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 referred to, or tales unsupported by evidence are
confidently quoted. Mr. Heber's subject confined his inquiries to
theological 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 spite of satisfactory answers, have continued to urge
against the English protestant the romance of Parker's consecration;[84]
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. "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![85]
The falsehoods and forgeries raised by parties are overwhelming! 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
pursuits--and it proves that the personal is too apt to predominate over
the literary character.
I have already touched on the main point of the present article in the
one on "Political Nicknames." 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 origin of a vast
number of supposititious papers and volumes, which sometimes, at a
remote date, confound the labours 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 overloaded 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 necessary
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, was employed to draw up a pretended conference
between him, Knox, and others, to stigmatise them by the odium of
advising 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 expression, that this circumstance
long baffled the incredulity 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 enclosing 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
bare-faced 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 circumstantially, though not more
affectingly, nor perhaps more truly, may be found in Wanley's "Wonders
of the Little World,"[86] 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, yet 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! Mourning 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 repaid!"
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 assembled 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 exemplary
catastrophe. The duke first commanded that the criminal 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 constituted 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 overpowered
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 with a change
of names and places, without any of incident. It always turns on a
soldier, a brother or a husband, executed; and a wife, a 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 regiment,
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![87]
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 producing authorities! Modern historians must furnish
their readers with the truest means to become their critics, by providing
them with their authorities; and it is only by judiciously 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
copiousness of Livy conceals many a tale of wonder; the graver 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 reginae 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 different persons. A critic in the Ritsonian style has said of the
grave Plutarch, _Mendax ille Plutarchus qui vitas oratorum, dolis et
erroribus consutas, olim conscribillavit_.[88] "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 however 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.