slaughters of civil wars, spoil 
 and blood had accustomed the people to contemplate the 
 most horrible scenes. One madman of the many, we find 
 drinking a health on his knees, in the midst of a town, " to 
 
 * There is a pamphlet which records a strange fact. " News from 
 Powles : or the new Reformation of the Army, with a true Relation of a Colt 
 that was foaled in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, in London, and how 
 it was publiquely baptized, and the name (because a bald Colt) was called 
 Baal-Rex! 1649." The water they sprinkled from the soldier's helmet on 
 this occasion is described. The same occurred elsewhere. See Foulis's 
 History of the Plots, &c. of our pretended Saints. These men, who bap- 
 tized horses and pigs in the name of the Trinity, sang psalms when they 
 marched. One cannot easily comprehend the nature of fanaticism, except 
 when we learn that they refused to pay rents ! 
 
364 
 
 VIEW OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF THE 
 
 the devil ! that it might be said that his family should not 
 be extinct without doing some infamous act." A Scotchman, 
 one Alexander Agnew, commonly called " Jock of broad 
 Scotland," whom one cannot call an atheist, for he does not 
 seem to deny the existence of the Creator, nor a future state, 
 had a shrewdness of local humour in his strange notions. 
 Omitting some offensive things, others as strange may exhibit 
 the state to which the reaction of an hypocritical system of 
 religion had driven the common people. Jock of broad 
 Scotland said he was nothing in God's common, for God had 
 given him nothing ; he was no more obliged to God than to 
 the devil, for God was very greedy. Neither God nor the 
 devil gave the fruits of the ground ; the wives of the country 
 gave him his meat. When asked wherein he believed, he 
 answered, " He believed in white meal, water, and salt. 
 Christ was not God, for he came into the world after it was 
 made, and died as other men." He declared that " he did 
 not know whether God or the devil had the greatest power, 
 but he thought the devil was the greatest. "When I die, let 
 God and the devil strive for my soul, and let him that is 
 strongest take it." He no doubt had been taught by the 
 presbytery to mock religious rites ; and when desired to give 
 God thanks for his meat, he said, " Take a sackful of prayers 
 to the mill and grind them, and take your breakfast of them." 
 To others, he said, "I will give you a two-pence, to pray 
 until a boll of meal, and one stone of butter, fall from heaven 
 through the house rigging (roof) to you." When bread and 
 cheese were laid on the ground by him, he said, " If I leave 
 this, I will long cry to God before he give it me again." To 
 others he said, " Take a bannock, and break it in two, and 
 lay down one half thereof, and you will long pray to God 
 before he will put the other half to it again ! " He seems to 
 have been an anti-trinitarian. He said he received every 
 thing from nature, which had ever reigned and ever would. 
 He would not conform to any religious system, nor name the 
 three Persons, — " At all these things I have long shaken my 
 
STATE OF RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS. 
 
 365 
 
 cap " he said. Jock of broad Scotland seems to have been 
 one of those who imagine that God should have furnished 
 them with bannocks ready baked. 
 
 The extravagant fervour then working in the minds of the 
 people is marked by the story told by Clement Walker of 
 the soldier who entered a church with a lantern and a candle 
 burning in it, and in the other hand four candles not lighted. 
 He said he came to deliver his message from God, and show it 
 by these types of candles. Driven into the churchyard, and 
 the wind blowing strong, he could not kindle his candles, and 
 the new prophet was awkwardly compelled to conclude his 
 five denouncements, abolishing the Sabbath, tithes, ministers, 
 magistrates, and, at last, the Bible itself, without putting out 
 each candle, as he could not kindle them ; observing, how- 
 ever, each time — " And here I should put out the first light, 
 but the wind is so high that I cannot kindle it." 
 
 A perfect scene of the effects which the state of irreligious 
 society produced among the lower orders, I am enabled to 
 give from the manuscript life of John Shaw, vicar of Rother- 
 ham, with a little tediousness, but with infinite naivete, what 
 happened to himself. This honest divine was puritanically 
 inclined, but there can be no exaggeration in these unvar- 
 nished facts. He tells a remarkable story of the state of 
 religious knowledge in Lancashire, at a place called Cartmel : 
 some of the people appeared desirous of religious instruction, 
 declaring that they were without any minister, and had en- 
 tirely neglected every religious rite, and therefore pressed 
 him to quit his situation at Lymm for a short period. He 
 may now tell his own story. 
 
 " I found a very large spacious church, scarce any seats in it ; a people 
 very ignorant, and yet willing to learn ; so as I had frequently some thou- 
 sands of hearers. I catechized in season and out of season. The churches 
 were so thronged at nine in the morning, that I had much ado to get to the 
 pulpit. One day, an old man about sixty, sensible enough in other things, 
 and living in the parish of Cartmel, coming to me on some business, I told 
 him that he belonged to my care and charge, and I desired to be informed 
 \n his knowledge of religion. I asked him how many Gods there were ? 
 
3GG STATE OF RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS. 
 
 He said he knew not. I informing him, asked again how he thought to be 
 saved? He answered he could not tell. Yet thought that was a harder 
 question than the other. I told him that the way to salvation was by- 
 Jesus Christ, God-man, who as he was man shed his blood for us on the 
 cross, &c. Oh sir, said he, I think I heard of that man you speak of once 
 in a play at Kendall, called Corpus-Christ's play, where there was a man 
 on a tree and blood run down, &c. And afterwards he professed he could 
 not remember that he ever heard of salvation by Jesus, but in that play." 
 
 The scenes passing in the metropolis, as well as in the 
 country, are opened to us in one of the chronicling poems of 
 George Withers. Our sensible rhymer wrote in November, 
 1652, "a Darke Lanthorne" on the present subject. 
 
 After noticing that God, to mortify us, had sent preachers 
 from the " shop-board and the plough," 
 
 " Such as we seem justly to contemn, 
 
 As making truths abhorred, which come from them;" 
 
 he seems, however, inclined to think, that these self-taught 
 " Teachers and Prophets " in their darkness might hold a 
 certain light within them : 
 
 " Children, fools, 
 
 Women, and madmen, we do often meet 
 Preaching, and threatening judgments in the street, 
 Yea by strange actions, postures, tones, and cries, 
 Themselves they offer to our ears and eyes 
 
 As signs unto this nation. 
 
 They act as men in ecstacies have done 
 
 Striving their cloudy visions to declare, 
 
 Till they have lost the notions which they had, 
 
 And want but few degrees of being mad." 
 
 Such is the picture of the folly and of the wickedness, 
 which after having been preceded by the piety of a religious 
 age, were succeeded by a dominion of hypocritical sanctity, 
 and then closed in all the horrors of immorality and impiety. 
 The parliament at length issued one of their ordinances for 
 "punishing blasphemous and execrable opinions," and this 
 was enforced with greater power than the slighted proclama- 
 tions of James and Charles ; but the curious wording is a 
 comment on our present subject. The preamble notices that 
 
BUCKINGHAM'S POLITICAL COQUETRY, ETC. 3G7 
 
 u men and women had lately discovered monstrous opinions, 
 even such as tended to the dissolution of human society, and 
 have abused, and turned into lice?itiousness, the liberty given in 
 matters of religion" It punishes any person not distempered 
 in his brains, who shall maintain any mere creature to be 
 God ; or that all acts of unrighteousness are not forbidden in 
 the Scriptures ; or that God approves of them ; or that there 
 is no real difference between moral good and evil," &c. 
 
 To this disordered state was the public mind reduced, for 
 this proclamation was only describing what was passing 
 among the people ! The view of this subject embraces more 
 than one point, which I leave for the meditation of the poli- 
 tician, as well as of the religionist. 
 
 BUCKINGHAM'S POLITICAL COQUETRY WITH THE 
 PURITANS. 
 
 Buckingham, observes Hume, " in order to fortify him- 
 self against the resentment of James" — on the conduct of 
 the duke in the Spanish match, when James was latterly 
 hearing every day Buckingham against Bristol, and Bristol 
 against Buckingham — " had affected popularity, and entered 
 into the cabals of the puritans ; but afterwards, being secure 
 of the confidence of Charles, he had since abandoned this 
 party ; and on that account was the more exposed to their 
 hatred and resentment." 
 
 The political coquetry of a minister coalescing with an 
 opposition party, when he was on the point of being dis- 
 graced, would doubtless open an involved scene of intrigue ; 
 and what one exacted, and the other was content to yield, 
 towards the mutual accommodation, might add one more ex- 
 ample to the large chapter of political infirmity. Both 
 workmen attempting to convert each other into tools, by first 
 trying their respective malleability on the anvil, are liable to 
 
3G8 
 
 BUCKINGHAM'S POLITICAL COQUETRY 
 
 be disconcerted by even a slight accident, whenever that 
 proves, to perfect conviction, how little they can depend on 
 each other, and that each party comes to cheat, and not to be 
 cheated ! 
 
 This piece of secret history is in part recoverable from 
 good authority. The two great actors were the Duke of 
 Buckingham and Dr. Preston, the master of Emmanuel 
 College, and the head of the puritan party. 
 
 Dr. Preston was an eminent character, who from his 
 youth was not without ambition. His scholastic learning, the 
 subtilty of his genius, and his more elegant accomplishments, 
 had attracted the notice of James, at whose table he was 
 perhaps more than once honoured as a guest ; a suspicion of 
 his puritanic principles was perhaps the only obstacle to his 
 court preferment; yet Preston unquestionably designed to 
 play a political part. He retained the favour of James by 
 the king's hope of withdrawing the doctor from the op- 
 position party, and commanded the favour of Buckingham 
 by the fears of that minister ; when, to employ the quaint 
 style of Placket, the duke foresaw that " he might come to be 
 tried in the furnace of the next sessions of parliament, and 
 he had need to make the refiners his friends : " most of these 
 "refiners" were the puritanic or opposition party. Ap- 
 pointed one of the chaplains of Prince Charles, Dr. Preston 
 had the advantage of being in frequent attendance ; and as 
 Hacket tells us, " this politic man felt the pulse of the court, 
 and wanted not the intelligence of all dark mysteries through 
 the Scotch in his highness's bed-chamber." A close com- 
 munication took place between the duke and Preston, who, 
 as Hacket describes, was " a good crow to smell carrion." 
 He obtained an easy admission to the duke's closet at least 
 thrice a week, and their notable conferences Buckingham 
 appears to have communicated to his confidential friends. 
 Preston, intent on carrying all his points, skilfully com- 
 menced with the smaller ones. He winded the duke circuit- 
 ously, — he worked at him subterraneously. This wary 
 
WITH THE PURITANS. 
 
 3C9 
 
 politician was too sagacious to propose what he had at heart — 
 the extirpation of the hierarchy ! The thunder of James's 
 voice, " No bishop! no king! " in the conference at Hampton- 
 court, still echoed in the ear of the puritan. He assured the 
 duke that the love of the people was his only anchor, which 
 could only be secured by the most popular measures. A 
 new sort of reformation was easy to execute. Cathedrals 
 and collegiate churches maintained by vast wealth, and the 
 lands of the chapter, only fed "fat, lazy, and unprofitable 
 drones." The dissolution of the foundations of deans and 
 chapters would open an ample source to pay the king's debts, 
 and scatter the streams of patronage. "You would then 
 become the darling of the commonwealth ; " I give the 
 words as I find them in Hacket. " If a crumb stick in the 
 throat of any considerable man that attempts an opposition, 
 it will be easy to wash it down with manors, woods, royalties, 
 tythes, &c." It would be furnishing the wants of a number 
 of gentlemen ; and he quoted a Greek proverb, " that when 
 a great oak falls, every neighbour may scuffle for a fagot." 
 
 Dr. Preston was willing to perform the part which Knox 
 had acted in Scotland ! He might have been certain of a 
 party to maintain this national violation of property ; for he 
 who calls out " Plunder ! " will ever find a gang. These acts 
 of national injustice, so much desired by revolutionists, are 
 never beneficial to the people ; they never partake of the 
 spoliation, and the whole terminates in the gratification of 
 private rapacity. 
 
 It was not, however, easy to obtain such perpetual access 
 to the minister, and at the same time escape from the watch- 
 ful. Archbishop Williams, the lord keeper, got sufficient 
 hints from the king ; and in a tedious conference with the 
 duke, he wished to convince him that Preston had only offered 
 him " flitten milk, out of winch he should churn nothing ! " 
 The duke was, however, smitten by the new project, and 
 made a remarkable answer : " You lose yourself in general- 
 ities : make it out to me in particular, if you can, that the 
 
 VOL. IV. 24 
 
370 BUCKINGHAM'S POLITICAL COQUETRY, ETC. 
 
 motion you pick at will find repulse, and be baffled in the 
 House of Commons. I know not how you bishops may 
 struggle, but I am much deluded if a great part of the 
 knights and burgesses would not be glad to see this altera- 
 tion." We are told on this, that Archbishop Williams took 
 out a list of the members of the House of Commons, and con- 
 vinced the minister that an overwhelming majority would 
 oppose this projected revolution, and that in consequence the 
 duke gave it up. 
 
 But this anterior decision of the duke may be doubtful, 
 since Preston still retained the high favour of the minister, 
 after the death of James. When James died at Theobalds, 
 where Dr. Preston happened to be in attendance, he had the 
 honour of returning to town in the new king's coach with the 
 Duke of Buckingham. The doctor's servile adulation of the 
 minister gave even great offence to the over-zealous puritans. 
 That he was at length discarded is certain ; but this was 
 owing not to any deficient subserviency on the side of our 
 politician, but to one of those unlucky circumstances which 
 have often put an end to temporary political connections, by 
 enabling one party to discover what the other thinks of him. 
 
 I draw this curious fact from a manuscript narrative in the 
 handwriting of the learned William Wotton. When the 
 puritanic party foolishly became jealous of the man who 
 seemed to be working at root and branch for their purposes, 
 they addressed a letter to Preston, remonstrating with him 
 for his servile attachment to the minister ; on which he con- 
 fidently returned an answer, assuring them that he was as 
 fully convinced of the vileness and profligacy of the Duke of 
 Buckingham's character as any man could be, but that there 
 was no way to come at him but by the lowest flattery, and 
 that it was necessary for the glory of God that such instru- 
 ments should be made use of as could be had ; and for that 
 reason, and that alone, he showed that respect to the reigning 
 favourite, and not for any real honour that he had for him. 
 This letter proved fatal ; some officious hand conveyed it to 
 
COKE AGAINST THE HIGH SHERIFF'S OATH. 371 
 
 the duke ! When Preston came, as usual, the duke took his 
 opportunity of asking him what he had ever done to disoblige 
 him, that he should describe him in such black characters to 
 his own party ? Preston, in amazement, denied the fact, and 
 poured forth professions of honour and gratitude. The duke 
 showed him his own letter. Dr. Preston instantaneously felt 
 a political apoplexy ; the labours of some years were lost in 
 a single morning. The baffled politician was turned out of 
 Wallingford House, never more to see the enraged minister ! 
 And from that moment Buckingham wholly abandoned the 
 puritans, and cultivated the friendship of Laud. This hap- 
 pened soon after James the First's death. Wotton adds, 
 " This story I heard from one who was extremely well 
 versed in the secret history of the time." * 
 
 SIR EDWARD COKE'S EXCEPTIONS AGAINST THE 
 HIGH SHERIFF'S OATH. 
 
 A curious fact will show the revolutionary nature of 
 human events, and the necessity of correcting our ancient 
 statutes, which so frequently hold out punishments and penal- 
 ties for objects which have long ceased to be criminal ; as 
 well as for persons against whom it would be barbarous to 
 allow some unrepealed statute to operate. 
 
 When a political stratagem was practised by Charles the 
 First to keep certain members out of the House of Commons, 
 by pricking them down as sheriffs in their different counties, 
 among them was the celebrated Sir Edward Coke, whom the 
 government had made High Sheriff for Bucks. It was ne- 
 cessary, perhaps, to be a learned and practised lawyer to 
 
 * Wotton delivered this memorandum to the literary antiquary, Thomas 
 Baker; and Kennet transcribed it in his Manuscript Collections. Lans- 
 iowne MSS. No. 932-88. The Life of Dr. Preston, in Chalmers's Bio- 
 graphical Dictionary, may be consulted with advantage. 
 
372 SECKET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 discover the means he took, in the height of his resentment, 
 to elude the insult. This great lawyer, who himself, perhaps, 
 had often administered the oath to the sheriffs, which had, 
 century after century, been usual for them to take, to the 
 surprise of all persons drew up Exceptions against the 
 Sheriff's Oath, declaring that no one could take it. Coke 
 sent his Exceptions to the attorney-general, who, by an 
 immediate order in council, submitted them to " all the judges 
 of England." Our legal luminary had condescended only to 
 some ingenious cavilling in three of his exceptions ; but the 
 fourth was of a nature which could not be overcome. All 
 the judges of England assented, and declared, that there was 
 one part of this ancient oath which was perfectly irreligious, 
 and must ever hereafter be left out ! This article was, " That 
 you shall do all your pain and diligence to destroy and make 
 to cease all manner of heresies, commonly called Lollaries, 
 within your bailiwick, &c." * The Lollards were the most 
 ancient of protestants, and had practised Luther's sentiments ; 
 it was, in fact, condemning the established religion of the 
 country ! An order was issued from Hampton-Court, for the 
 abrogation of this part of the oath ; and at present all high 
 sheriffs owe this obligation to the resentment of Sir Edward 
 Coke, for having been pricked down as Sheriff of Bucks, to 
 be kept out of Parliament ! The merit of having the oath 
 changed, instanter, he was allowed ; but he was not excused 
 taking it, after it was accommodated to the conscientious and 
 lynx-eyed detection of our enraged lawyer. 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST AND 
 HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 The reign of Charles the First, succeeded by the Com- 
 monwealth of England, forms a period unparalleled by any 
 * Rushworth's Historical Collections, vol. i. p. 199. 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 373 
 
 preceding one in the annals of mankind. It was for the 
 English nation the great result of all former attempts to 
 ascertain and to secure the just freedom of the subject. The 
 prerogative of the sovereign, and the rights of the people 
 were often imagined to be mutual encroachments ; and were 
 long involved in contradiction, in an age of unsettled opinions 
 and disputed principles. At length the conflicting parties of 
 monarchy and democracy, in the weakness of their passions, 
 discovered how much each required the other for its protector. 
 This age offers the finest speculations in human nature ; it 
 opens a protracted scene of glory and of infamy ; all that 
 elevates and all that humiliates our kind, wrestling together, 
 and expiring in a career of glorious deeds, of revolting 
 crimes, and even of ludicrous infirmities ! 
 
 The French Revolution is the commentary of the English ; 
 and a commentary at times more important than the text 
 which it elucidates. It has thrown a freshness over the 
 antiquity of our own history; and, on returning to it, we 
 seem to possess the feelings, and to be agitated by the in- 
 terests, of contemporaries. The circumstances and the per- 
 sons which so many imagine had passed away, have been 
 reproduced under our own eyes. In other histories we 
 accept the knowledge of the characters and the incidents on 
 the evidence of the historian ; but here we may take them 
 from our own conviction, since to extinct names and to past 
 events, we can apply the reality which we ourselves have 
 witnessed. 
 
 Charles the First had scarcely ascended the throne ere he 
 discovered, that in his new parliament he was married to a 
 sullen bride : the youthful monarch, with the impatience of a 
 lover, warm with hope and glory, was ungraciously repulsed 
 even in the first favours ! The prediction of his father re- 
 mained, like the handwriting on the wall ; but, seated on the 
 throne, Hope was more congenial to youth than Prophecy. 
 
 As soon as Charles the First could assemble a parliament, 
 De addressed them with an earnestness, in which the simplic- 
 
374 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 ity of words and thoughts strongly contrasted with the orato- 
 rical harangues of the late monarch. It cannot be alleged 
 against Charles the First, that he preceded the parliament in 
 the war of words. He courted their affections ; and even in 
 this manner of reception, amidst the dignity of the regal 
 office, studiously showed his exterior respect by the marked 
 solemnity of their first meeting. As yet uncrowned, on the 
 day on which he first addressed the Lords and Commons, he 
 wore his crown, and vailed it at the opening, and on the close 
 of his speech ; a circumstance to which the parliament had 
 not been accustomed. Another ceremony gave still greater 
 solemnity to the meeting ; the king would not enter into busi- 
 ness till they had united in prayer. He commanded the 
 doors to be closed, and a bishop to perform the office. The 
 suddenness of this unexpected command disconcerted the cath- 
 olic lords, of whom the less rigid knelt, and the moderate 
 stood: there was one startled papist who did nothing but 
 cross himself ! * 
 
 The speech may be found in Rushworth ; the friendly tone 
 must be shown here. 
 
 " I hope that you do remember that you were pleased to employ me to 
 advise my father to break off the treaties (with Spain). I came into this 
 business willingly and freely, like a young man, and consequently rashly; 
 but it was by your interest — your engagement. I pray you to remember, 
 that this being my first action, and begun by your advice and entreaty, what 
 a great dishonour it were to you and me that it should fail for that assist- 
 ance you are able to give me ! " 
 
 This effusion excited no sympathy in the house. They 
 voted not a seventh part of the expenditure necessary to pro- 
 ceed with a war, into which, as a popular measure, they 
 themselves had forced the king. 
 
 At Oxford the king again reminded them that he was 
 engaged in a war " from their desires and advice." He 
 expresses his disappointment at their insufficient grant, " far 
 short to set forth the navy now preparing." The speech pre- 
 serves the same simplicity. 
 
 * From manuscript letters of the times. 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 375 
 
 Still no echo of kindness responded in the house. It was, 
 however, asserted, in a vague and quibbling manner, that 
 " though a former parliament did engage the king in a war, 
 yet, (if things were managed by a contrary design, and the 
 treasure misemployed) this parliament is not bound by 
 another parliament : " and they added a cruel mockery, k ' that 
 the king should help the cause of the Palatinate with his own 
 money ! " — this foolish war, which James and Charles had so 
 long borne their reproaches for having avoided as hopeless, 
 but which the puritanic party, as well as others, had contin- 
 ually urged as necessary for the maintenance of the protest- 
 ant cause in Europe. 
 
 Still no supplies ! but protestations of duty, and petitions 
 about grievances, which it had been difficult to specify. In 
 their " Declaration " they style his Majesty " Our dear and 
 dread sovereign," and themselves " his poor Commons : " but 
 they concede no point — they offer no aid ! The king was not 
 yet disposed to quarrel, though he had in vain pressed for 
 dispatch of business, lest the season should be lost for the 
 navy ; again reminding them, that " it was the first request 
 that he ever made unto them ! " On the pretence of the 
 plague at Oxford, Charles prorogued parliament, with a 
 promise to reassemble in the winter. 
 
 There were a few whose hearts had still a pulse to vibrate 
 with the distresses of a youthful monarch, perplexed by a war 
 which they themselves had raised. But others, of a more 
 republican complexion, rejected " Necessity, as a dangerous 
 counsellor, which would be always furnishing arguments for 
 supplies. If the king was in danger and necessity, those 
 ought to answer for it who have put both king and kingdom 
 into this peril : and if the state of things would not admit a 
 redress of grievances, there cannot be so much necessity for 
 money." 
 
 The first parliament abandoned the king ! 
 Charles now had no other means to dispatch the army and 
 leet, in a bad season, but by borrowing money on privy seals : 
 
376 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 these were letters, where the loan exacted was as small as 
 the style was humble. They specified, " that this loan with- 
 out inconvenience to any, is only intended for the service of 
 the public. Such private helps for public services, which 
 cannot be deferred," the king premises, had been often re- 
 sorted to ; but this " being the first time that we have required 
 any thing in this kind, Ave require but that sum which few 
 men would deny a friend." As far as I can discover, the 
 highest sum assessed from great personages was twenty 
 pounds ! The king was willing to suffer any mortification, 
 even that of a charitable solicitation, rather than endure the 
 obdurate insults of parliament ! All donations were received, 
 from ten pounds to five shillings : this was the mockery of an 
 alms-basket ! Yet with contributions and savings so trivial, 
 and exacted with such a warm appeal to their feelings, was 
 the king to send out a fleet with ten thousand men — to take 
 Cadiz ! 
 
 This expedition, like so many similar attempts from the 
 days of Charles the First to those of the great Lord Chat- 
 ham, and to our own — concluded in a nullity ! Charles, 
 disappointed in this predatory attempt, in despair called his 
 second parliament — as he says, " in the midst of his necessi- 
 ties — and to learn from them how he was to frame his course 
 and counsels." 
 
 The Commons, as duteously as ever, profess that "No king 
 was ever dearer to his people ; and that they really intend to 
 assist his majesty in such a way, as may make him safe at 
 home, and feared abroad" — but it was to be on condition, 
 that he would be graciously pleased to accept " the informa- 
 tion and advice of parliament in discovering the causes of the 
 great evils, and redress their grievances." The king accepted 
 this "as a satisfactory answer;" but Charles comprehended 
 their drift — " You specially aim at the Duke of Buckingham ; 
 what he hath done to change your minds I wot not." The 
 style of the king now first betrays angered feelings ; the 
 secret cause of the uncomplying conduct of the Commons was 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 377 
 
 hatred of the favourite — but the king saw that they designed 
 to control the executive government, and he could ascribe 
 their antipathy to Buckingham but to the capriciousness of 
 popular favour ; for not long ago he had heard Buckingham 
 hailed as " their saviour." In the zeal and firmness of his 
 affections, Charles always considered that he himself was 
 aimed at, in the person of his confidant, his companion, and 
 his minister ! 
 
 Some of " the bold speakers," as the heads of the opposi- 
 tion are frequently designated in the manuscript letters, have 
 now risen into notice. Sir John Eliot, Dr. Turner, Sir Dud- 
 ley Digges, Mr. Clement Coke, poured themselves forth in a 
 vehement, not to say seditious style, with invectives more 
 daring than had ever before thundered in the House of Com- 
 mons ! The king now told them, " I come to show your er- 
 rors, and, as I may call it, unparliamentary proceedings of 
 parliament" The lord keeper then assured them, that 
 " when the irregular humours of some particular pe?°sons 
 were settled, the king would hear and answer all just griev- 
 ances ; but the king would have them also to know, that he 
 was equally jealous to the contempt of his royal rights, which 
 his majesty would not suffer to be violated by any pretended 
 course of parliamentary liberty. The king considered the 
 parliament as his council ; but there was a difference between 
 councilling and controlling, and between liberty and the 
 abuse of liberty." He finished by noticing their extraordi- 
 nary proceedings in their impeachment of Buckingham. The 
 king, resuming his speech, remarkably reproached the parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 "Now that you have all things according to your wishes, and that Tarn 
 so far engaged that you think there is no retreat, now you begin to set the dice, 
 and make your own game. But I pray you be not deceived ; it is not a par- 
 liamentary way, nor is it a way to deal with a king. Mr. Clement Cok6 
 told you, ' It was better to be eaten up by a foreign enemy than to be de- 
 stroyed at home ! 1 Indeed, I think it more honour for a king to be invaded 
 and almost destroyed by a foreign enemy than to be despised by his own 
 subjects." 
 
378 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 The king concluded by asserting his privilege, to call or to 
 forbid parliaments. 
 
 The style of " the bold speakers " appeared at least as 
 early as in April ; I trace their spirit in letters of the times, 
 which furnish facts and expressions that do not appear in our 
 printed documents. 
 
 Among the earliest of our patriots, and finally the great 
 victim of his exertions, was Sir John Eliot, vice-admiral of 
 Devonshire. He, in a tone which " rolled back to Jove his 
 own bolts," and startled even the writer, who was himself 
 biassed to the popular party, " made a resolute, I doubt 
 whether, a timely speech." He adds, Eliot asserted that 
 " They came not thither either to do what the king should 
 command them, nor to abstain when he forbade them ; they 
 came to continue constant, and to maintain their privileges. 
 They would not give their posterity a cause to curse them 
 for losing their privileges by restraint, which their forefathers 
 had left them." * 
 
 On the eighth of May, the impeachment of the duke was 
 opened by Sir Dudley Digges, who compared the duke to 
 a meteor exhaled out of putrid matter. He was followed by 
 Glanville, Selden, and others. On this first day, the duke sat 
 out-facing his accusers and out-braving their accusations, which 
 the more highly exasperated the house. On the following day 
 the duke was absent, when the epilogue to this mighty piece 
 was elaborately delivered by Sir John Eliot, with a force of 
 declamation, and a boldness of personal allusion, which have 
 not been surpassed in the invectives of the modern Junius. 
 
 Eliot, after expatiating on the favourite's ambition in pro- 
 curing and getting into his hands the greatest offices of 
 strength and power in the kingdom, and the means by which 
 he had obtained them, drew a picture of " the inward char- 
 acter of the duke's mind." The duke's plurality of offices 
 reminded him " of a chimerical beast called by the ancients 
 Stellionatus, so blurred, so spotted, so full of foul lines, that 
 * Sloaiie MSS. 4177. Letter 317, 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 379 
 
 they knew not what to make of it ! In setting up himself he 
 hath set upon the kingdom's revenues, the fountain of supply, 
 and the nerves of the land — He intercepts, consumes, and 
 exhausts the revenues of the crown ; and, by emptying the 
 veins the blood should run in, he hath cast the kingdom into 
 a high consumption." He descends to criminate the duke's 
 magnificent tastes ; he who had something of a congenial na- 
 ture ; for Eliot was a man of fine literature. " Infinite sums 
 of money, and mass of land exceeding the value of money, 
 contributions in parliament have been heaped upon him ; and 
 how have they been employed ? Upon costly furniture, 
 sumptuous feasting, and magnificent building, the visible evi- 
 dence of the express exhausting of the state ! " 
 Eliot eloquently closes — 
 
 " Your lordships have an idea of the man, what he is in himself, what in 
 his affections ! You have seen his power, and some, I fear, have felt it. 
 You have known his practice, and have heard the effects. Being such, 
 what is he in reference to king and state; how compatible or incompatible 
 with either? In reference to the king, he must be stjded the canker in his 
 treasure ; in reference to the state, the moth of all goodness. I can hardly 
 find him a parallel; but none were so like him as Sejanus, who is described 
 by Tacitus, Audax ; sui obtegens, in alios criminator ; juxta adulatio et super- 
 bin. Sejanus's pride was so excessive, as Tacitus saith, that he neglected 
 all councils, mixed his business and service with the prince, seeming to 
 confound their actions, and was often styled hnperatoris laborum sucius. 
 Doth not this man the like? Ask England, Scotland, and Ireland — and 
 they will tell you ! How lately and how often hath this man commixed 
 his actions in discourses with actions of the king's ! My lords ! I have 
 done — you see the man! " 
 
 The parallel of the duke with Sejanus electrified the house ; 
 and, as we shall see, touched Charles on a convulsive nerve. 
 
 The king's conduct on this speech was the beginning of his 
 troubles, and the first of his more open attempts to crush the 
 popular party. In the house of lords the king defended the 
 duke, and informed them, " I have thought fit to take order 
 for the punishing some insolent speeches, lately spoken." I 
 find a piece of secret history inclosed in a letter, with a sol- 
 3mn injunction that it might be burnt. " The king this morn- 
 
380 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 ing complained of Sir John Eliot for comparing the duke to 
 Sej cuius, in which he said implicitly he must intend me for 
 Tiberius I " On that day the prologue and the epilogue ora- 
 tors, Sir Dudley Digges, who had opened *he impeachment 
 against the duke, and Sir John Eliot who had closed it, were 
 called out of the house by two messengers, who showed their 
 warrants for committing them to the Tower.* 
 
 On this memorable day a philosophical politician might 
 have presciently marked the seed-plots of events, which not 
 many years afterwards were apparent to all men. The pas- 
 sions of kings are often expatiated on ; but, in the present 
 anti-monarchical period, the passions of parliaments are not 
 imaginable ! The democratic party in our constitution, from 
 the meanest of motives, from their egotism, their vanity, and 
 their audacity, hate kings ; they would have an abstract 
 being, a chimerical sovereign on the throne — like a statue, the 
 mere ornament of the place it fills, — and insensible, like a 
 statue, to the invectives they would heap on its pedestal ! 
 
 The commons, with a fierce spirit of reaction for the king's 
 " punishing some insolent speeches," at once sent up to the 
 lords for the commitment of the duke ! But when they learnt 
 the fate of the patriots, they instantaneously broke up ! In 
 the afternoon they assembled in Westminster-hall, to inter- 
 change their private sentiments on the fate of the two im- 
 prisoned members, in sadness and indignation. 
 
 The following day the commons met in their own house. 
 When the speaker reminded them of the usual business, they 
 all cried out, " Sit down ! sit down ! " They would touch on 
 no business till they were " righted in their liberties ! " f An 
 
 * Our printed historical documents, Kennett, Frankland, &c. are con- 
 fused in their details, and facts seem misplaced for want of dates. They 
 all equally copy Rush worth, the only source of our history of this period. 
 Even Hume is involved in the obscurity. The king's speech was on the 
 eleventh of May. As Rush worth has not furnished dates, it would seem 
 that the two orators had been sent to the Tower before the king's speech to 
 the lords. 
 
 t Frankland, an inveterate royalist, in copying Rushworth, inserts " their 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 381 
 
 open committee of the whole house was formed, and no mem- 
 ber suffered to quit the house ; but either they were at a loss 
 how to commence this solemn conference, or expres.-ed their 
 indignation by a sullen silence. To soothe and subdue " the 
 bold speakers" was the unfortunate attempt of the vice- 
 chamberlain, Sir Dudley Carleton, who had long been one of 
 our foreign ambassadors ; and who, having witnessed the des- 
 potic governments on the continent, imagined that there was 
 no deficiency of liberty at home. " I find," said the vice- 
 chamberlain, " by the great silence in this house, that it is a 
 fit time to be heard, if you will grant me the patience." Al- 
 luding to one of the king's messages, where it was hinted 
 that, if there was " no correspondency between him and the 
 parliament, he should be forced to use new counsels," " I pray 
 you consider what these new counsels are, and may be : I fear 
 to declare those I conceive ! " However, Sir Dudley plainly 
 hinted at them, when he went on observing, that " when 
 monarchs began to know their own strength, and saw the tur- 
 bulent spirit of their parliaments, they had overthrown them 
 in all Europe, except here only with us." Our old ambassa- 
 dor drew an amusing picture of the effects of despotic gov- 
 ernments, in that of France — " If you knew the subjects in 
 foreign countries as well as myself, to see them look, not like 
 our nation, with store of flesh on their backs, but like so many 
 ghosts and not men, being nothing but skin and bones, with 
 some thin cover to their nakedness, and wearing only wooden 
 shoes on their feet, so that they cannot eat meat, or wear good 
 clothes, but they must pay the king for it ; this is a misery 
 beyond expression, and that which we are yet free from ! " 
 A long residence abroad had deprived Sir Dudley Carleton 
 of any sympathy with the high tone of freedom, and the 
 proud jealousy of their privileges, which, though yet unascer- 
 tained, undefined, and still often contested, was breaking forth 
 
 pretended liberties ; " exactly the style of catholic writers when they men- 
 tion protestantism by " la religion pretendue ref&rmee." All party writers 
 use the same style ! 
 
382 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 among the commons of England. It was fated that the celes- 
 tial spirit of our national freedom should not descend among 
 us in the form of the mystical dove ! 
 
 Hume observes on this speech, that "these imprudent sug- 
 gestions rather gave warning than struck terror." It was 
 evident that the event, which implied " new counsels," meant 
 what subsequently was practised — the king governing with- 
 out a parliament ! As for " the ghost who wore wooden shoes," 
 to which the house was congratulated that they had not yet 
 been reduced, they would infer that it was the more necessary 
 to provide against the possibility of such strange apparitions ! 
 Hume truly observes, " The king reaped no further benefit 
 from this attempt than to exasperate the house still further." 
 Some words, which the duke persisted in asserting had drop- 
 ped from Digges, were explained away, Digges declaring that 
 they had not been used by him ; and it seems probable that 
 he was suffered to eat his words. Eliot was made of " ster- 
 ner stuff ; " he abated not a jot of whatever he had spoken 
 of " that man," as he affected to call Buckingham. 
 
 The commons, whatever might be their patriotism, seem at 
 first to have been chiefly moved by a personal hatred of the 
 favourite ; and their real charges against him amounted to 
 little more than pretences and aggravations. The king, 
 whose personal affections were always strong, considered his 
 friend innocent ; and there was a warm, romantic feature in 
 the character of the youthful monarch, which scorned to sac- 
 rifice his faithful companion to his own interests, and to im- 
 molate the minister to the clamours of the commons. Sub- 
 sequently, when the king did this in the memorable case of 
 the guiltless Strafford, it was the only circumstance which 
 weighed on his mind at the hour of his own sacrifice ! Sir 
 Robert Cotton told a friend, on the day on which the king 
 went down to the house of lords, and committed the two 
 patriots, that " he had of late been often sent for to the king 
 and duke, and that the king's affection towards him was very 
 admirable, and no whit lessened. Certainly," he added, " the 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 383 
 
 king will never yield to the duke's fall, being a young man, 
 resolute, magnanimous, and tenderly and firmly affectionate 
 where he takes." * This authentic character of Charles the 
 First by that intelligent and learned man, to whom the nation 
 owes the treasures of its antiquities, is remarkable. Sir 
 Robert Cotton, though holding no rank at court, and in no 
 respect of the duke's party, was often consulted by the king, 
 and much in his secrets. How the king valued the judgment 
 of this acute and able adviser, acting on it in direct contra- 
 diction and to the mortification of the favourite, I shall proba- 
 bly have occasion to show. 
 
 The commons did not decline in the subtle spirit with 
 which they had begun ; they covertly aimed at once to sub- 
 jugate the sovereign, and to expel the minister ! A remon- 
 strance was prepared against the levying of tonnage and 
 poundage, which constituted half of the crown revenues ; 
 and a petition, "equivalent to a command," for removing 
 Buckingham from his majesty's person and councils.f The 
 remonstrance is wrought up with a high spirit of invective 
 against "the unbridled ambition of the duke," whom they 
 class " among those vipers and pests to their king and com- 
 monwealth, as so expressly styled by your most royal father." 
 They request that " he would be pleased to remove this per- 
 son from access to his sacred presence, and that he would not 
 balance this one man with all these things, and with the 
 affairs of the Christian world." 
 
 The king hastily dissolved this second parliament ; and 
 when the lords petitioned for its continuance, he warmly and 
 angrily exclaimed, " Not a moment longer ! " It was dissolved 
 in June, 1626. 
 
 The patriots abandoned their sovereign to his fate, and 
 retreated home sullen, indignant, and ready to conspire among 
 themselves for the assumption of their disputed or their de- 
 
 * Manuscript letter. 
 
 t Rushworth, i. 400. Hume, vi. 221, who enters widely into the views 
 and feelings of Charles. 
 
384 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 fraudcd liberties. They industriously dispersed their remon- 
 strance, and the king replied by a declaration ; but an attack 
 is always more vigorous than a defence. The declaration is 
 spiritless, and evidently composed under suppressed feelings, 
 which, perhaps, knew not how to shape themselves. The 
 " Remonstrance " was commanded everywhere to be burnt ; 
 and the effect which it produced on the people we shall shortly 
 witness. 
 
 The king was left amidst the most pressing exigencies. At 
 the dissolution of the first parliament, he had been compelled 
 to practise a humiliating economy. Hume has alluded to the 
 numerous wants of the young monarch ; but he certainly was 
 not acquainted with the king's extreme necessities. His coro- 
 nation seemed rather a private than a public ceremony. To 
 save the expenses of the procession from the Tower through 
 the city to Whitehall, that customary pomp was omitted ; and 
 the reason alleged was " to save the charges for more noble 
 undertakings ! " that is, for means to carry on the Spanish 
 war without supplies ! But now the most extraordinary 
 changes appeared at court. The king mortgaged his lands 
 in Cornwall to the aldermen and companies of London. A 
 rumour spread that the small pension list must be revoked ; 
 and the royal distress was carried so far, that all the tables at 
 court were laid down, and the courtiers put on board-wages ! 
 I have seen a letter which gives an account of " the funeral 
 supper at Whitehall, whereat twenty-three tables were buried, 
 being from henceforth converted to board-wages ; " and there 
 I learn, that "since this dissolving of house-keeping, his 
 majesty is but slenderly attended." Another writer, who 
 describes himself to be only a looker-on, regrets, that while 
 the men of the law spent ten thousand pounds on a single 
 masque, they did not rather make the king rich ; and adds, 
 " I see a rich commonwealth, a rich people, and the crown 
 poor ! " This strange poverty of the court of Charles seems 
 to have escaped the notice of our general historians. Charles 
 was now to victual his fleet with the savings of the 
 
AND HTS FIEST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 385 
 
 board-wages ! for this " surplusage " was taken into ac- 
 count ! 
 
 The fatal descent on the Isle of Rhe sent home Bucking- 
 ham discomfited, and spread dismay through the nation. The 
 best blood had been shed from the wanton bravery of an un- 
 skilful and romantic commander, who, forced to retreat, 
 would march, but not fly, and was the very last man to quit 
 the ground which he could not occupy. In the eagerness of 
 his hopes, Buckingham had once dropped, as I learn, that 
 " before Midsummer he should be more honoured and be- 
 loved of the commons than ever was the Earl of Essex : " 
 and thus he rocked his own and his master's imagination in 
 cradling fancies. This volatile hero, who had felt the capri- 
 ciousness of popularity, thought that it was as easily regained 
 as it was easily lost ; and that a chivalric adventure would 
 return to him that favour which at this moment might have 
 been denied to all the wisdom, the policy, and the arts of an 
 experienced statesman. 
 
 The king was now involved in more intricate and desperate 
 measures ; and the nation was thrown into a state of agita- 
 tion, of which the page of popular history yields but a faint 
 impression. 
 
 The spirit of insurrection was stalking forth in the metrop- 
 olis and in the country. The scenes which I am about to 
 describe occurred at the close of 1626 : an inattentive reader 
 might easily mistake them for the revolutionary scenes of 
 1640. It was an unarmed rebellion. 
 
 An army and a navy had returned unpaid, and sore with 
 defeat. The town was scoured by mutinous seamen and 
 soldiers, roving even into the palace of the sovereign. Sol- 
 diers without pay form a society without laws. A band of 
 captains rushed into the duke's apartment as he sat at dinner ; 
 and when reminded by the duke of a late proclamation, for- 
 bidding all soldiers coming to court in troops, on pain of 
 hanging, they replied, that u Whole companies were ready to 
 be hanged with them ! that the king might do as he pleased 
 
 VOL. IV. 25 
 
38G SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 with their lives ; for that their reputation was lost, and their 
 honour forfeited, for want of their salary to pay their debts." 
 When a petition was once presented, and it was inquired who 
 was the composer of it, a vast body tremendously shouted 
 "All! all!" A multitude, composed of seamen, met at 
 Tower-hill, and set a lad on a scaffold, who, with an " O yes ! " 
 proclaimed that King Charles had promised their pay, or the 
 duke had been on the scaffold himself! These, at least, were 
 grievances more apparent to the sovereign than those vague 
 ones so perpetually repeated by his unfaithful commons. 
 But what remained to be done ? It was only a choice of 
 difficulties between the disorder and the remedy. At the 
 moment, the duke got up what he called " The council of the 
 sea ; " was punctual at its first meeting, and appointed three 
 days in a week to sit — but broke his appointment the second 
 day — they found him always otherwise engaged ; and " the 
 council of the sea '' turned out to be one of those shadowy 
 expedients which only lasts while it acts on the imagination. 
 It is said that thirty thousand pounds would have quieted 
 these disorganized troops ; but the exchequer could not sup- 
 ply so mean a sum. Buckingham in despair, and profuse of 
 life, was planning a fresh expedition for the siege of Rochelle ; 
 a new army was required. He swore, " if there was money 
 in the kingdom it should be had ! " 
 
 Now began that series of contrivances and artifices and 
 persecutions to levy money. Forced loans, or pretended 
 free-gifts, kindled a resisting spirit. It was urged by the 
 court party, that the sums required were, in fact, much less 
 in amount than the usual grants of subsidies ; but the cry, 
 in return for " a subsidy," was always " a Parliament ! " 
 Many were heavily fined for declaring, that " they knew no 
 law besides that of Parliament, to compel men to give away 
 their own goods." The king ordered, that those who would 
 not subscribe to the loans should not be forced ; but it seems 
 there were orders in council to specify those householder.-;' 
 names who would not subscribe ; and it further appears, that 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 387 
 
 those who would not pay in purse should in person. Those 
 who were pressed were sent to the depot ; but either the 
 soldiers would not receive these good citizens, or they found 
 easy means to return. Every mode which the government 
 invented seems to have been easily frustrated, either by the 
 intrepidity of the parties themselves, or by that general un- 
 derstanding which enabled the people to play into one an- 
 other's hands. When the common council had consented 
 that an imposition should be laid, the citizens called the 
 Guild-hall the Yield-all i And whenever they levied a 
 distress, in consequence of a refusal to pay it, nothing was 
 to be found but " Old ends, such as nobody cared for." Or 
 if a severer officer seized on commodities, it was in vain to 
 offer penny-worths where no customer was to be had. A 
 wealthy merchant, who had formerly been a cheesemonger, 
 was summoned to appear before the privy council, and re- 
 quired to lend the king two hundred pounds, or else to go 
 himself to the army, and serve it with cheese. It was not 
 supposed that a merchant, so aged and wealthy, would sub- 
 mit to resume his former mean trade ; but the old man, in 
 the spirit of the times, preferred the hard alternative, and 
 balked the new project of finance, by shipping himself with 
 his cheese. At Hicks's Hall the duke and the Earl of Dor- 
 set sat to receive the loans ; but the duke threatened, and the 
 earl affected to treat with levity, men who came before them 
 with all the suppressed feelings of popular indignation. The 
 Earl of Dorset asking a fellow who pleaded inability to lend 
 money, of what trade he was, and being answered " a tailor," 
 said : " Put down your name for such a sum ; one snip will 
 make amends for all ! " The tailor quoted scripture abun- 
 dantly, and shook the bench with laughter or with rage by his 
 anathemas, till he was put fast into a messenger's hands. This 
 was one Ball, renowned through the parish of St. Clement's ; 
 and not only a tailor, but a prophet. Twenty years after, 
 tailors and prophets employed messengers themselves ! * 
 * The Radicals of that day differed from ours in the means, though not 
 
388 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 These are instances drawn from the inferior classes of 
 society ; but the same spirit actuated the country gentlemen : 
 one instance represents many. George Gatesby, of North- 
 amptonshire, being committed to prison as a loan-recusant, 
 alleged, among other reasons for his non-compliance, that 
 " he considered that this loan might become a precedent ; 
 and that every precedent, he was told by the lord president, 
 was a flower of the prerogative." The lord president told 
 him that " he lied ! " Gatesby shook his head, observing, 
 " I come not here to contend with your lordship, but to 
 suffer ! " Lord Suffolk then interposing, entreated the lord 
 president would not too far urge his kinsman, Mr. Gatesby. 
 This country gentleman waived any kindness he might owe 
 to kindred, declaring, that " he would remain master of his 
 own purse." The prisons were crowded with these loan- 
 recusants, as well as with those who had sinned in the free- 
 dom of their opinions. The country gentlemen insured their 
 popularity by their committals ; and many stout resisters of 
 the loans were returned in the following parliament against 
 their own wishes.* The friends of these knights and country 
 
 in the end. They at least referred to their Bibles, and rather more than 
 was required; but superstition is as mad as atheism! Many of the puri- 
 tans confused their brains with the study of the Revelations ; believing 
 Prince Henry to be prefigured in the Apocalypse ; some prophesied that 
 he should overthrow " the beast." Ball, our tailor, was this very prophet ; 
 and was so honest as to believe in his own prophecy. Osborn tells, that 
 Ball put out money on adventure; i. e. to receive it back double or treble, 
 when King James should be elected pope! So that though he had no 
 money for a loan, he had to spare for a prophecy. 
 
 This Ball has been confounded with a more ancient radical, Ball, a 
 priest, and a principal mover in Wat Tyler's insurrection. Our Ball 
 must have been very notorious, for Jonson has noticed his " admired 
 discourses." Mr. Gifford, without any knowledge of my account of this 
 tailor-prophet, by his active sagacity has rightly indicated him. — See 
 Jonson's Works, vol. v. p. 241. 
 
 * It is curious to observe, that the Westminster elections, in the fourth 
 year of Charles's reign, were exactly of the same turbulent character as 
 those which we witness in our days. The duke had counted by his in- 
 terest to bring in Sir Robert Pye. The contest was severe, but accom- 
 panied by some of those ludicrous electioneering scenes, which still amuse 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 389 
 
 gentlemen flocked to their prisons ; and when they petitioned 
 for more liberty and air during the summer, it was policy to 
 grant their request. But it was also policy that they should 
 not reside in their own counties : this relaxation was only 
 granted to those who, living in the south, consented to sojourn 
 in the north ; while the dwellers in the north were to be 
 lodged in the south ! 
 
 In the country the disturbed scenes assumed even a more 
 alarming appearance than in London. They not only would 
 not provide money, but when money was offered by govern- 
 ment, the. men refused to serve ; a conscription was not then 
 known : and it became a question, long debated in the privy 
 council, whether those who would not accept press-money 
 should not be tried by martial law. I preserve in the note a 
 curious piece of secret information.* The great novelty and 
 symptom of the times was the scattering of letters. Sealed 
 letters addressed to the leading men of the country, were 
 
 the mob. Whenever Sir Robert Rye's party cried — "APye! aPye! a 
 Pye!" the adverse party would cry — "A pudding! a pudding! a pud- 
 ding!" and others — "A lie! a lie! a lie!" This Westminster election, 
 of two hundred years ago, ended as we have seen some others; they re- 
 jected all who had urged the payment of the loans; and, passing by such 
 men as Sir Robert Cotton, and their last representative, they fixed on a 
 brewer and a grocer for the two members for Westminster. 
 
 * Extract from a manuscript letter. — " On Friday last I hear, but as a 
 secret, that it was debated at the council-table, whether our Essex men, 
 who refused to take press-money, should not be punished by martial-law, 
 and hanged up on the next tree to their dwellings, for an example of ter- 
 ror to others. My lord keeper, who had been long silent, when, in conclu- 
 sion, it came to his course to speak, told the lords, that as far as he under- 
 stood the law, none were liable to martial law, but martial men. If these had 
 taken press-money, and afterwards run from their colours, they might then 
 be punished in that manner; but yet they were no soldiei's, and refused to 
 be. Secondly, he thought a subsidy, new by law, could not be pressed 
 against his will for a foreign service; it being supposed, in law, the service 
 of his purse excused that of his person, unless his own country were in 
 danger; and he appealed to my lord treasurer, and my lord president, 
 whether it was not so, who both assented it was so, though some of them 
 Taintly, as unwilling to have been urged to such an answer. So it is 
 thought that proposition is dashed; and it will be tried what may be don« 
 in the Star-chamber against these refractories." 
 
390 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 found hanging on bushes ; anonymous letters were dropped 
 in shops and streets, which gave notice, that the day was fast 
 approaching, when " Such a work was to be wrought in Eng- 
 land, as never was the like, which will be for our good." 
 Addresses multiplied " To all true-hearted Englishmen ! " 
 A groom detected in spreading such seditious papers, and 
 brought into the inexorable Star-chamber, was fined three 
 thousand pounds ! The leniency of the punishment was 
 rather regretted by two bishops ; if it was ever carried into 
 execution, the unhappy man must have remained a groom 
 who never after crossed a horse ! 
 
 There is one difficult duty of an historian, which is too 
 often passed over by the party-writer ; it is to pause when- 
 ever he feels himself warming with the passions of the mul- 
 titude, or becoming the blind apologist of arbitrary power. 
 An historian must transform himself" into the characters which 
 he is representing, and throw himself back into the times 
 which he is opening ; possessing himself of their feelings and 
 tracing their actions, he may then at least hope to discover 
 truths which may equally interest the honourable men of all 
 parties. 
 
 This reflection has occurred from the very difficulty into 
 which I am now brought. Shall we at once condemn the 
 king for these arbitrary measures? It is, however, very 
 possible that they were never in his contemplation ! Involved 
 in inextricable difficulties, according to his feelings, he was 
 betrayed by parliament; and he scorned to barter their 
 favour by that vulgar traffic of treachery — the immolation 
 of the single victim who had long attached his personal affec- 
 tions ; a man at least as much envied as hated ! that hard 
 lesson had not yet been inculcated on a British sovereign, 
 that his bosom must be a blank for all private affection ; and 
 had that lesson been taught, the character of Charles was 
 destitute of all aptitude for it. To reign without a refractory 
 parliament, and to find among the people themselves subjects 
 more loyal than their representatives, was an experiment — ■ 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 391 
 
 and a fatal one ! Under Charles, the liberty of the subject, 
 when the necessities of the state pressed on the sovereign, 
 was matter of discussion, disputed as often as assumed ; the 
 divines were proclaiming as rebellious those who refused 
 their contributions to aid the government;* and the law- 
 sages alleged precedents for raising supplies in the manner 
 which Charles had adopted. Selden, whose learned industry 
 was as vast as the amplitude of his mind, had to seek for the 
 freedom of the subject in the dust of the records of the 
 Tower — and the omnipotence of parliaments, if any human 
 assembly may be invested with such supernatural greatness, 
 
 * A member of the house, in James the First's time, called this race of 
 divines " Spaniels to the court and wolves to the people." Dr. Mainwar- 
 ing, Dr. Sibthorpe, and Dean Bargrave were seeking for ancient precedents 
 to maintain absolute monarchy, and to inculcate passive obedience. Bar- 
 grave had this passage in his sermon : " It was the speech of a man 
 renowned for wisdom in our age, that if he were commanded to put forth 
 to sea in a ship that had neither mast nor tackling, he would doit:" 
 and being asked w T hat wisdom that were, replied, " The wisdom must be 
 in him that hath power to command, not in him that conscience binds to 
 obey." Sibthorpe, after he published his sermon, immediately had his 
 house burnt down. Dr. Mainwaring, says a manuscript letter-writer, 
 "sent the other day to a friend of mine, to help him to all the ancient 
 precedents he could find, to strengthen his opinion, (for absolute monarchy,) 
 who answered him he could help him in nothing but only to hang him, 
 and that if he lived till a parliament, or, &c. he should be sure of a 
 halter." Mainwaring afterwards submitted to parliament; but after the 
 dissolution got a free pardon. The panic of popery was a great evil. 
 The divines, under Laud, appeared to approach to Catholicism; but it was 
 probably only a project of reconciliation between the two churches, which 
 Elizabeth, James, and Charles, equally wished. Mr. Cosins, a letter- 
 writer, is censured for "superstition" in this bitter style: "Mr. Cosins 
 has impudently made three editions of his prayer-book, and one which he 
 gives away in private, different from the published ones. An audacious 
 fellow, whom my Lord of Durham greatly admirefh. I doubt if he be a 
 sound protestant: he was so blind at even-song on Candlemas-day, that 
 he could not see to read prayers in the minster with less than three hun- 
 dred and forty candles, whereof sixty he caused to be placed about the 
 high altar; besides he caused the picture of our Saviour, supported by 
 two angels, to be set in the choir. The committee is very hot against 
 him, and no matter if they trounce him." This was Cosins, who survived 
 the revolution, and returning with Charles the Second, was raised to the 
 see of Durham: the charitable institutions he has left ai - e most munificent 
 
392 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 had not yet awakened the hoar antiquity of popular 
 liberty. 
 
 A general spirit of insurrection, rather than insurrection 
 itself, had suddenly raised some strange appearances through 
 the kingdom. " The remonstrance " of parliament had un- 
 questionably quickened the feelings of the people : but yet 
 the lovers of peace and the reverencers of royalty were not 
 a few ; money and men were procured, to send out the army 
 and the fleet. More concealed causes may be suspected to 
 have been at work. Many of the heads of the opposition 
 were pursuing some secret machinations ; about this time I 
 find many mysterious stories — indications of secret societies 
 i — and other evidences of the intrigues of the popular party. 
 
 Little matters, sometimes more important than they ap- 
 pear, are suitable to our minute sort of history. In Novem- 
 ber, 1G26, a rumour spread that the king was to be visited 
 by an ambassador from " the President of the Society of the 
 Rosycross." He was indeed an heteroclite ambassador, for 
 he is described " as a youth with never a hair on his face ; " 
 in fact, a child who was to conceal the mysterious personage 
 which he was for a moment to represent. He appointed 
 Sunday afternoon to come to court, attended by thirteen 
 coaches. He was to proffer to his majesty, provided the 
 king accepted his advice, three millions to put into his cof- 
 fers ; and by his secret councils he was to unfold matters of 
 moment and secrecy. A Latin letter was delivered to 
 " David Ramsey of the clock," to hand over to the king : a 
 copy of it has been preserved in a letter of the times ; but it 
 is so unmeaning, that it could have had no effect on the king, 
 who, however, declared that he would not admit him to an 
 audience, and that if he could tell where " the President of 
 the Rosycross " was to be found, unless he made good his 
 offer, he would hang him at the court-gates. This served 
 the town and country for talk till the appointed Sunday had 
 passed over, and no ambassador was visible ! Some con- 
 sidered this as the plotting of crazy brains, but others im- 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 393 
 
 agined it to be an attempt to speak with the king in private, 
 on matters respecting the duke. 
 
 There was also discovered, by letters received from Rome, 
 " a whole parliament of Jesuits sitting " in " a fair-hanged 
 vault" in Clerkenwell.* Sir John Cooke would have 
 alarmed the parliament, that on St. Joseph's day these were 
 to have occupied their places ; ministers are supposed some- 
 times to have conspirators for " the nonce ; " Sir Dudley 
 Digges, in the opposition, as usual, would not believe in any 
 such political necromancers; but such a party were dis- 
 covered; Cooke would have insinuated that the French am- 
 bassador had persuaded Louis, that the divisions between 
 Charles and his people had been raised by his ingenuity, and 
 was rewarded for the intelligence ; this is not unlikely. 
 After all, the parliament of Jesuits might have been a secret 
 college of the order ; for, among other things seized on, was 
 a considerable library. 
 
 When the parliament was sitting, a sealed letter was 
 thrown under the door, with this superscription, Cursed be 
 the man that finds this letter, and delivers it not to the House 
 of Commons. The serjeant-at-arms delivered it to the speaker, 
 who would not open it till the house had chosen a committee 
 of twelve members to inform them whether it was fit to be 
 read. Sir Edward Coke, after having read two or three 
 lines, stopped, and according to my authority, "durst read no 
 further, but immediately sealing it, the committee thought fit 
 to send it to the king, who they say, on reading it through, 
 cast it into the fire, and sent the house of commons thanks 
 for their wisdom in not publishing it, and for the discretion 
 of the committee in so far tendering his honour, as not to 
 read it out, when they once perceived that it touched his 
 majesty." f 
 
 * Rushworth's Collections, i. 514. 
 
 t I deliver this fact as I find it in a private letter; but it is noticed in 
 the Journals of the House of Commons, 23 Junii, 4°. Caroli Re^is. " Sir 
 Edward Coke reporteth that they find that, inclosed in the letter, to be 
 
394 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 Others, besides the freedom of speech, introduced another 
 form, "A speech without doors," which was distributed to the 
 members of the house. It is in all respects a remarkable 
 one, occupying ten folio pages in the first volume of Rush- 
 worth. 
 
 Some in office appear to have employed extraordinary 
 proceedings of a similar nature. An intercepted letter writ- 
 ten from the Archduchess to the King of Spain was de- 
 livered by Sir H. Martyn at the council-board on New-year's 
 day, who found it in some papers relating to the navy. The 
 duke immediately said he would show it to the king ; and, 
 accompanied by several lords, went into his majesty's closet. 
 The letter was written in French ; it advised the Spanish 
 court to make a sudden war with England, for several 
 reasons ; his majesty's want of skill to govern of himself ; the 
 weakness of his council in not daring to acquaint him with 
 the truth; want of money; disunion of the subjects' hearts 
 from their prince, &c. The king only observed, that the 
 writer forgot that the Archduchess writes to the king of 
 Spain in Spanish, and sends her letters overland. 
 
 I have to add an important fact. I find certain evidence 
 that the heads of the opposition were busily active in thwart- 
 ing the measures of government. Dr. Samuel Turner, the 
 member for Shrewsbury, called on Sir John Cage, and de- 
 sired to speak to him privately ; his errand was to entreat 
 him to resist the loan, and to use his power with others to 
 obtain this purpose. The following information comes from 
 Sir John Cage himself. Dr. Turner " being desired to stay, 
 he would not a minute, but instantly took horse, saying he 
 had more places to go to, and time pressed ; that there ivas a 
 company of them had divided themselves into all parts, every 
 
 unfit for any subject's ear to hear. Read but one line and a half of it, and 
 could not endure to read more of it. It was ordered to be sealed and de- 
 livered into the king's hands by eight members, and to acquaint his 
 majesty with the place and time of finding it; particularly that upon the 
 reading of one line and a half at most, they would read no more, but 
 sealed it up, and brought it to the House." 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 395 
 
 one having had a quarter assigned to hi?n, to perform this 
 service for the commonwealth." This was written in Novem- 
 ber, 1626. This unquestionably amounts to a secret confed- 
 eracy watching out of parliament as well as in ; and those 
 strange appearances of popular defection exhibited in the 
 country, which I have described, were in great part the con- 
 sequences of the machinations and active intrigues of the 
 popular party.* 
 
 The king was not disposed to try a third parliament. The 
 favourite, perhaps to regain that popular favour which his 
 greatness had lost him, is said in private letters to have been 
 twice on his knees to intercede for a new one. The elections 
 however foreboded no good ; and a letter-writer connected 
 with the court, in giving an account of them, prophetically 
 declared, " we are without question undone ! " 
 
 The king's speech opens with the spirit which he himself 
 felt, but which he could not communicate : — 
 
 " The times are for action: wherefore, for example's sake, I mean not to 
 spend much time in words! If you, which God forbid, should not do your 
 duties in contributing what the state at this time needs, I must, in dis- 
 charge of my conscience, use those other means which God hath put into my 
 hands, to save that, which the follies of some particular men may other- 
 wise hazard to lose." He added, with the loftiness of ideal majesty — 
 " Take not this as a threatening, for 1 scorn to threaten any but my equals ; 
 but as an admonition from him, that, both out of natuie and duty, hath 
 most care of your preservations and prosperities: " and in a more friendly 
 tone he requested them " To remember a thing to the end that we may for- 
 get it. You may imagine that I come here with a doubt of success, remem- 
 bering the distractions of the last meeting; but I assure you that I shall 
 very easily forget and forgive what is past." 
 
 A most crowded house now met, composed of the wealthi- 
 est men ; for a lord, who probably considered that property 
 was the true balance of power, estimated that they were able 
 to buy the upper-house, his majesty only excepted ! The 
 aristocracy of wealth had already begun to be felt. Some ill 
 
 * I have since discovered, by a manuscript letter, that this Dr. Turner 
 was held in contempt by the king; that he was ridiculed at court, which 
 he haunted, for his want of veracity ; in a word, that he was a disappointed 
 courtier ! 
 
396 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 omens of the parliament appeared. Sir Robert Philips 
 moved for a general fast : " we had one for the plague which 
 it pleased God to deliver us from, and we have now so many 
 plagues of the commonwealth about his majesty's person, 
 that we have need of such an act of humiliation." Sir Ed- 
 ward Coke held it most necessary, " because there are, I fear> 
 some devils that will not be cast out but by fasting and 
 prayer." 
 
 Many of the speeches in " this great council of the king- 
 dom " are as admirable pieces of composition as exist in 
 the language. Even the court-party were moderate, extenu- 
 ating rather than pleading for the late necessities. But the 
 evil spirit of party, however veiled, was walking amidst them 
 all : a letter-writer represents the natural state of feelings : 
 " Some of the parliament talk desperately ; while others, of 
 as high a course to enforce money, if they yield not ! " Such 
 is the perpetual action and reaction of public opinion ; when 
 one side will give too little, the other is sure to desire too 
 much ! 
 
 The parliament granted subsidies. — Sir John Cooke hav- 
 ing brought up the report to the king, Charles expressed 
 great satisfaction, and declared that he felt now more happy 
 than any of his predecessors. Inquiring of Sir John by how 
 many voices he had carried it ? Cooke replied, But by one ! 
 — at which his majesty seemed appalled, and asked how 
 many were against him ? Cooke answered " None ! the 
 unanimity of the House made all but one voice ! " at which 
 his majesty wept ! * If Charles shed tears, or as Cooke him- 
 self expresses it, in his report to the House, " was much 
 affected," the emotion was profound : for on all sudden emer- 
 gencies Charles displayed an almost unparalleled command 
 over the exterior violence of his feelings. 
 
 The favourite himself sympathized with the tender joy of 
 his royal master ; and, before the king, voluntarily offered 
 
 * This circumstance is mentioned in a manuscript letter; what Cooke 
 declared to the House is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 525. 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 397 
 
 himself as a peace-sacrifice. In his speech at the council- 
 table, he entreats the king that he, who had the honour to be 
 his majesty's favourite, might now give up that title to 
 them. — A warm genuine feeling probably prompted these 
 words. 
 
 " To open my heart, please to pardon me a word more ; I must confess I 
 have long lived in pain, sleep hath given me no rest, favours and fortune no 
 content; such have been my secret sorrows, to be thought the man of sep- 
 aration, and that divided the king from his people, and them from him; 
 but I hope it shall appear they were some mistaken minds that would have 
 made me the evil spirit that walketh between a good master and a loyal 
 people." * 
 
 Buckingham added, that for the good of his country he 
 was willing to sacrifice his honours ; and since his plurality 
 of offices had been so strongly excepted against, that he was 
 content to give up the master of the horse to Marquess 
 Hamilton, and the warden of the Cinque Ports to the Earl 
 of Carlisle ; and was willing that the parliament should ap- 
 point another admiral for all services at sea. 
 
 It is as certain as human evidence can authenticate, that 
 on the king's side all was grateful affection ; and that on 
 Buckingham's there was a most earnest desire to win the 
 favours of parliament ; and what are stronger than all human 
 evidence, those unerring principles in human nature itself, 
 which are the secret springs of the heart, were working in 
 the breasts of the king and his minister ; for neither were 
 tyrannical. The king undoubtedly sighed to meet parliament 
 with the love which he had at first professed ; he declared, 
 that " he should now rejoice to meet with his people often." 
 Charles had no innate tyranny in his constitutional character : 
 and Buckingham at times was susceptible of misery amidst his 
 greatness, as I have elsewhere shown. f It could not have 
 
 * I refer the critical student of our history to the duke's speech at the 
 council-table as it appears in Rushworth, i. 525 : but what I add respecting 
 his personal sacrifices is from manuscript letters. Sloane MSS. 4177. 
 Letter 490, &c. 
 
 f Curiosities of Literature, First Series, vol. iii. p. 438, Ed. 1817; vol. v. 
 
398 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 been imagined that the luckless favourite, on the present occa- 
 sion, should have served as a pretext to set again in motion 
 the chaos of evil ! Can any candid mind suppose, that the 
 king or the duke meditated the slightest insult on the patri- 
 otic party, or would in the least have disturbed the apparent 
 reconciliation ! Yet it so happened ! Secretary Cooke, at 
 the close of his report of the king's acceptance of the subsi- 
 dies, mentioned that the duke had fervently beseeched the 
 king to grant the house all their desires ! Perhaps the men- 
 tion of the duke's name was designed to ingratiate him into 
 their toleration. 
 
 Sir John Eliot caught fire at the very name of the duke, 
 and vehemently checked the secretary for having dared to 
 introduce it ; declaring, that " they knew of no other distinc- 
 tion but of king and subjects. By intermingling a subject's 
 speech with the king's message, he seemed to derogate from 
 the honour and majesty of a king. Nor would it become 
 any subject to bear himself in such a fashion, as if no grace 
 ought to descend from the king to the people, nor any loyalty 
 ascend from the people to the king, but through him only." 
 
 This speech was received by many with acclamations ; some 
 cried out, " Well spoken, Sir John Eliot ! " * It marks the 
 heated state of the political atmosphere, where even the 
 lightest coruscation of a hated name made it burst into 
 flames ! 
 
 I have often suspected that Sir John Eliot, by his vehement 
 personality, must have borne a personal antipathy to Buck- 
 ingham. I have never been enabled to ascertain the fact ; 
 but I find that he has left in manuscript a collection of sa- 
 tires, or " Verses, being chiefly invectives against the Duke 
 of Buckingham, to whom he bore a bitter and most inveterate 
 
 p. 277, Ed. 1823; vol. iii. p. 429, Ed. 1824; vol. iv. p. 148, Ed. 1834; p. 301, 
 Ed. 1840, or vol. iii. p. 97, of this edition. 
 
 * I find this speech, and an account of its reception in manuscript let- 
 ters ; the fragment in Rush worth contains no part of it. I. 526. Sloane 
 MSS. 4177. Letter 490, &c. 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 309 
 
 enmity." Could we sometimes discover the motives of those 
 who first head political revolutions, we should find liow 
 greatly personal hatreds have actuated them in deeds which 
 have come down to us in the form of patriotism, and how 
 often the revolutionary spirit disguises its private passions by 
 its public conduct.* 
 
 But the supplies, which had raised tears from the fervent 
 gratitude of Charles, though voted, were yet withheld. They 
 resolved that grievances and supplies go hand in hand. The 
 commons entered deeply into constitutional points of the 
 highest magnitude. The curious erudition of Selden and 
 Coke was combined with the ardour of patriots who merit no 
 inferior celebrity, though not having consecrated their names 
 by their laborious literature, we only discover them in the 
 obscure annals of parliament. To our history, composed by 
 writers of different principles, I refer the reader for the argu- 
 ments of lawyers, and the spirit of the commons. My secret 
 history is only its supplement. 
 
 The king's prerogative, and the subject's liberty, were 
 
 * Modern history would afford more instances than perhaps some of us 
 suspect. I cannot pass over an illustration of my principle, which I shall 
 take from two very notorious politicians — Wat Tyler and Sir William Wal- 
 worth ! 
 
 Wat, when in servitude, had been beaten by his master, Richard Lyons, 
 a great merchant of wines, and a sheriff of London. This chastisement, 
 working on an evil disposition, appears never to have been forgiven ; and 
 when this Radical assumed his short-lived dominion, he had his old master 
 beheaded, and his head carried before him on the point of a spear ! So 
 Grafton tells us, to the eternal obloquy of this arch-jacobin, who " was a 
 crafty fellow, and of an excellent wit, but wanting grace." I would not 
 sully the patriotic blow which ended the rebellion with the rebel ; yet 
 there are secrets in history! Sir William Walworth, " the ever famous 
 mayor of London," as Stowe designates him, has left the immortality of 
 his name to one of our suburbs; but having discovered in Stowe's survey, 
 that Walworth was the landlord of the stews on the Bank-side, which he 
 farmed out to the Dutch vrows, and which Wat had pulled down, I am in- 
 clined to suspect that private feeling first knocked down the saucy ribald 
 and then thrust him through and through with his dagger ; and that there 
 was as much of personal vengeance as patriotism, which crushed the de- 
 molisher of so much valuable property ! 
 
400 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 points hard to distinguish, and were established but by con- 
 test. Sometimes the king imagined that " the house pressed 
 not upon the abuses of power, but only upon power itself." 
 Sometimes the commons doubted whether they had any thing 
 of their own to give ; while their property and their persons 
 seemed equally insecure. Despotism seemed to stand on one 
 side, and Faction on the other — Liberty trembled ! 
 
 The conference of the commons before the lords, on the 
 freedom and person of the subject, was admirably conducted 
 by Selden and by Coke. When the king's attorney affected 
 to slight the learned arguments and precedents, pretending to 
 consider them as mutilated out of the records, and as proving 
 rather against the commons than for them, Sir Edward Coke 
 rose, affirming to the house, upon his skill in the law, that " it 
 lay not under Mr. Attorney's cap to answer any one of their 
 arguments." Selden declared that he had written out all the 
 records from the Tower, the Exchequer, and the King's 
 Bench, with his own hand ; and " would engage his head, 
 Mr. Attorney should not find in all these archives a single 
 precedent omitted." Mr. Littleton said, that he had examined 
 every one syllabatim, and whoever said they were mutilated 
 spoke false ! Of so ambiguous and delicate a nature was then 
 the liberty of the subject, that it seems they considered it to 
 depend on precedents ! 
 
 A startling message, on the 12th of April, was sent by the 
 king, for dispatch of business. The house, struck with as- 
 tonishment, desired to have it repeated. They remained sad 
 and silent. No one cared to open the debate. A whimsical 
 politician, Sir Francis Nethersole,* suddenly started up, en- 
 treating leave to tell his last night's dream. Some laughing 
 
 * I have formed my idea of Sir Francis Nethersole from some strange 
 incidents in his political conduct, which I have read in some contemporary 
 letters. He was, however, a man of some eminence, had been Orator for 
 the University of Cambridge, agent for James I. with the Princes of the 
 Union in Germany, and also Secretary to the Queen of Bohemia. He 
 founded and endowed a free-school at Polesworth in Warwickshire. 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 401 
 
 at him, he observed, that "kingdoms had been saved by 
 dreams ! " Allowed to proceed, he said, " he saw two good 
 pastures ; a flock of sheep was in the one, and a bell-wether 
 alone in the other ; a great ditch was between them, and a 
 narrow bridge over the ditch." 
 
 He was interrupted by the speaker, who told him that it 
 stood not with the gravity of the house to listen to dreams ; 
 but the house was inclined to hear him out. 
 
 " The sheep would sometimes go over to the bell-wether, or 
 the bell-wether to the sheep. Once both met on the narrow 
 bridge, and the question was who should go back, since both 
 could not go on without danger. One sheep gave counsel 
 that the sheep on the bridge should he on their bellies, and 
 let the bell-wether go over their backs. The application of 
 this dilemma he left to the house." * It must be confessed 
 that the bearing of the point was more ambiguous than some 
 of the important ones that formed the matters of their debates. 
 Davus sum, non (Edipus ! It is probable that this fantasti- 
 cal politician did not vote with the opposition ; for Eliot, 
 Wentworth, and Coke, protested against the interpretation 
 of dreams in the house ! 
 
 When the attorney-general moved that the liberties of the 
 subject might be moderated, to reconcile the differences 
 between themselves and the sovereign, Sir Edward Coke 
 observed, that " the true mother would never consent to the 
 dividing of her child." On this, Buckingham swore that 
 Coke intimated that the king, his master, was the prostitute 
 of the state. Coke protested against the misinterpretation. 
 The dream of Nethersole, and the metaphor of Coke, were 
 alike dangerous in parliamentary discussion. 
 
 In a manuscript letter it is said that the house of commons 
 sat four days without speaking or doing any thing. On the 
 first of May, Secretary Cooke delivered a message, asking 
 whether they would rely upon the king's word ? This ques- 
 tion was followed by a long silence. Several speeches are 
 
 * Manuscript letter. 
 vol. iv. 26 
 
402 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 reported in the letters of the times, which are not in Ru«h- 
 worth. Sir Nathaniel Rich observed, that " confident as he 
 was of the royal word, what did any indefinite word ascer- 
 tain ? " Pym said, " We have his majesty's coronation oath 
 to maintain the laws of England ; what need we then take 
 his word?" He proposed to move "Whether we should 
 take the king's word or no." This was resisted by Secretary 
 Cooke ; " What would they say in foreign parts, if the people 
 of England would not trust their king ? " He desired the 
 house to call Pym to order ; on which Pym replied, " Truly, 
 Mr. Speaker, I am just of the same opinion I was ; viz : that 
 the king's oath was as powerful as his word." Sir John 
 Eliot moved that it be put to the question, " because they 
 that would have it, do urge us to that point." Sir Edward 
 Coke on this occasion made a memorable speech, of which 
 the following passage is not given in Rushworth : — 
 
 " We sit now in parliament, and therefore must take his majesty's word 
 no otherwise than in a parliamentary way ; that is, of a matter agreed on by 
 both houses — his majesty sitting on his throne in his robes, with his crown 
 on his head, and sceptre in his hand, and in full parliament ; and his royal 
 assent being entered upon record, in perpetuam ret memoriam. This was 
 the royal word of a king in parliament, and not a word delivered in a cham- 
 ber, and out of the mouth of a secretary at the second hand ; therefore I 
 motion, that the House of Commons, more majorum, should draw up a pe- 
 tition de droict, to his majesty ; which, being confirmed by both houses, 
 and assented unto by his majesty, will be as firm an act as any. Not that 
 I distrust the king, but that I cannot take his trust but in a parliamentary 
 way." * 
 
 In this speech of Sir Edward Coke we find the first men- 
 tion, in the legal style, of the ever-memorable " Petition of 
 Right," which two days after was finished. The reader must 
 pursue its history among the writers of opposite parties. 
 
 On Tuesday, June 5, a royal message announced, that on 
 the 11th the present sessions would close. This utterly dis- 
 concerted the commons. Religious men considered it as a 
 
 * These speeches are entirely drawn from those manuscript letters to 
 which I have frequently referred. Coke's may be substantially found in 
 Rushworth, but without a single expression as here given. 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 403 
 
 judicial visitation for the sins of the people ; others raged 
 with suppressed feelings ; they counted up all the disasters 
 which had of late occurred, all which were charged to one 
 man : they knew not, at a moment so urgent, when all their 
 liberties seemed at stake, whether the commons should fly to 
 the lords, or to the king. Sir John Eliot said, that as they 
 intended to furnish his majesty with money, it was proper 
 that he should give them time to supply him with counsel : 
 he was renewing his old attacks on the duke, when he was 
 suddenly interrupted by the speaker, who, starting from the 
 chair, declared, that he was commanded not to suffer him to 
 proceed ; Eliot sat down in sullen silence. On Wednesday, 
 Sir Edward Coke broke the ice of debate. u That man," 
 said he of the duke, " is the grievance of grievances ! As 
 for going to the lords," he added, " that is not via regia ; our 
 liberties are impeached — it is our concern ! " 
 
 On Thursday, the vehement cry of Coke against Bucking- 
 ham was followed up ; as, says a letter-writer, when one 
 good hound recovers the scent, the rest come in with a full 
 cry. A sudden message from the king absolutely forbade 
 them to asperse any of his majesty's ministers, otherwise his 
 majesty would instantly dissolve them. 
 
 This fell like a thunderbolt ; it struck terror and alarm ; 
 and at the instant, the house of commons was changed into a 
 scene of tragical melancholy ! All the opposite passions of 
 human nature — all the national evils which were one day to 
 burst on the country, seemed, on a sudden, concentrated in 
 this single spot ! Some were seen weeping, some were expos- 
 tulating, and some, in awful prophecy, were contemplating 
 the future ruin of the kingdom ; while others, of more ardent 
 daring, were reproaching the timid, quieting the terrified, and 
 infusing resolution into the despairing. Many attempted to 
 speak, but were so strongly affected, that their very utter- 
 ance failed them. The venerable Coke, overcome by his feel- 
 ings when he rose to speak, found his learned eloquence falter 
 on his tongue ; he sat down, and tears were seen on his aged 
 
404 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 cheeks. The name of the public enemy of the kingdom was 
 repeated, till the speaker, with tears covering his face, de- 
 clared he could no longer witness such a spectacle of woe in 
 the commons of England, and requested leave of absence for 
 half an hour. The speaker hastened to the king, to inform 
 him of the state of the house. They were preparing a vote 
 against the duke, for being an arch-traitor and arch-enemy to 
 king and kingdom, and were busied on their " Remonstrance," 
 when the speaker, on his return, after an absence of two 
 hours, delivered his majesty's message, that they should ad- 
 journ till the next day. 
 
 This was an awful interval of time ; many trembled for the 
 issue of the next morning : one letter- writer calls it, " that 
 black and doleful Thursday ! " and another, writing before 
 the house met, observes, " What we shall expect this morn- 
 ing, God of heaven knows ; we shall meet timely." * 
 
 Charles probably had been greatly affected by the report 
 of the speaker, on the extraordinary state into which the whole 
 house had been thrown ; for on Friday the royal message 
 imported, that the king had never any intention of " barring 
 them from their right, but only to avoid scandal, that his 
 ministers should not be accused for their counsel to him ; and 
 still he hoped that all Christendom might notice a sweet part- 
 ing between him and his people. This message quieted the 
 house, but did not suspend their preparations for a " Remon- 
 strance," which they had begun on the day they were threat- 
 ened with a dissolution. 
 
 On Saturday, while they were still occupied on the " Re- 
 monstrance," unexpectedly, at four o'clock, the king came to 
 parliament, and the commons were called up. Charles 
 spontaneously came to reconcile himself to parliament. The 
 king now gave his second answer to the " Petition of Right." 
 He said, " My maxim is, that the people's liberties strengthen 
 the king's prerogative ; and the king's prerogative is to de- 
 fend the people's liberties. Read your petition, and you shall 
 * This last letter is printed in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 609. 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 405 
 
 have an answer that I am sure will please you." * They 
 desired to have the ancient form of their ancestors, " Soit 
 droit fait come il est desyre," and not as the king had before 
 given it, with any observation on it. Charles now granted 
 this ; declaring that his second answer to the petition in 
 nowise differed from his first ; " but you now see how ready 
 I have shown myself to satisfy your demands ; I have done 
 my part ; wherefore, if this parliament have not a happy con- 
 clusion, the sin is yours, — I am free from it ! " 
 
 Popular gratitude is, at least, as vociferous as it is sudden. 
 Both houses returned the king acclamations of joy ; every 
 one seemed to exult at the happy change which a few days 
 had effected in the fate of the kingdom. Everywhere the 
 bells rung, bonfires were kindled, an universal holiday was 
 kept through the town, and spread to the country : but an 
 ominous circumstance has been registered by a letter-writer ; 
 the common people, who had caught the contagious happiness, 
 imagined that all this public joy was occasioned by the king's 
 consenting to commit the duke to the Tower ! 
 
 Charles has been censured, even by Hume, for his " eva- 
 sions and delays," in granting his assent to the " Petition of 
 Right ; " but now, either the parliament had conquered the 
 royal unwillingness, or the king was zealously inclined on 
 reconciliation. Yet the joy of the commons did not outlast 
 the bonfires in the streets ; they resumed their debates as if 
 they had never before touched on the subjects : they did not 
 account for the feelings of the man whom they addressed as 
 the sovereign. They sent up a " Remonstrance " against the 
 duke, f and introduced his mother into it, as a patroness of 
 popery. Charles declared, that after having granted the 
 famous " Petition," he had not expected such a return as this 
 " Remonstrance." " How acceptable it is," he afterwards 
 said, " every man may judge ; no wise man can justify it." 
 After the reading of the Remonstrance, the duke fell on his 
 
 * The king's answer is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 613. 
 
 t This eloquent state paper is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 619. 
 
406 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST. 
 
 knees, desiring to answer for himself ; but Charles no way 
 relaxed in showing his personal favour.* 
 
 The duke was often charged with actions and with expres- 
 sions of which, unquestionably, he was not always guilty ; 
 and we can more fairly decide on some points, relating to 
 Charles and the favourite, for we have a clearer notion of them 
 than his contemporaries. The active spirits in the commons 
 were resolved to hunt down the game to the death ; for they 
 now struck at, as the king calls it, " one of the chief mainte- 
 nances of my crown," in tonnage and poundage, the levying 
 of which, they now declared, was a violation of the liberties 
 of the people. This subject again involved legal discussions, 
 and another " Remonstrance." They were in the act of read- 
 ing it, when the king suddenly came down to the house, sent 
 for the speaker, and prorogued the parliament. " I am forced 
 to end this session," said Charles, " some few hours before I 
 meant, being not willing to receive any more Remonstrances, 
 to which I must give a harsh answer." There was, at least, 
 as much of sorrow as of anger, in this closing speech. 
 
 Buckingham once more was to offer his life for the honour 
 of his master — and to court popularity ! It is well known 
 with what exterior fortitude Charles received the news of the 
 duke's assassination ; this imperturbable majesty of his mind — 
 insensibility it was not — never deserted him on many similar 
 occasions. There was no indecision — no feebleness in his 
 conduct ; and that extraordinary event was not suffered to 
 delay the expedition. The king's personal industry astonished 
 all the men in office. One writes, that the king had done 
 more in six weeks than in the duke's time had been done in 
 six months. The death of Buckingham caused no change ; 
 the king left every man to his own charge, but took the gen- 
 eral direction into his own hands.f In private, Charles 
 deeply mourned the loss of Buckingham ; he gave no en- 
 
 * This interview is taken from manuscript letters, 
 f Manuscript Letters: Lord Dorset to the Earl of Carlisle. — Sloane 
 MSS. 4178, Letter 519. 
 
AND EIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 407 
 
 20uragement to his enemies : the king called him " his mar- 
 tyr," and declared, " the world was greatly mistaken in him ; 
 for it was thought that the favourite had ruled his majesty 
 but it was far otherwise ; for that the duke had been to him 
 a faithful and an obedient servant." * Such were the feel- 
 ings and ideas of the unfortunate Charles the First, which it 
 is necessary to become acquainted with to judge of ; few have 
 possessed the leisure or the disposition to perform this his- 
 torical duty, involved as it is in the history of our passions. 
 If ever the man shall be viewed, as well as the monarch, the 
 private history of Charles the First will form one of the most 
 pathetic of biographies. f 
 
 All the foreign expeditions of Charles the First were alike 
 disastrous : the vast genius of Richelieu, at its meridian, had 
 paled our ineffectual star ! The dreadful surrender of Ro- 
 chelle had sent back our army and navy baffled and dis- 
 graced ; and Buckingham had timely perished, to save one 
 more reproach, one more political crime, attached to his 
 name. Such failures did not improve the temper of the 
 times ; but the most brilliant victory would not have changed 
 the fate of Charles, nor allayed the fiery spirits in the com- 
 mons, who, as Charles said, " not satisfied in hearing complain- 
 ers, had erected themselves into inquisitors after complaints." 
 
 Parliament met. The king's speech was conciliatory. 
 He acknowledged that the exaction of the duties of the cus- 
 toms was not a right which he derived from his hereditary 
 prerogative, but one which he enjoyed as the gift of his 
 people. These duties as yet had not indeed been formally 
 confirmed by parliament, but they had never been refused to 
 the sovereign. The king closed with a fervent ejaculation 
 that the session, begun with confidence, might end with a 
 mutual good understanding. 
 * Manuscript Letter. 
 
 t I have already given the " Secret history of Charles the First and his 
 Queen," where I have traced the firmness and independence of his char- 
 acter. In another article will be found as much of the " Secret History of 
 the Duke of Buckingham " as I have been enabled to acquire. 
 
408 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 The shade of Buckingham was no longer cast between 
 Charles the First and the commons. And yet we find that 
 " their dread and dear sovereign " was not allowed any re- 
 pose on the throne. 
 
 A new demon of national discord, Religion in a metaphy- 
 sical garb, reared its distracted head. This evil spirit had 
 been raised by the conduct of the court divines, whose politi- 
 cal sermons, with their attempts to return to the more solemn 
 ceremonies of the Romish church, alarmed some tender con- 
 sciences ; it served as a masked battery for the patriotic party 
 to change their ground at will, without slackening their fire. 
 When the king urged for the duties of his customs, he found 
 that he was addressing a committee sitting for religion. Sir 
 John Eliot threw out a singular expression. Alluding to 
 some of the bishops, whom he called " masters of ceremo- 
 nies," he confessed that some ceremonies were commendable, 
 such as " that we should stand up at the repetition of the 
 creed, to testify the resolution of our hearts to defend the 
 religion we profess, and in some churches they did not only 
 stand upright but with their swords drawn." His speech 
 was a spark that fell into a well-laid train ; scarcely can we 
 conceive the enthusiastic temper of the house of commons, at 
 that moment, when, after some debate, they entered into a 
 vow to preserve " the articles of religion established by par- 
 liament, in the thirteenth year of our late Queen Elizabeth ! 99 
 and this vow was immediately followed up by a petition to 
 the king for a fast for the increasing miseries of the reformed 
 churches abroad. Parliaments are liable to have their pas- 
 sions ! Some of these enthusiasts were struck by a panic, 
 not perhaps warranted by the danger, of " Jesuits and Armi- 
 nians." The king answered them in good humour ; observ- 
 ing, however, on the state of the reformed abroad, " that 
 fighting would do them more good than fasting." He granted 
 them their fast, but they would now grant no return ; for now 
 they presented " a Declaration " to the king, that tonnage and 
 poundage must give precedency to religion ! The king's 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 409 
 
 answer still betrays no ill temper. He confessed that he did 
 not think that " religion was in so much danger as they 
 affirmed." He reminds them of tonnage and poundage ; " I 
 do not so much desire it out of greediness of the thing, as out 
 of a desire to put an end to those questions that arise be- 
 tween me and some of my subjects." 
 
 Never had the king been more moderate in his claims, or 
 more tender in his style ; and never had the commons been 
 more fierce, and never, in truth, so utterly inexorable ! Often 
 kings are tyrannical, and sometimes are parliaments ! A 
 body corporate, with the infection of passion, may perform 
 acts of injustice equally with the individual who abuses the 
 power with which he is invested. It was insisted that 
 Charles should give up the receivers of the customs, who 
 were denounced as capital enemies to the king and kingdom ; 
 while those who submitted to the duties, were declared guilty 
 as accessories. When Sir John Eliot was pouring forth in- 
 vectives against some courtiers — however they may have 
 merited the blast of his eloquence — he was sometimes inter- 
 rupted and sometimes cheered, for the stinging personal- 
 ities. The timid Speaker refusing to put the question, 
 suffered a severe reprimand from Selden : " If you will not 
 put it, we must sit still, and thus we shall never be able 
 to do any thing ! " The house adjourned in great heat ; the 
 dark prognostic of their next meeting, which Sir Symonds 
 d'Ewes has remarked in his Diary as " the most gloomy, sad, 
 and dismal day for England that happened for five hundred 
 years ! " 
 
 On this fatal day,* the Speaker still refusing to put the 
 question, and announcing the king's command for an adjourn- 
 ment, Sir John Eliot stood up ! The Speaker attempted to 
 leave the chair, but two members, who had placed themselves 
 on each side, forcibly kept him down — Eliot, who had pre- 
 pared "a short declaration," flung down a paper on the floor, 
 crying out that it might be read ! His party vociferated for 
 * Monday, 2d of March, 1629. 
 
410 SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST 
 
 the reading — others that it should not. A sudden tumult 
 broke out ; Coriton, a fervent patriot, struck another member, 
 and many laid their hands on their swords.* " Shall we," 
 said one, " be sent home as we were last sessions, turned off 
 like scattered sheep?" The weeping, trembling Speaker, 
 still persisting in what he held to be his duty, was dragged to 
 and fro by opposite parties; but neither he nor the clerk 
 would read the paper, though the Speaker was bitterly re- 
 proached by his kinsman, Sir Peter Hayman, " as the dis- 
 grace of his country, and a blot to a noble family." Eliot, 
 finding the house so strongly divided, undauntedly snatching 
 up the paper, said, " I shall then express that by my tongue 
 which this paper should have done." Denzil Holies assumed 
 the character of Speaker, putting the question : it was re- 
 turned by the acclamations of the party. The doors were 
 locked and the keys laid on the table. The king sent for the 
 Serjeant and mace, but the messenger could obtain no admit- 
 tance — the usher of the black-rod met no more regard. The 
 king then ordered out his guard — in the meanwhile the pro- 
 test was completed. The door was flung open, the rush of 
 the members was so impetuous that the crowd carried away 
 among them the Serjeant and the usher, in the confusion and 
 riot. Many of the members were struck by horror amidst 
 this conflict, it was a sad image of the future ! Several of 
 the patriots were committed to the Tower. The king on dis- 
 solving this parliament, which was the last till the memorable 
 " Long Parliament," gives us, at least, his idea of it : — " It is 
 far from me to judge all the House alike guilty, for there are 
 there as dutiful subjects as any in the world ; it being but 
 some few vipers among them that did cast this mist of undu- 
 tifulness over most of their eyes." f 
 
 * It was imagined out of doors that swords had been drawn ; for a Welsh 
 page running in great haste, when he heard the noise, to the door, cried 
 out, " I pray you let hur in! let hur in! to give hur master his sword ! " 
 — Manuscript Letter. 
 
 t At the time many undoubtedly considered that it was a mere faction 
 in the house. Sir Symonds d'Ewes was certainly no politician — but, un- 
 
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 411 
 
 Thus have I traced, step by step, the secret history of 
 Charles the First and his early Parliaments. I have entered 
 into their feelings, while I have supplied new facts, to make 
 every thing as present and as true as my faithful diligence 
 could repeat the tale. It was necessary that I should some- 
 times judge of the first race of our patriots as some of their 
 contemporaries did ; but it was impossible to avoid correcting 
 these notions by the more enlarged views of their posterity. 
 This is the privilege of an historian and the philosophy of his 
 art. There is no apology for the king, nor any declamation 
 for the subject. Were we only to decide by the final results of 
 this great conflict, of which what we have here narrated is but 
 the faint beginning, we should confess that Sir John Eliot 
 and his party were the first fathers of our political existence ; 
 and we should not withhold from them the inexpressible grat- 
 itude of a nation's freedom ! But human infirmity mortifies 
 us in the noblest pursuits of man ; and we must be taught 
 this penitential and chastising wisdom. The story of our 
 patriots is involved ; Charles appears to have been lowering 
 those high notions of his prerogative, which were not peculiar 
 to him, and was throwing himself on the bosom of his people. 
 The severe and unrelenting conduct of Sir John Eliot, his 
 prompt eloquence and bold invective, well fitted him for the 
 leader of a party. He was the lodestone, drawing together 
 the looser particles of iron. Never sparing, in the monarch, 
 the errors of the man, never relinquishing his royal prey, 
 which he had fastened on, Eliot, with Dr. Turner and some 
 others, contributed to make Charles disgusted with all parlia- 
 ments. Without any dangerous concessions, there was more 
 than one moment when they might have reconciled the sov- 
 
 questionably, his ideas were not peculiar to himself. Of the last third 
 parliament he delivers this opinion in his Diary: " I cannot deem but the 
 greater part of the house were morally honest men ; but these were the 
 least guilty of the fatal breach, being only misled by some other Machiavelian 
 politics, who seemed zealous for the liberty of the commonivealth, and by that 
 means, in the moving of their outward freedom, drew the votes of those 
 good men to their side." 
 
412 
 
 THE RUMP. 
 
 ereign to themselves, and not have driven him to the fatal 
 resource of attempting to reign without a parliament ! * 
 
 THE RUMP. 
 
 Text and commentary ! The French Revolution abounds 
 with wonderful "explanatory notes" on the English. It has 
 cleared up many obscure passages — and in the political 
 history of Man, both pages must be read together. 
 
 The opprobrious and ludicrous nickname of " the Rump " 
 stigmatized a faction which played the same part in the 
 English Revolution as the " Montagne " of the Jacobins did 
 in the French. It has been imagined that our English 
 Jacobins were impelled by a principle different from that of 
 their modern rivals ; but the madness of avowed atheism, 
 and the frenzy of hypocritical sanctity, in the circle of crimes 
 meet at the same point. Their history forms one of those 
 useful parallels where, with truth as unerring as mathemati- 
 cal demonstration, we discover the identity of human nature. 
 Similarity of situation, and certain principles, producing 
 similar personages and similar events, finally settle in the 
 same results. The Rump, as long as human nature exists, 
 can be nothing but the Rump, however it may be thrown 
 uppermost. 
 
 The origin of this political by-name has often been inquired 
 into ; and it is somewhat curious, that, though all parties con- 
 sent to reprobate it, each assigns for it a different allusion. 
 In the history of political factions there is always a mixture 
 of the ludicrous with the tragic ; but, except their modern 
 brothers, no faction, like the present, ever excited such a 
 combination of extreme contempt and extreme horror. 
 
 * Since the publication of the present article, I have composed my 
 M Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First," in five vol- 
 umes. 
 
THE RUMP. 
 
 413 
 
 Among the rival parties in 1G59, the loyalists and the 
 presbyterians acted, as we may suppose the Tories and the 
 Whigs would in the same predicament ; a secret reconcilia- 
 tion had taken place, to bury in oblivion their former jeal- 
 ousies, that they might unite to rid themselves from that 
 tyranny of tyrannies, a hydra-headed government ; or, as 
 Hume observes, that " all efforts should be used for the over- 
 throw of the Rump ; so they called the parliament, in allu- 
 sion to that part of the animal body." The sarcasm of the 
 allusion seemed obvious to our polished historian ; yet, look- 
 ing more narrowly for its origin, we shall find how indistinct 
 were the notions of this nickname among those who lived 
 nearer to the times. Evelyn says, that " the Rump parlia- 
 ment was so called, as containing some few rotten members 
 of the other." Roger Coke describes it thus ; " You must 
 now be content with a piece of the Commons, called ' the 
 Rump.'" And Carte calls the Rump, "the carcass of a 
 House," and seems not precisely aware of the contemptuous 
 allusion. But how do " rotten members," and " a carcass," 
 agree with the notion of " a Rump ? " Recently the editor 
 of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson has conveyed a novel 
 origin. " The number of the members of the Long Parlia- 
 ment having been by seclusion, death, &c. very much re- 
 duced," — a remarkable &c. this ! by which our editor seems 
 adroitly to throw a veil over the forcible transportation by 
 the Ruinpers of two hundred members at one swoop, — " the 
 remainder was compared to the rump of a fowl which was 
 left, all the rest being eaten." Our editor even considers this 
 to be " a coarse emblem ; " yet " the rump of a fowl " could 
 hardly offend even a lady's delicacy ! Our editor, probably, 
 was somewhat anxious not to degrade too lowly the antimon- 
 archical party, designated by this opprobrious term. Per- 
 haps it is pardonable in Mrs. Macaulay, an historical lady, 
 and a " Rumper," for she calls the " Levellers " " a brave 
 and virtuous party," to have passed over in her history any 
 mention of the offensive term at all, as well as the ridiculous 
 
414 
 
 THE RUMP. 
 
 catastrophe which they underwent in the political revolution, 
 which however we must beg leave not to pass by. 
 
 This party-coinage has been ascribed to Clement "Walker, 
 their bitter antagonist; who, having sacrificed no inconsider- 
 able fortune to the cause of what he considered constitu- 
 tional liberty, was one of the violent ejected members of the 
 Long Parliament, and perished in prison, a victim to honest 
 unbending principles. His " History of Independency " is a 
 rich legacy bequeathed to posterity, of all their great mis- 
 doings, and their petty villainies, and, above all, of their 
 secret history. One likes to know of what blocks the idols 
 of the people are sometimes carved out. 
 
 Clement Walker notices " the votes and acts of this fag 
 end; this rump of a parliament, with corrupt maggots in 
 it." * This hideous, but descriptive image of " The Rump " 
 had, however, got forward before ; for the collector of " the 
 Rump Songs " tells us, " If you ask who named it Ramp, 
 know 'twas so styled in an honest sheet of prayer, called 
 * The Bloody Rump,' written before the trial of our late 
 sovereign ; but the word obtained not universal notice, till it 
 flew from the mouth of Major-General Brown, at a public 
 assembly in the days of Richard Cromwell." Thus it hap- 
 pens that a stinging nickname has been frequently applied to 
 render a faction eternally odious ; and the chance expression 
 of a wit, when adopted on some public occasion, circulates 
 among a whole people. The present nickname originated 
 in derision on the expulsion of the majority of the Long 
 Parliament, by the usurping minority. It probably slept ; 
 for who would have stirred it through the Protectorate ? and 
 finally awakened at Richard's restored, but fleeting " Rump," 
 to witness its own ridiculous extinction. 
 
 Our Rump passed through three stages in its political 
 progress. Preparatory to the trial of the sovereign, the 
 anti-monarchical party constituted the minority in " the Long 
 Parliament:" the very by-name by which this parliament is 
 * History of Independency, Part II. p. 32. 
 
THE RUMP. 
 
 415 
 
 recognized seemed a grievance to an impatient people, vacil- 
 lating with chimerical projects of government, and now 
 accustomed, from a wild indefinite notion of political equality, 
 to pull down all existing institutions. Such was the temper 
 of the times, that an act of the most violent injustice, openly 
 performed, served only as the jest of the day, a jest which 
 has passed into history. The forcible expulsion of two 
 hundred of their brother members, by those who afterwards 
 were saluted as " The Rump," was called " Pride's Purge," 
 from the activity of a colonel of that name, a military ad- 
 venturer, who was only the blind and brutal instrument of 
 his party ; for when he stood at the door of the Commons, 
 holding a paper with the names of the members, he did not 
 personally know one ! And his " Purge " might have 
 operated a quite opposite effect, administered by his own 
 unskilful hand, had not Lord Grey of Groby, and the door- 
 keeper, — worthy dispersers of the British senate ! — pointed 
 out the obnoxious members, on whom our colonel laid his 
 hand, and sent off by his men to be detained, if a bold 
 member, or to be deterred from sitting in the house, if a 
 frightened one. This colonel had been a drayman ; and the 
 contemptible knot of the Commons, reduced to fifty or sixty 
 confederates, which assembled after his " Purge," were called 
 " Colonel Pride's Dray-Horses." 
 
 It was this Rump which voted the death of the sovereign, 
 and abolished the regal office, and the House of Peers — as 
 " unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous ! " Every office 
 in parliament seemed " dangerous," but that of the " Custodes 
 libertatis Anglise," the keepers of the liberties of England ! 
 or rather " the gaolers ! " " The legislative half-quarter of 
 the House of Commons ! " indignantly exclaims Clement 
 Walker — the " Montagne " of the French revolutionists ! 
 
 The " Red-coats," as the military were nicknamed, soon 
 taught their masters, " the Rumpers," silence and obedience : 
 the latter having raised one colossal man for their own pur- 
 pose, were annihilated by him at a single blow. Cromwell, 
 
THE RUMP. 
 
 five years after, turned them out of their house, and put tne 
 keys into his pocket. Their last public appearance was in 
 the fleeting days of Richard Cromwell, when the comi-tragedy 
 of " the Rump " concluded by a catastrophe as ludicrous as 
 that of Tom Thumb's tragedy ! 
 
 How such a faction used their instruments to gather in the 
 common spoil, and how their instruments at length converted 
 the hands which held them into instruments themselves, 
 appears in their history. When " the Long Parliament " 
 opposed the designs of Cromwell and Ire ton, these chiefs 
 cried up " the liberty of the people," and denied " the au- 
 thority of parliament:' 1 but when they had effectuated their 
 famous " purge," and formed a House of Commons of them- 
 selves, they abolished the House of Lords, crying up the 
 supreme authority of the House of Commons, and crying 
 down the liberty of the people. Such is the history of polit- 
 ical factions, as well as of statesmen ! Charles the Fifth 
 alternately made use of the Pope's authority to subdue the 
 rising spirit of the Protestants of Germany, or raised an army 
 of Protestants to imprison the Pope ! who branded his Ger- 
 man allies by the novel and odious name of Lutherans. A 
 chain of similar facts may be framed out of modern history. 
 
 The " Rump," as they were called by every one but their 
 own party, became a whetstone for the wits to sharpen them- 
 selves on ; and we have two large collections of " Rump 
 Songs," curious chronicles of popular feeling ! "Without this 
 evidence we should not have been so well informed respecting 
 the phases of this portentous phenomenon. " The Rump " 
 was celebrated in verse, till at length it became " the Rump 
 of a Rump of a Rump ! " as Foulis traces them to their dwin- 
 dled and grotesque appearance. It is portrayed by a wit of 
 the times — 
 
 " The Rump's an old story, if well understood, 
 'Tis a thing dress'd up in a parliament's hood, 
 And like it — but the tail stands where the head shou'd! 
 'T would make a man scratch where it does not itch ! 
 They say 'tis good luck when a body rises 
 
THE RUMP. 
 
 417 
 
 With the rump upwards ; but he that advises 
 To live in that posture, is none of the wisest." 
 
 Cromwell's hunting them out of the House by military 
 force is alluded to — 
 
 " Our politic doctors do us teach, 
 That a blood-sucking red-coat's as good as a leech 
 To relieve the head, if applied to the breech." 
 
 In the opening scene of the Restoration, Mrs. Hutchinson, 
 an honest republican, paints with dismay a scene otherwise 
 very ludicrous. " When the town of Nottingham, as almost 
 all the rest of the island, began to grow mad, and declared 
 themselves in their desires of the king ; " or, as another of the 
 opposite party writes, " When the soldiery, who had hitherto 
 made clubs trumps, resolved now to turn up the king of hearts 
 in their affections," the rabble in town and country vied with 
 each other in burning the " Rump ; " and the literal emblem 
 was hung by chains on gallowses, with a bonfire underneath, 
 while the cries of " Let us burn the Rump ! Let us roast the 
 Rump ! " were echoed everywhere. The suddenness of this 
 universal change, which was said to have maddened the wise, 
 and to have sobered the mad, must be ascribed to the joy at 
 escaping from the yoke of a military despotism ; perhaps, too, 
 it marked the rapid transition of hope to a restoration which 
 might be supposed to have implanted gratitude even in a 
 royal breast ! The feelings of the people expected to find an 
 echo from the throne ! 
 
 "The Rump," besides their general resemblance to the 
 French anarchists, had also some minuter features of ugliness, 
 which Englishmen have often exulted have not marked an 
 English revolution — sanguinary proscriptions ! We had 
 thought that we had no revolutionary tribunals ! no Septem- 
 brisers ! no noyades ! no movable guillotines awaiting for 
 carts loaded with human victims ! no infuriated republican 
 urging, in a committee of public safety, the necessity of a 
 salutary massacre ! 
 
 But if it be true that the same motives and the same prin- 
 
 VOL. IV. 27 
 
418 
 
 THE RUMP. 
 
 ciples were at work in both nations, and that the like charac- 
 ters were performing in England the parts which they did 
 afterwards in France, by an argument d priori we might be 
 sure that the same revolting crimes and chimerical projects 
 were alike suggested at London as at Paris. Human nature, 
 even in transactions which appear unparalleled, will be found 
 to preserve a regularity of resemblance not always suspected. 
 
 The first great tragic act was closely copied by the French : 
 and if the popular page of our history appears unstained by 
 their revolutionary axe, this depended only on a slight acci- 
 dent ; for it became a question of " yea " and " nay ! " and was 
 only carried in the negative by two voices in the council ! It 
 was debated among "the bloody Rump," as it was hideously 
 designated, " whether to massacre and to put to the sword all 
 the king's party ! " * Cromwell himself listened to the sug- 
 gestion ; and it was only put down by the coolness of political 
 calculation — the dread that the massacre would be too general ! 
 Some of the Rump not obtaining the blessedness of a mas- 
 sacre, still clung to the happiness of an immolation ; and 
 many petitions were presented, that " two or three principal 
 gentlemen of the royal party in each county might be sac- 
 rificed to justice, whereby the land might be saved from 
 blood-guiltiness ! " Sir Arthur Haslerigg, whose " passionate 
 fondness of liberty " has been commended, f was one of the 
 committee of safety in 1647 — I too would commend "a pas- 
 sionate lover of liberty," whenever I do not discover that this 
 lover is much more intent on the dower than on the bride. 
 Haslerigg, " an absurd, bold man," as Clarendon, at a single 
 stroke, reveals his character, was resolved not to be troubled 
 with king or bishop, or with any power in the state superior 
 to " the Rump's." We may safely suspect the patriot who 
 can cool his vehemence in spoliation. Haslerigg would have 
 
 * Clement Walker's History of Independency, Part II. p. 130. Con- 
 firmed by Barwick in his Life, p. 163. 
 
 t The Rev. Mark Noble's Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Crom- 
 well, i. 405. 
 
THE RUMP. 
 
 410 
 
 no bishops, but this was not from any want of reverence for 
 church lands, for he heaped for himself such wealth as to have 
 been nicknamed " the bishop of Durham ! " He is here noticed 
 for a political crime different from that of plunder. When, 
 in 1647, this venerable radical found the parliament resisting 
 his views, he declared that " Some heads must fly off ! " add- 
 ing " the parliament cannot save England ; we must look 
 another way ; " — threatening, what afterwards was done, to 
 bring in the army ! It was this " passionate lover of liberty " 
 who, when Dorislaus, the parliamentary agent, was assassi- 
 nated by some Scotchmen in Holland, moved in the house, 
 that " six royalists of the best quality " should be immediately 
 executed ! When some northern counties petitioned the Com- 
 mons for relief against a famine in the land, our Maratist ob- 
 served, that " this want of food would best defend those coun- 
 ties from Scottish invasion ! " * The slaughter of Drogheda 
 by Cromwell, and his frightening all London by what Walker 
 calls " a butchery of apprentices," when he cried out to his 
 soldiers " to kill man, woman, and child, and fire the city ! "f 
 may be placed among those crimes which are committed to 
 open a reign of terror — but Hugh Peters's solemn thanks- 
 giving to Heaven that " none were spared ! " was the true 
 expression of the true feeling of these political demoniacs. 
 Cromwell was cruel from politics, others from constitution. 
 Some were willing to be cruel without "blood-guiltiness." 
 One Alexander Rigby, a radical lawyer, twice moved in the 
 Long Parliament, that those lords and gentlemen who were 
 " malignants," should be sold as slaves to the Dey of Algiers, 
 or sent off to the new plantations in the West Indies. He 
 had all things prepared ; for it is added that he had contracted 
 with two merchants to ship them off. J There was a most 
 bloody-minded " maker of washing-balls," as one John Durant 
 is described, appointed a lecturer by the House of Commons, 
 
 * Clement Walker's History of Independency, Part II. 173. 
 t lb. Part I. 160. 
 
 \ Mercurius Rusticus, xii. 115. Barwick's Life, p. 42. 
 
420 
 
 THE RUMP. 
 
 who always left out of the Lord's prayer, " As we forgive 
 them that trespass against us, and substituted, " Lord, since 
 thou hast now drawn out thy sword, let it not be sheathed 
 again till it be glutted in the blood of the malignants." I find 
 too many enormities of this kind. " Cursed be he that doeth 
 the work of the Lord negligently, and keepeth back his sword 
 from blood ! " was the cry of the wretch, who, when a cele- 
 brated actor and royalist sued for quarter, gave no other reply 
 than that of " fitting the action to the word." Their treat- 
 ment of the Irish may possibly be admired by a true Machi- 
 avelist : " they permitted forty thousand of the Irish to enlist 
 in the service of the kings of Spain and France — in other 
 words, they expelled them at once, which, considering that 
 our Rumpers affected such an abhorrence of tyranny, may 
 be considered as an act of mercy ! satisfying themselves only 
 with dividing the forfeited lands of the aforesaid forty thou- 
 sand among their own party, by lot and other means." An 
 universal confiscation, after all, is a bloodless massacre. They 
 used the Scotch soldiers, after the battles of Dunbar and 
 Worcester a little differently — but equally efficaciously — for 
 they sold their Scotch prisoners for slaves to the American 
 planters.* 
 
 The Robespierres and the Marats were as extraordinary 
 beings, and in some respects the Frenchmen were working on 
 a more enlarged scheme. These discovered, that " the gen- 
 eration which had witnessed the preceding one would always 
 regret it; and for the security of the Revolution, it was 
 necessary that every person who was thirty years old in 1788 
 should perish on the scaffold ! " The anarchists were intent 
 
 * The following account is drawn from Sir William Dugdale's inter- 
 leaved Pocket-book for 1648. — "Aug. 17. The Scotch army, under the 
 command of Duke Hamilton, defeated at Preston, in Lancashire. 24th. 
 The Moorlanders rose upon the Scots and stript some of them. The Scotch 
 prisoners miserably used ; exposed to eat cabbage-leaves in Ridgley ( Staf- 
 fordshire), and carrot-tops in Coleshill (Warwickshire). The soldiers who 
 guarded them sold the victuals which were brought in for them from the 
 country." 
 
THE RUMP. 
 
 421 
 
 on reducing the French people to eight millions, and on 
 destroying the great cities of France. * 
 
 Such monstrous persons and events are not credible — but 
 this is no proof that they have not occurred. Many incredi- 
 ble things will happen ! 
 
 Another disorganizing feature in the English Rumpers was 
 also observed in the French Sans-culottes — their hatred of 
 literature and the arts. Hebert was one day directing his 
 satellites towards the Bibliotheque Nationale, to put an end 
 to all that human knowledge had collected for centuries on 
 centuries — in one day ! alleging, of course, some good reason. 
 This hero was only diverted from the enterprise by being 
 persuaded to postpone it for a day or two, when luckily the 
 guillotine intervened ; the same circumstance occurred here. 
 The burning of the records in the Tower was certainly pro- 
 posed ; a speech of Selden's, which I cannot immediately 
 turn to, put a stop to these incendiaries. It w T as debated in 
 the Rump parliament, when Cromwell was general, whether 
 they should dissolve the universities ? They concluded that 
 no university was necessary ; that there were no ancient 
 examples of such education, and that scholars in other coun- 
 tries did study at their own cost and charges, and therefore 
 they looked on them as unnecessary, and thought them fitting 
 to be taken away for the public use! — How these venerable 
 asylums escaped from being sold with the king's pictures, as 
 stone and timber, and why their rich endowments were not 
 shared among such inveterate ignorance and remorseless 
 spoliation, might claim some inquiry. 
 
 The Abbe Morellet, a great political economist, imagined 
 that the source of all the crimes of the French Revolution 
 was their violation of the sacred rights of property. The 
 perpetual invectives of the Sans-culottes of France against 
 proprietors and against property proceeded from demoralized 
 beings who formed panegyrics on all crimes ; crimes, to ex- 
 plain whose revolutionary terms, a new dictionary was re- 
 
 * Desodoard's Histoire Philosophique de la Revolution de France, iv. 5. 
 
422 
 
 THE RUMP. 
 
 quired. But even these anarchists, in their mad expres- 
 sions against property, and in their wildest notions of their 
 "egalite," have not gone beyond the daring of our own 
 u Rumpers ! " 
 
 Of those revolutionary journals of the parliament of 1 649, 
 which in spirit so strongly resemble the diurnal or hebdoma- 
 dal effusions of the redoubtable French Hebert, Marat, and 
 others of that stamp, one of the most remarkable is, " The 
 Moderate, impartially communicating Martial Affairs to the 
 Kingdom of England ; " the monarchical title our common- 
 wealth men had not yet had time enough to obliterate from 
 their colloquial style. This writer called himself, in his 
 barbarous English, The Moderate ! It would be hard to 
 conceive the meanness and illiteracy to which the English 
 language was reduced under the pens of the rabble-writers 
 of these days, had we not witnessed in the present time a 
 parallel to their compositions. " The Moderate ! " was a title 
 assumed on the principle on which Marat denominated him- 
 self "l'Ami du Peuple." It is curious that the most fero- 
 cious politicians usually assert their moderation. Robespierre, 
 in his justification, declares that Marat " m'a souvent accuse 
 de Mode'rantisme." The same actors, playing the same parts, 
 may be always paralleled in their language and their deeds. 
 This "Moderate" steadily pursued one great principle — the 
 overthrow of all property. Assuming that property was the 
 original cause of sin ! an exhortation to the people for this 
 purpose is the subject of the present paper : * the illustration 
 of his principle is as striking as the principle itself. 
 
 It is an apology for, or rather a defence of robbery ! Some 
 moss-troopers had been condemned to be hanged, for practis- 
 ing their venerable custom of gratuitously supplying them- 
 selves from the flocks and herds of their weaker neighbours : 
 our " Moderate " ingeniously discovers, that the loss of these 
 men's lives is to be attributed to nothing but property. They 
 
 * The Moderate, from Tuesday, July 31, to August 7, 1649. 
 
THE RUMP. 
 
 423 
 
 are necessitated to offend the laws, in order to obtain a liveli- 
 hood ! 
 
 On this he descants ; and the extract is a political curiosity, 
 in the French style ! " Property is the original cause of any 
 sin between party and party as to civil transactions. And 
 since the tyrant is taken off, and the government altered in 
 nomine, so ought it really to redound to the good of the 
 people in specie ; which, though they cannot expect it in few 
 years, by reason of the multiplicity of the gentlemen in au- 
 thority, command, &c. who drive on all designs for support 
 of the old government, and consequently their own interest 
 and the people's slavery, yet they doubt not, but in time the 
 people will herein discern their own blindness and folly." 
 
 In September, he advanced with more depth of thought. 
 u Wars have ever been clothed with the most gracious pre- 
 tences — viz: reformation of religion, the laws of the land, the 
 liberty of the subject, &c. ; though the effects thereof have 
 proved most destructive to every nation ; making the sword, 
 and not the people, the original of all authorities for many 
 hundred years together, taking away each maris birthright, 
 and settling upon a few a cursed propriety; the ground 
 of all civil offences, and the greatest cause of most sins 
 against the heavenly Deity. This tyranny and oppression 
 running through the veins of many of our predecessors, and 
 being too long maintained by the sword upon a royal foun- 
 dation, at last became so customary, as to the vulgar it seemed 
 most natural — the only reason why the people of this time 
 are so ignorant of their birthright, their only freedom," &c. 
 
 " The birthright " of citoyen Egalite to " a cursed propri- 
 ety settled on a few-" was not, even among the French Jaco- 
 bins, urged with more amazing force. Had things proceeded 
 according to our " Moderate's " plan, " the people's slavery " 
 had been something worse. In a short time the nation would 
 have had more proprietors than property. We have a curi- 
 ous list of the spoliations of those members of the House of 
 Commons, who, after their famous self-denying ordinances, 
 
424 THE RUMP. 
 
 appropriated among themselves sums of money, offices, and 
 lands, for services " done or to be done." 
 
 The most innocent of this new government of " the Majesty 
 of the People," were those whose talents had been limited by 
 Nature to peddle and purloin ; puny mechanics, who had sud- 
 denly dropped their needles, their hammers, and their lasts, 
 and slunk out from behind their shop-counters ; those who 
 had never aspired beyond the constable of the parish, were 
 now seated in the council of state ; where, as Milton describes 
 them, " they fell to huckster the commonwealth : " there they 
 met a more rabid race of obscure lawyers, and discontented 
 men of family, of blasted reputations ; adventurers, who were 
 to command the militia and navy of England, — governors of 
 the three kingdoms ! whose votes and ordinances resounded 
 with nothing else but new impositions, new taxes, excises, 
 yearly, monthly, weekly sequestrations, compositions, and 
 universal robbery ! 
 
 Baxter vents one deep groan of indignation, and presciently 
 announces one future consequence of Reform ! " In all this 
 appeared the severity of God, the mutability of worldly things, 
 and the fruits of error, pride, and selfishness, to be charged 
 hereafter upon reformation and religion." As a statesman, 
 the sagacity of this honest prophet was narrowed by the hori- 
 zon of his religious views ; for he ascribes the whole as 
 " prepared by Satan to the injury of the Protestant cause, 
 and the advantage of the Papists ! " But dropping his par- 
 ticular application to the devil and the Papists, honest Richard 
 Baxter is perfectly right in his general principle concerning 
 * Rumpers,"— " Sans-culottes," and " Radicals." 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 425 
 
 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY.— 
 OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Such a picture may be furnished by some unexpected 
 materials which my inquiries have obtained of Oldys. Tins 
 is a sort of personage little known to the wits, who write 
 more than they read, and to their volatile votaries, who only 
 read what the wits write. It is time to vindicate the honours 
 of the few whose laborious days enrich the stores of national 
 literature, not by the duplicates but the supplements of knowl- 
 edge. A literary antiquary is that idler whose life is passed 
 in a perpetual voyage autour de ma chambre ; fervent in 
 sagacious diligence, instinct with the enthusiasm of curious 
 inquiry, critical as well as erudite ; he has to arbitrate between 
 contending opinions, to resolve the doubtful, to clear up the 
 obscure, and to grasp at the remote ; so busied with other 
 times, and so interested for other persons than those about 
 him, that he becomes the inhabitant of the visionary world of 
 books. He counts only his days by his acquisitions, and may 
 be said by his original discoveries to be the creator of 
 facts ; often exciting the gratitude of the literary world, 
 while the very name of the benefactor has not always de- 
 scended with the inestimable labours. 
 
 Such is the man whom we often find leaving, when he dies, 
 his favourite volumes only an incomplete project ! and few 
 of this class of literary men have escaped the fate reserved 
 for most of their brothers. Voluminous works have been 
 usually left unfinished by the death of the authors ; and it is 
 with them as with the planting of trees, of which Johnson 
 has forcibly observed, " There is a frightful interval between 
 the seed and timber/' And he admirably remarks, what I 
 cannot forbear applying to the labours I am now to describe : 
 " He that calculates the growth of trees has the remembrance 
 of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows 
 that he is doing what will never benefit himself ; and when he 
 
426 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 rejoices to see the stem rise, is disposed to repine that another 
 shall cut it down." The days of the patriotic Count Mazzu- 
 chelli were freely given to his national literature ; and six 
 invaluable folios attest the gigantic force of his immense eru- 
 dition ; yet these only carry us through the letters A and B : 
 and though Mazzuchelli had finished for the press other vol- 
 umes, the torpor of his descendants has defrauded Europe of 
 her claims. The Abbe Goujet, who had designed a classitied 
 history of his national literature, in the eighteen volumes we 
 possess, could only conclude that of the translators, and com- 
 mence that of the poets ; two other volumes in manuscript 
 have perished. That great enterprise of the Benedictines, 
 the " Histoire Literaire de la France," now consists of twelve 
 large quartos, and the industry of its successive writers has 
 only been able to carry it to the twelfth century. David 
 Clement designed the most extensive bibliography which had 
 ever appeared ; but the diligent life of the writer could only 
 proceed as far as H. The alphabetical order, which so many 
 writers of this class have adopted, has proved a mortifying 
 memento of human life ! Tiraboschi was so fortunate as to 
 complete his great national history of Italian literature. But, 
 unhappily for us, Thomas Warton, after feeling his way 
 through the darker ages of our poetry, in planning the map 
 of the beautiful land, of which he had only a Pisgah-sight, 
 expired amidst his volumes. The most precious portion of 
 "Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment. 
 
 Oldys, among this brotherhood, has met perhaps with a 
 harder fate ; his published works, and the numerous ones to 
 which he contributed, are now highly appreciated by the 
 lovers of books ; but the larger portion of his literary labours 
 have met with the sad fortune of dispersed, and probably 
 of wasted manuscripts. Oldys's manuscripts, or 0. M. as they 
 are sometimes designated, are constantly referred to by every 
 distinguished writer on our literary history. I believe that 
 not one of them could have given us any positive account of 
 the manuscripts themselves ! They have indeed long served 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 427 
 
 as the solitary sources of information — but like the well at 
 the way-side, too many have drawn their waters in silence. 
 
 Oldys is chiefly known by the caricature of the facetious 
 Grose ; a great humorist, both with pencil and with pen : it is 
 in a posthumous scrap-book, where Grose deposited his odd3 
 and ends, and where there is perhaps not a single story which 
 is not satirical. Our lively antiquary, who cared more for 
 rusty armour than for rusty volumes, would turn over these 
 flams and quips to some confidential friend, to enjoy together 
 a secret laugh at their literary intimates. His eager executor, 
 who happened to be his bookseller, served up the poignant 
 hash to the public as " Grose's Olio ! " The delineation of 
 Oldys is sufficiently overcharged for " the nonce." One 
 prevalent infirmity of honest Oldys, his love of companion- 
 ship over too social a glass, sends him down to posterity in a 
 grotesque attitude ; and Mr. Alexander Chalmers, who has 
 given us the fullest account of Oldys, has inflicted on him 
 something like a sermon, on " a state of intoxication." 
 
 Alas ! — Oldys was an outcast of fortune, and the utter 
 simplicity of his heart was guileless as a child's — ever open 
 to the designing. The noble spirit of a Duke of Norfolk 
 once rescued the long-lost historian of Rawleigh from the 
 confinement of the Fleet, where he had existed, probably for- 
 gotten by the world, for six years. It was by an act of grace 
 that the duke safely placed Oldys in the Heralds' College as 
 Norroy King of Arms.* But Oldys, like all shy and retired 
 
 * Mr. John Taylor, the son of Oldys's intimate friend, has furnished me 
 with this interesting anecdote. " Oldys, as my father informed me, was 
 many years in quiet obscurity in the Fleet prison, but at last was spirited 
 up to make his situation known to the Duke of Norfolk of that time, who 
 received Oldys's letter while he was at dinner with some friends. The 
 Duke immediately communicated the contents to the company, observing 
 that he had long been anxious to know what had become of an old, though 
 an humble friend, and was happy by that letter to find that he was alive. 
 He then called for his gentleman, (a kind of humble friend whom noblemen 
 used to retain under that name in those days,) and desired him to go im- 
 mediately to the Fleet, to take money for the immediate need of Oldys, to 
 procure an account of his debts, and discharge them. Oldys was soon 
 
428 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 men, had contracted peculiar habits and close attachments for 
 a few ; both these he could indulge at no distance. He liked 
 his old associates in the purlieus of the Fleet, whom he face- 
 tiously dignified as " his Rulers," and there, as I have heard, 
 with the grotesque whim of a herald, established " The 
 Dragon Club." Companionship yields the poor man unpur- 
 chased pleasures. Oldys, busied every morning, among the 
 departed wits and the learned of our country, reflected some 
 image from them of their wit and learning to his companions : 
 a secret history as yet untold, and ancient wit, which, cleared 
 of the rust, seemed to him brilliant as the modern ! 
 
 It is hard, however, for a literary antiquary to be carica- 
 tured, and for a herald to be ridiculed about an " unseemly 
 reeling, with the coronet of the Princess Caroline, which 
 looked unsteady on the cushion, to the great scandal of his 
 brethren," — a circumstance which could never have occurred 
 at the burial of a prince or princess, as the coronet is carried 
 by Clarencieux, and not by Norroy. Oldys's deep potations 
 of ale, however, give me an opportunity of bestowing on 
 him the honour of being the author of a popular Anacreontic 
 song. Mr. Taylor informs me that " Oldys always asserted 
 that he was the author of the well-known song — 
 
 1 Busy, curious, thirsty fly ! ' 
 
 and as he was a rigid lover of truth, I doubt not that he 
 wrote it." My own researches confirm it ; I have traced this 
 popular song through a dozen of collections since the year 
 1740, the first in which I find it. In the later collections an 
 original inscription has been dropped, which the accurate 
 
 after, either by the duke's gift or interest, appointed Norroy King of Arms, 
 and I remember that his official regalia came into my father's hands at his 
 death." 
 
 In the Life of Oldys, by Mr. A. Chalmers, the date of this promotion is 
 not found. My accomplished friend, the Rev. J. Dallaway. has obligingly 
 examined the records of the college, by which it appears that Oldys had 
 been Norfolk herald extraordinary, but not belonging to the college, was 
 appointed per saltum Norroy King of Arms by patent, May 5th, 1755. 
 
OLDYS AND ins MANUSCRIPTS. 420 
 
 Ritson has restored, without, however, being able to discover 
 the writer. In 1740 it is said to have been " made extem- 
 pore by a gentleman, occasioned by a fly drinking out of his 
 cup of ale ; " — the accustomed potion of poor Oldys ! * 
 
 Grose, however, though a great joker on the peculiarities 
 of Oldys, was far from insensible to the extraordinary acqui- 
 sitions of the man. " His knowledge of English books has 
 hardly been exceeded." Grose too was struck by the deli- 
 cacy of honour, and the unswerving veracity which so strongly 
 characterized Oldys, of which he gives a remarkable instance. 
 We are concerned in ascertaining the moral integrity of the 
 writer, whose main business is with history. 
 
 At a time when our literary history, excepting in the soli- 
 tary labour of Anthony Wood, was a forest, with neither road 
 nor pathway, Oldys, fortunately placed in the library of the 
 Earl of Oxford, yielded up his entire days to researches con- 
 cerning the books and the men of the preceding age. His 
 labours were then valueless, their very nature not yet ascer- 
 tained, and when he opened the treasures of our ancient lore, 
 
 * The beautiful simplicity of this Anacreontic has met the unusual fate 
 of entirely losing its character, by an additional and incongruous stanza in 
 the modern editions, by a gentleman who has put into practice the unal- 
 lowable liberty of altering the poetical and dramatic compositions of ac- 
 knowledged genius to his own notion of what he deems " morality; " but 
 in works of genius whatever is dull ceases to be moral. " The Fly " of 
 Oldys may stand by " The Fly of Gray for melancholy tenderness of 
 thought ; it consisted only of these two stanzas : 
 
 " Busy, curious, thirsty fly ! 
 Drink with me, and drink as I ! 
 Freely welcome to my cup, 
 Couldst thou sip and sip it up : 
 Make the most of life you may; 
 Life is short and wears away ! 
 
 Both alike are mine and thine, 
 Hastening quick to their decline ! 
 Thine' s a summer, mine no more, 
 Though repeated to threescore ! 
 Threescore summers when they're gone, 
 Will appear as short as one ! " 
 
430 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 in " The British Librarian," it was closed for want of public 
 encouragement. Our writers, then struggling to create an 
 age of genius of their own, forgot that they had had any pro- 
 genitors ; or, while they were acquiring new modes of excel- 
 lence, that they were losing others, to which their posterity 
 or the national genius might return. (To know, and to 
 admire only, the literature and the tastes of our own age, is a 
 species of elegant barbarism.) * Spenser was considered 
 nearly as obsolete as Chaucer ; Milton was veiled by oblivion, 
 and Shakspeare's dramas were so imperfectly known, that in 
 looking over the play-bills of 1711, and much later, I find 
 that whenever it chanced that they were acted, they were 
 always announced to have been " written by Shakspeare." 
 Massinger was unknown ; and Jonson, though called " im- 
 mortal" in the old play-bills, lay entombed in his two folios. 
 The poetical era of Elizabeth, the eloquent age of James the 
 First, and the age of wit of Charles the Second, were blanks 
 in our literary history. Bysshe compiling an Art of Poetry, 
 in 1718, passed by in his collection " Spenser and the poets 
 of las age, because their language is now become so obsolete, 
 that most readers of our age have no ear for them, and there- 
 fore Shakspeare himself is so rarely cited in my collection." 
 The best English poets were considered to be the modem ; a 
 taste which is always obstinate ! 
 
 All this was nothing to Oldys ; his literary curiosity antici- 
 pated by half a century the fervour of the present day. This 
 energetic direction of all his thoughts was sustained by that 
 life of discovery, which in literary researches is starting 
 novelties among old and unremembered things ; contemplat- 
 ing some ancient tract as precious as a manuscript, or revel- 
 ling in the volume of a poet, whose passport of fame was yet 
 delayed in its way ; or disinterring the treasure of some 
 
 * We have been taught to enjoy the two ages of Genius and of Taste. 
 The literary public are deeply indebted to the editorial care, the taste, 
 and the enthusiasm of Mr. Singer, for exquisite reprints of some valuable 
 writers. 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 431 
 
 secluded manuscript, whence he drew a virgin extract; or 
 raising up a sort of domestic intimacy with the eminent in 
 arms, in politics, and in literature, in this visionary life, life 
 itself with Oldys was insensibly gliding away — its cares 
 almost unfelt ! 
 
 The life of a literary antiquary partakes of the nature of 
 those who, having no concerns of their own, busy themselves 
 with those of others. Oldys lived in the back ages of Eng- 
 land ; he had crept among the dark passages of Time, till, 
 like an old gentleman-usher, he seemed to be reporting the 
 secret history of the courts which he had lived in. He had 
 been charmed among their masques and revels, had eyed 
 with astonishment their cumbrous magnificence, when knights 
 and ladies carried on their mantles and their cloth of gold 
 ten thousand pounds' worth of ropes of pearls, and buttons 
 of diamonds ; or, descending to the gay court of the second 
 Charles, he tattled merry tales, as in that of the first he had 
 painfully watched, like a patriot or a loyalist, a distempered 
 era. He had lived so constantly with these people of another 
 age, and had so deeply interested himself in their affairs, and 
 so loved the wit and the learning which are often bright 
 under the rust of antiquity, that his own uncourtly style is 
 embrowned with the tint of a century old. But it was this 
 taste and curiosity which alone could have produced the ex- 
 traordinary volume of Sir Walter Rawleigh's life ; a work 
 richly inlaid with the most curious facts and the juxtaposition 
 of the most remote knowledge ; to judge by its fulness of 
 narrative, it would seem rather to have been the work of a 
 contemporary. * 
 
 It was an advantage in this primaeval era of literary curi- 
 osity, that those volumes which are now not even to be found 
 in our national library, where certainly they are perpetually 
 
 * Gibbon once meditated a life of Rawleigh, and for that purpose began 
 some researches in that " memorable era of our English annals." After 
 reading Oldys's, he relinquished his design, from a conviction that "he 
 could add nothing new to the subject, except the uncertain merit of style 
 and sentiment." 
 
432 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 wanted, and which are now so excessively appreciated, were 
 exposed on stalls, through the reigns of Anne and the two 
 Georges.* Oldys encountered no competitor, cased in the 
 invulnerable mail of his purse, to dispute his possession of the 
 rarest volume. On the other hand, our early collector did 
 not possess our advantages ; he could not fly for instant aid 
 to a " Biographia Britannica," he had no history of our 
 poetry, nor even of our drama. Oldys could tread in no 
 man's path, for every soil about him was unbroken ground. 
 He had to create every thing for his own purposes. We 
 gather fruit from trees which others have planted, and too 
 often we but " pluck and eat." 
 
 Nulla dies sine linea, was his sole hope while he was accu- 
 mulating masses of notes ; and as Oldys never used his pen 
 from the weak passion of scribbling, but from the urgency of 
 preserving some substantial knowledge, or planning some 
 future inquiry, he amassed nothing but what he wished to 
 remember. Even the minuter pleasures of settling a date, 
 or classifying a title-page, were enjoyments to his incessant 
 pen. Every thing was acquisition. This never-ending busi- 
 ness of research appears to have absorbed his powers, and 
 sometimes, to have dulled his conceptions. No one more 
 aptly exercised the tact of discovery ; he knew where to feel 
 in the dark : but he was not of the race — that race indeed 
 had not yet appeared among us — who could melt, into their 
 Corinthian brass, the mingled treasures of Research, Imagi- 
 nation, and Philosophy ! 
 
 We may be curious to inquire where our literary antiquary 
 deposited the discoveries and curiosities which he was so in- 
 cessantly acquiring. They were dispersed, on many a fly- 
 leaf, in occasional memorandum-books; in ample marginal 
 notes on his authors — they were sometimes thrown into what 
 he calls his " parchment budgets " or " Bags of Biography — 
 
 * The British Museum is extremely deficient in our National Literature. 
 The gift of George the Third's library has, however, probably supplied 
 many deficiencies. 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 433 
 
 of Botany — of Obituary " — of " Books relative to London," 
 and other titles and bags, which he was every day filling. 
 Sometimes his collections seem to have been intended for a 
 series of volumes, for he refers to " My first Volume of Ta- 
 bles of the eminent Persons celebrated by English Poets " — 
 to another of " Poetical Characteristics." Among those 
 manuscripts which I have seen, I find one mentioned, appar- 
 ently of a wide circuit, under the reference of " My Bio- 
 graphical Institutions. Part third ; containing a Catalogue 
 of all the English Lives, with Historical and Critical Obser- 
 vations on them." But will our curious or our whimsical 
 collectors of the present day endure, without impatience, the 
 loss of a quarto manuscript, which bears this rich condiment 
 for its title — " Of London Libraries ; with Anecdotes of Col- 
 lectors of Books ; Remarks on Booksellers ; and on the first 
 Publishers of Catalogues?" Oldys left ample annotations 
 on " Fuller's Worthies," and " Winstanley's Lives of the 
 Poets," and on " Langbaine's Dramatic Poets." The late 
 Mr. Boswell showed me a Fuller in the Malone collection, 
 with Steevens's transcriptions of Oldys's notes, which Malone 
 purchased for £43 at Steevens's sale; but where is the origi- 
 nal copy of Oldys ? The " Winstanley," I think, also reposes 
 in the same collection. The " Langbaine " is far-famed, and 
 is preserved in the British Museum, the gift of Dr. Birch ; 
 it has been considered so precious, that several of our eminent 
 writers have cheerfully passed through the labour of a minute 
 transcription of its numberless notes. In the history of the 
 fate and fortune of books, that of Oldys's Langbaine is too 
 curious to omit. Oldys may tell his own story, which I find 
 in the Museum copy, p. 336, and which copy appears to be 
 a second attempt ; for of the Jirst Langbaine we have this 
 account : — 
 
 When I left London in 1724, to reside in Yorkshire, I left in the care of 
 the Rev. Mr. Burridge's family, with whom I had several years lodged, 
 among many other books, goods, &c. a copy of this Langbaine, in which 
 I had wrote several notes and references to further knowledge of these 
 poets. When I returned to London, 1730, 1 understood my books had been 
 
 VOL. IV. 28 
 
434 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 dispersed; and afterwards becoming acquainted with Mr. T. Coxeter, I 
 found that he had bought my Langbaine of a bookseller who was a great 
 collector of plays and poetical books : this must have been of service to 
 him, and he has kept it so carefully from my sight, that I never could have 
 the opportunity of transcribing into this I am now writing in, the Notes I 
 had collected in that.* 
 
 This first Langbaine, with additions by Coxeter, was bought, 
 at the sale of his books, by Theophilus Cibber : on the 
 strength of these notes he prefixed his name to the first col- 
 lection of the " Lives of our Poets," which appeared in 
 weekly numbers, and now form five volumes, written chiefly 
 by Shiels, an amanuensis of Dr. Johnson. Shiels has been re- 
 cently castigated by Mr. GifFord. 
 
 These literary jobbers nowhere distinguished Coxeter's 
 and Oldys's curious matter from their own. Such was 
 the fate of the first copy of Langbaine, with Oldys's 
 notes ; but the second is more important. At an auction of 
 some of Oldys's books and manuscripts, of which I have seen a 
 printed catalogue, Dr. Birch purchased this invaluable copy 
 
 * At the Bodleian Library, I learnt by a letter with which I am favoured 
 by the Rev. Dr. Bliss, that there is an interleaved " Gildon's Lives and 
 Characters of the Dramatic Poets," with corrections, which once belonged 
 to Coxeter, who appears to have intended a new edition. Whether Coxe- 
 ter transcribed into his Gildon the notes of Oldys's Jirst Langbaine, is 
 worth inquiry. Coxeter's conduct, though he had purchased Oldys's first 
 Langbaine, was that of an ungenerous miser, who will quarrel with a 
 brother rather than share in any acquisition he can get into his own hands. 
 To Coxeter we also owe much ; he suggested Dodsley's Collection of old 
 Plays, and the first tolerable edition of Massinger. 
 
 Oldys could not have been employed in Lord Oxford's library, as Mr. 
 Chalmers conjectures, about 1726; for hare he mentions that he was in 
 Yorkshire from 1724 to 1730. This period is a remarkable blank in Oldys's 
 life. My learned friend, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, has supplied me with a 
 note in the copy of Fuller in the Malone Collection, preserved at the Bod- 
 leian. Those years were passed apparently in the household of the first 
 Earl of Malton, who built Went worth House. There all the collections of 
 the antiquary Gascoigne, with " seven great chests of manuscripts," some 
 as ancient as the time of the Conquest, were condemned in one solemn 
 sacrifice to Vulcan; the ruthless earl being impenetrable .to the prayers 
 and remonstrances of our votary to English History. Oldys left the earl 
 with little satisfaction, as appears by some severe strictures from his gentle 
 pen. 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 435 
 
 for three shillings and six-pence.* Such was the value at- 
 tached to these original researches concerning our poets, and 
 of which, to obtain only a transcript, very large sums have 
 since been cheerfully given. The Museum copy of Lang- 
 baine is in Oldys's handwriting, not interleaved, but over- 
 flowing with notes, written in a very small hand about the 
 margins, and inserted between the lines ; nor may the tran- 
 scriber pass negligently even its corners, otherwise he is here 
 assured that he will lose some useful date, or the hint of some 
 curious reference. The enthusiasm and diligence of Oldys, 
 in undertaking a repetition of his first lost labour, proved to 
 be infinitely greater than the sense of his unrequited labours. 
 Such is the history of the escapes, the changes, and the fate 
 of a volume, which forms the groundwork of the most curi- 
 ous information concerning our elder poets, and to which we 
 must still frequently refer. 
 
 In this variety of literary arrangements, which we must 
 consider as single works in a progressive state, or as portions 
 of one great work on our modern literary history, it may, 
 perhaps, be justly suspected, that Oldys, in the delight of 
 perpetual acquisition, impeded the happier labour of unity of 
 design and completeness of purpose. He was not a Tirabo- 
 schi — nor even a Niceron ! He was sometimes chilled by 
 neglect, and by " vanity and vexation of spirit," else we 
 should not now have to count over a barren list of manuscript 
 works ; masses of literary history, of which the existence is 
 even doubtful. 
 
 In Kippis's Biographia Britannica, we find frequent refer- 
 ences to O. M., Oldys's Manuscripts. Mr. John Taylor, the 
 
 * This copy was lent by Dr. Birch to the late Bishop of Dromore, who 
 with his own hand carefnlly transcribed the notes into an interleaved copy 
 of Langbaine, divided into four volumes, which, as I am informed, nar- 
 rowly escaped the flames, and was injured by the water, at a fire at North- 
 umberland House. His lordship, when he went to Ireland, left this copy 
 with Mr. Nichols, for the use of the projected editions of the Tatler, the 
 Spectator, and the Guardian, with notes and illustrations; of which I 
 think the Tatler only has appeared, and to which his lordship contributed 
 some valuable communications. 
 
436 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 son of the friend and executor of Oldys, has greatly obliged 
 me with all his recollections of this man of letters ; whose 
 pursuits, however, were in no manner analogous to his, and 
 whom he could only have known in youth. By him I learn, 
 that on the death of Oldys, Dr. Kippis, editor of the Biogra- 
 phia Britannica, looked over these manuscripts at Mr. Tay- 
 lor's house. He had been directed to this discovery by the 
 late Bishop of Dromore, whose active zeal was very remark- 
 able in every enterprise to enlarge our literary history. 
 Kippis was one who, in some degree, might have estimated 
 their literary value ; but, employed by commercial men, and 
 negotiating with persons who neither comprehended their 
 nature, nor affixed any value to them, the editor of the 
 Biographia found Oldys's Manuscripts an easy purchase for 
 his employer, the late Mr. Cadell ; and the twenty guineas, 
 perhaps, served to bury their writer! Mr. Taylor says, 
 " The manuscripts of Oldys were not so many as might be 
 expected from so indefatigable a writer. They consisted 
 chiefly of short extracts from books, and minutes of dates, 
 and were thought worth 'purchasing by the doctor. I remem- 
 ber the manuscripts well ; though Oldys was not the author, 
 but rather recorder." Such is the statement and the opinion 
 of a writer, whose effusions are of a gayer sort. But the 
 researches of Oldys must not be estimated by this standard ; 
 with him a single line was the result of many a day of re- 
 search, and a leaf of scattered hints would supply more 
 original knowledge than some octavos, fashioned out by the 
 hasty gilders and varnishers of modern literature. These 
 discoveries occupy small space to the eye ; but large works 
 are composed out of them. This very lot of Oldys's manu- 
 scripts was, indeed, so considerable in the judgment of Kippis, 
 that he has described them as "a large and useful body of 
 biographical materials, left by Mr. Oldys." Were these the 
 " Biographical Institutes " Oldys refers to among his manu- 
 scripts? "The late Mr. Malone," continues Mr. Taylor, 
 " told me that he had seen all Oldys's manuscripts ; so I pre- 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 437 
 
 sume they are in the hands of Cadell and Davie?." Have 
 they met with the fate of sucked oranges ? — and how much 
 of Malone may we owe to Oldys ? 
 
 This information enabled me to trace the manuscripts of 
 Oldys to Dr. Kippis ; but it cast me among the booksellers, 
 who do not value manuscripts which no one can print. I 
 discovered, by the late Mr. Davies, that the direction of that 
 hapless work in our literary history, with its whole treasure 
 of manuscripts, had been consigned, by Mr. Cadell, to the late 
 George Robinson, and that the successor of Dr. Kippis had 
 been the late Doctor George Gregory. Again I repeat, the 
 history of voluminous works is a melancholy office ; every one 
 concerned with them no longer can be found ! The esteemed 
 relict of Dr. Gregory, with a friendly promptitude, gratified 
 my anxious inquiries, and informed me, that " she perfectly 
 recollects a mass of papers, such as I described, being re- 
 turned, on the death of Dr. Gregory, to the house of Wilkie 
 and Robinson, in the early part of the year 1809." I applied 
 to this house, who, after some time, referred me to Mr. John 
 Robinson, the representative of his late father, and with 
 whom all the papers of the former partnership were depos- 
 ited. But Mr. John Robinson has terminated my inquiries, 
 by his civility in promising to comply with them, and his 
 pertinacity in not doing so. He may have injured his own 
 interest in not trading with my curiosity.* It was fortunate 
 for the nation, that George Vertue's mass of manuscripts 
 escaped the fate of Oldys's ; had the possessor proved as 
 indolent, Horace Walpole would not have been the writer 
 of his most valuable work, and we should have lost the 
 
 * I know that not only this lot of Oldys's manuscripts, but a great quan- 
 tity of original contributions of whole lives, intended for the Biographia 
 Britannica, must lie together, unless they have been destroyed as waste 
 paper. These biographical and literary curiosities were often supplied by 
 the families or friends of eminent persons. Some may, perhaps, have been 
 reclaimed by their owners. I am informed there was among them an in- 
 teresting collection of the correspondence of Locke; and I could mention 
 several lives which were prepared. 
 
438 LIFE A ^D HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 "Anecdotes of Painting," of which Vertue had collected the 
 materials. 
 
 Of a life consumed in such literary activity we should have 
 known more had the Diaries of Oldys escaped destruction. 
 " One habit of my father's old friend, William Oldys," says 
 Mr. Taylor, " was that of keeping a diary, and recording in 
 it every day all the events that occurred, and all his engage- 
 ments, and the employment of his time. I have seen piles 
 of these books, but know not what became of them." The 
 existence of such diaries is confirmed by a sale catalogue of 
 Thomes Davies, the literary bookseller, who sold many of 
 the books and some manuscripts of Oldys, which appear to 
 have been dispersed in various libraries. I find Lot " 3627, 
 Mr. Oldys's Diary, containing several observations relating 
 to books, characters, &c. ; " a single volume, which appears 
 to have separated from the " piles " which Mr. Taylor once 
 witnessed. The literary diary of Oldys would have exhib- 
 ited the mode of his pursuits, and the results of his discover- 
 ies. One of these volumes I have fortunately discovered, 
 and a singularity in this writer's feelings throws a new inter- 
 est over such diurnal records. Oldys was apt to give utter- 
 ance with his pen to his most secret emotions. Querulous or 
 indignant, his honest simplicity confided to the paper before 
 him such extemporaneous soliloquies, and I have found him 
 hiding in the very corners of his manuscripts his " secret 
 sorrows." 
 
 A few of these slight memorials of his feelings will exhibit 
 a sort of Silhouette likeness traced by his own hand, when at 
 times the pensive man seems to have contemplated his own 
 shadow. Oldys would throw down in verses, whose humility 
 or quaintness indicates their origin, or by some pithy adage, 
 or apt quotation, or recording anecdote, his self-advice, or his 
 self-r egrets ! 
 
 Oppressed by a sense of tasks so unprofitable to himself, 
 while his days were often passed in trouble and in prison, 
 he breathes a self-reproach in one of these profound reflec- 
 
OLDYS AND HTS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 439 
 
 tions of melancholy which so often startle the man of study, 
 who truly discovers that life is too limited to acquire real 
 knowledge, with the ambition of dispensing it to the world : — 
 
 " I say, who too long in these cobwebs lurks, 
 Is always whetting tools, but never works." 
 
 In one of the corners of his note-books I find this curious 
 but sad reflection : — 
 
 "Alas ! this is but the apron of a fig-leaf— but the curtain of a cobweb." 
 
 Sometimes he seems to have anticipated the fate of that 
 obscure diligence, which was pursuing discoveries reserved 
 for others to use : — 
 
 " He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them." 
 " Fond treasurer of these stores, behold thy fate 
 In Psalm the thirty-ninth, 6, 7, and 8." 
 
 Sometimes he checks the eager ardour of his pen, and re- 
 minds himself of its repose, in Latin, Italian, and English. 
 
 " Non vi, sed saepe cadendo. 
 
 Assai presto si fa quel che si fa bene." 
 
 " Some respite best recovers what we need, 
 Discreetly baiting gives the journey speed." 
 
 There was a thoughtless kindness in honest Oldys ; and 
 his simplicity of character, as I have observed, was prac- 
 tised on by the artful or the ungenerous. We regret to find 
 the following entry concerning the famous collector, James 
 West :— 
 
 " I. gave above threescore letters of Dr. Davenant to his son, who was 
 envoy at Frankfort in 1703 to 1708, to Mr. James West,* with one hundred 
 and fifty more, about Christmas, 1746 : but the same fate they found as 
 grain that is sown in barren ground." 
 
 * This collection, and probably the other letters, have come down to us 
 no doubt, with the manuscripts of this collector, purchased for the British 
 Museum. The correspondence of Dr. Davenant, the political writer, with 
 his son, the envoy, turns on one perpetual topic, his son's and his own ad- 
 vancement in the state. 
 
440 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 Such is the plaintive record by which Oldys relieved him- 
 self of a groan ! We may smile at the simplicity of the 
 following narrative, where poor Oldys received manuscripts 
 in lieu of money : — 
 
 " Old Counsellor Fane, of Colchester, who in forma pauperis, deceived 
 me of a good sum of money which he owed me, and not long after set up 
 his chariot, gave me a parcel of manuscripts, and promised me others, 
 which he never gave me, nor any thing else, besides a barrel of oysters, and 
 a manuscript copy of Randolph's poems, an original, as he said, with many 
 additions, being devolved to him as the author's relation." 
 
 There was no end to his aids and contributions to every 
 author or bookseller who applied to him ; yet he had reason 
 to complain of both while they were using his invaluable, 
 but not valued knowledge. Here is one of these diurnal 
 entries : — 
 
 " I lent the tragical lives and deaths of the famous pirates, Ward and 
 Dansiker, 4to., London, 1612, by Robt. Daborn, alias Dabourne, to Mr. T. 
 Lediard, when he was writing his Naval History, and he never returned it. 
 See Howell's Letters of them." 
 
 In another, when his friend T. Hayward was collecting, for 
 his " British Muse," the most exquisite common-places of our 
 old English dramatists, a compilation which must not be con- 
 founded with ordinary ones, Oldys not only assisted in the 
 labour, but drew up a curious introduction with a knowledge 
 and love of the subject which none but himself possessed. 
 But so little were these researches then understood, that we 
 find Oldys, in a moment of vexatious recollection, and in a 
 corner of one of the margins of his Langbaine, accidentally 
 preserving an extraordinary circumstance attending this cu- 
 rious dissertation. Oldys having completed this elaborate 
 introduction, " the penurious publisher insisted on leaving out 
 one third part, which happened to be the best matter in it, 
 because he would have it contracted into one sheet f " Poor 
 Oldys never could forget the fate of this elaborate Disserta- 
 tion on all the collections of English poetry ; I am confident 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 44 \ 
 
 that I have seen some volume which was formerly Old) " , 
 and afterwards Thomas Warton's, in the possession of my 
 intelligent friend Mr. Douce, in the fly-leaf of which Oldys 
 has expressed himself in these words: "In my historical 
 and critical review of all the collections of this kind, it would 
 have made a sheet and a half or two sheets ; but they for 
 sordid gain, and to save a little expense in print and paper, 
 got Mr. John Campbell to cross it and cramp it, and play the 
 devil with it, till they squeezed it into less compass than a 
 sheet." This is a loss which we may never recover. The 
 curious book-knowledge of this singular man of letters, those 
 stores of which he was the fond treasurer, as he says with 
 such tenderness for his pursuits, were always ready to be 
 cast into the forms of a dissertation or an introduction ; and 
 when Morgan published his Collection of Rare Tracts, the 
 friendly hand of Oldys furnished " A Dissertation upon Pam- 
 phlets, in a Letter to a Nobleman ; " probably the Earl of 
 Oxford, a great literary curiosity ; and in the Harleian 
 Collection he has given a Catalogue raisonne of six hundred. 
 When Mrs. Cooper attempted " The Muse's Library/' the 
 first essay which influenced the national taste to return to our 
 deserted poets in our most poetical age, it was Oldys who 
 only could have enabled this lady to perform that task so 
 well. When Curll, the publisher, to help out one of his 
 hasty compilations, a " History of the Stage," repaired, like 
 all the world, to Oldys, whose kindness could not resist the 
 importunity of this busy publisher, he gave him a life of Nell 
 Gwynn ; while at the same moment Oldys could not avoid 
 noticing, in one of his usual entries, an intended work on the 
 stage, which we seem never to have had, " Dick Leveridges 
 History of the Stage and Actors in his own Time, for these 
 forty or fifty years past, as he told me he had composed, is 
 likely to prove, whenever it shall appear, a more perfect 
 work." I might proceed with many similar gratuitous con- 
 tributions with which he assisted his contemporaries. Oldys 
 should have been constituted the reader for the nation. His 
 
442 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 Comptes Rendus of books and manuscripts are still held pre- 
 cious ; but his useful and curious talent had sought the public 
 patronage in vain ! From one of his * Diaries," which has 
 escaped destruction, I transcribe some interesting passages 
 ad verbum. 
 
 The reader is here presented with a minute picture of 
 those invisible occupations which pass in the study of a man 
 of letters. There are those who may be surprised, as well as 
 amused, in discovering how all the business, even to the very 
 disappointments and pleasures of active life, can be trans- 
 ferred to the silent chamber of a recluse student ; but there 
 are others who will not read without emotion the secret 
 thoughts of him who, loving literature with its purest passion, 
 scarcely repines at being defrauded of his just fame, and 
 leaves his stores for the after-age of his more gifted heirs. 
 Thus we open one of Oldys's literary days : — 
 
 " I was informed that day by Mr. Tho. Odell's daughter, that her father, 
 "who was deputy inspector and licenser of the plays, died 24 May, 1749, at 
 his house in Chappel-street, Westminster, aged 58 years. He was writing 
 a history of the characters he had observed, and conferences he had had 
 with many eminent persons he knew in his time. He was a great observator 
 of every thing curious in the conversations of his acquaintance, and his 
 own conversation was a living chronicle of the remarkable intrigues, ad- 
 ventures, sayings, stories, writings, &c. of many of the quality, poets, and 
 other authors, players, booksellers, &c. who flourished especially in the 
 present century. He had been a popular man at elections, and sometimes 
 master of the playhouse in Goodman's Fields, but latterly was forced to 
 live reserved and retired by reason of his debts. He published two or three 
 dramatic pieces, one was the Patron, on the story of Lord Romney. 
 
 " Q. of his da. to restore me Eustace Budgell's papers, and to get a sight 
 of her father's. 
 
 " Have got the one, and seen the other. 
 
 "July 31.— Was at Mrs. Odell's; she returned me Mr. Budgell's papers. 
 Saw some of her husband's papers, mostly poems in favour of the ministry, 
 and against Mr. Pope. One of them, printed by the late Sir Robert Wal- 
 pole's encouragement, who gave him ten guineas for writing and as much 
 for the expense of printing it ; but through his advice it was never pub- 
 lished, because it might hurt his interest with Lord Chesterfield, and some 
 other noblemen, who favoured Mr. Pope for his fine genius. The tract I 
 liked best of his writings was the history of his playhouse in Goodman's 
 Fields. (Remember that which was published against that playhouse, 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 443 
 
 which I have entered in my London Catalogue. Letter to Sir Rio. Procas, 
 lord mayor, &c. 8vo. 1730.) 
 
 " Saw nothing of the history of his conversations with ingenious men ; 
 his characters, tales, jests, and intrigues of them, of which no man was 
 better furnished with them. She thinks she has some papers of these, and 
 promises to look them out, and also to inquire afrer Mr. Griffin of the lord 
 chamberlain's office, that I may get a search made about Spenser. 
 
 So intent was Oldys on these literary researches that we 
 see, by the last words of this entry, how in hunting after one 
 sort of game, his undivided zeal kept its eye on another. 
 One of his favourite subjects was the realizing of original 
 discoveries respecting Spenser and Shakspeare ; of whom, 
 perhaps, to our shame, as it is to our vexation, it may be said 
 that two of our master-poets are those of whom we know the 
 least! Oldys once flattered himself that he should be able 
 to have given the world a life of Shakspeare. Mr. John 
 Taylor informs me, that " Oldys had contracted to supply ten 
 years of the life of Shakspeare unknown to the biographers, 
 with one Walker, a bookseller in the Strand ; and as Oldys 
 did not live to fulfil the engagement, my father was obliged 
 to return to "Walker twenty guineas which he had advanced 
 on the work." That interesting narrative is noiv hopeless for 
 us. Yet, by the solemn contract into which Oldys had en- 
 tered, and from his strict integrity, it might induce one to 
 suspect that he had made positive discoveries which are now 
 irrecoverable. 
 
 We may observe the manner of his anxious inquiries about 
 Spenser : — 
 
 " Ask Sir Peter Thompson if it were improper to try if Lord Effingham 
 Howard would procure the pedigrees in the Herald's office, to be seen for 
 Edmund Spenser's parentage or family? or how he was related to Sir John 
 Spenser of Althorpe, in Northamptonshire ? to three of whose daughters, who 
 all married nobility, Spenser dedicates three of his poems. 
 
 " Of Mr. Vertue, to examine Stowe's memorandum-book. Look more 
 carefully for the year when Spenser's monument was raised, or between 
 which years the entry stands — 1623 and 1626. 
 
 " Sir Clement Cottrell's book about Spenser. 
 
 " Captain Power, to know if he has heard from Capt. Spenser about my 
 letter of inquiries relating to Edward Spenser. 
 
444 LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 " Of Whiston, to examine if my remarks on Spenser are complete ns to 
 the press — Yes. 
 
 Remember, when I see Mr. W. Thompson, to inquire whether he has 
 printed in any. of his works any other character of our old poets than those 
 of Spenser and Shakspeare ; * and to get the liberty of a visit at Kentish 
 Town, to see his Collection of Robert Greene's Works, in about four large 
 volumes quarto. He commonly published a pamphlet every term, as his 
 acquaintance Tom Nash informs us." 
 
 Two or three other memorials may excite a smile at his 
 peculiar habits of study, and unceasing vigilance to draw from 
 original sources of information. 
 
 " Dryderi's dream, at Lord Exeter's, at Burleigh, while he was translat- 
 ing Virgil, as Signior Verrio, then painting there, related it to the York- 
 shire painter, of whom I had it, lies in the parchment book in quarto, designed 
 for his life." 
 
 At a subsequent period Oldys inserts, " Now entered 
 therein." Malone quotes this very memorandum, which he 
 discovered in Oldys 's Largbaine, to show Dry den had some 
 confidence in Oneirocriticism, and supposed that future events 
 were sometimes prognosticated by dreams. Malone adds, 
 " Where either the loose prophetic leaf, or the parchment 
 booh now is, I know not." f 
 
 Unquestionably we have incurred a great loss in Oldys's 
 collections for Dry den's Life, which are very extensive ; such 
 a mass of literary history cannot have perished unless by 
 accident ; and I suspect that many of Oldys's manuscripts 
 are in the possession of individuals who are not acquainted 
 with his handwriting, which may be easily verified. 
 
 " To search the old papers in one of my large deal boxes for Dryden's 
 letter of thanks to my father, for some communication relating to Plutarch, 
 while they and others were publishing a translation of Plutarch's Lives, 
 
 * William Thompson, the poet of" Sickness," and other poems; a warm 
 lover of our elder bards, and no vulgar imitator of Spenser. He was the 
 revivor of Bishop Hall's Satires, in 1753, by an edition which had been 
 more fortunate if conducted by his friend Oldys, for the text is unfaithful, 
 though the edition followed was one borrowed from Lord Oxford's library 
 probably by the aid of Oldys. 
 
 f Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 420. 
 
OLDYS AND TIIS MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 415 
 
 in five volumes 8vo. 1683. It is copied in theyclhnv book for Dryden's Life, 
 in which there are about 150 transcriptions in prose and verse, relating to 
 the life, character, and writings of Dryden." — u Js England's Remem- 
 brancer extracted out of my obit, (obituary) into my remarks on him in 
 the poetical bnyV 
 
 M My extracts in the parchment budget about Denham's seat and family 
 in Surrey." 
 
 " My white vellum pocket-book, bordered with gold, for the extract from 
 ' Groans of Great Britain' about Butler." 
 
 " See my account of the great yews in Tankersley's park, while Sir R. 
 Fanshaw was prisoner in the lodge there; especially Talbot's yew, which 
 a man on horseback might turn about in, in my botanical budget. 1 '' 
 
 " This Donald Lupton I have mentioned in my catalogue of all the books 
 and pamphlets relative to London in folio, begun anno 1740, and in which 
 I have now, 1746, entered between 300 and 400 articles, besides remarks, 
 &c. Now, in June, 1748, between 400 and 500 articles. Now, in October, 
 1750, six hundred and thirty-six." * 
 
 There remains to be told an anecdote, which shows that 
 Pope greatly regarded our literary antiquary. " Oldys," says 
 my friend, " was one of the librarians of the Earl of Oxford, 
 and he used to tell a story of the credit which he obtained as 
 a scholar, by setting Pope right in a Latin quotation, which 
 he made at the earl's table. He did not, however, as I re- 
 member, boast of having been admitted as a guest at the 
 table, but as happening to be in the room." Why might not 
 Oldys, however, have been seated, at least, below the salt ! 
 It would do no honour to either party to suppose that Oldys 
 stood among the menials. The truth is, there appears to 
 
 * This is one of Oldys 1 s Mmuscripts ; a thick folio of titles, which has 
 been made to do its duty, with small thanks from those who did not care 
 to praise the service which they derived from it. It passed from Dr. 
 Berkenhout to George Steevens, who lent it to Gough. It was sold for five 
 guineas. The useful work of ten years of attention given to it! The an- 
 tiquary Gough alludes to it with his usual discernment. "Among these 
 titles of books and pamphlets about London are many purely historical, and 
 many of too low a kind to rank under the head of topography and history." 
 Thus the design of Oldys, in forming this elaborate collection, is condemned 
 by trying it by the limited object of the topographer's view. This cata- 
 logue remains a desideratum, were it printed entire as collected by Oldys, 
 not merely for the topography of the metropolis, but for its relation to its 
 manners, domestic annals, events, and persons connected with its history. 
 
44G LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY. 
 
 have existed a confidential intercourse between Pope and 
 Oldys ; and of this I shall give a remarkable proof. In 
 those fragments of Oldys, preserved as " additional anecdotes 
 of Shakspeare," in Steevens's and Malone's editions, Oldys 
 mentions a story of Davenant, which he adds, " Mr. Pope 
 told me at the Earl of Oxford's table ! " And further relates 
 a conversation which passed between them. Nor is this all; 
 for in Oldys's Langbaine he put down this memorandum in 
 the article of Shakspeare — " Remember what I observed to 
 my Lord Oxford for Mr. Pope's use out of Cowley's preface." 
 Malone appears to have discovered this observation of Cow- 
 ley's which is curious enough and very ungrateful to that 
 commentator's ideas : it is " to prune and lop away the old 
 withered branches " in the new editions of Shakspeare and 
 other ancient poets ! " Pope adopted," says Malone, " this 
 very unwarrantable idea ; Oldys was the person who sug- 
 gested to Pope the singular course he pursued in his edition 
 of Shakspeare." Without touching on the felicity or the 
 danger of this new system of republishing Shakspeare, one 
 may say that if many passages were struck out, Shakspeare 
 would not be injured, for many of them were never composed 
 by that great bard ! There not only existed a literary intimacy 
 between Oldys and Pope, but our poet adopting his suggestions 
 on so important an occasion, evinces how highly he esteemed 
 his judgment ; and unquestionably Pope had often been de- 
 lighted by Oldys with the history of his predecessors, and the 
 curiosities of English poetry. 
 
 I have now introduced the reader to Oldys sitting amidst 
 his "poetical bags," his "parchment biographical budgets," 
 his " catalogues," and his " diaries," often venting a solitary 
 groan, or active in some fresh inquiry. Such is the Silhouette 
 of this prodigy of literary curiosity ! 
 
 The very existence of Oldys's manuscripts continues to be 
 of an ambiguous nature ; referred to, quoted, and transcribed, 
 we can but seldom turn to the originals. These masses of 
 curious knowledge, dispersed or lost, have enriched an after- 
 
OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS. 447 
 
 race, who have often picked up the spoil and claimed the 
 victory, but it was Oldys who had fought the battle ! 
 
 Oldys affords one more example how life is often closed 
 amidst discoveries and acquisitions. The literary antiquary, 
 when he has attempted to embody his multiplied inquiries, 
 and to finish his scattered designs, has found that the labor 
 absque labore, "the labour void of labour," as the in- 
 scription on the library of Florence finely describes the re- 
 searches of literature, has dissolved his days in the volup- 
 tuousness of his curiosity ; and that too often, like the hunter 
 in the heat of the chase, while he disdained the prey which 
 lay before him, he was still stretching onwards to catch the 
 fugitive ! 
 
 Transvolat in medio posita, et fugieniia capiat. 
 
 At the close of every century, in this growing world of 
 books, may an Oldys be the reader for the nation ! Should 
 he be endowed with a philosophical spirit, and combine the 
 genius of his own times with that of the preceding, he will 
 hold in his hand the chain of human thoughts, and, like an- 
 other Bayle, become the historian of the human mind ! 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Abelard, ranks among the heretics, 
 i. 212; book condemned as his writ- 
 ten by another, 213 ; absolution grant- 
 ed to, ib. ; wrote and sung finely, 214 ; 
 raises the school ol'the Paraclete, 215. 
 
 Abram-men, iii. 47, and note, ib. 
 
 Abridgers, objections to, and recom- 
 mendations of, ii. 67 ; Bayle's advice 
 to, 68; now slightly regarded, ib. ; 
 instructions to, quoted from the Book 
 of Maccabees, 69. 
 
 Absence of mind, anecdotes of, i. 284, 
 285. 
 
 Absolute monarchy, search for prece- 
 dents to maintain, iv. 3S9, note. 
 
 Abstraction of mind, instances of, 
 amongst great men, ii. 221-224; 
 sonnet on, by Metastasio, 223, 224. 
 
 Academy, the French, some account 
 of, ii. 85-89; visit of Christina Queen 
 of Sweden to, 85; of Literature, de- 
 signed in the reign of Queen Anne, 
 iii. 158 ; abortive attempts to estab- 
 lish various, ib.; disadvantages of, 
 ib. ; arguments of the advocates for, 
 ib. ; should be designed by individu- 
 als, 159; French origin of, 159-162; 
 origin of the Royal Society, 162-164; 
 ridiculous titles of Italian, 242; some 
 account of the Arcadian, and its ser- 
 vice to literature, 245; derivation of 
 its title, 247 ; of the Colombaria, ib. ; 
 indications of, in England, 248 ; early 
 rise of among the Italians, 249 ; es- 
 tablishment of, the "Academy," 250 ; 
 suppressed, and its members perse- 
 cuted, 250-251; of the "Oziosi," 252 ; 
 suppression of many, at Florence and 
 Sienna, 253; considerations of the 
 reason of the Italian fantastical titles 
 of, &c. 255. 
 
 Acajou and Zirphile, a whimsical fairy 
 tale, iii. 43-46. 
 
 Accademia of Bologna originated with 
 Lodovico Caracci, iii. 149. 
 
 Accident, instances of the pursuits 
 of great men directed by, i. 142. 
 
 Acephali, iv. 79, and note, ib. 
 
 Acrostics, i. 388. 
 
 vol. iv. 29 
 
 Actors, tragic, i. 334; who have died 
 martyrs to their tragic characters, 
 335, should be nursed in the laps of 
 queens, 336; anecdotes of, 336, 337. 
 
 Addison, silent among strangers, i.165. 
 
 Adriani, his continuation of Guicciar- 
 dini's History, iv. 65. 
 
 Advice, good,of a literary sinner, ii. 12. 
 
 Agates, presenting representations of 
 natural forms, i. 330. 
 
 Agreda, Maria, wrote the Life of the 
 Virgin Mary, ii. 31. 
 
 Albertus Magnus, his opinion con- 
 cerning books of magic, iv. 180; his 
 brazen man, 182 ; his entertainment 
 of the Earl of Holland, 191. 
 
 Alchymists, results of their opera- 
 tions, iv. 184; their cautious secrecy, 
 ib; discoveries by, 184, 185. 
 
 Alchymy, anecdotes of professors of, 
 
 i. 374, 375 ; Henry VI. endeavoured 
 to recruit his coffers by, 375; pro- 
 fessors of, called multipliers, 370; 
 books of, pious frauds, ib.; Elias 
 Ashmole rather the historian of, than 
 an adept in, 377 ; opinions of modern 
 chemists on, 379. 
 
 Alexandria, library of, i. 49, 50 ; De- 
 metrius Phalereus, its industrious 
 and skilful librarian, 50; original 
 manuscripts of vEschyhis, Sopho- 
 cles, and Euripides procured for, ib. ; 
 destruction of, 101, 102. 
 
 Ambassadors, anecdotes of frivolous 
 points of etiquette insisted on by, 
 
 ii. 376-388. 
 
 Amilcar, the author of the Second 
 Punic War, iv. 20. 
 
 Amriiigouries, i. 391. 
 
 Amusement, periodical, during study, 
 a standing rule among the Jesuits, 
 i. 90; various, practised by different 
 celebrated men, 90-93. 
 
 Anagrams, ii. 389, ii. 416, are classed 
 among the Hebrews with the caba- 
 listic sciences, 416; Platonic notions 
 of, ib. ; specimens of Greek, 417; 
 several examples of curious, 417- 
 419 ; amusing anecdotes concerning, 
 419-422, 
 
 Andreini, an actor and author of ir- 
 
450 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 regular Italian comedies, ii. 314; a 
 drama of his gave the first idea to 
 Milton of his "Paradise Lost," ib. 
 
 Anecdotes, literary, their impor- 
 tance, iii. 34; Dr. .Johnson's defence 
 of, 35 ; the absurdity of many trans- 
 mitted by biographers, ib.; general 
 remarks on, 36, 37. 
 
 Anglksea, Earl of, his MSS. sup- 
 pressed, iii. 205. 
 
 Animals, influence of music on, i. 
 361-364. 
 
 Annius of Viterbo published seventeen 
 books of pretended antiquities, iv. 
 207 ; and afterwards a commentary, 
 208; caused a literary war, ib. 
 
 Antediluvian researches, i. 394, 395. 
 
 Anti, a favourite prefix to books of 
 controversy, i. 413. 
 
 Antiquariks, Society of, inquiry into 
 its origin and progress, iii. 164-^167. 
 
 Antony, Marc, anecdote of, ii. 163. 
 
 Apparel, excess in, proclamation 
 against, by Elizabeth, iv. 288. 
 
 Apples grafted on mulberry stocks, 
 
 ii. 332, note. 
 Archesteatus, a celebrated culinary 
 
 philosopher, ii. 434. 
 Arguments, invented by a machine, 
 
 iii. 171. 
 
 Ariosto, his merits disputed in Italy, 
 ii. 54; public preference given to, by 
 the Accademia della Crusca, ib. ; his 
 verses sung by the gondoliers, 56. 
 
 Aristocrat, a nickname, iii. 412. 
 
 Aristotle, account of criticisms on, i. 
 75 ; fate of his library, 108 ; Arabic 
 commentaries on, 116; rage for, ib. ; 
 his opinions on sneezing, 192 ; letter 
 of Philip of Macedon to, 209; de- 
 scription of the person and manners 
 of, ib.; will of, 210; studied under 
 Plato, ib. ; parallel between him and 
 Plato, by Rapin, ib. ; anecdote con- 
 cerning him and Plato, 211; raises a 
 school, ib. ; attacked by Xenocrates, 
 ib. ; his mode of pointing out a suc- 
 cessor, 212; writers against and for, 
 408 ; bonmot on his precepts, ii. 78. 
 
 Armstrong, Archibald, jester to 
 Charles I. ii. 423, note. 
 
 Arnauld, one of the most illustrious 
 members of the Port Royal Society, 
 i. 154; anecdotes of, 156, 157; was 
 still the great Arnauld at the age of 
 eighty-two, 157. 
 
 Ashmole, Elias, his Theatrum Chem- 
 icum Britannicum, i. 377. 
 
 Astr.ea, D'Urfd's romance of the, ii. 
 130; sketch of, 130-133. 
 
 Astrologers, faith in, by celebrated 
 
 charactei-s, i. 369 ; Lilly consulted by 
 Charles I., ib.; Nostrodamus, by 
 Catherine de' Medici, 370; several 
 have suffered death to verify their 
 skill, ib. ; shifts and impostures of, ib. 
 
 Astrology, greatly flourished in the 
 time of the Civil Wars, i. 371; at- 
 tacks on and defences of, 371, 372. 
 
 Atellan.e Fabuloe, Atellan farces, ii. 
 304, and note. 
 
 Atticus, employed to collect for Cice- 
 ro, iii. 146 ; traded in books and gla- 
 diators, 148. 
 
 Aubrey, John, extract from his corre- 
 spondence, iv. 195; his search after 
 gold, ib. ; his idea of universal € duca- 
 tion, 197. 
 
 Audley, a lawyer and usurer, ii. 332 ; 
 his commencement of life, and means 
 of rising in, 335 ; anecdote of him and 
 a draper, ib. ; his maxims of political 
 economy, 336 ; his reply to a borrow- 
 ing lord", 337 ; his manners and opin- 
 ions, 342-344; his death, 345; his 
 general character, 345, 346. 
 
 Autographs, indications of character, 
 iv. 44; of English sovereigns, 46, 47. 
 
 B. 
 
 Babington's conspiracy, some ac- 
 count of its progress, and of the noble 
 youths concerned in it, ii. 347 ; trial 
 and defences of the conspirators, 349 ; 
 their execution, 351, 352. 
 
 Bacchus, ancient descriptions of, and 
 modern translations of them, iii. 24. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, sketch of his life as a 
 philosophei*, iv. 224-232 ; more val- 
 ued abroad than at home, 233. 
 
 Baker, Sir Richard, author of the 
 Chronicle, died in the Fleet, iii. 211 ; 
 his papers burnt, ib. 
 
 Bales, Peter, a celebrated caligrapher, 
 
 i. 366. 
 
 Ballard, the Jesuit, concerned in 
 Babington's conspiracy, ii. 347; ex- 
 pression of his on his trial, 349. 
 
 Baptista Porta, founded the Acca- 
 demie of the Oziosi and Segreti, iv. 
 190; considered himself a prognos- 
 ticator, ib. ; his magical devices, 190, 
 191. 
 
 Barbier, Louis, anecdote relating to, 
 
 ii. 164. 
 
 Barthius, Gaspar, a voluminous au- 
 thor, iii. 305 ; an infant prodigy, 306 ; 
 published a long list of unprinted 
 works, 307 ; its fate, 308. 
 
 Basnage, his Dictionary, iv. 122. 
 
 Bayle, publishes his Ncuvelles de la 
 
INDEX. 
 
 451 
 
 Republique des Letlres, i. 63 ; his Crit- 
 ical Dictionary, remarks on its 
 character, iii. 129-132; Gibbon's 
 remarks on, 132; publication of, 133; 
 his originality, how obtained, 134; 
 account of his death, ii. 60; his con- 
 duct to his friend, ib. ; read much 
 by his fingers, 61; amusements of, 
 ib. ; anecdotes, relating to, ib. ; his 
 errors, iii. 135; his characteristics, 
 136 ; changes his religion twice, 137 ; 
 extract from his diary, 138 ; his me- 
 thods of study, 139 ; appointed to a 
 professorship, ib.; deprived of it, ib.; 
 laments his want of books, 140; an- 
 ecdotes of the effects of his works, 
 141 ; a model of a literary character, 
 145. 
 
 Beards, various fashions in, i. 300. 
 
 Beaussol, M. Peyraud de, his pref- 
 ace to his condemned tragedy, iii. 
 38-42. 
 
 Ben Jonson, assisted Rawleigh in his 
 history of the world, iv. 9, and note. 
 
 Benevolences, iv. 85, 86. 
 
 Bentley, notice of his criticisms on 
 Milton, ii. 35-38. 
 
 Bettekton, anecdote of, i. 336. 
 
 Beza, Theodore, an imitator of Calvin 
 in abuse, i. 403 ; effect of his work 
 against toleration, iv. 142. 
 
 Bible, the prohibition of, ii. 175 ; vari- 
 ous vei'sions of, 177-179 ; a family 
 one, 179 ; corrupt state of the Eng- 
 lish, formerly, iv. 349; printing of, 
 an article of open trade, 350 ; shame- 
 ful practices in the printing of, 350- 
 352, and note ; privilege of printing 
 granted to one Bentlev, 352; Field's 
 Pearl Bible contained 6,000 faults, 
 353; division of, into chapter and 
 verse, 355. 
 
 Bibliomane, iv. 249. 
 
 Bibliomania, i. 57. 
 
 Bibliognoste, iv. 249. 
 
 BlBLIOGRAPHE, iv. 249. 
 
 Bibliography, remarks on its import- 
 ance, iv. 249. 
 Bibliophile, iv. 249. 
 
 BlBLIOTAPHE, iv. 249. 
 
 Biographical parallels, iv. 346; a 
 book of, proposed by Hurd, ib. ; be- 
 tween Budeeus and Erasmus, 347; 
 instances of several, 348, 349. 
 
 Biography, remarks on, iv. 302 ; sen- 
 timental, distinguished from chrono- 
 logical, ib. ; of Dante, by Boccaccio 
 and Aretino, 334-340 ; domestic, 
 340-345 ; customary among the Ro- 
 mans, 345; comparative, a series of, 
 projected bv Elizabeth Hamilton, ib. 
 
 Birch, Dr., his great services to his- 
 tory, iv. 301. 
 
 Birkenhead, Sir John, a newspaper 
 writer and pamphleteer during the 
 great rebellion, i. 229. 
 
 Black Cloaks, a political nickname 
 for a party in Naples, iii. 412. 
 
 Blenhuim, secret history of the build- 
 ing of, iii. 435-444 ; drawn from MSS. 
 435, note. 
 
 Bonaventure de Perriers, speci- 
 men of his stories, i. 194. 
 
 Botanic Garden, Darwin's remarks 
 on, i. 439 
 
 Bouts Rimes, i. 388. 
 
 Bourdaloue, i. 344. 
 
 Bourgeois, Pere, one of the Chinese 
 missionaries, account of his attempt 
 at preaching in Chinese, i. 356, 357. 
 
 Book of Sports, effect of, ii. 322. 
 
 Books, collections of, see Libraries; 
 collectors of, see Collectors; re- 
 views of, and criticisms on, see Lit- 
 erary Journals and Sketches of 
 Criticism; destruction of, see title; 
 lost, i. 112-114; prices of, in early 
 times, 133; treatise on the art of 
 reading printed, 134; curious adver- 
 tisements of, 227 ; titles of, 379 ; va- 
 rious opinions as to the size of, ii. 9; 
 difficulties encountered in publishing 
 many books of merit, 41 ; works of 
 another description better remuner- 
 ated, 43; leaves of, origin of their 
 name, 180, note; table-books, 183; 
 derivation of the name " book," 185; 
 description of the form and condition 
 of ancient, ib.; censors and licensers 
 of, 399 ; catalogue of, condemned at 
 the Council of Trent, 400; inquisi- 
 tors of, ib. see Index; burning of, 
 anecdote of its good effect in promot- 
 ing their sale, 403; mutilations 
 caused by the censors in Camden's 
 works, Lord Herbert's History of 
 Henry VIII., and the Poems of Lord 
 Brooke, 405 ; anecdotes of purloinei's 
 of, iv. 219; predilection of celebrat- 
 ed men to particular, 244-247 ; cal- 
 culations as to their present number, 
 248; different terms for amateurs 
 of, 249 ; which have been designed 
 but not completed, 425, 426. 
 
 Booksellers, two ruined by one au- 
 thor, iii. 304. 
 
 Borrowers, destructive to collections 
 of books, i. 60. 
 
 Bridgewater, late Duke of, destroy- 
 ed many family MSS., iii. 209. 
 
 Buckingham, Duke of, his conduct in 
 Spain, ii. 155-157; equally a favour- 
 
452 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ite with James I. and Charles I., 157; 
 Hume's character of, ib. ; anecdote 
 of him and the Queen of France, 158 ; 
 his audacity and " English familiar- 
 ity," ib. ; anecdote of him and Prince 
 Charles, 159; his rise, 164; his mag- 
 nificent entertainment of Charles I. 
 and the French ambassador, iii. 65; 
 his character, 97-100, and notes; 
 contrast between him and Richelieu, 
 100; history of his expedition to 
 Spain with Prince Charles, 101-104; 
 prognostics of his death, 105-108; 
 portrait of, 109, note; determined to 
 succour Kochelle, 111; his death, 
 112; satires on, 113; possessed the 
 esteem of Charles E, 114; intrigued 
 with the Puritans, iv. 367; his inter- 
 course with Dr. Preston, a Puritan, 
 368; discovers Preston's insincerity, 
 and abandons the Puritans, 371; his 
 impeachment, 378; his failure at 
 the Isle of Rhe\ 385 ; offers to resign 
 his offices, 397 ; hatred of, by the Par- 
 liament, 398. 
 
 Buffon, Vicq. d'Azyr's description of 
 his study, iv. 312. 
 
 Buildings in the metropolis, opposi- 
 tion to, from the days of Elizabeth 
 to those of Charles IE, iv. 275 ; stat- 
 ute against, 276; proclamations 
 against, ib. 
 
 Burying grounds, iv. 97. 
 
 C, 
 
 Cadiz, expedition to, in the time of 
 Charles E, iii. 109; satirical lines on, 
 110. 
 
 Calamy, his History of the Ejected 
 
 Ministers, iv. 133. 
 Calumny, political advantages of, 
 
 iii. 409. 
 
 Calvin, less tolerable than Luther in 
 
 controversy, i. 403. 
 Camus, his M^decine de l'Esprit, iii. 
 
 231. 
 
 Caracci, the family of the, iii. 149; 
 Lodovico, character of, 150-152 ; the 
 school of the, 151, note; Agostino 
 and Annibale, 152; their opposite 
 characters, ib.; the three opened a 
 school in their own house, 154; 
 Agostino's eminence there, ib. ; his 
 sonnet comprising the laws of paint- 
 ing, ib.; Domenichino, Albano, 
 Guido, Guercino, their pupils, 155, 
 156 : disputes between Annibale and 
 Agostino, 156 ; their separation, 157. 
 
 Cardinal Richelieu, anecdotes of, 
 and considerations on his character, 
 i. 205-209. 
 
 Carleton, Sir Dudley, vice-chamber- 
 lain of Charles E, his speech to the 
 Commons on the imprisonment of 
 two of their members for their im- 
 peachment of Buckingham, iv. 381. 
 
 Catherine de' Medici, her belief in 
 astrology, iv. 256; employs Montluc 
 to intrigue to secure the'election of 
 the Duke of Anjou to the crown of 
 Poland, 258. 
 
 Catharinot, a voluminous writer, iii. 
 318; his singular mode of publishing 
 his unsalable works, 319. 
 
 Cause and Pretext, distinction be- 
 tween, to be observed by historians, 
 iv. 19 ; anecdotical illustrations, 20- 
 22. 
 
 Cayet, Dr., his " Chronologie Nove- 
 naire," ii. 160. 
 
 Censors of books, designed to counter- 
 act the press, ii. 399 ; originated with 
 the Inquisition, ib.; appointed with 
 the title of Inquisitors of Books, 400; 
 disagreement among these inquisi- 
 tors, 401 ; in Spain, 402 ; their treat- 
 ment of commentators on the Lusiad, 
 ib. ; instances of the injury done to 
 English literature by the appoint- 
 ment of, 404; never recognized by 
 English law, 405; regularly estab- 
 lished under Charles E, 407 ; office of, 
 maintained by the Puritans, 408; 
 treatment of Milton by, ib. ; the office 
 lay dormant under Crormvell, 409; 
 revived and continued under Charles 
 II. and James IE, ib. ; anecdotes rel- 
 ative to, 411-414. 
 
 Centos, i. 392. 
 
 Ceremonies, different, among various 
 
 nations, ii. 165-169. 
 Cervantes, remark of, ii. 63 ; taken 
 
 prisoner at the battle of Lepanto, ib. 
 Chamillart, minister of France, his 
 
 rise, ii. 164. 
 Charades, i. 389. 
 
 Charles Martel, his combat with, 
 and defeat of, the Mahometans, iii. 
 185. 
 
 Charles the First, account of his ex- 
 pedition into Spain, ii. 153-157 ; an • 
 ecdote of him and Buckingham, 156; 
 history of his diamond seal, iii. 63; 
 his love of the fine arts, 64 ; the mag- 
 nificence and taste of his court enter- 
 tainments, 65; anecdote of, 67; cata- 
 logue of his effects, 69 : an artist and 
 a poet, 72, 73, and note; influence of 
 his wife on, doubted, 7 4 ; his dismissal 
 of his wife's French establishment, 
 85; reply to the French ambassa- 
 dor's remonstrances, 86; his conduct 
 
INDEX. 
 
 453 
 
 on the death of Buckingham, 114; 
 secret history of him and his first 
 Parliaments, iv. 372 ; the latter a sul- 
 len bride, 373 ; his address to his first 
 Parliament, and their ungracious 
 conduct, 374, 375 ; they abandoned 
 the king, 375 ; raises money on Privy 
 Seals, ib. ; on the failure of the expe- 
 dition to Cadiz he called his second 
 Parliament, 376; communications 
 between him and his Parliament, 377, 
 378; his address to them, noticing 
 the impeachment of Buckingham, 
 ib. ; his conduct on that occasion the 
 beginning of his troubles, 379; on the 
 Commons 1 further remonstrance 
 against Buckingham, he dissolves his 
 second Parliament, 383; his distress 
 for money, 384; his fresh distresses 
 on the failure of the expedition to the 
 Isle of Rhe, and his expedients to 
 raise money, 385, 386; their ill suc- 
 cess, 387, 389 ; reflections on his 
 situation, 390; rejects the proffered 
 advice of the President of the Rosy- 
 Cross, 392 ; anonymous letter sent to 
 the Commons, and by them forward- 
 ed to the king without perusing, 393 ; 
 secret measures used by the opposi- 
 tion, 394; speech of the' king to Par- 
 liament, 395 ; his emotion on being 
 informed that the Parliament had 
 granted subsidies, 396; debates on 
 the king's message, 401; Coke's 
 speech thereon, 402 ; the kin» grants 
 his assent to the Petition of Right, 
 404, 405; popular rejoicings, 405; 
 presentation of the Remonstrance, 
 ib.; the king's conduct after the as- 
 sassination of Buckingham, 406; 
 vow of the Parliament to maintain 
 the Articles of Religion of the 13th 
 Eliz., 408; tumult in the House, and 
 dissolution of the Parliament, 410. 
 
 Charles the Fifth, his edicts against 
 the Reformed, iv. 136; his conduct 
 influenced by political, not religious 
 motives, 137. 
 
 Charles the Ninth, account of the 
 death of, ii. 160, 161; his apology for 
 the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 iv. 151, 156 ; his character, 157. 
 
 Cherries, into Great Britain, intro- 
 duction of, ii. 330 ; loss and reintro- 
 duction of, in the reign of Henry 
 VIII. ib. 
 
 Chess, clergymen prohibited from 
 
 playing, ii. 190. 
 Chinese language, i. 356; difficulties 
 
 of, experienced by P. Bourgeois, ib. 
 Chocolate, brought from Mexico by 
 
 the Spaniards, iii. 62 ; treatise against 
 the use of, ib. 
 
 Chocolate-houses, iii. 62. 
 
 Christodins, iii. 411. 
 
 Chronograms, i. 388. 
 
 Churchill abhorred the correction 
 of his MSS. ii. 252. 
 
 Cicero a punster, i. 126; a manufac- 
 turer of prefaces, 128; a collector, 
 iii. 145; his projected library, ib.; 
 employs Atticus to procure books 
 and statues, 146; discovered the 
 tomb of Archimedes, iv. 327. 
 
 Cities, Free, shook off the yoke of 
 feudal tyranny, i. 258. 
 
 Clairon, Mademoiselle, anecdote of, 
 i. 337. 
 
 Clarendon House, history of its erec- 
 tion, iv. 74, 75 ; popularly called Dun- 
 kirk House, or Tangier Hall, 75; 
 satire on the building of, 76 ; existing 
 remains of, ib. note. 
 
 Classical learning, iii. 129. 
 
 Clovis, his reasons for adopting Chris- 
 tianity, iii. 188, 189, and note. 
 
 Coaches, introduction of, into Eng- 
 land, ii. 195 ; use of, in France, ib. 
 
 Cock-fighting in Ceylon, i. 264. 
 
 Coffee, introduction of, into Europe, 
 iii. 57 ; made fashionable at Paris by 
 the Turkish ambassador, ib. ; invec- 
 tives and poetical satires against, 58, 
 59: advantages of its use, 61. 
 
 Coffee-houses, the first opened at 
 Paris, iii. 57, 58; improvements in, 
 58; the first in England, ib.; shut 
 up by proclamation, 61. 
 
 Coke, or Cook, Sir Edward, his most 
 pleasing book, his Manual, or Vade 
 Mecum, iii. 287; his MSS. seized on 
 his death, ib.; yet to be recovered, 
 ib. note ; his character, 288 ; his mat- 
 rimonial alliances, 288 ; his disgrace, 
 289; disputes between him and his 
 wife, Lady Hatton, concerning the 
 marriage of his daughter, 292 ; curi- 
 ous letter of advice to Lady Hatton, 
 for her defence before the Council, 
 293-298; his daughter married to 
 Lord Villiers, and Coke reinstated, 
 299; his daughter's bad conduct, ib. ; 
 his death, 300 ; his vituperative style, 
 ib. ; his conduct to Rawleigh, 300, 
 301: his abjectness in disgrace, 302; 
 pricked as sheriff, to exclude him 
 from Parliament, iv. 371; eludes the 
 appointment by excepting to the 
 oath, 372. 
 
 Coke, Mr. Clement, a violent opposi- 
 tion leader in the second Parliament 
 of Charles I. iv. 377. 
 
454 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Coleridge, method pui'sued by him 
 in his remarkable political predic- 
 tions, iv. 166. 
 
 Collections of books, see Libra- 
 ries; of engravings, see Engrav- 
 ings. 
 
 Collector of books, i. 57; defence 
 of himself, as one of the body, by 
 Ancillon, 58; Aristotle first saluted 
 as a, 107, 108. 
 
 Collectors, their propensity to plun- 
 der, iv. 219-223. 
 
 Collins, Anthonv, a great lover of 
 books, iii. 337,338; a free-thinker, 
 ib . ; the friend of Locke, 339; fate 
 of his MSS. 339-343. 
 
 Comedies, extemporal, ii. 302 ; opinion 
 of northern critics on, 303; the 
 amusement of Italy, ib. ; practised by 
 the Romans, 304; Salvator Rosa's 
 prologue to one, 305; opinions and 
 descriptions of, by Riccoboni and 
 Gherardi, 307; anecdote of the ex- 
 cellence of, 310; when first intro- 
 duced in England, 311. 
 
 Comfits universally used under Henry 
 III. of France, i. 302. 
 
 Comines, notice of, i. 349. 
 
 Composition, various modes of liter- 
 ary, ii. 251 ; correction in, necessary, 
 252 ; but by some authors impossi- 
 ble, ib. ; illustrative anecdotes, 253 ; 
 use of models in, 255 ; various modes 
 of, used by celebrated authors, 255- 
 260; passion for, exhibited by some 
 authors, iii. 304, 305. 
 
 Conde, great Prince of, expert in 
 physiognomy, i. 219. 
 
 Confreres de la Passion, ii. 15. 
 
 Confusion of words by writers, iii. 
 391; by the Nominalists and Real- 
 ists, 392 ; in modern philosophy, 393 ; 
 between the Antinomians and their 
 opposers, and the Jansenists and 
 Jesuits, 394, 395; between Abelard 
 and St. Bernard, 396 ; other instances, 
 397-399 ; in jurisprudence and poli- 
 tics, 399; historical instances, 399, 
 400 ; arising from a change of mean- 
 ing in the course of time, 402 ; serious 
 consequences of, 402-404; among 
 political economists, 407; illustra- 
 tive anecdote of Caramuel, a Span- 
 ish bishop, 408. 
 
 Constantine, motives of his acknow- 
 ledgment of Christianity, iii. 189. 
 
 Controversial writings, acrimony 
 infused into by scholars, i. 220. 
 
 Controversy, literary, that of the 
 Nominalists and Reaiists, i. 406 ; be- 
 tween Benedetto Aletino and Con- 
 
 stantino Grimaldi, 408, 409; abuse 
 lavished on each other by learned 
 men in, 407-415; challenges sent on 
 occasion of, 413. 
 
 Cookery and cooks of the ancients, 
 ii. 433; Epic composed in praise of, 
 434; illustrative translations from 
 Athenaeus, 435, 436; the dexterity 
 of the cooks, 441 ; writers on, 443 ; 
 anecdotes, 443, 444. 
 
 Corneille, Peter, died in poverty, i. 
 84; deficient in conversation, 165; 
 sketch of his life, ii. 102-107. 
 
 Corneille, Thomas, impromptu writ- 
 ten under his portrait, ii. 107. 
 
 Cornelius Agrippa, accused of 
 magic, i. 79; his dog supposed to be 
 a demon, ib. ; his belief in demons, 
 iv. 181. 
 
 Cornhert, Theodore, a great advo- 
 cate for toleration, iv. 149, and note. 
 Corsned, i. 234. 
 
 Cosmetics, use of, by the ladies of 
 the Elizabethan age, i. 310. 
 
 Cotton, Sir Robert, his character of 
 Charles I., iv. 382, 383. 
 
 Country gentlemen, their former hab- 
 its commended, ii. 391; Lord Clar- 
 endon's mention of his grandfather's 
 conduct as one of the body, ib. ; 
 their conduct created a national 
 character, ib. 
 
 Country residence, opinion of Justice 
 Best upon, iv. 276 ; James 1. recom- 
 mendation of, ib. ; proclamations to 
 compel a, 277; and proceedings in 
 the Star Chamber against the dis- 
 obedient, 278, 279; Ode upon, by Sir 
 Richard Fanshaw, 282-284. 
 
 Cranmer, Jansenist character of, ii. 39. 
 
 Creation of the World, precise date 
 of, i. 395. 
 
 Crebillon, his creditors attached the 
 proceeds of his tragedy of Catiline, 
 
 ii. 77; decree of Louis XV. there- 
 upon, ib. 
 
 Critics may possess the art of judging 
 without the power of execution, ii. 
 77; Abbe d'Aubignac and Chape- 
 lain quoted as instances, ib. 
 
 Criticism, Periodical, see Literary 
 Journals, i. 60-66; sketches of 
 amongst the ancients, 74-77; effect 
 of, upon authors, ii. 80. 
 
 Cromwell, his great political error, 
 
 iii. 191; prediction of his future em- 
 inence, iv. 167, 168; reasons for his 
 delay in naming a successor, 233, 234. 
 
 CYRE,'the Abbe\ an envoy of the Em- 
 peror's in Poland, iv. 260; seized and 
 imprisoned, 271. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 D. 
 
 D'Aguesseau, the Chancellor, his ad- 
 vice to his son on the study of his- 
 tory, iv. 63. 
 
 Dance of Death, iv. 100-104. 
 
 Dante, origin of his Inferno disputes 
 on, iii. 173; the entire work Gothic, 
 174; Vision of Alberico supposed to 
 be borrowed, 175 ; and probably read 
 by Dante, ib. ; his originality vindi- 
 cated, 180, 181 ; the true origin of the 
 Inferno, 181, and note. 
 
 Death, anecdotes relating to the death 
 of many distinguished, persons, ii. 
 89-94; book containing the accounts 
 of the deaths of remarkable persons, 
 compiled by Montaigne, iv. 87; re- 
 flections on death, 88; anecdotes of 
 the death of some celebrated persons, 
 88, 89; effect of the continual con- 
 sideration of, 91 ; Lady Gethiu's ideas 
 on, ib. ; conversations of Johnson and 
 Boswell on, 92; singular preparations 
 for, by Moncriff, 93, 94; opinions of 
 the ancients on, 95, 96; personifica- 
 tions of, among the ancients, 96, and 
 note; Gothic representations of, 97. 
 
 Dedications, curious anecdotes con- 
 cerning, i. 434-439 ; price for the ded- 
 ication of a play, 436; one to himself 
 composed by a patron, 436 ; practice 
 of Elkanah Settle with regard to, 
 437 ; of the Polyglot Bible to Crom- 
 well, ib. ; altered at the Restoration, 
 ib.; to Cardinal Richelieu, 438; Dry- 
 den's, ib. ; ingenious one by Sir Si- 
 mon Degge, 439. 
 
 De Foe, his honour questioned as to 
 the publication of Robinson Crusoe, 
 ii. 465; probably struck by Steele's 
 observations on Selkirk's narration, 
 467; wrote Robinson Crusoe in com- 
 parative solitude, ib. ; vindication of 
 his character, 467, 468. 
 
 De la Chambre, secret correspond- 
 ence of, with Louis XIV. on physiog- 
 nomy, i. 216. 
 
 Delinquents, a convenient revolu- 
 tionary phrase, iii. 416. 
 
 Descartes, persecuted for his opin- 
 ions, i. 80; silent in mixed company, 
 165; his description of his life in 
 Amsterdam, 175, 176. 
 
 Descriptions, local, when prolonged, 
 tedious, iii. 319; Boileau's criticisms 
 on, 320; inefficiency of, instanced by 
 a passage from Pliny, ib. ; example 
 of elegant, in a sonnet by Francesca 
 de Caste! lo, 322. 
 
 Descriptive Poems, general remarks 
 on, i. 440; race of, confined to one 
 
 object, ib. ; titles of, and notices on 
 several of these, 440-442. 
 Des Maizeaux, a French refugee, iii. 
 333; his Life of Bavle, 334; notices 
 of his literary life, 334, 337 ; Anthonv 
 Collins bequeathes his MSS. to, 889; 
 relinquishes them to Collins's widow, 
 ib; correspondence concerning, 340 
 -343. 
 
 Desmarets, his comedy of the "Vi- 
 sionnaires," ii. 208. 
 
 De Serkes, introduced the cultivation 
 of the mulberry tree and silkworm 
 into France, ii. 326; opposition to 
 his schemes, ib. ; supported bv Hen- 
 ry IV. 327; medal struck in honour 
 of his memory, 327. 
 
 Destruction of books and MSS. by 
 the monks, i. 70, 104; account of, at 
 Constantinople by the Christians, 
 suppressed, 101 ; burning of Talmuds, 
 ib. ; of Irish and Mexican, 102 ; anec- 
 dotes regarding, 102-104; of Korans, 
 103; of the classics, 104; of Bohe-* 
 mian, 105; in England under Henry 
 VIII. ib.; at Stationers' Hall in 1599, 
 107 ; of many of Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu's letters, 108; of Anglo- 
 Saxon MSS. 109; anecdotes con- 
 cerning the, ib.; by fire and ship- 
 wreck, 110-112. 
 
 D'Ewes, Sir Simon, a sober anti 
 quary, but a visionary, iv. 356; ex 
 tracts from his Diary, 357, 358. 
 
 Diary, of a master of the ceremonies, 
 ii. 374; Shaftesbury's definition of 
 a, 388; Colonel Harwood's, ib.; kept 
 by Titus, ib.; Alfred's, 389; Prince 
 Henry's, ib. ; Edward VI.'s, ib. ; kept 
 by James II. 390; usually kept 
 by heads of families, 391; kept by 
 Swift and Horace Walpole, ib.'; 
 recommended by Sir Thomas Bod- 
 ley to Sir Francis Bacon, ib.; 
 Coke's, 392; Camden's, ib.: of Sir 
 Simon d'Ewes, 393; Baxter's, ib.; 
 the thoughtful disposition giving rise 
 to the keeping of a diary, partaken 
 even by women, 394; Whitelocke's, 
 395 ; Henry Earl of Clarendon's, 397 ;. 
 Lord Clarendon's, ib.; practice of 
 keeping one recommended, 398. 
 
 Diaries, Religious, iv. 358. 
 
 Dictionary of Trevoux, account of 
 its origin and progress, iv. 121 ; of 
 Basnage, 122; of Dr. Johnson, 125. 
 
 DniGES, Sir Dudley, a violent oppo- 
 sition leader in Charles I.'s second 
 Parliament, iv. 377; opened the im- 
 peachment of Buckingham, 378 f 
 committed to the Tower, 380. 
 
45 G 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Dilapidation of MSS.— See Manu- 
 scripts. 
 
 Dinner hour, variations of, in differ- 
 ent times, ii. 193. 
 
 Dinner parties, Roman limitation of 
 the number of guests at, ii. 434. 
 
 Discoveries in literature and science, 
 aptitude in, obtained by studious 
 men, iv. 327; illustrative anecdotes, 
 327-332. 
 
 Divinity, scholastic, i. 118, 119; curi- 
 ous accounts and specimens of, 
 120, 121. 
 
 Dodu's Church History of England, 
 iv. 132. 
 
 Dragons, origin of the old stories of, 
 
 ii. 188. 
 
 Drama, anecdotes of the early, ii. 198- 
 201; Mexican, 202; account of a 
 curious drama, entitled Technota- 
 mia, or the Marriage of the Arts, 
 203-206 ; account of one written by 
 a madman, 208. 
 •Dramatic works made the vehicle of 
 political feeling, iii. 7 ; by the Cath- 
 olics at the Reformation, ib. ; such 
 conduct caused a proclamation by 
 Edward VI. against English inter- 
 ludes, &c. 8; those on the side of 
 the Reformation allowed, and spec- 
 imens of one, 9-11; proceedings 
 against in the Star Chamber, 11. 
 Dramatic Annals. — See Dramatic 
 Works. Suppression of the drama 
 during the civil wars of Charles I. 
 
 iii. 12; opposite conduct of actors 
 at that time, and at the period of 
 the French revolution, ib. ; writers 
 against the stage, 13, 14 ; custom of 
 boys personating females, 14; intro- 
 duction of actresses, 15; Histriomas- 
 tix, 16; all theatres suppressed in 
 1642, ib. ; ordinance against theatres, 
 17; plays enacted secretly during 
 their suppression, 18; Cox's "drol- 
 leries," IS, 19; petitions against the 
 drama, 20; the player's petition in 
 favour of, 21, 22; ' secretly acted 
 at Holland House, 23; the suppres- 
 sion of the drama caused the publi- 
 cation of many MS. plays, ib. 
 
 Drinking, hard, a borrowed custom 
 among the English, iii. 25; learnt by 
 them in the Netherlands, ib. ; stat- 
 utes against, ib. note; terms of. 26, 
 note, 27-30; anecdotes of, 31-33'. 
 
 Drunkards, their different character- 
 istics, iii. 32; "A Delicate Diet for," 
 ib. note; toasts of, 33, and note. 
 
 Du Clos, origin of his fairy tale of 
 Acajou and Zirphile, and account 
 
 of his satirical preface to it, iii. 
 43-46. 
 
 Dutch literature, remarks and stric- 
 tures on, ii. 73-75. 
 
 E. 
 
 Echo verses, specimen of, ii. 422. 
 
 Edward the Fourth, to what he owed 
 his crown, i. 349. 
 
 Elizabeth, queen, i. 352; her amours, 
 352, 353; wished to be thought beau- 
 tiful by all the world, 354; her habits 
 studious but not of the gentlest kind, 
 355; her writing, ib. ; her education 
 severely classical, 356 ; various anec- 
 dotes concerning, 352-356; her con- 
 duct regarding the succession, ii. 
 357 ; her treatment of James 1. ib. 
 
 Eliot, Sir John, a violent opposition 
 leader in Charles I.'s second Parlia- 
 ment, iv. 377 ; his speech on the im- 
 peachment of Buckingham, 378, 379; 
 committed to the Tower, 380 ; violent 
 against Buckingham in Parliament, 
 398; his collection of satires against 
 him, ib. ; a leader in the last Parlia- 
 ment of Charles I. 398-411. 
 
 Eloisa, solicited and obtained Abe- 
 lard's absolution, i. 213; buried with 
 Abelard, 214; a fine lady, 215; 
 Pope's reprehensible lines found in 
 original letters of, ib. 
 
 Enchanters, origin of the old stories 
 of, ii. 188. 
 
 English Poetry, scai*cely known in 
 France in 1610, iv. 125; ignorance 
 of, displayed by Quadrio innis His- 
 tory of Poetry published in 1750, 127. 
 
 Engravings, first collection of, under 
 Louis XIV., by Colbert, i. 55; collec- 
 tion of engraved portraits originated 
 the work of Granger, 98. 
 
 Epitaph on Cardinal Richelieu, by his 
 protege^ Benserade, i. 142; by cele- 
 brated persons on themselves, ii. 90 ; 
 on Philip I. 153 ; on Butler, the au- 
 thor of Hudibras, iii. 259.^__^ 
 
 Errata, remarkable ane^uotes con- 
 cerning, i. 135-139. 
 
 Etiquette, Court, reflections on its 
 rise and progress, ii. 374; forms of, 
 observed between the English am- 
 bassadors and Cardinal Richelieu, 
 375 ; creation of a master of the cer- 
 emonies, 376; absurd punctilios of, 
 illustrated from the Diary of Sir John 
 Finett, 376-387. 
 
 Evelyn, his mode of composition, ii. 
 256; praise due to him for his Sylva, 
 325. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 457 
 
 Excommunication, by the Popes, 
 dreadful consequences of, ii. 249-251. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fairfax:, Sir Thomas, anecdotes of 
 him and his family, iii. 221. 
 
 Fame, contemned, i. 122. 
 
 Familiar spirits, intercourse with, 
 believed, i. 78-80. 
 
 Fan shaw, Sir Richard, his Ode on the 
 king's commanding the gentry to re- 
 side on their estates, iv. 282-284. 
 
 Farces, ancient, reprehensible, ii. 21; 
 their pleasantry and humour not con- 
 temptible, 22; customary among the 
 Romans after a serious piece, ii. 304. 
 
 Fashions. — See Literary Fashions. 
 Anecdotes of their origin, changes, 
 and extravagances, i. 297-314; in- 
 troduction of French, 305 ; chronicled 
 by Stowe, 307 ; French, prevailed in 
 the reign of Charles II., 310; notice 
 of modern, 312 ; lines condemning the 
 acts of, 313 ; expensive in the reigns 
 of Henrv VII. and VIII. ii. 194. 
 
 Feast of "Fools, ii. 189. 
 
 Feast of Asses, ii. 189. 
 
 Felton, John, the assassin of the Duke 
 of Buckingham, his motives for the 
 act, iii. 115 ; his passage to London 
 in triumph, 116; anagram on his 
 name, 117 ; his remorse, ib. ; his char- 
 acter, 118; his family, ib. and note; 
 propositions found in his trunk, 119; 
 answer to a threat of torture, 120 ; 
 poem addressed to, 122. 
 
 Female beauty and ornaments, opin- 
 ions and practices of various nations 
 concerning; i. 290-292. 
 
 Fenelon, Jansenist character of, ii. 39. 
 
 Feudal customs and rights, the bar- 
 barous, the first attempts at organiz- 
 ing society, i. 258; servitude of the 
 land, 259; maiden rights, ib.; ward- 
 ship, 260; German lords privileged 
 to rob on the highway, ib. ; anecdote 
 of Geoffrey, lord of Coventry, 261 ; 
 anecdotes of the abuse of feudal 
 rights and power, 261, 262. 
 
 Filbert, origin of the name, ii. 332, 
 and note. 
 
 Filicaja, a sonnet of, iv. 62; trans- 
 lated, ib. 
 
 Finett, Sir John, master of the cere- 
 monies to Charles I. See Etiquette. 
 
 Fire, in primaeval ages, a signal of re- 
 spect, ii. 171; worshipped as a di- 
 vinity,^; a symbol of majesty,ib.; 
 ancient observances regarding, ib. 
 
 Fire-works, not known to antiquity, 
 
 ii. 173; their epoch, ib.; originated 
 with the Florentines and Siennese, 
 ib.; their use passes to Rome, 174; 
 exhibition of at Paris, ib. 
 
 Flap-dragons, iii. 31. 
 
 Flea, collection of poems on, i. 397. 
 
 Floral gifts, withheld by the Capi- 
 touls of Toulouse from Maynard a 
 French poet, ii. 114. 
 
 Flogging, a discussion on, occasioned 
 Roger Ascham to write his School- 
 master, i. 145, 146. 
 
 Flowers and Fruits, praise of the in- 
 troducers of exotic, ii. 324 ; Peiresc 
 and Evelyn, 325-327; Hartlibb, 327; 
 enthusiasm evinced by the trans- 
 planters of, 328 ; notice' of many in- 
 troduced by particular persons, 329; 
 origin of, distinguished by their 
 names, 330; worthy pride of intro- 
 
 ^ ducers of, 331. 
 
 Forgeries and fictions, political and 
 religious, iv. 23; historical instances, 
 24-28. 
 
 Foscolo, Ugo, his opinion on the titles 
 of Italian Academies, iii. 254. 
 
 Fourmont, the Oriental scholar, an- 
 ecdote of, iv. 312. 
 
 Fox's Acts and Monuments, iv. 132. 
 
 Friendships of literary men, inter- 
 esting anecdotes of, ii. 216-220. 
 
 Franklin, Dr. anecdote of, iv. 184. 
 
 French Revolution a commentary on 
 the English, iv. 373. 
 
 Frondeurs, iii. 412; organized by 
 Cardinal de Retz, iv. 22. 
 
 Funeral honours, paid to their kings 
 by the Goths and Huns, i. 273. 
 
 G. 
 
 Galileo, condemned to disavow his 
 own opinions, i. 78, 79; his annota- 
 tions on Tasso, iii. 200, 201. 
 
 Gamesters, memoirs of celebrated, 
 i. 266. 
 
 Gaming, a universal passion, i. 262; 
 
 treatises on, ib. ; among the nations 
 
 of the East, 263, 264; the ancients, 
 
 265 ; picture of a gambling house in 
 
 1731, 265, 266. 
 Gas, origin of the word, iv. 185. 
 Gemaka.— See Talmud. 
 Genius, inequalities of, i. 146: men 
 
 of, deficient in conversation, 164; 
 
 modern persecution of, 274. 
 Gerbier, Sir Balthazar, a confidential 
 
 agent of the duke of Buckingham, 
 
 iii. 100; notices of his Memoirs, 101- 
 104; his account of the preparations 
 for the siege of Rochelle, 110-112. 
 
458 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Gethin, Lady Grace, her statue in 
 Westminster Abbey, ii. 461; her 
 papers collected and published, 
 under the title of Reliquiae Gethin- 
 ianae, ib. ; character of the book, 402 ; 
 Congreve's laudatory lines on, ib.; 
 its authenticity doubted, 463; her 
 considerations on the choice of a 
 husband, 464. 
 
 Ghosts, theory of, iv. 186, 187. 
 
 Giannone, his history of Naples, iv. 
 69, threatened by the Inquisition, 
 70; died in the citadel of Turin, 
 ib. 
 
 Gibbon, his mode of study useful to 
 students, ii. 257. 
 
 Gill, Alexander, committed to the 
 Star Chamber, iii. 116. 
 
 Gloves, supposed to be mentioned in 
 the 108th Psalm, i. 319; account of 
 by Xenophon, ib. ; mentioned by 
 several ancient writers, ib. ; use of, 
 universal in the 9th century, 320; 
 regulations concerning, ib. ; em- 
 ployed on great and solemn occa- 
 sions, such as investitures, ib. ; 
 Abbots forbidden to use, ib. ; bless- 
 ing of, 321 ; deprivation of, a mark 
 of degradation, 321; challenging by, 
 ib.; use of, in carrying the hawk, 
 322; formerly forbidden to judges, 
 ib. ; singular anecdote concerning, 
 ib. ; ancient, in the Denny family,323. 
 
 Glove-money, i. 322. 
 
 Goff, Thomas, a tragic poet, ii. 201 ; 
 specimens of his works, ib. 
 
 Gondoliers of Venice, description of 
 their chanting the verses of Tasso 
 and Ariosto, ii. 56-59. 
 
 Gray, loss of his MSS., iii. 210. 
 
 Grotius, account of his life and 
 studies, i. 195-197. 
 
 Grub-street Journal, extract from, 
 
 iii. 257; its authors, ib. note. 
 Guelphs and Ghibelliues, iii. 419. 
 Gueux, iii. 410. 
 
 Guibert, foretold the French Revolu- 
 tion, iv. 170. 
 Guicciardini, his history posthumous, 
 
 iv. 65; first editions of his works 
 castrated, ib.; continuation of his 
 history by Adriani, ib. 
 
 Guilt, trials and modes of proof of, in 
 superstitious ages, i. 232-238. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hair, early taste in the colour of, ii. 
 191. 
 
 Halifax, Marquis of, his MS. memoirs 
 suppressed, iii. 204. 
 
 Hall, Bishop, his belief in witches, iv. 
 
 194, and note. 
 Halley, anecdote of his perseverance 
 
 and sagacity, iv. 330. 
 Hamilton, Elizabeth, her projected 
 
 series of comparative biography, iv. 
 
 345, 346. 
 
 Hans Carvel, origin of Prior's story 
 of, i. 173. 
 
 Harui, a French tragic author, ii. 199. 
 
 Harlequin, his Italian origin, ii. 288, 
 289; turned into a magician by the 
 English, ib.; the character essen- 
 tially Italian, ib.; treatises written 
 on it, ib. ; a Roman mime, 292 and 
 note; his classical origin, 293, note; 
 his degeneration, 296; his renovation 
 under the hand of Goldoni, ib. ; im- 
 proved into a wit in France, ib. 
 
 Hartlibb, Samuel, a collector and 
 publisher of manuscripts on horti- 
 culture and agriculture, ii. 327. 
 
 Harvey, his discovery of the circula- 
 tion of the blood, iv. 331. 
 
 Hazlkrigg, Sir Arthur, " an absurd 
 bold man," a violent leader of the 
 Rump Parliament, iv. 418. 
 
 Heart of a lover, story of, i. 316-318. 
 
 Heavy hours of literary men, ii. 61. 
 
 Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, topo- 
 graphical descriptions of, i. 281-283 ; 
 treatises on, 283, 284. 
 
 Hemon de la Fosse, a modern Poly- 
 theist, executed in 1503, i. 296. 
 
 Henrietta, queen of Charles I. her 
 character, iii. 75; anecdote illustra- 
 tive of, ib. ; after the Restoration, 76; 
 various descriptions of her person, 
 77, 78; her contract with the Pope, 
 79 ; account of her journey to Eng- 
 land on her marriage, ib. ; her French 
 establishment, 80 ; anecdote of her 
 confessor's conduct, 81, 82; the dis- 
 missal of her French attendants, 85 ; 
 the amount of her supposed influence 
 over her husband, 88. 
 
 Henry the Seventh, anecdote of, ii.163. 
 
 Henry the Eighth, anecdote of, ii. 163. 
 
 Henry, prince, son of James I., his 
 skill in writing, iv. 49. 
 
 Henry, the English historian, loose 
 and general in his references, iii. 170. 
 
 Heretics, a classification of, ii. 12. 
 
 Hehmippus Redivivus, a curious jeau- 
 d'esprit, i. 416. 
 
 Heylin, a popular writer, died in 1662, 
 iv. 105; his rival biographers, 105- 
 110; his history of the Puritans and 
 Presbyterians, 133. 
 
 High Sheriff's Oath, exceptions taken 
 to, by Sir Edward Coke, iv. 372. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 459 
 
 History, of events which have not 
 happened, a good title for a curious 
 book, iii. 182; speculative history of 
 the battle of Worcester had it 'ter- 
 minated differently, 183; a history 
 of this kind in Livv, 184; subjects 
 for, 185-193. 
 
 Historians, remarks on the infideli- 
 ties of, i. 267; Italian, commended, 
 iv. 61 ; notices of the most celebrated, 
 63-67 ; wrote for posterity, 67, 68 ; 
 fate of Giannone, who published in 
 his lifetime, 70; observation on, ib. 
 
 Holyd.vy, Barton, author of the com- 
 edy " The Marriage of the Arts," ii. 
 203. 
 
 Home, the author of the tragedy of 
 u Douglas,'' persecuted for compos- 
 ing it, i. 274. 
 
 Homer, notice of his detractors, i. 74; 
 profound knowledge of history, ge- 
 ography, arts, sciences, and surgery 
 ascribed to, 396. 
 
 Hudibkas, attacks upon Butler, the 
 author of, iii. 255 ; various accounts 
 of the original of the character, 256, 
 257; indecency avoided in, 258; 
 epitaph on the author of, 259 ; attacks 
 on Butler's character, 259, 260 ; and 
 vindication of, 260. 
 
 Huguenot, origin of the term, iii. 411. 
 
 Hume, his carelessness in research, iv. 
 300. 
 
 Hurd, Bishop, his proposed book of 
 parallels, iv. 346. 
 
 t 
 
 Idleness punished among the an- 
 cients, i. 277. 
 
 Ikon Basilike; its probable effects 
 had it appeared a week sooner, iii. 
 190. 
 
 Iliad, in a nut-shell, i. 365. 
 
 Image-breakers, proclamation by 
 Elizabeth against, iv. 288, 289. 
 
 Imitators, masterly, i. 345-349. 
 
 Imitations, of Cicero, i. 124; Le 
 Bran's religious Virgil and Ovid, ib. ; 
 Sannazarius's poem de Pavtu Vir~ 
 ginis, ib. ; Arruntius an ancient imi- 
 tator of Sallust, 125 ; modern, ib. ; 
 Arabian anecdote, 126. 
 
 Imitations and Similarities, Poetical, 
 various and curious instances of, ii. 
 260-279. 
 
 Independents, their intolerance, iii. 
 417, 418. 
 
 Index, of prohibited books, ii. 400; 
 expurgatory, ib. ; Congregation of 
 the, ib. ; reprinted by the heretics, 
 
 with annotations, 401 ; effect of in 
 raising the sale of books, 403. 
 Indexes, Fuller's observations on, i. 
 130. 
 
 Inigo Jones, his excellent machinery 
 for exhibiting masques, iii. 331, 332. 
 
 Ink, inferiority of modern, ii. 184; 
 various kinds anciently used, 187. 
 
 Inquisition, establishment of, at 
 Toulouse, i. 238; in Spain, ib.; first 
 proceedings of, 239; taciturnity of 
 the Spaniards attributed to, 239; 
 anecdotes concerning, 240-243; his- 
 tory of, by Limborch, 243. 
 
 Intemperance in study, i. 56. 
 
 Isabella-colour, origin of term, i. 
 297, 298. 
 
 Italians, their national genius dra- 
 matic, ii. 289. 
 
 Italic letter, introduction of, i. 134; 
 formerly called the Aldine, ib. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jacquerie, iii. 411. 
 
 James the First gave credit to physi- 
 ognomy, i. 217 ; injustice done to his 
 character for wit, 226; distinguished 
 as Queen James, ii. 143; his ambas- 
 sador's speech, 144; cleanliness of his 
 coui't, ib ; his effeminacy, ib.; his 
 general character, ib. ; his imbecility 
 in his amusements, 145, 146 ; his pe- 
 dantry, 147, 148; account of his 
 death, 148; results of the author's 
 further inquiry into the character of, 
 149 ;' his conduct regarding his son's 
 expedition into Spain, 154; his ob- 
 jections to Laud's promotion, iv. 
 167; his character vilified, 239; his 
 attention to the education of his 
 children, 240; his conduct towards 
 his wife, 241-243. 
 
 James the Second, kept a diarv, ii. 
 390-398. 
 
 Jamet l'aine, proposes to edit a new 
 edition of the Dictionary of Trevoux, 
 iv. 124. 
 
 Jansenists, the Methodists of France, 
 
 ii. 38; cause a Biographical Dic- 
 tionary to be compiled, devoted to 
 their cause, in opposition to that of 
 L'Avocat, ib.; specimens of this 
 dictionary, 39, 40; their curses never 
 "lapsed legacies," 41. 
 
 Jodelle, Etienne, the first author of 
 French tragedy, ii. 198. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., his original Memoran- 
 dum of Hints for the Life of Pope, 
 
 iii. 124-126. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, Fuller's character of, ii. 
 
4G0 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 46; his arrogance, 48; his Ode on 
 the ill reception of his play of" The 
 New Inn" quoted, 49; Owen Felt- 
 ham's Ode in reply, 50; Randolph's 
 Consolatory Ode to, 52, 53 ; his poem 
 on translation, iii. 266. 
 
 Joseph V ella, pretended to have re- 
 covered seventeen of the lost books 
 of Livy, i. 201; patronized by the 
 king of Naples, 202; discovered and 
 imprisoned, 203. 
 
 Journals. See Litehary Journals. 
 
 Journalist, Public, indispensable ac- 
 quirements of a, i. 66. 
 
 Jerusalem, Arabic chronicle of, only 
 valuable from the time of Mahomet, 
 i. 266 ; several portions translated by 
 Longuerue, ib. 
 
 Jesuits, a senate of, sent by Sigis- 
 mund, king of Sweden, to represent 
 him at Stockholm, destroyed by 
 stratagem, i. 314-316. 
 
 Jews of York, history of their self- 
 destruction, ii. 240-244. 
 
 Judicial Combats, anecdotes of, i. 
 232-234. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kings, remark of St. Chrysostom on, 
 i. 246; willing to be aided, but not 
 surpassed, ib. ; anecdotes of, 246-248; 
 observations of the Duke of Alva and 
 of Dr. Johnson on, 248 ; divine hon- 
 ours bestowed on, 253; dethroned, 
 255 ; anecdotes of, and their families, 
 in misfortune, 255-258; descendants 
 of, found among the dregs of the 
 populace in conquered countries, 
 258: funeral honours paid to, by the 
 Goths and Huns, 273. 
 
 Kirk, Colonel, original of the horrid 
 tale of, related by Hume, iv. 26. 
 
 Kissing hands, customary among the 
 ancients as an act of adoration, ii. 
 247; used by the primeval bishops, 
 248; declined with Paganism, ib.; 
 prevailed at Rome, ib. ; an essential 
 duty under the emperors, ib. ; prac- 
 tised in every known country, 249. 
 
 Knox, John, his Machiavelian politics, 
 iv. 136; his opinions on toleration, 
 146; his predecessors, 176, 177. 
 
 L. 
 
 La Mothe le Vayer, a great quoter, 
 iii. 170. 
 
 Lamps, Perpetual, i. 328; possibility 
 
 of, ib. ; Rosicrucians, ib. 
 La Rue. i. 344. 
 
 Laureats, sketch of the history of, ii. 
 
 134; ancient, ib.; Petrarch the first 
 modern, ib. ; degrees granted to, ib. ; 
 formula employed in granting the 
 degree of, ib.; their honours dis- 
 graced in Italy, 135; Querno crown- 
 ed in a joke, ib. ; honours lavished 
 on, by Maximilian I., 136; honours 
 still conferred on, in Germany, ib. ; 
 unknown among the French, ib. ; 
 appointment of in Spain, ib.; in 
 England never solemnly crowned, 
 ib. ; salary of in England, 137. 
 
 Lautour du Chatel, a neglected con- 
 tributor to the Dictionary of Tre- 
 voux, procures the mediation of the 
 French government, iv. 123, 124. 
 
 Lazzaroni, iii. 412. 
 
 Lazzi, side-play, ii. 300. 
 
 League, the, its pretext and its cause, 
 iv 21, 22. 
 
 Learned men, persecution of, i. 78; 
 poverty of, 81 ; imprisonment of, 87 ; 
 amusements of, 90. 
 
 Le Clerc, antagonist of Bayle, and 
 author of three Bibliotheques, the 
 Universelle et Historique, Choisie, 
 and Ancienne et Moderne, i. 64. 
 
 Le Fevre, Nicholas, edition of his 
 works by Lenglet du Fresnoy, iv. 
 117 and note. 
 
 Legends, origin of, i. 148 ; Golden, 149 ; 
 of the Seven Sleepers, ib. ; account of 
 several, 150-153 ; Golden, abounds in 
 religious indecencies, ii. 30 ; of St. 
 Mary the Egyptian, ib. 
 
 Leibnitz, anecdote of, iv. 332. 
 
 Lenglet du Fresnoy, his " Methode 
 pour etudier l'Histoire," iv. Ill; his 
 peculiar character, ib.; history of 
 his M6thode, 112-114, and note, ib.; 
 his literary history, 115,116; a be- 
 liever in aichymy,"ll6; his political 
 adventures, 117-119. 
 
 Le Kain, anecdote of, i. 336. 
 
 Leo the Tenth, motive of his projected 
 alliance against the Turks, iv. 20. 
 
 L'Estrange, Sir Roger, a strong party 
 writer for Charles II., i. 277; his 
 iEsop's Fables, ib. 
 
 Lettres de Cachet, invented by 
 (Father Joseph, confessor to Riche- 
 lieu, iv. 82. 
 
 Libel, singular means used to dis- 
 cover the author of a. ii. 191. 
 
 Libels on the Duke of Buckingham, 
 iii. 108. 
 
 Liberty of the Press, restrictions on, 
 ii. 399-414; did not commence till 
 1694, 413; reflections on, 414. See 
 Censoks. 
 
 Libraries, i. 49 ; celebrated Egyptian 
 
INDEX. 
 
 461 
 
 and "Roman, 51 ; public, in Italy and 
 England, 52; in France and Germa- 
 nv, 54, 55; use of lights in, 55; that 
 Of the Palatine Apollo destroyed 
 by Pope Gregory VII., 104; in Bo- 
 hemia, destroyed by the Jesuits, 105 ; 
 destruction of, under Henry VIII., 
 ib.; astronomical, in the ark of 
 Noah, 394; Irish, before the Flood, 
 395; Adam's, ib. ; modern opinion 
 on their utility, iv. 249. 
 
 Licensers of the Press. See Censors. 
 
 Lights, in public libraries, ordered in 
 France by Charles V., i. 55 ; objec- 
 tion to, 55. 
 
 Lilly, the astrologer, notices of, i. 
 369-372 ; his great work, 372 ; an ex- 
 quisite rogue, 373. 
 
 Lipogrammatic works, i. 385. 
 
 Lipsius, Justus, his opinions on tolera- 
 tion, iv. 148, 149. 
 
 Literary Journals, i. 60; originated 
 with the Journal des Scavans, by 
 Denis de Sallo, counsellor in the Par- 
 liament of Paris, 62 ; Nouvelles de la 
 R^publique des Lettres, published 
 by Bayle in 1684 — continued by Ber- 
 nard, and afterwards by Basnage in 
 his Histoire des Ouvrages des Sca- 
 vans, 63, 64; Le Clerc's Bibliothe- 
 ques Universelle et Historique, Cho- 
 isie, and Ancienne et Moderne, 64; 
 Apostolo Zeno's Giornale de Littera- 
 ti d' Italia, ib.; Bibliotheque Ger- 
 manique, 64; Bibliotheque Britanni- 
 que, ib. ; Journal Britannique by Dr. 
 Maty, ib.; Keview conducted by 
 Maty, jun., ib.; M^moires de Tre"- 
 voux, 65; Journal Litte>aire, ib.; 
 Memoirs of Literature and Present 
 State of the Republic of Letters, the 
 best early English, ib. ; monthly, ib. 
 
 Literary Controversy, specimens of 
 Luther's mode of managing, i. 401; 
 Calvin's conduct of, 403; Beza imi- 
 tates Calvin's style in, ib. ; opinion 
 of Bishop Bedell on, 404; conduct of 
 the fathers in, ib. ; grossness used in, 
 406 ; of the Nominalists and Realists, 
 ib. 
 
 Literary Impostures, i. 198 ; by Va- 
 rillas, the French histoi-ian, ib ; sup- 
 posed by Gemelli Carreri, but after- 
 wards discovered to be fact, 199 ; 
 Du Halde's account of China com- 
 piled, ib. ; Damberger's Travels, ib. ; 
 titles of works announced by the 
 historiographer Paschal, his works 
 at his death amounting to six pages, 
 200 ; by Gregorio Leti, ib. ; forgeries 
 of Testaments Politiques, ib.; pre- 
 
 tended translations, ib.; Travels of 
 Rabbi Benjamin, ib.; by Annius 
 Viterbo, 201; by Joseph Vella, who 
 pretended to have recovered seven- 
 teen of the lost books of Livy, ib.; 
 by Medina Conde, 203; by George 
 Psalmanazar, ib.; Lauder's, ib. ; 
 Ireland's, ib.; by a learned Hindu, 
 204; anecdotes concerning, ib. 
 
 Literary Impositions, curious anec- 
 dotes of, i. 348, 349. 
 
 Literary Forgeries, by Dr. Berken- 
 hout, a letter from Peele to Marlow, 
 ii. 47; by George Steevens, iv. 198; 
 history of one, 200, 201; by Horace 
 Walpole, 204; anecdote of Steevens 
 and Gough, 205, 206, and notes; by 
 De Grassis, ib. ; by Annius of Viter- 
 bo, 207; and mischievous conse- 
 quences of, ib. ; Sanchoniathon, 208; 
 of Etruscan antiquities, 209; the 
 false Decretals of Isidore, 210,211; 
 in the prayer-book of Columbus, 211 ; 
 in the Virgil of Petrarch, ib.; by 
 the Duke de la Valliere, 213; by 
 Lauder, 213; by Psalmanazar, 214. 
 
 Literary Follies, instances of various 
 in the fantastical composition of 
 verses, i. 385-401 ; strange researches 
 made in antediluvian times to be 
 classed with, 394, 395 ; anecdote of 
 a malicious one, 397; various anec- 
 dotes concerning, 398-401. 
 
 Literary Blunders, a pair of lexico- 
 graphical, i. 398 ; instances of curi- 
 ous, 415-423. 
 
 Literary Fashions, ii. 283; applause 
 given to a work supposed to be writ- 
 ten by a celebrated man, ib. ; notices 
 of various, 284; love all the fashion, 
 ib.; Spenser's Faerie Queen be- 
 came one, 285; the translation of 
 Greek tragedies, a, ib. ; of the seven- 
 teenth century, ib.; of the time of 
 Charles I., ib. ; of Charles II., and 
 of more modern times, 286. 
 
 Loxgolius, or Longueil, composed a 
 biographical parallel between Bu- 
 d?eus and Erasmus, iv. 347, 348. 
 
 Lorenzo de' Medici, effect of his 
 death, iii. 192. 
 
 Louis the Eighth, singular anecdote 
 of the cause of his death, ii. 190. 
 
 Louis the Eleventh, anecdote of, ii. 163. 
 
 Louis the Twelfth, cause of his death, 
 ii. 192. 
 
 Louis the Fourteenth, chose his cour- 
 tiers by the rules of physiognomy, 
 i. 216 ; some remarks on his real char- 
 acter, iii. 207; passages suppressed in 
 his instruction to the Dauphin, ib 
 
462 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Louis?: L' Abe, the Aspasia of Lyons, 
 ii. 25; wrote the morality of "Love 
 and Foil}-," ib. 
 
 Loups-gakoux, iv. 194. 
 
 Lucullus, description of the library 
 of, L 61. 
 
 Luther, Martin, remarks on, and ex- 
 tracts from,his controversial writings, 
 
 i. 401, 402; Jansenist character of, 
 
 ii. 40, 41; anecdote of, from Guic- 
 ciardini, iii. 187; his political con- 
 duct, iv. 21. 
 
 Luynes, Due de, his origin, ii. 164. 
 
 Luxury, in dress, an old dramatist's 
 opinion on, iv. 317; doctrines of po- 
 litical economy concerning, ib.; ex- 
 cessive amongst our ancestors, 319; 
 the Pas de Sandricourt, 319-322; 
 ruinous in the reigns of Elizabeth, 
 James I., and Charles I. 323. 
 
 M. 
 
 Mabbe, James, translator of " Guz- 
 man" and " Celestina," Spanish 
 plays, iii. 266, 267; Ben Jonson's 
 verses in praise of, ib. 
 
 Machiavel discovered the secret of 
 comparative history, iv. 63. 
 
 Mackenzie, Sir George, notice of his 
 Treatise on Solitude, ii. 211-213. 
 
 Mad-song, specimen of an ancient, 
 
 iii. 51. 
 
 Magic, instances of many learned men 
 accused of, i. 78, 79 ; Solomon ac- 
 counted an adept in, 187. 
 
 Magius, Charles, a noble Venetian, iv. 
 13 ; his travels and adventures con- 
 tained in a volume of paintings, ib. ; 
 detailed description of, 13-18. 
 
 Magliabechi, Anthony, celebrated 
 for his great knowledge of books, ii. 
 64 ; description of him and his mode 
 of life, 64-66. 
 
 Maillard, Oliver, a famous cordelier 
 and preacher, i. 338. 
 
 Maine, Due de, instituted the Journal 
 de Tre>oux, iv. 121; and the Dic- 
 tionary of TreVoux, ib. 
 
 Maintenon, Madame de, marries Scar- 
 ron, ii. 98 ; corrects his style, ib. 
 
 Malignants, iii. 416. 
 
 Mandrake, i. 332. 
 
 Manners, anecdotes of European, ii. 
 188-198 ; domestic, among the Eng- 
 lish, 196-198. 
 
 Manuscripts, more valued by the 
 Romans than vases of gold, i. 50; 
 two thousand collected by Trithe- 
 mius, abbot of Spanlieim, who died 
 1516, 55; recovery of, 67, 68; of the 
 classics, disregarded and mutilated 
 
 by the monks, 68 ; researches for, at 
 the restoration of letters, 69 ; great 
 numbers imported from Asia, 69, 70 ; 
 of Quintilian discovered by Po^gio 
 under a heap of rubbish, 70 ; of Ta- 
 citus found in a Westphalian mon- 
 astery, ib. ; of Justinian's code found 
 in a city of Calabria, 70; loss of, ib. ; 
 unfair use made of by learned men, 
 71; anecdotes concerning, 72-74; of 
 Galileo, partly destroyed by his 
 wife's confessor, 79; ancient, fre- 
 quently adorned with portraits of the 
 authors, 94: destruction of, at the 
 Reformation, 105 ; of Lord Mansfield 
 destroyed in the riots of 1780, and of 
 Dr. Priestley by the mob at Birming- 
 ham, 107 ; loss of many of Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu's letters, 108: loss 
 of letters addressed to Peiresc, ib. ; 
 of Leonardo da Vinci,109 ; anecdotes 
 of the, of several celebrated works, 
 
 ii. 41; description of the ancient 
 adornments of, ii. 185, 186; of Pope's 
 versions of the Iliad and Odyssey, 
 280 ; of Sir Matthew Hale, bequeath- 
 ed to Lincoln's Inn, to avoid their 
 mutilation by the licensers of the 
 press, 405 ; slaves employed to copy, 
 
 iii. 148 ; of the Vision of Alberico, 
 preserved in the king's library at 
 Paris, 175, 176; of Galileo's annota- 
 tions on Tasso, 200, 201 ; destruction 
 of Hugh Broughton's, by Speed, 202 ; 
 destruction of Leland's, by Polydore 
 Vergil, 202, 203 ; dilapidation of the 
 Harleian, 203; suppression of one 
 relating to Sixtus IV. by Fabroni, 
 204; of the Marquis of Halifax sup- 
 pressed, ib. ; Earl of Pulteney's and 
 Earl of Anglesea's MS. Memoirs sup- 
 pressed, 205; anecdotes of the sup- 
 pression of various, 205-211 ; mutila- 
 tors of, 211, 212 ; collections of, em- 
 barrassing at first sight, yet neces- 
 sary to the historian, iv. 297, 298 ; of 
 Oldys's, iii. 544. 
 
 Marana, John Paul, author of the 
 Turkish Spy, ii. 44, 45. 
 
 Marbles, presenting representations 
 of natural forms, i. 330, 331. 
 
 Mare Clausum, written by Selden in 
 answer to the Mare Liberum of Gro- 
 tius, ii. 246 ; copies preseiwed in the 
 chest of the Exchequer and in the 
 Court of Admiralty, ib. 
 
 Marionettes, improved by the Eng- 
 lish, iv. 131. 
 
 Marlborough, the great Duke of, 
 (See Blenheim,) account of his 
 wealth, iii. 422. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 4C3 
 
 Maholles, Abbe* de, a most egregious 
 scribbler, ii. 12; wrote his own mem- 
 oirs, 13 ; good advice in the postscript 
 to the epistle dedicatory of that work, 
 14; his memoirs, iii. 309; anecdote 
 of him and I)e L'Etang, a critic, 310 ; 
 notices of his voluminous works, 311, 
 312; his magnificent collection of 
 prints, 313. 
 
 Marot, Clement, his character, iii. 
 236; his translation of the Psalms, 
 237 ; sung to the airs of popular bal- 
 lads, 239; his Psalms the fashion, 
 240; edition published by Theodore 
 Beza, set to music, ib. ; "his Psalms 
 declared Lutheran, and himself for- 
 ced to fly to Geneva, ib. 
 
 Mar-Prelate, the book suppressed, 
 iii. 212. 
 
 Masks, worn by Italian actors, ii. 296. 
 
 Masques, notices of magnificent, in 
 the time of Charles 1. iii. 65, 66; the 
 farewell masque of the Duke of 
 Buckingham, 112; mistaken notions 
 of commentators regarding, iii. 324; 
 their real nature, 325, 326, 327 ; de- 
 scription of the masque of Night and 
 the Hours, 328. 
 
 Massillon, i. 345. 
 
 Master-pieces, i. 347. 
 
 Master of the Ceremonies, created by 
 James the First, ii. 376. 
 
 Matrimony, its suitableness to learned 
 men considered, i. 431, 432; opinions 
 of Sir Thomas Browne upon, 432 ; 
 not borne out by his practice, ib. 
 
 Maximilian the First, founds a poet- 
 ical college at Vienna, ii. 136. 
 
 Meals, hours of, ii. 193. 
 
 Medal, struck by the Catholics to 
 commemorate the massacre of the 
 Huguenots, iv. 144. 
 
 Medals, satiric, used as money in the 
 Saturnalia, iv. 30, 31 ; modern ap- 
 plications of, 39. 
 
 Medicine and Morals, considerations 
 on their connection, iii. 225-231; 
 connection of the mind with the 
 body, 232. 
 
 Medina Conde, forges deeds and in- 
 scriptions to benefit the Church, i. 
 203 ; sold a bracelet to the Morocco 
 ambassador, as part of the treasure 
 of the last Moorish king, yet in fact 
 fabricated by himself, ib. 
 
 Memoirs, remarks on their interest as 
 compared with history, ii. 142. 
 
 Mendelssohn, anecdote of, ii. 61. 
 
 Mendicity, punished among the Jews 
 and nations of antiquity, i. 276-278; 
 first made a trade of by liberated 
 
 Christian slaves, 279; punishment of 
 in China, 280. 
 
 Menot, Michael, a celebrated preacher, 
 specimen of his sermons, i. 340-342. 
 
 Mental Disorders, singular mode of 
 cure of, iii. 228; remarkable anec- 
 dote, 229. 
 
 Metempsychosis, doctrines of, advo- 
 cated in the present age, i. 268; no- 
 tion long extant in Greece before the 
 time of Pythagoras, ib. ; taught by 
 the Egyptians, ib.; entertained by 
 many Eastern nations and bv the 
 Druids, 269; Welsh system of, ex- 
 plained by Sharon Turner, ib. ; be- 
 lieved in Mexico, 270; Plutarch's 
 description of, 270, 271. 
 
 Michael Angelo, anecdote of, i. 
 345. 
 
 Mignard, a celebrated painter, curi- 
 ous anecdote concerning, i. 346. 
 
 Milton, his controversy with Salma- 
 sius and Moras conducted with mu- 
 tual revilings, i. 221-223; absurdly 
 criticized by Bentley, ii. 35-38; in- 
 debted to Andreini for the first idea 
 of Pai*adise Lost, ii. 314; his works 
 suffered at the hands of both Royal- 
 ist and Republican licensers, 408; 
 his Areopagitica, 410; a passage in 
 his History of England suppressed, 
 but preserved in a pamphlet, 206; 
 his Comus escaped the destruction 
 of the Bridge water papers, 209; the 
 story of him and the Italian lady, 
 probably an invention of George 
 Steevens, iv. 200; copied from a 
 French story purporting to be of the 
 15th century, 201. 
 
 Milliners' bills, ancient and modern, 
 ii. 198. 
 
 Mimes, Arch-mime followed the body 
 of Vespasian at his funeral, iv. 31. 
 
 Mimi, an impudent race of buffoons, ii. 
 290 ; harlequin, a Roman mime, 292, 
 and note. 
 
 Ministers, origin of the term as ap- 
 plied to the pastors of Christian 
 churches, i. 195; palaces built by, 
 notices of several, iv. 71-76; Sir 
 Robert Walpole's remarks on the im- 
 prudence of their erecting such, 77 ; 
 yet builds one himself, ib. 
 
 Minstrels, ancient and modern, pick- 
 pockets, ii. 319, note. 
 
 Mishna, see Talmud. 
 
 Missals, gross adornments of, ii. 29, 30. 
 
 Modern stories and plots, many de- 
 rived from the East, i. 173, 174. 
 
 Monk, General, anecdote of him and 
 his wife, ii. 150; his conduct to- 
 
4C4 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 wards Charles EL at his landing, iv. 
 304, 305. 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, sup- 
 pression of her MSS., iii. 208, 209. 
 
 Montkleury, a French actor, death 
 of, i. 334. 
 
 Montluc, Bishop of Valence, his ne- 
 gotiations for the election of the 
 Duke of Anjou, as King of Poland, 
 iv. 258-274. 
 
 Moralities, see Mysteries and Mo- 
 ralities. 
 
 Morality of "Every Man," referred 
 by Percy to the class of tragedy, iii. 8. 
 
 More, Doctor, his extravagant Pla- 
 tonic opinions, i. 296. 
 
 Morus, controversy of Salmasms with 
 Milton, continued by, with mutual 
 abuse, i. 221-224. 
 
 Music, use of, in discovering disposi- 
 tions by the voice, i. 219; influence 
 of, in the cure of diseases, 358, 359; 
 effect of, on animals, 361. 
 
 Mutilations commonly practised in 
 the middle ages, ii. 189. 
 
 Mysteries and Moralities introduced 
 by pilgrims, ii. 15; subsequently dis- 
 tinguished characters actors in, ib.; 
 performed in open plains, ib. ; indul- 
 gence granted to frequenters of, 16 ; 
 at Chester, ib.; singular anecdotes 
 concerning a mystery, ib.; speci- 
 mens from French mysteries, 17-20 ; 
 observations of Bayle and Warton 
 on, ib. ; distinguished from each 
 other, ib. ; specimen of a morality, 
 21 ; moralities allegorical dramas, ib. ; 
 passion of Rene d' Anjou, for, 23; 
 triple stage used for representation 
 of, 24 ; anecdote relating to an Eng- 
 lish mystery, ib. ; morality of " Love 
 and Folly," 25. 
 
 N. 
 
 Names, anecdotes relating to, and to 
 their effect on mankind, ii. 228-240. 
 
 Nardi, his history of Florence, iv. 66. 
 
 Neal, his account of the Nonconform- 
 ists, iv. 133. 
 
 Needham, Marchamont, the great pa- 
 triarch of newspaper writers, i. 228 ; 
 short account of, ib. 
 
 Neology, or the novelty of new words 
 and phrases, remarks on, iv. 343; 
 Neological Dictionary proposed by 
 Lord Chesterfield, 347; not always 
 to be condemned, ib. ; examples of 
 the introduction of various new 
 words in French and English, 347, 
 348; the term " father-land " intro- 
 
 duced by the author, 352; pictur- 
 esque words, ib. 
 
 Nerli, Philip, his " Commentarj de 
 Fatti Civili," iv. 66. 
 
 Newcastle, Margaret, Duche s of, 
 celebrated among literary wives, i. 
 425-428; her account of her hus- 
 band's mode of life, ii. 196, 197. 
 
 Newspapers, originated in Italy, i. 
 224; called Gazettas, ib. ; first a 
 Venetian, published monthly, ib.; 
 circulated in manuscript, ib. ; pro- 
 hibited by Gregory XIII., 225; first 
 English, 225, 226; much used by the 
 English during the Civil Wars of 
 Cromwell, and notices of these, 227, 
 228; origin of, in France, 231; first 
 daily one after the Restoration, ib; 
 only one daily, in the reign of Queen 
 Anne, ib.; union between them and 
 literary periodicals, opinions ex- 
 pressed on, ib. 
 
 Newton, remarks on, iv. 332. 
 
 Niccoli, Nicholas, founded the first 
 public library in Italy, i. 52. 
 
 Nicknames, use of, practised by po- 
 litical parties, iii. 409 ; instances of 
 many, 410-414; serve to heat the 
 minds of the people, 415; of various 
 Parliaments, ib. ; effect of, on minis- 
 ters, 420. 
 
 Nobility, conduct of kings towards, 
 ii. 165. 
 
 Noblemen turned critics, pair of an- 
 ecdotes concerning, i. 197, 198. 
 
 Nominalists and Realists, i. 406, 407. 
 
 Nostrodamus, consulted by Catherine 
 de' Medici, i. 370. 
 
 Novels, the successors of romances, 
 ii. 128; Adam Smith's favourable 
 opinion of, 129. 
 
 Numerical Figures, of Indian origin, 
 i. 367; introduction of Arabic, 368; 
 Roman, ib. ; origin of Roman, ib.; 
 falsification of Arabic, ib 
 
 O. 
 
 Obscurity, in style, taught by a pro- 
 fessor, ii. 70, 71; Lycophron pos- 
 sessed this taste, 72 ; defence of, by 
 Thomas Anglus, ib. ; Gravina's ob- 
 servations on, 73. 
 
 Old Age, progress of, in new studies, 
 i. 158; remark of Adam Smith, on 
 resumption of former studies in, ib. 
 
 Oldys, a literary antiquary,iv. 42r>,426 ; 
 caricature of, by Grose, 427 ; released 
 from the Fleet "by the Duke of Nor- 
 folk, and made Norroy King at Arms, 
 ib. and note ; author of the anacreon- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 4G.3 
 
 tic, " Busy, curious, thirsty fly," 
 428; placed in the library of the 
 Earl of Oxford, 429; his integrity, 
 ib. ; his literary labours, 429-431 ; his 
 life of Rawleigh, 431; history of his 
 two annotated copies of Langbaine, 
 433-435; fate of his MSS.,435; his 
 diaries, 438; his readiness to aid 
 others with his knowledge, 439,440; 
 his Dissertation on English poetry, 
 curtailed by the bookseller, 440 ; ex- 
 tracts from his diaries, 442-445 ; his 
 intended Life of Shakspeare, 446; 
 anecdote of him and Pope, ib. 
 
 Opinions, suppressed, modes of ex- 
 pressing them in ancient and modern 
 times, iv. 29; in the Saturnalia, 30; 
 by carvings and illuminations, 32; 
 preceding the Reformation, 34; in- 
 stance of the Olivetan Bible, 35; 
 by medals and prints, 36-43. 
 
 Orchis, Bee and Fly, i. 331, 
 
 Ordeals, i. 232-238. 
 
 Ordinaries, the " Hells " of the 17th 
 century, ii. 340; description of the 
 arts practised at, 340-342. 
 
 Orobio, his description of his im- 
 prisonment in the Inquisition, i. 239. 
 
 Osman, Sultan, promotes his gardener, 
 ii. 163. 
 
 Oxford, Edwai-d Vere, Earl of, his 
 secret history, ii. 430-432. 
 
 P. 
 
 Palingenesis. — See Regeneration. 
 
 Pamphlets, sketch of Myles Davis's 
 history of, i. 442 ; origin and rise of, 
 443; one pretended to have been 
 composed by Jesus Christ, ib. ; Alex- 
 ander Pope denounced as a plotter 
 in a, ib. ; etymologies of the word, 
 444-446. 
 
 Pantomime, Italian verses in praise of, 
 and translation of, ii.287 ; Cervantes's 
 and Bayle's delight in, 287, 288; har- 
 lequin, 288 ; of the lower Italians in 
 their gestures, 289; treatises on, ib.; 
 transmitted from the Romans, 290; 
 improvement of, by Ruzzante, 295 ; 
 the history of a people traced in, 
 , 297; description of the various char- 
 acters in Italian, 298-302. 
 
 Pantomimi, tragic actors usually 
 mute, ii. 291 ; Seneca's taste for, ib. ; 
 their influence over the Roman peo- 
 ple, 292. 
 
 Pantomimical Characters. See Pan- 
 tomime; Massinger and Moliere in- 
 debted to, ii. 311; remarks on 
 Shakspeare's " Pantaloon," 312. 
 vol. iv. 30 
 
 Paper, among the ancients, ii. 184- 
 186; introduction into England, 186, 
 187; various sorts of modern, ib. 
 
 Paracelsus, his receipt for making a 
 fairy, iv. 186. 
 
 Paradise Lost, prose and verse ver- 
 sions of, i. 398. 
 
 Park, Mungo, his book interpolated 
 and altered by his editor, Bryan 
 Edwards, iii. 212. 
 
 Parker, Bishop of Oxford, iv. 148, 
 note. 
 
 Parodies, anecdote relating to, iii. 
 212; resembles mimicry, 213; not 
 made in derision, ib. ; practised by 
 the ancients, ib. ; ancient of Homer, 
 214; modern, 215; dramatic, anec- 
 dotes of modern, 217; legitimate use 
 of, 220. 
 
 Parpaillots, or Parpirolles, iii. 411. 
 
 Particular Providence, various opin- 
 ions on, iii. 182, 183; the granting a 
 free-conduct to Luther, by Charles 
 V., possibly one, 187. 
 
 Pasquin and Marforio, account of, i. 
 287. 
 
 Pasquinades, origin of, and instances 
 
 of several, i. 287. 
 Patrons, their treatment of authors, 
 
 i. 139, 140 ; anecdotes regarding, 140- 
 
 142; opinion of Dr. Johnson upon, 
 
 141. 
 
 Paulus Jovius, description of the 
 country-house and collections of 
 statues, books, and portraits belong- 
 ing to, i. 98, 99; description of the 
 villa built by, iv. 314. 
 
 Pazzi, Cavaliero, founder of the Acca- 
 demia Colombaria, iii. 247. 
 
 Peg-tankards, iii. 29, and note. 
 
 Peiresc, a man of incessant literary 
 occupations, and an enthusiast in 
 the importation of exotic plants, ii. 
 325; anecdotes of, iv. 314. 
 
 Pembroke, Anne, Countess of, de- 
 signed a history of her family, iv. 
 341. 
 
 Perfumery and costly washes, in- 
 troduced into England by the Earl 
 of Oxford, i. 307. 
 
 Petitions, to Parliament against the 
 drama, iii. 20; mock, ib. 
 
 Petitioners and Abhorrers, iii. 418. 
 
 Petrarch, formula used at his coro- 
 nation, with the Laurel Crown, ii. 134, 
 135 ; his passion for literary com- 
 position, iii. 304; his Laura, iv. 212. 
 
 Pictorial Biography.— See Magius. 
 
 Pisistratus, the first projector 
 amongst the Greeks of a collection 
 of the works of the learned, i. 50. 
 
466 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Philip the First of Spain, ii. 151 ; his 
 marriage with Mary of England, ib ; 
 sought Queen Elizabeth in marriage, 
 152 ; offered himself to three different 
 sisters-in-law, ib. ; his advice to his 
 son, ib. ; his death-bed, ib. ; his epi- 
 taph, 153. 
 
 Philosophy, dreams at the dawn of, 
 iv. 179-191; mechanical fancies, 192, 
 193; inquiries after prodigies, 193; 
 further anecdotes of, 194-196. 
 
 Physiognomy, credited by Louis XIV. 
 and James L, i. 216, 217. 
 
 Plagiarism, in printed sermons, ii. 
 70; a professor of, 71. 
 
 Plants, presenting representations of 
 natural forms, i. 331, 332. 
 
 Platina, his account of his persecu- 
 tion and tortures, for having been 
 a member of the " Academy " at 
 Rome, iii. 250, 251. 
 
 Plato, Aristotle studied under, i.210; 
 parallel between him and Aristotle, 
 ib. ; contest between him and Aris- 
 totle, 211; the model of the moderns 
 who profess to be anti-poetical, ii. 
 108; a true poet himself, ib. 
 
 Platonism, modern, originated among 
 the Italians, i. 292, 293 ; system of, by 
 Gemisthus Pletho, 293,*' 294; pro- 
 fessed by a Mr. Thomas Taylor, 295 ; 
 bv a scholar in the reign of Louis 
 XII., 296; by Dr. More, ib. 
 
 Pletho, or Gemisthus, a remarkable 
 modern professor of Platonism, i. 
 293-295. 
 
 Platts or Plots, theatrical discovery 
 of curious ones at Dulwich College, 
 and remarks upon, ii. 811-314; see 
 Scenario. 
 
 Plott, Dr. his project of a tour, iv. 
 193. 
 
 Plunder, etymology of, iii. 417, and 
 note. 
 
 Poets, Plato's description of the feel- 
 ings of, in the Phsedon, ii. 108 ; opin- 
 ions of various learned men on the 
 works of, 109-112; remarks on the 
 habits of, 111, 112; behaviour of 
 Frederic King of Prussia (father of 
 the great Frederic) to, 112; differ- 
 ent conduct of other kings towards, 
 113, 114; honours paid to, in the 
 early stage of poetry, 114; anecdote 
 of Margaret of Scotland and Alain 
 the poet, ib. ; opinions of the pious 
 on the works of, 115; too frequently 
 merely poets, ib. ; hints to young, 
 116; to veteran, 117 ; mistresses of, 
 118; change their opinions of their 
 productions, 119; antiquity of the 
 
 custom of crowning, 134: abolished 
 in the reign of Theodosius, ib. ; re- 
 gal, 136, 137; condemned, iii. 37, 42; 
 laureat, see Laukeats. 
 
 Poetical Garland, i. 332-334. 
 
 Point-device, etymology of, iv. 73; 
 and note. 
 
 Poland, History of the election of the 
 Duke of Anjou as King of, iv. 255- 
 274. 
 
 Polichinello. — See Punch. 
 
 Politian, Angelo, a polished Italian 
 writer of the 15th century, ii. 137; 
 his dedicatory epistle, prefixed to 
 his epistles, 138-140. 
 
 Political Reports, false maxim on 
 the efficacy of, iii. 194; ancient in- 
 stances, 195; of the battle of Lutzen, 
 ib. ; on the battle of the Boyne, 196 ; 
 other anecdotes, modern and ancient, 
 of the effect of, 196-199. 
 
 Political Religionism, illustrations 
 of its effects, iv. 131-138. 
 
 Political Prognostics. — See Predic- 
 tions. Dugdale hastened his labours 
 in anticipation of the disorders of the 
 Rebellion, iv. 159. 
 
 Political Parallels, iv. 165. 
 
 Polydore Vergil, a destroyer of 
 MSS. iii. 203. 
 
 Pomponius L.etus, in the 15th centu- 
 ry raised altai-s to Romulus, iii. 249; 
 chief of the "Academy " at Rome, 
 250. 
 
 Pope, his manuscripts, ii. 280 ; passage 
 from, with the various alterations, 
 281, 282 ; Dr. Johnson's memorandum 
 of hints for the life of, iii. 124; anec- 
 dote of, iv. 313. 
 
 Pope, project of the, for placing a car- 
 dinal on the throne of England, iii. 
 271; favoured by Henry IV., ib. 
 
 Popes, their early "humility and subse- 
 quent arrogance, ii. 249; Celestine 
 kicks off the crown of the Emperor 
 Henry VI., ib.; their infallibility first 
 asserted, 250 ; protest of the Univer- 
 sity of Vienna against, ib. ; their ex- 
 communications, 251. 
 
 Porta, John Baptista and John Vin- 
 cent, found the academy " Degli 
 Oziosi," iii. 252. 
 
 Portraits, of authors, of celebrated 
 men, i. 94-100; of the Fugger fam- 
 ily, 54; commonly prefixed to an- 
 cient manuscripts, 94; collections 
 of, amongst the ancients, 95; query 
 upon the mode of their transmission 
 and their correctness, ib. : use of, 96; 
 anecdotes relative to the effect of, 97 ; 
 objections of ingenious men to sit for, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 407 
 
 reprobated, 98; Granger's illustra- 
 tions of, ib. ; Perrault's " Eloges " 
 confined to French, ib.; collection by 
 Paulus Jovius, 99 ; doubts as to au- 
 thenticity of several, ib,; literary, of 
 himself, by St. Evremond, 163; in 
 minute writing, 366. 
 
 Port Royal Society, the, i. 154; their 
 Logic, or The Art of Thinking, an ad- 
 mirable work, ib. ; account of its rise 
 and progress, ib. ; many families of 
 rank erected houses there, 155 ; per- 
 secuted and destroyed by the Jesuits, 
 156 ; their writings fixed the French 
 language, ib. 
 
 Poverty, abridgment of histoiy of, by 
 Morin, i. 275 ; regulations regarding, 
 among the Jews, 276; among the 
 Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, 277 ; 
 uncommon among the ancients, 278; 
 introduction of hospitals for the re- 
 lief of, 279. 
 
 Prayer-books, gross illustrations of, 
 ii. 80, 31. 
 
 Preachers, jocular, i. 337-345. 
 
 Prediction, political and moral, de- 
 termined by certain prognostics, iv. 
 157 ; of the Reformation by Cardinal 
 Julian and Sir Thomas More, 159; 
 by Erasmus and Sir Walter Rawleigh, 
 160, 161; of Tacitus, ib.; of Solon, 
 161; of Charlemagne, ib.; Cicero's 
 art of, 162 ; faculty of, possessed by 
 Du Vair, ib.; principles of, revealed 
 by Aristotle, 163 ; by Mr. Coleridge, 
 166 ; of the French Revolution, 168 ; 
 frequently false, 171 ; anecdotes, 172 ; 
 of American Independence, 173; 
 sometimes condemned as false when 
 really verified, 174; caution to be 
 observed in, 175; instances of, by 
 v Knox, 176; of the death of Henry 
 IV., ib. ; reflections on, 177, 178. 
 
 Prefaces, frequently superior to the 
 work, i. 128; a volume of, always 
 kept ready by Cicero, ib. ; ought to 
 be dated, 130 ; anecdote of Du Clos's 
 to a fairy tale, iii. 43. 
 
 Preferment, anecdotes of, ii. 164. 
 
 Presbyterians, their conduct under 
 Charles II., iv. 133 ; their intolerance, 
 148. 
 
 Press-money, proposition that those 
 who refused it should be tried by 
 martial law, iv. 389, and note. 
 
 Price, Robert, a Welsh lawyer, inci- 
 dents in his life, iv. 343. 
 
 Prince Henry, son of James L, re- 
 sembled Henry V. in his features, ii. 
 365 ; Dr. Birch's life of, ib. ; anecdotes 
 concerning, 366-374; his diary, 389. 
 
 Printing, art of, possessed by the Ro- 
 mans without beiirg aware of it, i. 
 95-130; early, ib. ; probably origi- 
 nated in China, ib.; general account 
 of early, 130-134. 
 
 Printers, mention of early, i. 133. 
 
 Prints, satiric, iv. 42, 43. 
 
 Proclamations, against long swords 
 and deep ruffs, i. 303; royal, against 
 buildings in London, iv. 277 ; to en- 
 force a country residence, 282; never 
 
 Sossessed the force of laws, ib. ; of 
 [enry VIII., 285; of Mnry, 287; of 
 Edward VI., ib ; of Elizabeth, 288 ; 
 of James I., 289; of Charles I., 291; 
 of Charles II. against vicious, de- 
 bauched, and profane persons, ib. ; 
 others by Charles II., 292, 
 Profession, the choice of one and its 
 influence on the mind, with some 
 illusti-ative anecdotes, iii. 221, 222. 
 Proper names, orthography of, the 
 uncertainty of, ii. 423; anecdotes and 
 instances of, 424-426. 
 Protestantism, once existed in Spain, 
 iii. 189. 
 
 Proverbs, use of, derided by Lord 
 Chesterfield, iii. 355 ; records of the 
 populace, 356 ; existed before books, 
 ib. ; abound in the most ancient 
 writers, ib. ; " the dark sayings of 
 the wise," 357; introduced into the 
 Greek drama, 358 ; definition of, ib. ; 
 influence of, over a whole people, 
 359; collection of, by Franklin, 360; 
 inscribed on furniture, 361; English, 
 collected by Hey wood, ib. ; a speech 
 of, 362 ; an era of, amongst the Eng- 
 lish, 363 ; long favourites in France, 
 ib.; comedy of, ib.; family, 365; an- 
 cient examples of the use of, ib. ; 
 some, connected with the characters 
 of eminent men, ib. ; use of, by poets, 
 367; Eastern origin of many, 368; 
 collection of, by Polydore Vergil and 
 Erasmus, of Spanish, by Fernandez 
 Nunez, of Italian and French, Eng- 
 lish and Scotch, 369, 370; study of, 
 371 ; illustrative of national charac- 
 ter, 371-376: anecdotes of the origin 
 of certain, 377-380 ; historical, 382- 
 388 ; remarks on the arrangement of 
 collections of, 389. 
 
 Prynne, his method of composition, 
 iii. 305; his extraordinary perseve- 
 rance, ib. ; title of the catalogue of 
 his writings, 305, 306; copy of his 
 works bequeathed to Sion College, 
 306. 
 
 Psalm-singing, remarks on, iii. 233; 
 first introduction of, 234; T. War- 
 
468 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ton's criticism of, ib. ; history of, 235- 
 241 ; practised at lordmayors feasts, 
 242. 
 
 P Salmanazar, his extraordinary lit- 
 erary forgery, iv. 214 ; some account 
 of, 214-218. 
 
 Pulteney, Earl of Bath, MS. Memoirs 
 of, suppressed, iii. 205. 
 
 Punch, his ancient origin, ii. 292-294, 
 and note ; origin of his name, ib., note- 
 
 Punchinello. — See Punch. 
 
 Punning, in a dictionary, i. 398. 
 
 Puns, Cicero's, i. 126. 
 
 Puppet-shows in England, iv.130, 131. 
 
 PuRGATORY,Cardinal Bellarmin's trea- 
 tise on, i. 283. 
 
 Puritans, turn bacchanalian songs 
 into spiritual ones, ii. 322. 
 
 Puritans and Precisians, party nick- 
 names at the Reformation, iii. 414. 
 
 Pyrotechnics. — See Fireworks. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quadrio, his Universal History of Po- 
 etry, iv. 125 ; his ignorance of Eng- 
 lish poetry, 126, 127; his opinion of 
 English comedy, 129; praises our 
 puppet-shows, 131. 
 
 Queen Mary the First, her marriage 
 with Philip of Spain, ii. 151; her 
 letter of instructions, ib. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, letter of, to her broth- 
 er, Edward VI., ii. 141 ; her exhibi- 
 tion of youthfulness to the ambassa- 
 dor of the Scottish king, 144; re- 
 markable period in her annals, 355 ; 
 her maiden state, ib. ; real cause of 
 her repugnance to change it, 356, and 
 note ; her artifices to conceal her res- 
 olution, 357 ; debates of the Com- 
 mons on the succession to, ib. ; ad- 
 dress to, by the Duke of Norfolk, and 
 her answer, 358, 359 ; dispatch of the 
 French ambassador on this occasion, 
 359-362 ; her judicious conduct, 364 ; 
 her conduct towards printers and 
 authors, 406 ; her dislike to the ap- 
 pointment of a successor, iv. 234; 
 account of her death-bed, 236-238. 
 
 Queen Anne Bullen, anecdote relative 
 to her execution, ii. 142, 143. 
 
 Querno, made laureat for the joke's 
 sake, ii. 135. 
 
 Quince, origin of, ii. 332, note. 
 
 Quodlibets, or Scholastic Disquisi- 
 tions, i. 115. 
 
 Quotation, remarks on the use of, iii. 
 168; Selden's precept for, violated 
 by himself, 169, 170; Bayle's remarks 
 on the use of, 170 ; when used by an 
 
 eminent author often appropriated 
 by an inferior, 172; value of the 
 proper application of, 173. 
 
 R. 
 
 Rabbinical Stories, specimens of, 
 i. 185-192 ; scripture quoted to sup- 
 port, 191. 
 
 Rawleigh, Sir Walter, composed his 
 History of the World in prison, i. 88; 
 assisted in that work by several em- 
 inent persons, ib.; author's account 
 of his chai'acter, iii. 445 ; Gibbon'3 
 and Hume's observations on, 447; 
 cunning practised by, ib. ; anecdotes 
 of, 447, 448; account of his return 
 from Guiana, 448, 449 ; his attempt 
 to escape, 450; betrayed by Sir 
 Lewis Stucley, 455; narrative of his 
 last hours, 459-466 ; his History of 
 the World, the labour of several per- 
 sons, iv. 7-10; note on Mr. Tytler's 
 remarks on the author's account of, 
 12 ; notice of Oldys's life of, 431. 
 
 Rantzau, founder of the great library 
 at Copenhagen, stanzas by, i. 53. 
 
 Ranz des Vaches, effect of, i. 364. 
 
 Raynaud, Theophilus, his works fill 
 twenty folios, and ruined his book- 
 seller," iii. 314; notice of, 315; his cu- 
 rious treatises, ib. 
 
 Reformation, origin of, iv. 20. 
 
 Refutation, a Catholic's, ii. 11, 12. 
 
 Regeneration of material bodies, 
 iv. 187, 188. 
 
 Relics of Saints, bought, sold, and 
 stolen, i. 323 ; treatise on, by Gilbert 
 de Nogent, ib.; of St. Lewin, 324; 
 of St. Indalece, ib.; of St. Majean, 
 325; of St. Augustin's arm, ib.; flog- 
 ging of, ib. ; miracles performed by, 
 ib. ; miraculously multiplied, 326; 
 anecdote of a box of, presented by 
 the Pope to Prince Radzivil, ib.; 
 Frederick the Wise, a great collector 
 of, 327 ; phial of the blood of Christ 
 sent to Henry III., 328 ; fall in price 
 of, ib. ; anecdotes of, ib, 
 
 Religion, state of, during the Civil 
 Wars, iv. 356-358; illustrative anec- 
 dotes of, 358, 359; contest between 
 Owen and Baxter on, 360; confusion 
 of, ib.; a colt baptized in St. Paul's 
 cathedral, 363, and note; anecdotes, 
 363-365 ; noticed by George Wither 
 the poet, 366 ; ordinance of the Par- 
 liament to rectify the disorders in, 
 ib. 
 
 Religionism distinguished from re- 
 ligion, iv. 131. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 469 
 
 Religious Nouvellettes, a class of 
 very singular works, ii. 27; account 
 of one, ib. ; notice of one discussing 
 three thousand questions concerning 
 the Virgin Mary, 28; Life of the 
 Virgin, 31 ; Jesuits usual authors of, 
 32; one describing what passes in 
 Paradise, ib. ; the Spiritual Kalen- 
 dar, 33. 
 
 Representation, right of, not fixed 
 in the 10th century, i. 233. 
 
 Residences of literary men, notices 
 of several, iv. 310-316. 
 
 Reviews. — See Literary Journals. 
 
 Revolutions, maxim o», iv. 178. 
 
 Riccoboni, a celebrated actor, his re- 
 marks on the Italian extempore 
 comedy, ii. 307 ; anecdote of, 310 ; his 
 inscription on the curtain of his 
 theatre, ib. 
 
 Rich, a celebrated harlequin, ii. 302. 
 
 Richardson, the author of Sir Charles 
 Grandison, remarks on him and his 
 works, ii. 224-228. 
 
 Richelieu, Cardinal de, his general 
 character, iii. 89; his death-bed, 90; 
 anecdotes of the sinister means prac- 
 tised by, ib. ; his confessor Father 
 Joseph, 91-94; projects of assassina- 
 tion of, 95, and note; drives Father 
 Caussin, the king's confessor, into 
 exile, 96. 
 
 Rive, Abbe de, librarian of the Duke 
 de la Valliere, iv. 250; his style of 
 criticism, 251; his collections for 
 works never begun, ib. ; his observa- 
 tions on the cause of the errors of 
 literary history, 253. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, remarks on, ii. 465 ; 
 history of, traced, 465, 466 ; written 
 by Defoe, after illness, and in com- 
 parative solitude, 467 ; not published 
 till seven years after Selkirk's ad- 
 ventures, 468. 
 
 Roc, the, of Arabian tales, a creature 
 of Rabbinical fancy, i. 189. 
 
 Rochefoucault, De la, remarks on 
 him and his maxims, i. 172. 
 
 Rochelle, expedition to, iii. 110 ; prep- 
 arations for, ib. ; frustrated by the 
 death of Buckingham, 112. 
 
 Romances, the offspring of fiction and 
 love, ii. 119; early, ib.; that of He- 
 liodorus denounced in a synod, 120 ; 
 forbidden in the Koran, 121 ; of the 
 Troubadours, 122 ; modern poets in- 
 debted to, ib. ; Le Roman de Perce- 
 forest, 123; of chivalry, examples of, 
 124; Italian, 126; use made of by 
 poets, 127 ; French, ib. ; Avent out of 
 fashion with square cocked hats,128 ; 
 
 modern novels, ib.; histories of, 129; 
 
 D'Urfd's Astraa, 130. 
 
 Ronsard, an early French tragic au- 
 thor, ii. 199. 
 
 Rosy-cross, the president of, proffers 
 his advice to Charles I., iv. 392. 
 
 Rousseau, his prediction of* the French 
 Revolution, iv. 170, 171, and note. 
 
 Royal Promotions, ii. 163-165. 
 
 Royal Society, origin of, iii. 162-164. 
 
 Rubens, his house at Antwerp, iv. 315. 
 
 Ruffs, extravagances in, i. 303-309. 
 
 Rump, the origin of the term, iv. 412, 
 413; three stages in its political pro- 
 gress, 414, 415; songs upon, 416; 
 debate of the, whether to massacre 
 all the king's party, 418, 419 ; parallel 
 between their course of conduct and 
 that of the leaders in the French Rev- 
 olution, 420-424. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sainte Ampoule, iii. 188, note. 
 
 Salmasius, his controversy with and 
 abuse of Milton, i. 221-223. 
 
 Salvator Rosa, fond of acting in ex- 
 temporal comedy, ii. 305. 
 
 Sandricourt, the Sieur de, ruined 
 himself by one fete, iv. 319-322. 
 
 Sans Culottes, iii. 412. 
 
 St. Ambrose, writes a treatise on vir- 
 gins, ii. 83 ; and another on the Per- 
 petual Virginity of the Mother of 
 God, 84; his chastisement of an 
 erring nun, ib. 
 
 St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand 
 Virgins all created out of a blunder, 
 i. 419. 
 
 St. Bartholomew, apology for the 
 massacre of, iv. 151-156. 
 
 St. Evremond, literary portrait of, by 
 himself, i. 163, 164. 
 
 Satirists may dread the cane of the 
 satirized, ii. 119. 
 
 Saturnalia, institution of among the 
 Romans, derived by Macrobius from 
 the Grecians, ii. 445; dedicated to 
 Saturn, ib. ; latterly prolonged for a 
 week, 446; description of, ib. ; crept 
 into the Christian Church, 447, 448, 
 and note; practised in the middle 
 ages, 448 ; Feast of Asses, ib. ; " De- 
 cember liberties," 450; the boy- 
 bishop, ib. ; lord of Misrule, 451 ; ab- 
 bot of Unreason, 452 ; description of a 
 grand Christmas held at the Inns of 
 a Court, 454, 455, and note; the hist 
 memorable, of the lords of Misrule 
 of the Inns of Court, 455; anecdote 
 of a lord of Misrule, 456, 457; the 
 
470 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Mayor of Garratt,459 ; regiment de la 
 Calotte, ib., and note, 460; republic 
 of baboonery, 460; medals used for 
 money in, iv. 30, 31. 
 
 Sauntering, i. 248. 
 
 Savages, various usages of, at meals, 
 
 i. 243-245. 
 
 Scaliger, Julius, his singular manner 
 of composition, ii. 253. 
 
 Scaramouches, see Pantomime. 
 Punch and Zany, prints of, ii. 292- 
 294; character of, invented by Ti- 
 berio Fiurilli, 299 ; power of a cele- 
 brated, ib. 
 
 Scarron, account of his life and 
 works, ii. 94-102. 
 
 Scenarie, the plots of extemporal 
 comedies, ii. 302 ; description of, 303, 
 note ; some discovered at Dulwich 
 College, 311. 
 
 Scudery, Mademoiselle, composed 
 ninety romances, i. 167 ; panegyrics 
 on, 168; her Great Cyrus and "Map 
 of Tenderness, 169. 
 
 Scudery, George, famous for compos- 
 ing romances, i. 169; a votaiy of 
 vanity, ib. ; author of sixteen plays, 
 170. 
 
 Secret History, the supplement of 
 history itself, iv. 294 ; reply to an 
 attack on the writers of, 295 ; two 
 species of, positive and relative, 296 ; 
 the true sources of to be found in 
 MS. collections, 297; neglect of by 
 historians, 298 ; its utility, 299 ; of 
 the Restoration, 303 ; of" Mary, the 
 Queen of William III.. 305-308. 
 
 Sedan Chairs, introduced into Eng- 
 land by the Duke of Buckingham, 
 
 ii. 195. 
 
 Segni, Bernardo, his history of Flor- 
 ence, iv. 66. 
 
 Serassi, writes the life of Tasso, iii. 
 201; finds Galileo's MS. annotations, 
 copies them and suppresses the orig- 
 inal, ib. 
 
 Sermons, printed, Bayle's saving on, 
 
 i. 444. 
 
 Seymour, William, his family and 
 character, iii. 274; enters into a 
 treaty of marriage with the Lady 
 Arabella Stuart, 275 ; summoned be- 
 fore the Privy Council, ib. ; his mar- 
 riage, 276 ; imprisoned in the Tower, 
 ib. ; his wife's letter to him, 276, 277 ; 
 his escape, 282 ; is permitted to re- 
 turn, 287. 
 
 Shakespeare, Fuller's character of, 
 
 ii. 47. 
 
 Shenstone, the object of his poem of 
 
 the Schoolmistress misunderstood, 
 
 iii. 261; his ludicrous index to, 265; 
 
 his character, his life, and his works, 
 
 420-434. 
 Shoeing-horns, iii. 30, note. 
 Silhouette, a term not to be found 
 
 in any dictionary, iii. 413 ; originated 
 
 in a political nickname, ib. 
 Silk Stockings, pair of, presented to 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, i. 308. 
 Silli, iii. 215. 
 
 Sneezing, the custom of saluting after, 
 i. 192 ; attributed to St. Gregory, ib. ; 
 Rabbinical account of, ib.; "anec- 
 dotes concerning, 193. 
 
 Snuff-boxes the rage, in the reign of 
 Queen Anne, i. 311. 
 
 Solitude, treatise on, by Sir George 
 Mackenzie, ii. 211-213; necessary 
 for the pursuits of genius, ib.; dis- 
 comforts of, 214. 
 
 Solomon, accounted an adept in ne- 
 cromancy, i. 187 ; story of him and 
 the Queen of Sheba, 280. 
 
 Songs among the Grecians, ii. 315; 
 sayings of Fletcher of Saltoun, and 
 Dr. Clerk on, 316; Greek songs of 
 the trades, ib. ; of the weavers among 
 the English, ib. ; harvest and oar- 
 songs in the Highlands, 317 ; of the 
 gondoliers, ib. ; Dibdin's, 318; old 
 English, ib.; Swiss, 320; Italian, 
 composed at Florence, under the 
 Medici, ib. ; French " Chansons de 
 Vendange," 320, 321; parodied, by 
 Puritans, 322 ; slang or flash, known 
 to the Greeks, and specimens from 
 Athenasus, 323, 324; ancient prac- 
 tices in, connected with old English 
 customs, 324; political, iv. 44. 
 
 Sonnah, the, i. 177. 
 
 Sotades travestied the Iliad, iii. 214, 
 215. 
 
 Sotties, more farcical than farce, ii. 
 21 ; specimen of one, 22, 23. 
 
 Sovereignty of the seas, ii. 245-247. 
 
 Spanish Etiquette, instances of its 
 absurdity, i. 271, 272. 
 
 Spanish Poetry, i. 161; remarks on, 
 and illustrative quotations of, 162; 
 translation of a madrigal found in a 
 newspapei*. 163. 
 
 Speed, the historian, suspicions of his 
 originality, iii. 202. 
 
 Spenser, Fuller's character of, ii. 46. 
 
 Spiders, influence of music on, i. 361, 
 362 ; admired as food, iii. 59, note. 
 
 Stanzas to Laura, i. 313, 314. 
 
 Starching, origin of, i. 309. 
 
 Steevens, George, the Puck of com- 
 mentators, iv. 198; account of his 
 literary forgeries, 198, 199 ; the story 
 
INDEX. 
 
 471 
 
 of Milton and the Italian lady attrib- 
 uted to, 200; his motives for omit- 
 ting the Poems from his edition of 
 Shakespeare, 203; his trick on the 
 antiquary Gough, 205, 206. 
 
 Stephens, Robert, divided the Bible 
 into chapter and vei'se, iv. 355. 
 
 Stern hold and Hopkins, their version 
 of the Psalms, iii. 234, 235. 
 
 Stochastic, a term for a moral and 
 political diviner, iv. 163. 
 
 Stones, presenting representations of 
 natural forms, i. 329, 330. 
 
 Streets of London, origin of many of 
 their names, ii. 426-430. 
 
 Stuart, Arabella, mistakes of histo- 
 rians regarding, iii. 268 ; her history, 
 269-286. 
 
 Stucley, Sir Lewis, Vice-Admiral of 
 Devon, accepted a smweillance 
 over his kinsman, Sir Walter Raw- 
 leigh, iii. 449; his base treachery, 
 455; universally shunned in conse- 
 quence, 457; convicted of clipping 
 gold, 458 ; his miserable death, 459. 
 
 Student in the metropolis, the, de- 
 scription of, by Gibbon, Rogers, and 
 Descartes, i. 175. 
 
 Study, plans of historical, ii. 258, 259. 
 
 Style, remarks on, in the composition 
 of works of science, i. 147 ; strictures 
 on the, of theological writers, ii. 179; 
 on that of Lancelot Addison, ib. 
 
 Sugar-Loaf-Court, origin of the 
 name, ii. 163. 
 
 Suppression of MSS. — See Manu- 
 scripts. ^ 
 
 Talmud, many copies of, burnt, i. 101 ; 
 a collection of Jewish traditions oral- 
 ly preserved, 177 ; comprises the 
 Mishna, which is the text of the 
 Gemara, its commentary, ib. ; gener- 
 al account of, ib. ; believed apocry- 
 phal, even by a few among the Jews, 
 178: time of the first appearance of 
 its traditions uncertain, ib. ; com- 
 piled by Jewish doctors to oppose 
 the Christians, ib.; analysis of, by 
 W. Wotton, ib. ; two Talmuds, ib. ; 
 committed to writing, and arranged 
 by R. Juda, prince of the Rabbins, 
 forming the Mishna, 179; disputes 
 and opinions of the Rabbins on the 
 form of the Mishna, ib. ; God's study 
 of, ib. ; curious, from its antiquity, 
 ib. v specimens of, from the Mishnic 
 titles, 179-185 ; and from the Gemara, 
 183. 
 
 Tasso, various opinions on the respec- 
 tive merits of him and Ariosto, ii. 
 
 54, 55; Boileau's criticism on, ib.; 
 his errors national, 56; his verses 
 sung by the gondoliers, ib. 
 
 Taxation, remarks on the popular 
 feeling on, in ancient and modern 
 times, iv. 78, 79; associated with the 
 idea of tyranny, 79; illustrative an- 
 ecdotes, 79, 80; efficacy of Oftifig u 
 mitigated term for, 80; gifts, tribute, 
 benevolences, and loans, 81-85 ; Bur- 
 leigh's advice on, 86. 
 
 Taylor, Thomas, a modern professor 
 of Platonism, i. 295. 
 
 Tea, opposition to the introduction of, 
 
 iii. 54 ; present of, declined by the 
 Russian ambassador, 54 ; Dutch bar- 
 gain for, 55; introduction into Eu- 
 rope, ib. ; shop-bill of the first ven- 
 dor of, 56. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, some account of 
 the works of, i. 118-120. 
 
 Tichp.ourne, Chidiock, concerned in 
 Babington's conspiracy, ii. 347 ; his 
 address to the populace at his exe- 
 cution, 353; his letter to his wife, 
 354; verses composed by him the 
 night before his execution, 355. 
 
 Timon of Philius, his parodies of Ho- 
 mer, iii. 215. 
 
 Titles, origins of, and anecdotes con- 
 cerning, i. 249; book of, published 
 in Spain, ib.; Selden's Titles of 
 Honour, ib. 
 
 Toleration, practised by the Ro- 
 mans, and inculcated by Mahomet, 
 
 iv. 139; caution used in publishing 
 works on, 140; early English advo- 
 cates of, ib. and note; in Holland, 
 141 ; facts illustrative of the history 
 of, 142, 143; condemned by all par- 
 ties, 144-146 ; opinions of an English 
 clergyman on, 148. 
 
 Tom o' Bedlams, account of, iii. 46- 
 52, and notes ; songs of, 51, 52. 
 
 Torture, Felton threatened with, iii. 
 120; its frequent use in England, ib. 
 
 Torquemada, first Spanish inquisitor, 
 in fourteen years persecuted 80,000 
 individuals, i. 239. 
 
 Traitors, barbarous mode of execu- 
 tion of, in Queen Elizabeth's time, 
 ii. 351, and note. 
 
 Trevoux. — See Dictionary. 
 
 Troubadours, their poems and their 
 loves, ii. 122. 
 
 Trusler, Doctor, first vendor of 
 printed sermons imitating manu- 
 script, ii. 70. 
 
 Turner, Doctor, a violent opposition 
 leader in the second Parliament of 
 Charles I., iv. 377; an agent of the 
 
472 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 opposition in Parliament against the 
 measures of Charles I., 394; a dis- 
 appointed courtier, ib. note. 
 Turkish Spy, the, ii. 43 ; John Paul 
 Marana, the author of, 44. 
 
 U. 
 
 Urban the Eighth, instances of his 
 poetic sensibility, ii. 135. 
 
 Usurers of the 17th century, notice 
 of the practices of, ii. 332-346. 
 
 UsuRY,contrary opinions on. ii. 333,334. 
 
 Utopia, Sir Thomas More's, missiona- 
 ries proposed to be sent to, i. 416. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vanbrugh, the architect of Blenheim, 
 got a power from Lord Godolphin to 
 contract in the Duke of Marlbor- 
 ough's name, iii. 436; produces the 
 power, 437: his depositions, 438, 439; 
 attempt of the Ducliess of Marlbor- 
 ough to charge the debts of Blen- 
 heim on, 441 ; conduct of the Duchess 
 towards, 442 ; discovery of his origin, 
 443, 444. 
 
 Vaccination, strange dread of, iii. 53. 
 
 Varchi, Benedetto, his " Storie Fior- 
 entine," iv. 67; remarks of Mr. Meri- 
 vale on, 68, note. 
 
 Vasari's History of Artists, not en- 
 tirely written by himself, iv. 10. 
 
 Vatican, library of, i. 52. 
 
 Vaudevilles, origin of the name, ii. 
 321, 322. 
 
 Verses, follies in the fantastical forms 
 of, i. 385-391 ; reciprocal, 392. 
 
 Vicar of Bray, story of the, i. 273 ; 
 Dr. Kitchen, Bishop of Llandaff, 
 acted the same part, 274 ; type of, 
 iii. 191. 
 
 Vida, Jerome, from the humblest ob- 
 scurity attained to the episcopacy, i. 
 166. 
 
 Vision of Alberico, iii. 175 ; of Charles 
 the Bald, 176. 
 
 Virgin Mary, images of, frequently 
 portraits of mistresses and queens, 
 ii. 29; miraculous letter of, 31; 
 Louis II. conveys Boulogne to, ib. ; 
 Life of. by Maria Agreda, ib. ; wor- 
 ship paid to, in Spain, 32; system 
 of, in 7 folio vols., 34. 
 
 Virginity, St. Ambrose's treatise on, 
 
 Walker, his account of the clergy of 
 the Church of England who were se- 
 questered, &c-, iv. 135. 
 
 Walsingham, Sir Francis, died in 
 debt, iv. 78. 
 
 Walworth, Sir William, his private 
 motive for' killing Wat Tyler, iv. 399, 
 note. 
 
 War, various practices in, ii. 170, 171. 
 Wat Tyler, anecdote of, iv. 399, note. 
 Whig and Tory, origin of the terms, 
 iii. 418. 
 
 Whitelocke, his Memorials, ii. 395; 
 his Remembrances, a work address- 
 ed to his family, lost or concealed, 
 395, 396; preface to the Remem- 
 brances preseiwed, 396 ; omissions in 
 first edition of his Memorials, iii. 206. 
 
 Wife, Literary, i. 423 ; of Budaeus, ib. ; 
 of Evelyn, who designed the frontis- 
 piece to" his translation of Lucretius, 
 424 ; of Baron Haller, ib. ; Calphur- 
 nia, wife of Pliny, ib. ; Margaret, 
 Duchess of Newcastle, 425 ; extract 
 from her epistle to her husband, ib. ; 
 notices of the wives of various cele- 
 brated men, 429-434. 
 
 Wigs, custom of using, i. 301-311; 
 Steele's, 311. 
 
 Wilkins, Bishop, his museum, iv. 192. 
 
 Winkelmann, the plan on which he 
 composed his works, ii. 256. 
 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, his magnificent 
 houses, iv. 72. 
 
 Words, introduction of new, see Ne- 
 ology. 
 
 Wood, Anthony, when dying caused 
 his papers to be destroyed, ii. 430; 
 some, however, preseiwed, ib. ; se- 
 cret history of the Earl of Oxford 
 drawn from, 431 ; compelled to dis- 
 avow the translation of his book, iii. 
 211; Gibbon's opinion of his dulness, 
 opposed, 309, note. 
 
 Writing, minute, i. 365 ; ancient modes 
 of, ii. 180-183; materials used for, 
 184-186. 
 
 Writing-masters, iv. 48; Massey's 
 lives of, 51 ; anecdote of Tomkins, a, 
 54 ; Peter Bayles, a celebrated, 56 ; 
 account of h'is contest with David 
 Johnson, 56-60. 
 
 X. 
 
 Xenocrates, pupil of Plato, attacked 
 Aristotle, i. 211, 212. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yvery, notice of the history of the 
 house of, iv. 341, and note. 
 
 Z. 
 
 Zany, etymology of the word, ii. 294, 
 and notes.