§Voltaire§, in his _Œdipus_, makes Jocasta say,—
Tout _parle_ contre nous, jusqu’à notre _silence_.
In §Milton’s§ _Samson Agonistes_ we find,—
The deeds themselves, though _mute_, _spoke loud_ the doer.
* * * * *
“A SORROW’S CROWN OF SORROW.”
A similar thought may be found in §Dante§:—
——nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.—_Inferno_, Canto v. 121.
(There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in
wretchedness.)
Also §Chaucer§:—
For of Fortune’s sharpe adversite
The worst kind of infortune is this:
A man to have been in prosperite
And it remember when it passid is.
_Troilus and Cresside_, B. III.
The same thought occurs in the writings of other Italian poets. See
§Marino§, _Adone_, c. xiv.; §Fortinguerra§, _Ricciardetto_, c. xi.; and
§Petrarch§, _canzone 46_. The original was probably in §Boetius§, _de
Consol. Philosoph._:—
In omni adversitate fortunæ infeliCissimum genus est infortunii fuisse
felicem et non esse.—L. ii. pr. 4.
* * * * *
The famous pun in the imitation of §Crabbe§ in the _Rejected
Addresses_:—
The youth, with joy unfeigned,
Regained the _felt_, and _felt_ what he regained,
and of §Holmes§ in his _Urania_:—
Mount the new Castor:—ice itself will melt;
Boots, gloves, may fail; the hat is always _felt_,
had been anticipated by §Thomas Heywood§ in a song:—
But of all _felts_ that may be _felt_,
Give me your English beaver.
* * * * *
§Falstaff’s§ pun:—
Indeed I am in the _waist_ two yards about; but I am now about no
_waste_; I am about thrift,—(_Merry Wives of Windsor._)
had also been anticipated, and may be found in §Heywood’s§
“_Epigrammes_,” 1562:—
“Where am I least, husband?” Quoth he, “In the _waist_;
Which cometh of this, thou art vengeance strait-laced.
Where am I biggest, wife?” “In the _waste_,” quoth she,
“For all is _waste_ in you, as far as I see.”
The same play on the word occurs subsequently in §Shirley’s§ comedy of
_The Wedding_, 1629:—
He is a great man indeed; something given to the _waist_, for he lives
within no _reasonable compass_.
* * * * *
§Moore§, in his song _Dear Harp of my Country_, sings,—
If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover
Have throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone;
I was but as the wind passing heedlessly over,
And all the wild sweetness I waked was thy own;—
an idea probably caught from §Horace’s§ Ode to Melpomene:—
Totum muneris hoc tui est,
Quod monstror digito prætereuntium
Romanæ fidicen lyræ:
Quod spiro, et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.
(That I am pointed out by the fingers of passers-by as the stringer of
the Roman lyre, is entirely thy gift: that I breathe and give
pleasure, if I do give pleasure, is thine.)
* * * * *
Now, by those stars that glance
O’er Heaven’s still expanse,
Weave we our mirthful dance,
Daughters of Zea!—§Moore§: _Evenings in Greece_.
Beneath the moonlight sky
The festal warblings flowed
Where maidens to the Queen of Heaven
Wove the gay dance.—§Keble§: _Christian Year_.
* * * * *
Her ‘prentice han’ she tried on man,
An’ then she made the lassies, O.
§Burns§: _Green Grow, &c._
Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was
a skilful mistress of her art.—_Cupid’s Whirligig_ (1607).
* * * * *
A book, upon whose leaves some chosen plants
By his own hand disposed with nicest care,
In undecaying beauty were preserved;—
Mute register, to him, of time and place
And various fluctuations in the breast;
To her a monument of faithful love
Conquered, and in tranquillity retained.
§Wordsworth§: _Excursion_.
Like flower-leaves in a precious volume stored,
To solace and relieve
Some heart too weary of the restless world.—§Keble§: _Christian Year_.
* * * * *
Her pretty feet,
Like smiles, did creep
A little out, and then,
As if they started at bo-peep,
Did soon draw in again.—§Herrick.§
Imitated by §Sir John Suckling§ in his ballad of _The Wedding_:—
Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light;
But, oh, she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight!
* * * * *
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart:
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel,
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.
§Byron§: _On the Death of Kirke White_.
§Waller§ says, in his _Lines to a Lady singing a song of his own
composing_,—
That eagle’s fate and mine are one,
Which, on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own
Wherewith he’d wont to soar so high.
§Moore§ uses the same figure:—
Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,
See their own feathers plucked to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart.—_Corruption._
The original in _The Myrmidons_ of §Eschylus§ has been thus translated:—
An eagle once,—so Libyan legends say,—
Struck to the heart, on earth expiring lay,
And, gazing on the shaft that winged the blow,
Thus spoke:—“Whilst others’ ills from others flow,
To my own plumes, alas! my fate I owe.”
* * * * *
Even as a broken mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies, and makes
A thousand images of one that was,
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks.
§Byron§: _Childe Harold_.
Suggested by the following passage:—
And as Praxiteles did by his glass when he saw a scurvy face in it,
brake it to pieces, but for that one he saw many more as bad in a
moment.
§Burton§: _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part II., Sect. 3, (mem. 7.)
* * * * *
In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all the others, all she loves is love, &c.—§Byron§: _Don Juan_.
Borrowed from §La Rochefoucauld§:—
Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l’amant; dans les autres
elles aiment l’amour.—_Max. 494._
In the same place §Byron§ adds:—
Although, no doubt, her first of love-affairs
Is that to which her heart is wholly granted,
Yet there are some, they say, who have had _none_;
But those who have ne’er end with only _one_.
And in some observations upon an article in Blackwood’s Magazine, he
says,—
Writing grows a habit, like a woman’s gallantry. There are women who
have had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only: so there are
millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have
written only one.
This idea is also borrowed from §La Rochefoucauld§:—
On peut trouver des femmes qui n’ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il
est rare d’en trouver qui n’en aient jamais eu qu’une.—_Max. 73._
* * * * *
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state,
An hour may lay it in the dust.—§Byron§: _Childe Harold_.
Cento si richieggono ad edificare; un solo basta per distruggere
tutto.—§Muratori’s§ _Annals_.
* * * * *
Even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are formed.—_Childe Harold._
Yet monsters from thy large increase we find,
Engendered in the slime thou leav’st behind.—§Dryden§: _The Medal_.
* * * * *
I am not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.—_Childe Harold._
The gods, a kindness I with thanks repay,
Had formed me of another sort of clay.—§Churchill.§
* * * * *
_What exile from himself can flee?_
To zones though more and more remote,
Still, still pursues, where’er I be,
The blight of life,—the demon Thought.—_Childe Harold._
Patriæ quis exul se quoque fugit?—§Horace§: _Ode to Grosphus_.
Vide also Epist. XI. 28.
* * * * *
To-morrow for the Moon we depart,
But not to-night,—to-night is for the heart.—§Byron§: _The Island_.
Nunc vino pellite curas;
Cras ingens iterabimus æquor.—§Horace§: _Ode to Munatius Plancus_.
(Now drown your cares in wine;
To-morrow we shall traverse the great brine.)
* * * * *
§Dryden§, alluding to his work, says,—
When it was only a confused mass of thoughts _tumbling_ over one
another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its _first work_,
moving the _sleeping images of things_ towards the light, there to be
distinguished, and there either to be _chosen_ or rejected by the
_judgment_.—_Rival Ladies_ (1664).
§Byron§ thus appropriates the idea:—
——As yet ’tis but a chaos
Of darkly brooding thoughts; my fancy is
In her _first work_, more nearly to the light
Holding _the sleeping images of things_
For the selection of the pausing judgment.—_Doge of Venice_, I. 2.
* * * * *
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
’Tis that I may not weep.—§Byron§: _Don Juan_.
§Richardson§ had said, long before,—
Indeed, it is to this deep concern that my levity is owing; for I
struggle and struggle, and try to buffet down my cruel reflections as
they rise; and when I cannot, _I am forced to try to make myself laugh
that I may not cry_; for one or other I must do: and is it not
philosophy carried to the highest pitch for a man to conquer such
tumults of soul as I am sometimes agitated by, and in the very height
of the storm to quaver out a horse-laugh?
_Clarissa Harlowe_, Let. 84.
In the _Antiquary_ of Sir §Walter Scott§, Maggie says to Oldbuck of
Monkbarns (ch. xi.):—
It’s no fish ye’re buying, its men’s lives.
§Tom Hood§, appears to have borrowed this idea in the _Song of the
Shirt_:—
It is not linen you’re wearing out.
But human creatures’ lives.
* * * * *
In §Rogers’§ poem, _Human Life_ is this couplet describing a good wife:—
A guardian angel o’er his hearth presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
In the _Tatler_, No. 49, it is said of a model couple, Amanda and
Florio, that “their satisfactions are doubled, their sorrows lessened,
by participation.”
* * * * *
Of the buccaneering adventurer described in _Rokeby_, Sir §Walter Scott§
says:—
Inured to danger’s direst form,
Tornade and earthquake, flood and storm,
Death had he seen by sudden blow,
By wasting plague, by torture slow,
By mine or breach, by steel or ball,
_Knew all his shapes and scorned them all_.
Sir §Walter Raleigh§, in a letter to his wife on the eve, as he
supposed, of his execution, speaks of himself as “one who, in his own
respect, despiseth death in all his misshapen and ugly forms.”
* * * * *
Speaking of Burke, §Goldsmith§ says in his _Retaliation_:—
Who, born for universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
§Pope§, in his Last Letter to the Bishop of Rochester, (Atterbury,)
said:—
At this time, when you are cut off from a little society and made a
citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents, not to
serve a party or a few, but all mankind.
* * * * *
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.—§Pope.§
Nous no jouissons jamais; nous espérons toujours.—§Massillon§, _Sermon
pour le Jour de St. Benoit_.
* * * * *
The jocular saying of §Douglas Jerrold§, that a wife of forty should,
like a bank-note, be exchangeable for _two_ of twenty, was anticipated
by §Byron§:—
Wedded she was some years, and to a man
Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;
And yet, I think, instead of such a _one_
’Twere better to have two of five-and-twenty.
_Don Juan_, lxii.
And still earlier by §Gay§ in _Equivocation_. In the colloquy between a
bishop and an abbot, the bishop advises:—
These indiscretions lend a handle
To lewd lay tongues to give us scandal
For your vow’s sake, this rule I give t’ye,
Let all your maids be _turned of fifty_.
The priest replied, I have not swerved,
But your chaste precept well observed;
That lass full _twenty-five_ has told;
I’ve yet another who’s as old;
Into one sum their ages cast,
So _both_ my maids have _fifty_ past.
* * * * *
Many readers will remember the lines by §Burns§, commencing:—
The day returns, my bosom burns,
The blissful day we twa did meet;
Though winter wild in tempest toiled,
Ne’er summer morn was half sae sweet.
The turn of thought in this stanza bears a striking resemblance to the
concluding lines of Ode cxi., of §M. A. Flaminius§. The following
translation is close enough to point the resemblance:—
When, borne on Zephyr’s balmy wing
Again returns the purple spring
Instant the mead is gay with flowers
The forest smiles, and through its bowers
Once more the song-bird’s tuneful voice
Bids nature everywhere rejoice.
Yet fairer far and far more gay
To me were winter’s darkest day,
So, blessed thenceforth, it should restore
My loved one to my arms once more.
* * * * *
§Moore§ says:—
Let conquerors boast
Their fields of fame—he who in virtue’s arms
A young warm spirit against beauty’s charms
Who feels her brightness, yet defies her thrall
Is the best, bravest conqueror of all.
§Howell§ in the Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ says:—
Alexander subdued the world—Cæsar his enemies—Hercules monsters—but he
that overcomes himself is the true valiant captain.
* * * * *
Brutus says, in §Shakspeare’s§ _Julius Cæsar_, iv., 3:—
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.
In §Bacon’s§ _Advancement of Learning_, B. 2, occurs this passage:—
In the third place, I set down reputation, because of the peremptory
tides and currents it hath, which, if they be not taken in due time,
are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an after game of
reputation.
* * * * *
King Henry says, in §Shakspeare’s§ 2 Hen. VI., i. 1:—
O Lord, that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.
§George Herbert§ says:—
Thou that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, a grateful heart.
* * * * *
§Vitruvius§ says:—There are various kinds of timber, as there are
various kinds of flesh; one of men, one of fishes, one of beasts, and
another of birds.
§St. Paul§ says:—All flesh is not the same flesh, &c., I Cor. xv. 39.
* * * * *
In §Coventry Patmore’s§ delicately beautiful poem, _The Angel in the
House_, twice occurs the line,—
Her pleasure in her power to charm.
“An exquisite line,” says _The Critic_: “who could have believed that
the ugly and often unjust word _vanity_ could ever be melted down into
so true and pretty and flattering a periphrasis?” §Thackeray§ uses the
same idea:—
A fair young creature, bright and blooming yesterday, distributing
smiles, levying homage, inspiring desire, conscious of her power to
charm, and gay with the natural enjoyments of her conquests—who, in
his walk through the world, has not looked on many such a one? _The
Newcomes._
E’en the slight hare-bell raised its head,
Elastic from its airy tread. §Scott§, _Lady of the Lake_.
For other print her airy steps ne’er left;
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass.
§Ben Jonson§, _The Sad Shepherd_.
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.
§Pope§, _Essay on Criticism_.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
§Tennyson§, _In Memoriam, xxvii._
Magis gauderes quod habueras [amicum], quam mœreres quod amiseras.
§Seneca§, _Epist. cxix._
* * * * *
The familiar epitaphic line,
Think what a woman should be—she was that,
finds a parallel in §Shakspeare’s§ _Venus and Adonis_:—
Look what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.
* * * * *
And homeless, near a thousand homes, I stood,
And, near a thousand tables, pined and wanted food.
§Wordsworth§, _Guilt and Sorrow_.
Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
Oh, it was pitiful,
Near a whole city full
Home she had none. §Hood§, _Bridge of Sighs_.
* * * * *
So that a doubt almost within me springs
Of Providence. §Wordsworth§, _Powers of Imagination_.
Even God’s Providence seeming estranged.
§Hood§, _Bridge of Sighs_.
* * * * *
Not that man may not here
Taste of the cheer:
But as birds drink, and straight lift up their head;
So must he sip and think
Of better drink
He may attain to after he is dead.
§George Herbert§, _Man’s Medley_.
Look at the chicken by the side of yonder pond, and let it rebuke your
ingratitude. It drinks, and every sip it takes it lifts its head to
heaven and thanks the giver of the rain for the drink afforded to it;
while thou eatest and drinkest, and there is no blessing pronounced at
thy meals and no thanksgiving bestowed upon thy Father for his bounty.
§Spurgeon§, _Everybody’s Sermon_.
* * * * *
§Toplady§ has bequeathed to us the beautiful hymn:—
Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee!
Let the water and the blood,
From thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
But §Daniel Brevint§ in _The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice_, (1673)
had made this devout and solemn aspiration:—
O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let
those two streams of blood and water, which once gushed out of thy
side ... bring down with them salvation and holiness into my soul.
* * * * *
She (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor
when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast
Solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch
the ruins of St. Paul’s. §Macaulay§, _Ranke’s History of the Popes_.
The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic.
There will perhaps be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York,
and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last some
curious traveler from Lima will visit England, and give a description
of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Baalbec and
Palmyra:—but am I not prophesying contrary to my consummate prudence,
and casting horoscopes of empires like Rousseau?
§Horace Walpole§, _Letter to Mason_.
* * * * *
Readers of _Don Juan_ sometimes descant with rapture on the beauty of
the lines (c. i. v. 123),—
’Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark
Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home,—
The epithet _deep-mouthed_, as applied to the bark, being especially
designated as “fine.” And fine it is, but §Byron§ found it in
§Shakspeare§ and in §Goldsmith§:—
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach.
_Taming of the Shrew, Induc. Sc. 1._
The laborers of the day were all retired to rest; the lights were out
in every cottage; no sounds were heard but of the shrilling cock, and
the deep-mouthed watch-dog at hollow distance.
_Vicar of Wakefield_, _ch._ xxii.
* * * * *
“Your sermon,” said a great critic to a great preacher, “was very fine;
but had it been only half the length, it would have produced twice the
impression.” “You are quite right,” was the reply; “but the fact is, I
received but sudden notice to preach, and therefore _I had not the time
to make my sermon short_.”
* * * * *
§Voltaire§ apologized for writing a long letter on the ground that he
had not time to condense. In these cases the idea is borrowed from
classical literature. §Pliny§ says in his _Letters_ (lib. i. ep. xx.):—
Ex his apparet illum permulta dixisse; quum ederet, omisisse; ... ne
dubitare possimus, quæ per plures dies, ut necesse erat, latius
dixerit, postea recisa ac purgata in unum librum, grandem quidem, unum
tamen, coarctasse.
(From this it is evident that he said very much; but, when he was
publishing, he omitted much: ... so that we may not doubt that what he
said more diffusely, as he was at the time forced to do, having
afterwards retrenched and corrected, he condensed into one single
book.)
The condensation and revision required more time and thought than the
first production.
* * * * *
§Campbell§ says in _O’Connor’s Child_,—
For man’s neglect we loved it more.
And again, _Lines on leaving a Scene in Bavaria_,—
For man’s neglect I love thee more.
* * * * *
And §Walter Scott§ likewise imitates himself thus:—
His grasp, as hard as glove of mail,
Forced the red blood drop from the nail.
_Rokeby.__Canto_i.
He wrung the Earl’s hand with such frantic earnestness, that his grasp
forced the blood to start under the nail.—_Legend of Montrose._
* * * * *
In _Rob Roy_, Sir Walter makes Frank Osbaldistone say in his elegy on
Edward the Black Prince,—
O for the voice of that wild horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
The dying hero’s call,
That told imperial Charlemagne,
How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain
Had wrought his champion’s fall.
And in _Marmion_, toward the close of Canto Sixth, he says:—
O for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come,
When Rowland brave, and Oliver,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died.
When this inadvertent or unconscious coincidence in the poem and the
novel was pointed out to Sir Walter, he replied, with his natural
expression of comic gravity, “Ah! that _was very careless_ of me. I did
not think I should have committed such a blunder.”
* * * * *
“I tread on the pride of Plato,” said Diogenes, as he walked over
Plato’s carpet. “Yes, and with more pride,” said Plato.—§Cecil§,
_Remains_.
Trampling on Plato’s pride, with greater pride,
As did the Cynic on some like occasion, &c.
§Byron§, _Don Juan_, xvi. 43.
Diogenes I hold to be the most vainglorious man of his time, and more
ambitious in refusing all honors than Alexander in rejecting none.
§Browne§, _Religio Medici_.
* * * * *
There is an Italian proverb used, in the extravagance of flattery, to
compliment a handsome lady, expressive of this idea:—“When nature made
thee, she broke the mould.” §Byron§ uses it in the closing lines of his
monody on the death of Sheridan:—
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die,—in moulding Sheridan.
§Shakspeare§ also says, in the second stanza of _Venus and Adonis_,—
Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.
* * * * *
Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.
(From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step.)
This saying, commonly ascribed to §Napoleon§, was borrowed by him from
§Tom Paine§, whose works were translated into French in 1791, and who
says,—
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is
difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes
the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime
again.
Tom Paine, in turn, adopted the idea from §Hugh Blair§, who says, in one
place,—
It is indeed extremely difficult to hit the precise point where true
wit ends and buffoonery begins.
In another,—
It frequently happens that where the second line is sublime, the
third, in which he meant to rise still higher, is perfect bombast.
Finally, §Blair§ borrowed the saying from §Longinus§, a celebrated Greek
critic and rhetorical writer, who, in a Treatise _On the Sublime_, uses
the same expression, with this slight modification, that he makes the
transition a gradual one, while Blair, Paine, and Napoleon make it but a
step.[35]
Footnote 35:
A curious instance of bathos occurs in Dr. Mavor’s account of Cook’s
voyages:—“The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till they were
lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with everlasting snow.
Not a tree was to be seen, nor even a shrub _big enough to make a
tooth-pick_.”
* * * * *
Evil communications corrupt good manners.—1 Cor. xv. 33.
φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρησθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί.—§Menander.§
Bonos corrumpunt mores congressus mali.—§Tertullian§: _Ad Uxorem_.
* * * * *
He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.—Eccl. i. 18.
From ignorance our comfort flows,
The only wretched are the wise.—§Prior.§
Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.—§Gray§: _Ode to Eton_.
* * * * *
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.—§Pope§: _On Criticism_.
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in
philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.—§Bacon§: _On
Atheism_.
* * * * *
In _Paradise Lost_, Book V. 601, we find the expression—
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers;
and in Book I. 261, this powerful passage put in the mouth of Satan:—
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell;
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
In §Stafford’s§ _Niobe_, printed when Milton was in his cradle, (1611,)
is the following:—
True it is, sir, (said the Devil,) that I, storming at the name of
supremacy, sought to depose my Creator; which the watchful,
all-seeing eye of Providence finding, degraded me of my angelic
dignities—dispossessed me of all pleasures; and the seraphs and
cherubs, the _Throne_, _Dominations_, _Virtues_, _Powers_,
_Princedoms_, Arch Angels, and all the Celestial Hierarchy, with a
shout of applause, sung my departure out of Heaven. My alleluia was
turned into an eheu. Now, forasmuch as I was an Angel of Light, it
was the will of Wisdom to confine me to Darkness and make me Prince
thereof. So that I, that could not obey in Heaven, might command in
Hell; and, believe me, I had _rather rule within my dark domain than
to re-inhabit Cœlum empyream, and there live in subjection under
check, a slave of the Most High_.
Cæsar said he would rather be the first man in a village than the second
man in Rome.
* * * * *
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.—§Garrick.§
I would help others out of a fellow-feeling.—§Burton§: _Anat. of Mel._
Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.—§Virgil§: _Æn._ I.
* * * * *
And learn the luxury of doing good.—§Goldsmith§: _Traveller_.
For all their luxury was doing good.—§Garth§: _Claremont_.
He tried the luxury of doing good.—§Crabbe§: _Tales_.
* * * * *
The cups that cheer but not inebriate.—§Cowper§: _Winter Evening_.
Tar water is of a nature so mild and benign, and proportioned to the
human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not
inebriate,—§Bishop Berkeley§: _Siris_.
* * * * *
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.—Byron: Childe Harold.
Tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors which the head invade,
And keeps the palace of the soul.—§Waller§: _On Tea_.
* * * * *
None knew thee but to love thee.—§Halleck§: _On Drake_.
To know her was to love her.—§Rogers§: _Jacqueline_.
* * * * *
Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
Enlightens but yourselves.—§Blair§: _Grave_.
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres.
§Pope§: _Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady_.
* * * * *
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.—§Gray§: _Elegy_.
And pilgrim, newly on his road, with love
Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.—§Dante§, _Cary’s Trans._
* * * * *
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.—§Gray§: _Elegy_.
Yet in our ashen cold is fire yrecken.—§Chaucer.§
* * * * *
Ἐάσατ’ ἤδη γῇ καλυφθῆναι νεκρόυς,
ὅθεν δ’ ἕκαστον εἰς το ζῇν ἀφίκετο
ἐνταῦθ’ ἀπελθεῖν· ΠΝΕΥΜΑ μὲν πρὸς ἈΙΘΕΡΑ
τὸ σῶμα δ’ εἰς ΓΗΝ.—§Euripides§: _Supplices_.
(Let the dead be concealed in the earth, whence each one came forth
into being, to return thence again—the spirit to the §SPIRIT’S
SOURCE§, but the body to the §EARTH§.)
The resemblance between the above and the beautiful expression in the
“Preacher’s” homily is very remarkable:—
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit
shall return unto God who gave it.—Eccles. xii. 7.
* * * * *
Ἐπάμεροι, τί δέ τις· τί δ’ οὔ τις·
Σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωποι.—§Pindar.§
(Things of a day! What is any one? What is he not? Men are the dream
of a shadow.)
Man’s life is but a dream—nay, less than so,
A shadow of a dream.—§Sir John Davies.§
* * * * *
Where highest woods, impenetrable
To sun or starlight, spread their umbrage broad
And brown as evening.—§Milton.§
The shades of eve come slowly down,
The woods are wrapped in deeper brown.—§Scott§: _Lady of the Lake_.
The term _brown_, applied to the evening shade, is derived from the
Italian, the expression “_fa l’imbruno_” being commonly used in Italy to
denote the approach of evening.
* * * * *
’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore;
And coming events cast their shadows before.
§Campbell§: _Lochiel’s Warning_.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors
of the gigantic _shadows which futurity casts upon the
present_.—§Shelley§: _Defence of Poetry_.
A similar form of expression occurs in §Paul’s§ Epistle to the Hebrews,
x. 1.
* * * * *
The wolfs long howl by Oonalaska’s shore.
§Campbell§: _Pleasures of Hope_.
Stolen from a line in an obscure poem called the _Sentimental Sailor_:—
The screaming eagle’s shriek that echoes wild,
The wolf’s long howl in dismal concert joined, &c.
* * * * *
Perhaps in some lone, dreary, desert tower
That Time had spared, _forth from the window looks,
Half hid in grass, the solitary fox_;
While _from above, the owl_, musician dire,
_Screams_ hideous, harsh, and grating to the ear.
§Bruce§: _Loch Leven_.
In the _Fragments_ attributed to §Ossian§ by Baron de Harold, Fingal
paints the following beautiful word-picture:—
I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they are desolate: the flames
had resounded in the halls, and the voice of the people is heard no
more; the stream of Cutha was removed from its place by the fall of
the walls; the thistle shoots there its lowly head; the moss whistled
to the winds; _the fox looked out of the windows, and the rank grass
of the walls waved round his head_; desolate is the dwelling of Morna:
silence is in the house of her fathers.
And again:—
The dreary night _owl screams_ in the solitary retreat of his
mouldering ivy-covered _tower_.—_Larnul, the Song of Despair._
The Persian poet quoted by Gibbon also says,—
The spider hath hung with tapestry the palace of the Cæsars; the owl
singeth her sentinel-song in the watch-towers of Afrasiab.—§Firdousi.§
* * * * *
Tell us, ye dead; will none of you in pity
Disclose the secret——
What ’tis you are, and we must shortly be?—§Blair§: _Grave_.
The dead! the much-loved dead!
Who doth not yearn to know
The secret of their dwelling-place,
And to what land they go?
What heart but asks, with ceaseless tone,
For some sure knowledge of its _own_?—§Mary E. Lee.§
Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to
heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of
her sickness-broken body.—§Fuller.§
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.—§Waller§: _Divine Poesie_.
Oh! let no mass be sung,
No ritual read;
In silence lay me down
Among the dead.—§Heine§: _Memento Mori_.
The great German poet was evidently familiar with Horace:—
Absint inani funere næniæ,
Luctusque turpes et querimoniæ;
Compesce clamorem, ac sepulchri
Mitte supervacuos honores.—Lib. II. Carmen 26.
* * * * *
I am old and blind;
Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown;
Afflicted and deserted of my kind:—
Yet am I not cast down.
I am weak, yet strong;
I murmur not that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father Supreme, to Thee!
O merciful One!
When men are farthest, then art Thou most near;
When friends pass by—my weaknesses to shun—
Thy chariot I hear.
Thy glorious face
Is leaning toward me, and its holy light
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling-place,
And there is no more night.
On my bended knee
I recognize Thy purpose clearly shown;
My vision Thou hast dimmed that I may see
Thyself, Thyself alone.
I have naught to fear!
This darkness is the shadow of Thy wing:
Beneath it I am almost sacred,—here
Can come no evil thing, &c.—§Elizabeth Lloyd.§
The resemblance of these lines to the following passage from §Milton’s§
_Second Defence of the People of England_ is so striking that we are
inclined to regard them as a paraphrase:—
Let me then be the most feeble creature alive, so long as that
feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational and
immortal spirit, so long as in that obscurity in which I am enveloped
the light of Divine Presence more clearly shines. Then in proportion
as I am weak, I shall be invincibly strong; and in proportion as I am
blind, I shall more clearly see. Oh that I may thus be perfected by
feebleness, and irradiated by obscurity! And indeed in my blindness I
enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favor of the Deity, who regards
me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to
behold nothing but himself. Alas for him who insults me, _who maligns
and merits public execration_! For the divine law not only shields me
from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to attack,—not indeed so
much from the privation of my sight, as from the overshadowing of
those heavenly wings which seem to have occasioned this obscurity, and
which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior
light more precious and more pure.
* * * * *
In §Keble’s§ lines for “St. John’s Day” occurs this stanza:—
Sick or healthful, slave or free,
Wealthy or despised and poor,
What is that to him or thee,
So his love to §Christ§ endure?
When the shore is won at last,
Who will count the billows past?
The first four lines resemble a stanza of §Wither§, one of the Roundhead
poets (1632):—
Whether thrallèd or exiled,
Whether poor or rich thou be,
Whether praisèd or reviled,
Not a rush it is to thee:
This nor that thy rest doth win thee.
But the mind that is within thee.
And the last two lines recall §Robert Burns§, who had said in his song
commencing _Contented wi little, and cantie wi mair_:—
When at the blithe end of our journey at last,
Wha the deil ever thinks o’ the road he has passed?
Two centuries before Burns, §Tasso§ said in his _Gerusalemme Liberata_
(iii. 4):—
Cosi di naviganti, etc.
... e l’uno all ’altro il mostra e intanto oblia
La noja e il mal della passata via.
Or as Fairfax renders it:—
As when a troop of jolly sailors row, etc.
And each to other show the land in haste,
Forgetting quite their pains and perils past.
And before dismissing “the billows past,” it is worth while to quote the
following passage from §Spenser’s§ _Faery Queene_ (I. 9. 40):—
What if some little pain the passage have
That makes frail flesh to fear the bitter wave?
Is not short pain well borne that brings long ease,
And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave?
Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.
* * * * *
§Lucretius§ says:—
At jam non domus accipiet te læta; neque uxor
Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
Præripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.
(No longer shall thy joyous home receive thee, nor yet thy best of
wives, nor shall thy sweet children run to be the first to snatch thy
kisses and thrill thy breast with silent delight.)
Compare §Gray’s§ Elegy:—
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
And §Thomson’s§ Seasons (Winter):—
In vain for him th’ officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingled storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home.
* * * * *
The famous speech of §Wolsey§ after his fall—
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.—
_Henry VIII._, iii. 2.
finds a counterpart in a satire of the Persian poet §Ferdousi§ on the
Arabian impostor:—
Had I but written as many verses in praise of Mahomet and Allah, they
would have showered a hundred blessings on me.
It also finds a parallel in a passage from Ockley’s _History of the
Saracens_—§AN.§ Hegira 54, A. D. 673—
This year Moawiyah deposed Samrah, deputy over Basorah. As soon as
Samrah heard this news, he said—“God curse Moawiyah. If I had served
God so well as I have served him, he would never have damned me to all
eternity.”
* * * * *
Our hearts——
——are beating.—
Funeral marches to the grave.—
§Longfellow§, _Psalm of Life_.
Our lives are but our marches to our graves.—
§Beaumont and Fletcher§, _Humorous Lieutenant_.
* * * * *
Next these learned Johnson in this list I bring,
Who had drunk deep of the Pierian spring.—§Drayton.§
A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.—§Pope.§
Socrates said to some Sophists, who pretended to know everything, “As
for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
§Owen Feltham§, in his _Resolves_ (_Curiosity in Knowledge_) remarks:—
Our knowledge doth but show us our ignorance. Our most studious
scrutiny is but a discovery of what we cannot know.
§Voltaire§, in the _Histoire d’un bon Bramin_ says:—
Le Bramin me dit un jour: Je voudrais n’être jamais né. Je lui
demandai pourquoi. Il me répondit: J’étudie depuis quarante ans; ce
sont quarante années de perdues; j’enseigne les autres, et j’ignore
tout.
These lines will remind the reader of the opening soliloquy of Faust in
§Goethe’s§ immortal tragedy. Bayard Taylor’s translation commences as
follows:—
I’ve studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,—
And even, alas! Theology,—
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before:
I’m Magister—yea, Doctor—hight,
And straight or cross-wise, wrong or right,
These ten years long, with many woes,
I’ve led my scholars by the nose,—
And see, that nothing can be known!
* * * * *
In _The Last Days of Pompeii_ (ch. v.) Glaucus, the Athenian, is made to
say:—
“I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead, and the
flowers faded.”
Of course, §Bulwer Lytton§ was familiar with _Oft in the Stilly Night_,
which Moore had written twenty years before:—
I feel like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.
* * * * *
Dr. Johnson said that “no one does _anything_ for the _last time_
(knowingly) but with regret.”
In Bishop §Hall’s§ _Holy Observations_ (xxvij) is this passage:—
“Nothing is more absurd than that Epicurean resolution, ‘Let us eat
and drink, to-morrow we die’; as if we were made only for the paunch,
and lived that we might live. _Yet has there never any natural man
found savour in that meat which he knew should be his last_; whereas
they should say: Let us fast and pray, for to-morrow we shall die.”
SHAKSPEREAN RESEMBLANCES.
Ah! that deceit should steal such gentle shapes,
And, with a virtuous vizor, hide deep vice.
§Richard III.§, ii. 2.
Oh! what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal.
§Much Ado About Nothing§, iv. 1.
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
§Merchant of Venice§, iii. 2.
Seems he a dove? his feathers are but borrowed;
Is he a lamb? his skin is surely lent him,
Who cannot steal a shape that means deceit?
§Henry VI.§, P. II., iii. 1.
BOLD PLAGIARISM.
Charles Reade, in _The Wandering Heir_ reproduces Swift’s _Journal of a
Modern Lady_ in a singular manner. Compare them. Reade says:—
“Mistress Anne Gregory held bad cards; she had to pawn ring after
ring—for these ladies, being well acquainted with each other, never
played on parole—and she kept bemoaning her bad luck. ‘Betty, I knew
how ’twould be. The parson called to-day. This odious chair, why will
you stick me in it? Stand farther, girl, I always lose when you look
on.’ Mrs. Betty tossed her head, and went behind another lady. Miss
Gregory still lost, and had to pawn her snuff box to Lady Dace. She
consoled herself by an insinuation: ‘My Lady you touched your
wedding-ring. That was a sign to your partner here.’
“’Nay Madam, ’twas but a sign my finger itched. But, if you go to
that, you spoke a word began with H. Then she knew you had the king of
hearts.’
“‘That is like Miss here,’ said another matron; ‘she rubs her chair
when she hath matadore in hand.’
“‘Set a thief to catch a thief, Madam,’ was Miss’s ingenious and
polished reply.
“‘Heyday!’ cries one, ‘Here spadillo got a mark on the back; a child
might know it in the dark. Mistress Pigot, I wish you’d be pleased to
pare your nails.’
“In short, they said things to each other all night, the slightest of
which, among men, would have filled Phœnix Park next morning with
drawn swords; but it went for little here; they were all cheats, and
knew it, and knew the others knew it, and didn’t care.
“It was four o’clock before they broke up, huddled on their cloaks and
hoods, and their chairs took them home with cold feet and aching
heads.”
Swift says:—
“‘This morning when the parson came,
I said I should not win a game,
This odious chair, how came I stuck in’t?
I think I never had good luck in’t.
I’m so uneasy in my stays;
Your fan a moment, if you please.
Stand further, girl, or get you gone;
I always lose when you look on.’
* * * * *
“‘I saw you touch your wedding-ring
Before my lady called a king;
You spoke a word began with H,
And I know whom you mean to teach
Because you held the king of hearts,
Fie, Madam, leave these little arts.’
‘That’s not so bad as one that rubs
Her chair to call the king of clubs,
And makes her partner understand
A matador is in her hand.’
‘And truly, madam, I know when,
Instead of five, you scored me ten.
Spadillo here has got a mark,
A child may know it in the dark.
I guessed the hand: It seldom fails.
I wish some folks would pare their nails,’
* * * * *
“At last they hear the watchman’s knock:
‘A frosty morn—past four o’clock.’
The chairmen are not to be found—
‘Come let us play the other round.’
Now all in haste they huddle on
Their hoods, their cloaks and get them gone.”
HISTORICAL SIMILITUDES.
In Motley’s _Rise of the Dutch Republic_ is narrated the following
incident:—
A bishop’s indiscretion, however, neutralized the apostolic blows of the
major (Charles the Hammer). The pagan Radbod had already immersed one of
his royal legs in the baptismal font when a thought struck him. “Where
are my dead forefathers at present?” he said, turning suddenly upon
Bishop Wolfrau. “In hell, with all other unbelievers,” was the imprudent
answer. “Mighty well,” replied Radbod, removing his leg; “then will I
rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden than dwell with
your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.” Entreaties and
threats were unavailing. The Frisian declined positively a rite which
was to cause an eternal separation from his buried kindred, and he died
as he had lived, a heathen.
Kingsley, in his _Hypatia_, in completing the history of the Goth Wulf,
after his settlement in Spain, writes as follows:—
Wulf died as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well—as
she loved all righteous and noble souls—had succeeded once in persuading
him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors; and
the old warrior was in the act of stepping into the font, when he turned
suddenly to the bishop and asked, “Where were the souls of his heathen
ancestors?” “In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from
the font, and threw his bear-skin cloak around him.... He would prefer,
if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people. And so he died
unbaptized, and went to his own.
This has suggested the query whether Mr. Kingsley uses his privilege as
a novelist to make a distant historical event subserve the purposes of
fiction, or whether this curious incident occurred.
But Francis Parkman in his _Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth
Century_, notes a corresponding unwillingness on the part of the Indians
to separate from their own kindred and people:—
The body cared for, he next addressed himself to the soul. “This life is
short and very miserable. It matters little whether we live or die.” The
patient remained silent, or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after
enlarging for a time in broken Huron on the brevity and nothingness of
mortal weal or woe, passed next to the joys of heaven and the pains of
hell, which he set forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of
infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the
listener had consciousness enough to comprehend anything; but with
respect to the advantages of the French paradise he was slow of
conviction. “I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone,”
was a common reply. “Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen,” said
another; “but I wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me
nothing to eat when I get there.” Often the patient was stolidly silent;
sometimes he was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again nature
triumphed over grace. “Which will you choose,” demanded the priest of a
dying woman, “heaven or hell?” “Hell, if my children are there, as you
say,” returned the mother. “Do they hunt in heaven, or make war, or go
to feasts?” asked an anxious inquirer. “Oh, no!” replied the father.
“Then,” returned the querist, “I will not go. It is not good to be
lazy.” But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the
regions of the blest. Nor when the dying Indian had been induced at last
to express a desire for Paradise was it an easy matter to bring him to a
due contrition for his sins; for he would deny with indignation that he
had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these
difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed
to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with
contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his
hand, touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from
an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not
always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. “Why did you baptize
that Iroquois?” asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the
prisoner recently tortured; “he will get to heaven before us, and, when
he sees us coming, he will drive us out.”
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF.
Herodotus tells us (Book III. 118) that after the conspirator
Intaphernes and his family had been imprisoned and held for execution by
order of Darius, the wife of the condemned man constantly presented
herself before the royal palace exhibiting every demonstration of grief.
As she regularly continued this conduct, her frequent appearance at
length excited the compassion of Darius, who thus addressed her by a
messenger: “Woman, King Darius offers you the liberty of any individual
of your family whom you may most desire to preserve.” After some
deliberation with herself she made this reply: “If the king will grant
me the life of any one of my family, I choose my brother in preference
to the rest.” Her determination greatly astonished the king; he sent to
her therefore a second message to this effect: “The king desires to know
why you have thought proper to pass over your children and your husband,
and to preserve your brother, who is certainly a more remote connection
than your children, and cannot be so dear to you as your husband.” She
answered: “O king! if it please the deity, I may have another husband;
and if I be deprived of these I may have other children; but as my
parents are both dead, it is certain that I can have no other brother.”
The answer appeared to Darius very judicious; indeed he was so well
pleased with it that he not only gave the woman the life of her brother,
but also pardoned her eldest son.
A passage in the _Antigone_ of Sophocles embodies the same singular
sentiment. Creon forbade the rites of sepulture to Polynices, after the
duel with his brother Eteocles, in which they were mutually slain, and
decreed immediate death to any one who should dare to bury him.
Antigone, their sister, was detected in the act of burial, and was
condemned to be buried alive for her pious care. In her dangerous
situation she goes on to say:—
And thus, my Polynices, for my care
Of thee, I am rewarded, and the good
Alone shall praise me; for a husband dead,
Nor, had I been a mother, for my children
Would I have dared to violate the laws—
Another husband and another child
Might sooth affliction; but, my parents dead,
A brother’s loss could never be repaired.
A story of analogous character told by an oriental to Miss Rogers, is
related in her book _Domestic Life in Palestine_, as follows:—
When Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mahomet Ali, ruled in Palestine, he sent
men into all the towns and villages to gather together a large army.
Then a certain woman of Serfurich sought Ibrahim Pasha at Akka, and came
into his presence bowing herself before him, and said: “O my lord, look
with pity on thy servant, and hear my prayer. A little while ago there
were three men in my house, my husband, my brother, and my eldest son.
But now behold, they have been carried away to serve in your army, and I
am left with my little ones without a protector. I pray you grant
liberty to one of these men, that he may remain at home.” And Ibrahim
had pity on her and said: “O woman, do you ask for your husband, for
your son, or for your brother?” And she said: “Oh, my lord, give me my
brother.” And he answered: “How is this, O woman, do you prefer a
brother to a husband or a son?” The woman, who was renowned for her wit
and readiness of speech, replied in a blank verse impromptu:—
“If it be God’s will that my husband perish in your service,
I am still a woman, and God may lead me to another husband:
If on the battle-field my first-born son should fall,
I have still my younger ones, who will in God’s time be like unto him.
But oh! my lord, if my only brother should be slain,
I am without remedy—for my father is dead and my mother is old,
And where should I look for another brother?”
And Ibrahim was much pleased with the words of the woman, and said: “O,
woman, happy above many is thy brother; he shall be free for thy word’s
sake, and thy husband and thy son shall be free also.” Then the woman
could not speak for joy and gladness. And Ibrahim said: “Go in peace;
let it not be known that I have spoken with you this day.” Then she
rose, and went her way to her village, trusting in the promise of the
Pasha. After three days, her husband, and son, and brother returned unto
her, saying: “We are free from service by order of the Pasha, but this
matter is a mystery to us.” And all the neighbors marvelled greatly. But
the woman held her peace, and this story did not become known until
Ibrahim’s departure from Akka, after the overthrow of the Egyptian
goverment in Syria, in 1840.
What the husband and the son thought of wifely and motherly affection
when the mystery of their deliverance was cleared up, is not reported.
THE TWO STATESMEN.
Hume says (_History of England_):—
A little before he (Wolsey) expired (28th November, 1530) he addressed
himself in the following words to Sir William Kingston, Constable of the
Tower, who had him in custody: “I pray you have me heartily recommended
unto his royal majesty (Henry VIII.), and beseech him on my behalf to
call to his remembrance all matters that have passed between us
especially with regard to his business with the queen, and then will he
know in his conscience whether I have offended him. He is a prince of a
most royal carriage, and hath a princely heart; and rather than he will
miss or want any part of his will, he will endanger the one half of his
kingdom. I do assure you that I have often kneeled before him, sometimes
three hours together, to persuade him from his will and appetite, but
could not prevail: had I but served God as diligently as I have served
the king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is
the just reward I must receive for my indulgent pains and study, not
regarding my service to God but only to my prince.”
Holinshead says in his famous old _Chronicles_:—
This year (1540), in the month of _August_, Sir _James Hamilton of
Finbert_, Knight, Controller to the King (James V. of Scotland), who
charged him in the king’s name to go toward within the castel of
_Edinburgh_, which commandment he willingly obeyed, thinking himself
sure enough, as well by reason of the good service he had done to the
king, specially in repairing the palaces of _Striviling_ and
_Linlithgow_, as also that the king had him in so high favour, that he
stood in no fear of himself at all. Nevertheless, shortlie after he was
brought forth to judgement, and convicted in the _Tolboth_ of
_Edinburgh_, of certain points of treason, laid against him, which he
would never confesse; but that notwithstanding, he was beheaded in the
month of _September_ next insuing, after that he had liberallie
confessed at the place of execution, that he had never in any jot
offended the king’s majesty; and that his death was yet worthilie
inflicted upon him by the Divine justice, because he had often offended
the law of God to please the prince, thereby to obtain greater
countenance with him. Wherefore he admonished all persons, that moved by
his example, they should rather follow the Divine pleasure than
unjustlie seek the king’s favour, since it is better to please God than
man.
THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
Several parallels to Solomon’s judgment, I. Kings iii. 16–28, are
recorded. One occurs in _Gesta Romanorum_. Three youths, to decide a
question, are desired by their referee, the King of Jerusalem, to shoot
at their father’s dead body. One only refuses; and to him, as the
rightful heir, the legacy is awarded.
In the Harleian MS., 4523, we are told of a woman of Pegu, a province of
Burmah, whose child was carried away by an alligator. Upon its
restoration another woman claimed the child. The judge ordered them to
pull for it; the infant cried, and one instantly quit her hold, to whom
the child was awarded.
The same story, substantially, is told in the Pali commentary on the
discourses of Buddha, translated by Rev. R. S. Hardy, as follows:—
A woman who was going to bathe, left her child to play on the banks of
a tank, when a female who was passing that way carried it off. They
both appeared before Buddha, and each declared the child was her own.
The command was therefore given that each claimant should seize the
infant by a leg and an arm, and pull with all her might in opposite
directions. No sooner had they commenced than the child began to
scream; when the real mother, from pity, left off pulling, and
resigned her claim to the other. The judge therefore decided that, as
she only had shown true affection, the child must be hers.
Suetonius tell us that the Emperor Claudius, when a woman refused to
acknowledge her son, ordered them to be married. The mother confessed
her child at once.
PRECEDENCY.
The Emperor Charles V. was appealed to, by two women of fashion at
Brussels, to settle the point of precedency between them, the dispute
respecting which had been carried to the greatest height. Charles, after
affecting to consider what each lady had to say, decided that the
greater simpleton of the two should have the _pas_; in consequence of
which judgment the ladies became equally ready to concede the privilege
each had claimed. Napoleon, on the occurrence of a similar difficulty at
a Court ball supper, based his decision on the question of _age_. Mr.
Hey, of Leeds, at a dinner-party of gentlemen, made _merit_ the test.
THE LEGEND OF BETH GELERT.
In F. Johnson’s translation from the Sanscrit, occurs the following
passage:—
In Ougein lived a Brahman named Mádhava. His wife, of the Brahmanical
tribe, who had recently brought forth, went to perform her ablutions,
leaving him to take charge of her infant offspring. Presently a person
from the Raja came for the Brahman to perform for him a Párrana s’ráddha
(a religious rite to all his ancestors.) When the Brahman saw him, being
impelled by his natural poverty, he thought within himself: If I go not
directly, then some one else will take the s’ráddha. It is said:—
“In respect of a thing which ought to be taken, or to be given, or of
a work which ought to be done, and not being done quickly, time drinks
up the spirit thereof.”
But there is no one here to take care of the child: what can I do then?
Well: I will go, having set to guard the infant this weasel, cherished a
long time, and in no respect distinguished from a child of my own. This
he did and went. Shortly afterwards, a black serpent, whilst silently
coming near the child, was killed there, and rent into pieces by the
weasel; who, seeing the Brahman coming home, ran towards him with haste,
his mouth and paws all smeared with blood, and rolled himself at his
feet. The Brahman seeing him in that state, without reflecting, said,
“My son has been eaten by this weasel,” and killed him: but as soon as
he drew near and looked, behold the child was comfortably sleeping, and
the serpent lay killed! Thereupon the Brahman was overwhelmed with
grief.
This fable was introduced to give point to the moral:—The fool who,
without knowing the true state of the case, becomes subject to anger,
will find cause for regret. Its similarity to the well-known Welsh
legend is so remarkable that we append Spencer’s touching ballad.
The spearman heard the bugle sound,
And cheerily smiled the morn;
And many a brach, and many a hound
Attend Llewellyn’s horn:
And still he blew a louder blast,
And gave a louder cheer:
“Come, Gelert! why art thou the last
Llewellyn’s horn to hear?
“Oh! where does faithful Gelert roam?
The flower of all his race!
So true, so brave; a lamb at home,
A lion in the chase!”
In sooth he was a peerless hound,
The gift of royal John;
But now no Gelert could be found
And all the chase rode on.
And now, as over rocks and dells
The gallant chidings rise,
All Snowdon’s craggy chaos yells
With many mingled cries.
That day Llewellyn little loved
The chase of hart or hare;
And small and scant the booty proved,
For Gelert was not there.
Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied,
When, near the portal-seat,
His truant Gelert he espied,
Bounding his lord to greet.
But when he gain’d the castle door,
Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound was smear’d with gouts of gore,
His lips and fangs ran blood!
Llewellyn gazed with wild surprise,
Unused such looks to meet:
His favorite checked his joyful guise,
And crouch’d and lick’d his feet.
Onward in haste Llewellyn passed—
And on went Gelert too—
And still, where’er his eyes were cast,
Fresh blood-gouts shock’d his view!
O’erturn’d his infant’s bed, he found
The blood-stain’d covert rent;
And all around, the walls and ground
With recent blood besprent.
He called his child—no voice replied;
He search’d—with terror wild;
Blood! blood! he found on every side,
But nowhere found the child!
“Hell-hound! by thee my child’s devoured!”
The frantic father cried;
And to the hilt the vengeful sword
He plunged in Gelert’s side!
His suppliant, as to earth he fell,
No pity could impart;
But still his Gelert’s dying yell
Pass’d heavy o’er his heart.
Aroused by Gelert’s dying yell,
Some slumberer waken’d nigh:
What words the parent’s joy can tell,
To hear his infant cry!
Conceal’d beneath a mangled heap,
His hurried search had miss’d,
All glowing from his rosy sleep,
His cherub-boy he kiss’d.
Nor scratch had he, nor harm, nor dread—
But, the same couch beneath,
Lay a great wolf, all torn and dead
Tremendous still in death!
Oh! what was then Llewellyn’s woe;
For now the truth was clear:
The gallant hound the wolf had slain,
To save Llewellyn’s heir.
Vain, vain was all Llewellyn’s woe;
“Best of thy kind adieu!
The frantic deed which laid thee low,
This heart shall ever rue!”
And now a gallant tomb they raise,
With costly sculpture deck’d;
And marbles storied with his praise,
Poor Gelert’s bones protect.
Here never could the spearman pass,
Or forester unmoved;
Here oft the tear-besprinkled grass,
Llewellyn’s sorrow proved.
And here he hung his horn and spear;
And, oft as evening fell,
In fancy’s piercing sounds would hear
Poor Gelert’s dying yell!
ART STORIES.
Art has parallel stories of a tragic nature. In the
Chapel proud
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie,
Each baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply,
stands an exquisite example of Gothic tracery-work, known as the
Apprentice’s Pillar, neighbored by corbels carved with grim, grotesque
human faces. How it came by its name may best be told as the old dame
who acted as cicerone at the beginning of the present century used to
tell it.
“There ye see it, gentlemen, with the lace-bands winding sae beautifully
roond aboot it. The maister had gane awa to Rome to get a plan for it,
and while he was awa, his ’prentice made a plan himsel, and finished it.
And when the maister cam back and fand the pillar finished, he was sae
enraged that he took a hammer and killed the ’prentice. There you see
the ’prentice’s face—up there in ae corner wi’ a red gash in the brow,
and his mother greetin’ for him in the corner opposite. And there, in
another corner, is the maister, as he lookit just before he was hanged;
it’s him wi’ a kind o’ ruff roond his face.”
In the same century that the Prince of Orkney founded the chapel at
Roslin, the good people of Stendal employed an architect of repute to
build them one new gate, and entrusted the erection of a second to his
principal pupil. In this case, too, the aspiring youth proved the better
craftsman, and paid the same penalty; the spot whereon he fell beneath
his master’s hammer being marked to this day by a stone commemorating
the event; and the story goes that yet, upon moonlight nights, the ghost
of the murdered youth may be seen contemplating the work that brought
him to an untimely end, while a weird skeleton beats with a hammer at
the stone he wrought into beauty.
Another stone, at Grossmoringen, close by Stendal, tells where an
assistant bell-caster was stabbed by his master because he succeeded in
casting a bell, after the latter had failed in the attempt. It is a
tradition of Rouen that the two rose-windows of its cathedral were the
work of the master-architect and his pupil, who strove which of the two
should produce the finer window. Again the man beat the master, and
again the master murdered the man in revenge for his triumph. The
transept window of Lincoln Cathedral was the product of a similar
contest, but in this instance the defeated artist killed himself instead
of his successful rival.
BALLADS AND LEGENDS.
Scott’s ballad of “Wild Darrell” was founded upon a story, first told by
Aubrey, but for which the poet was indebted to Lord Webb Seymour. An old
midwife sitting over her fire one dark November night was roused by a
loud knocking at the door. Upon opening it she saw a horseman, who told
her her services were required by a lady of rank, and would be paid for
handsomely; but as there were family reasons why the affair should be
kept secret, she must submit to be conducted to her patient blindfolded.
She agreed, allowed her eyes to be bandaged, and took her place on the
pillion. After a journey of many miles, her conductor stopped, led her
into a house, and removed the bandage. The midwife found herself in a
handsome bedchamber, and in presence of a lady and a ferocious-looking
man. A boy was born. Snatching it from the woman’s arms, the man threw
the babe on the blazing fire; it rolled upon the hearth. Spite of the
entreaties of the horrified midwife, and the piteous prayers of the poor
mother, the ruffian thrust the child under the grate, and raked the hot
coals over it. The innocent accomplice was then ordered to return whence
she came, as she came; the man who had brought her seeing her home
again, and paying her for her pains.
The woman lost no time in letting a magistrate know what she had seen
that November night. She had been sharp enough to cut a piece out of the
bed-curtain, and sew it in again, and to count the steps of the long
staircase she had ascended and descended. By these means the scene of
the infanticide was identified, and the murderer Darrell, Lord of
Littlecote House, Berkshire was tried at Salisbury. He escaped the
gallows by bribing the judge, only to break his neck in the
hunting-field a few months afterwards, at a place still known as
Darrell’s Stile. Aubrey places Littlecote in Wiltshire, makes the
unhappy mother the waiting-maid of Darrell’s wife, and concludes his
narration thus: “This horrid action did much run in her (the midwife’s)
mind, and she had a desire to discover it, but knew not where ’twas. She
considered with herself the time that she was riding, and how many miles
she might have ridden at that rate in that time, and that it must be
some great person’s house, for the room was twelve feet high. She went
to a justice of the peace, and search was made—the very chamber found.
The knight was brought to his trial; and, to be short, this judge had
this noble house, park, and manor, and (I think) more, for a bribe to
save his life. Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but being
a great person and a favorite, he procured a _nolle prosequi_.”
In Sir Walter’s ballad the midwife becomes a friar of orders gray,
compelled to shrive a dying woman,
A lady as a lily bright,
With an infant on her arm;
and when
The shrift is done, the friar is gone,
Blindfolded as he came—
Next morning, all in Littlecote Hall
Were weeping for their dame.
It was hardly fair to make Darrell worse than he was, by laying a second
murder at his door, merely to give a local habitation and a name to a
Scotch tale of murder that might have been an adaptation of the
Berkshire tragedy.
* * * * *
Somewhere about the beginning of the last century, an Edinburgh
clergyman was called out of his bed at midnight on the pretext that he
was wanted to pray with a person at the point of death. The good man
obeyed the summons without hesitation, but wished he had not done so,
when, upon his sedan-chair reaching an out-of-the-way part of the city,
its bearers insisted upon his being blindfolded, and cut his
protestations short by threatening to blow out his brains if he refused
to do their bidding. Like the sensible man he was, he submitted without
further parley, and the sedan moved on again. By and by, he felt he was
being carried up-stairs: the chair stopped, the clergyman was handed
out, his eyes uncovered, and his attention directed to a young and
beautiful lady lying in bed with an infant by her side. Not seeing any
signs of dying about her, he ventured to say so, but was commanded to
lose no time in offering up such prayers as were fitting for a person at
the last extremity. Having done his office, he was put into the chair
and taken down-stairs, a pistol-shot startling his ears on the way. He
soon found himself safe at home, a purse of gold in his hand, and his
ears still ringing with the warning he had received, that if he said one
word about the transaction, his life would pay for the indiscretion. At
last he fell off to sleep, to be awakened by a servant with the news,
that a certain great house in the Canongate had been burned down, and
the daughter of its owner perished in the flames. The clergyman had been
long dead, when a fire broke out on the very same spot, and there, amid
the flames, was seen a beautiful woman, in an extraordinarily rich
night-dress of the fashion of half a century before. While the
awe-struck spectators gazed in wonder, the apparition cried, “Anes
burned, twice burned; the third time I’ll scare you all!” The midwife of
the Littlecote legend and the divine of the Edinburgh one were more
fortunate than the Irish doctor living at Rome in 1743; this gentleman,
according to Lady Hamilton, being taken blindfolded to a house and
compelled to open the veins of a young lady who had loved not wisely,
but too well.
BURIAL ALIVE.
In the year 1400, Ginevra de Amiera, a Florentine beauty, married, under
parental pressure, a man who had failed to win her heart, that she had
given to Antonio Rondinelli. Soon afterwards the plague broke out in
Florence; Ginevra fell ill, apparently succumbed to the malady, and
being pronounced dead, was the same day consigned to the family tomb.
Some one, however, had blundered in the matter, for in the middle of the
night, the entombed bride woke out of her trance, and badly as her
living relatives had behaved, found her dead ones still less to her
liking, and lost no time in quitting the silent company, upon whose
quietude she had unwittingly intruded. Speeding through the
sleep-wrapped streets as swiftly as her clinging cerements allowed,
Ginevra sought the home from which she had so lately been borne. Roused
from his slumbers by a knocking at the door, the disconsolate widower of
a day cautiously opened an upper window, and seeing a shrouded figure
waiting below, in whose upturned face he recognized the lineaments of
the dear departed, he cried, “Go in peace, blessed spirit,” and shut the
window precipitately. With sinking heart and slackened step, the
repulsed wife made her way to her father’s door, to receive the like
benison from her dismayed parent. Then she crawled on to an uncle’s,
where the door was indeed opened, but only to be slammed in her face by
the frightened man, who, in his hurry, forgot even to bless his ghostly
caller. The cool night air, penetrating the undress of the hapless
wanderer, made her tremble and shiver, as she thought she had waked to
life only to die again in the cruel streets. “Ah” she sighed, “Antonio
would not have proved so unkind.” This thought naturally suggested it
was her duty to test his love and courage: it would be time enough to
die if he proved like the rest. The way was long, but hope renerved her
limbs, and soon Ginevra was knocking timidly at Rondinelli’s door. He
opened it himself, and although startled by the ghastly vision, calmly
inquired what the spirit wanted with him. Throwing her shroud away from
her face, Ginevra exclaimed, “I am no spirit, Antonio; I am that Ginevra
you once loved, who was buried yesterday—buried alive!” and fell
senseless into the welcoming arms of her astonished lover, whose cries
for help soon brought down his sympathizing family to hear the wondrous
story, and bear its heroine to bed, to be tenderly tended until she bad
recovered from the shock, and was as beautiful as ever again. Then came
the difficulty. Was Ginevra to return to the man who had buried her, and
shut his doors against her, or give herself to the man who had saved her
from a second death? With such powerful special pleaders as love and
gratitude on his side, of course Rondinelli won the day, and a private
marriage made the lovers amends for previous disappointment. They,
however, had no intention of keeping in hiding, but the very first
Sunday after they became man and wife, appeared in public together at
the cathedral, to the confusion and wonder of Ginevra’s friends. An
explanation ensued, which satisfied everybody except the lady’s first
husband, who insisted that nothing but her dying in genuine earnest
could dissolve the original matrimonial bond. The case was referred to
the bishop, who, having no precedent to curb his decision, rose superior
to technicalities, and declared that the first husband had forfeited all
right to Ginevra, and must pay over to Rondinelli the dowry he had
received with her: a decree at which we may be sure all true lovers in
fair Florence heartily rejoiced.
This Italian romance of real life has its counterpart in a French _cause
célèbre_, but the Gallic version unfortunately lacks names and dates; it
differs, too, considerably in matters of detail; instead of the lady
being a supposed victim of the plague, which in the older story secured
her hasty interment, she was supposed to have died of grief at being
wedded against her inclination; instead of coming to life of her own
accord, and seeking her lover as a last resource, the French heroine was
taken out of her grave by her lover, who suspected she was not really
dead, and resuscitated by his exertions, to flee with him to England.
After living happily together there for ten years, the strangely united
couple ventured to visit Paris, where the first husband accidentally
meeting the lady, was struck by her resemblance to his dead wife, found
out her abode, and finally claimed her for his own. When the case came
for trial, the second husband did not dispute the fact of identity, but
pleaded that his rival had renounced all claim to the lady by ordering
her to be buried, without first making sure she was dead, and that she
would have been dead and rotting in her grave if he had not rescued her.
The court was saved the trouble of deciding the knotty point, for,
seeing that it was likely to pronounce against them, the fond pair
quietly slipped out of France, and found refuge in “a foreign clime,
where their love continued sacred and entire, till death conveyed them
to those happy regions where love knows no end, and is confined within
no limits.”
RING STORIES.
Of dead-alive ladies brought to consciousness by sacrilegious robbers,
covetous of the rings upon their cold fingers, no less than seven
stories, differing but slightly from each other, have been preserved; in
one, the scene is laid in Halifax; in another, in Gloucestershire; in a
third, in Somersetshire; in the fourth, in Drogheda; the remaining three
being appropriated by as many towns in Germany.