terms of the highest praise. The number of volumes was immense, and they
were written in elegant hands. The use he made of them was still more
honorable to him than the possession of so much literary treasure. The
library of Lucullus was open to all; the Greeks who were at Rome
repaired with pleasure to his galleries and porticos, as to the retreat
of the muses, and there spent whole days in conversation upon subjects
of literature, delighted to retire to such a scene from other pursuits.
Lucullus himself, who was a perfect master of the Greek language often
joined and conferred with these learned men in their walks.
There were several other libraries at Rome, the chief of which was the
Ulpian library, instituted by Trajan, which Dioclesian annexed as an
ornament to his baths. One of the most elegant was that of Serenus
Samonicus, preceptor of the Emperor Gordian. It is said to have
contained not less than 60,000 volumes, and that the room in which they
were deposited was paved with gilded marble. The walls were ornamented
with glass and ivory; and the shelves, cases, presses, and desks, made
of ebony and silver. There were libraries in the capital, in the Temple
of Peace, and in the house of Tiberius. Many private persons had good
libraries particularly in their country villas. The Roman libraries were
in general adorned with statues and pictures, particularly of ingenious
and learned men.
Learning and the arts received a fatal blow by the destruction of the
heathen temples, in the reign of Constantine. The devastations then
committed, are depicted in the strongest and most lively colours by Mr.
Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Many valuable libraries perished by the Barbarians of the north, who
invaded Italy in the fourth and fifth centuries. By these rude hands
perished the library of Perseus, king of Macedon, which Paulus Æmilius
brought to Rome with its captive owner; as did also that noble library,
just mentioned, established for the use of the public by Asinius Pollio,
which was collected from the spoils of all the enemies he had subdued,
and was much enriched by him at a great expense. The libraries of Cicero
and Lucullus met with the same fate, and those of Julius Cæsar, of
Augustus, Vespasian, and Trajan also perished, together with that of the
Emperor Gordian.
KING CHARLES THE FIRST.
The Journey of Prince Charles (afterwards Charles the First) and the
Duke of Buckingham to Spain, was considered at the time to be such a
piece of knight-errantry as scarcely any age could parallel. Spanheim in
his history of Louisa-Juliana, Electress Palatine, mother of the king of
Bohemia, says “that never Prince was more obliged to a sister, than king
Charles I. was to the queen of Bohemia; since it was only the
consideration of _her_ and _her children_, who were then the _next
heirs_ after _him_ to the Crown of England, that prevailed with the
Court of Spain _to permit him ever to see England again_.”
Charles the First, though of abstemious habits kept a splendid and
hospitable table, at the beginning of his reign. Of this trait in his
character, hitherto unnoticed, the following account affords a
sufficient proof.
There were daily in his court eighty six tables, well furnished each
meal, whereof the king’s table had twenty-eight dishes; the queen’s
twenty-four; four other tables sixteen dishes each; three other ten
dishes each; twelve other had seven dishes each; seventeen other tables
had each of them five dishes; three other had four each; thirty-two
other tables had each three dishes; and thirteen other had each two
dishes; in all about five hundred dishes each meal, with bread, beer,
wine, and all other things necessary. All which was provided, mostly by
the several purveyors, who, by commission, legally and regularly
authorized, did receive those provisions at a moderate price, such as
had been formerly agreed upon in the several counties of England, which
price, (by reason of the value of money much altered) was become low,
yet a very inconsiderable burthen to the kingdom in general, but thereby
was greatly supported the royal dignity in the eyes of strangers as well
as subjects.
The English nobility and gentry, according to the king’s example, were
excited to keep a proportionable hospitality in their several country
mansions, the husbandmen encouraged to breed cattle, all tradesmen to a
cheerful industry; and there was then a free circulation of money
throughout the whole body of the kingdom. There was spent yearly in the
king’s house of gross meat fifteen hundred oxen, seven thousand sheep,
twelve hundred veals, three hundred porkers, four hundred storks or
young beefs, six thousand eight hundred lambs, three hundred flitches of
bacon, and twenty-six hams; also one hundred and forty dozen of geese,
two hundred and fifty dozen of capons, four hundred and seventy dozen of
hens, seven hundred and fifty dozen of pullets, one thousand four
hundred and seventy dozen of chickens; for bread three thousand six
hundred bushels of wheat: and for drink six hundred tuns of wine, and
one thousand seven hundred tuns of beer; moreover of butter forty six
thousand six hundred and forty pounds, together with fish and fowl,
venison, fruit and spice proportionably.
THE FAIR GERALDINE AND THE EARL OF SURREY.
The “Fair Geraldine” the general object of Lord Surrey’s empassioned
sonnets, is commonly said to have lived at Florence, and to have been of
the family of the _Geraldi_, of that city. This is however, a
misapprehension of an expression in one of our poet’s Odes, and of a
passage in Drayton’s Heroic Epistles. This lady was Elizabeth, third
daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth Earl of Kildare. She appears to
have received her education at Hunsdon House, with the Princesses Mary
and Elizabeth. It was here she was first seen by the Earl of Surrey, and
she immediately became the object of his fervent but fruitless devotion.
She was married first to Sir Anthony Browne, Lord Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas, and secondly to Edward Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, surviving
by many years her noble and unfortunate admirer. There is a Portrait of
the “Fair Geraldine” in the Woburn collection.
It is not precisely known at what period the Earl of Surrey began his
travels. They have the air of a romance. He made the tour of Europe in
the true spirit of chivalry, and with the ideas of an Amadis; he
proclaimed the unparalleled charms of his Mistress, and prepared to
defend the cause of her beauty with the weapons of Knight-errantry; nor
was this adventurous journey performed without the intervention of an
enchanter. The first city in Italy which he proposed to visit was
Florence, the capital of Tuscany, and the original seat of the ancestors
of his Geraldine.
In his way thither he passed a few days at the Emperor’s court; where he
became acquainted with Cornelius Agrippa, a celebrated adept in natural
magic. This visionary Philosopher shewed our hero in a mirror of glass,
a representation of Geraldine, reclining on a couch, sick, and reading
one of his most tender sonnets by a waxen taper. His imagination, which
wanted not the flattering representations and artificial incentives of
illusion, was heated anew by this interesting and affecting spectacle.
Inflamed with every enthusiasm of the most romantic passion, he hastened
to Florence; and on his arrival, immediately published a defiance
against any person who could handle a lance and was in love, whether
Christian, Jew, Turk, Saracen, or Cannibal, who should presume to
dispute the superiority of Geraldine’s beauty. As the lady was pretended
to be of Tuscan extraction, the pride of the Florentines was flattered
on this occasion; and the Grand Duke of Tuscany permitted a general and
unmolested ingress into his dominions of the combatants of all
countries, until this important trial should be decided. The challenge
was accepted, and the Earl proved victorious. The shield which was
presented to him by the Duke of Tuscany before the tournament began, is
exhibited in Vertue’s valuable print of the Arundel family, and was
actually in the possession of one of the late Dukes of Norfolk.
These heroic vanities did not, however, so totally engross the time
which the Earl of Surrey spent in Italy, as to alienate his mind from
letters; he studied with the greatest success a critical knowledge of
the Italian tongue; and that he might give new lustre to the name of
Geraldine, attained a just taste for the peculiar graces of the Italian
poetry.
He was recalled to England for some idle reason by the king, much sooner
than he expected; and he returned home the most elegant traveller, the
most polite lover, the most learned nobleman, and the most accomplished
gentleman of his age. Dexterity in tilting and gracefulness in managing
a horse under arms, were excellencies now viewed with a critical eye,
and practised with a high degree of emulation. In 1540 at a tournament
held in the presence of the Court at Westminster, and in which some of
the principal nobility were engaged, Surrey was distinguished above the
rest for his address in the use and exercise of arms.
But all these accomplishments, and the popularity that attended them,
laid the foundation of a fatal death for this illustrious nobleman. They
excited the jealousy of his capricious monarch Henry VIII. Lord Orford
says “The unwieldy king growing distempered and froward, and
apprehensive for the tranquillity of his boy-successor, easily conceived
or admitted jealousies infused into him by the Earl of Hertford and the
Protestant party, though one of the last acts of his fickle life was to
found a convent.” Treason was therefore objected to the Earl of Surrey
upon the most frivolous pretences; of which the principal was, his
quartering the arms of Edward the Confessor with those of Howard, though
even this insignificant fact had been justified by the practice of his
family, and the sanction of the heralds. He was arraigned in the
Guildhall, London, found guilty by a jury, and judgment of death being
given, he was beheaded on Tower Hill, in January, 1547.
The Earl of Surrey was professedly a man of gallantry and pleasure,
possessing a highly cultivated mind, and excelling in all the polite and
elegant accomplishments of the age in which he lived. The flattery which
has been bestowed upon his character by Poets, Heralds, and
Genealogists, has not ceased to flow from his death to the present hour.
A recent genealogical writer has been superlatively lavish of his
panegyrics upon the excellencies and even upon the morals of the gallant
Earl. There is, however, one extraordinary circumstance in the life of
this nobleman which has been entirely overlooked by all his encomiasts.
This is, that while his father urged him to connect himself in marriage
with one lady; while the king was jealous of his designs upon a second;
and while he himself as may be collected from his poem “To a Lady who
refused to dance with him,” made proposals of marriage to a third, he
was during all this time married to the lady Frances,[6] daughter of
John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, by whom he had five children, namely, two
sons and three daughters. The sons were Thomas, afterwards fourth Duke
of Norfolk, and Henry, created Earl of Northampton, by king James the
First. To this lady the Earl of Surrey was united at the age of fifteen,
and several years after his premature death, we find her bearing the
title of Countess of Surrey, and possessing the guardianship of his
children, therefore it is apparent they were never divorced. Can it be
supposed that the example of a lustful king had instructed his
courtiers, among their other accomplishments, to find pretexts for the
dissolution of the marriage tie, whenever interest or their guilty
passions prompted them to such baseness? Yet this is the man whose
moral, as well as poetical and literary character, we are told “it is
delightful to contemplate.”
The Earl of Surrey had one sister, Mary, who was married to Henry
Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, natural son of Henry VIII. who
died in 1536 at the age of seventeen without issue. There is a most
beautiful portrait of this lady in Chamberlaine’s collection of the
Holbein Heads. Mr. Lodge exclaims pathetically “Would that her story had
died with her; and that we might have been at liberty to fancy the
character of so fair a creature as fair as her countenance. But the
truth must be told. At the iniquitous trial of her brother in 1547, this
lady was called on as a witness and brought forward a body of evidence
against him so keenly pointed, and so full of secrets, which from their
nature must have been voluntarily disclosed by her, that we cannot but
suspect her conduct of a degree of rancour, unpardonable in any case,
but in this unnatural.”
Footnote 6:
There is a portrait of this lady among the Holbein Heads, published by
Mr. Chamberlaine.
JEWS IN ENGLAND.
William the Conqueror permitted great numbers of Jews to come over from
Rouen, and to settle in England in the last year of his reign. Their
number soon increased, and they spread themselves throughout most of the
cities and capital towns in England where they built synagogues. There
were fifteen hundred at York about the year 1189. At Bury, in Suffolk,
is a very complete remain of a Jewish synagogue of stone in the Norman
style, large and magnificent. Hence it was that many of the learned
English Ecclesiastics of those times became acquainted with their books
and language. In the reign of William Rufus, the Jews were remarkably
numerous at Oxford, and had acquired considerable property; and some of
their Rabbis were permitted to open a school in the university, where
they instructed not only their own people, but many Christian students,
in Hebrew literature, about the year 1094. Within 200 years after their
admission or establishment by the Conqueror, they were banished the
kingdom. This circumstance was highly favourable to the circulation of
their learning in England. The suddenness of their dismission obliged
them for present subsistence, and other reasons, to sell their moveable
goods of all kinds, among which were large quantities of of Rabbinical
books. The monks in various parts availed themselves of the distribution
of these treasures. At Huntingdon and Stamford there was a prodigious
sale of their effects, containing immense stores of Hebrew manuscripts,
which were immediately purchased by Gregory of Huntingdon, prior of the
abbey of Ramsey. Gregory speedily became an adept in the Hebrew, by
means of these valuable acquisitions, which he bequeathed to his
monastery about the year 1250. Other members of the same convent, in
consequence of these advantages, are said to have been equal proficients
in the same language, soon after the death of Prior Gregory, among whom
were Robert Dodford, Librarian of Ramsey, and Laurence Holbech, who
compiled a Hebrew Lexicon. At Oxford a great number of their books fell
into the hands of Roger Bacon, or were bought by his brethren the
Franciscan friars of that university.
THE ENGLISH BIBLE.
The first translation of any part of the Holy Scriptures into English
that was committed to the press, was _The New Testament_, translated
from the Greek, by William Tyndale, with the assistance of John Foye and
William Roye, and printed first in 1526, in octavo.
Tyndale published afterwards, in 1530, a translation of the _Five Books
of Moses_, and of _Jonah_, in 1531, in octavo. An English translation of
the _Psalter_, done from the Latin of Martin Bucer, was also published
at Strasburgh in 1530, by Francis Foye, octavo. And the same book
together with _Jeremiah_, and the _Song of Moses_, were likewise
published in 1534, in duodecimo, by George Joye, sometime fellow of
Peter-House in Cambridge.
The first time _the whole Bible_ appeared in English, was in the year
1535 in folio. The translator and publisher was Miles Coverdale,
afterwards Bishop of Exeter, who revised Tyndale’s version, compared it
with the original, and supplied what had been left untranslated by
Tyndale. It was printed at Zurich, and dedicated to King Henry the
Eighth. This was the Bible, which by Cromwell’s injunction of September,
1536, _was ordered to be laid in Churches_.
LUXURY OF ANCIENT ROME.
The most remote countries of the ancient world were ransacked to supply
the pomp and delicacy of Rome. The forests of Scythia afforded some
valuable furs. Amber was brought overland from the shores of the Baltic
to the Danube; and the Barbarians were astonished at the price which
they received in exchange for so useless a commodity. Pliny has observed
with some humour that even fashion had not found out the use of amber.
Nero sent a Roman knight to purchase great quantities on the spot where
it was produced. There was a considerable demand for Babylonian carpets
and other manufactures of the East; but the most important and unpopular
branch of foreign trade was carried on with Arabia and India. Every year
about the time of the summer solstice, a fleet of a hundred and twenty
vessels sailed from Myoshormos, a port of Egypt on the Red Sea. By the
periodical assistance of the monsoons, they traversed the ocean in about
forty days. The coast of Malabar, or the island of Ceylon, was the usual
limit of their navigation, and it was in those markets that the
merchants from the more remote countries of Asia expected their arrival.
The return of the fleet of Egypt was fixed to the months of December or
January; and as soon as their rich cargo had been transported on the
backs of camels, from the Red Sea to the Nile, and had descended that
river as far as Alexandria, it was poured without delay, into the
capital of the empire. The objects of oriental traffic were splendid and
trifling; silk, a pound of which was esteemed not inferior in value to a
pound of gold; precious stones, among which the pearl claimed the first
rank after the diamond: and a variety of aromatics, that were consumed
in religious worship and the pomp of funerals. The labour and risk of
the voyage was rewarded with almost incredible profit; but the profit
was made upon Roman subjects, and a few individuals were enriched at the
expense of the public. As the natives of Arabia and India were contented
with the productions and manufactures of their own country, silver, on
the side of the Romans, was the principal, if not the only instrument of
commerce. It was a complaint worthy of the gravity of the senate, that
in the pursuit of female ornaments, the wealth of the state was
irrecoverably given away to foreign and hostile nations. The annual loss
is computed by a writer of an inquisitive, but censorious temper, at
upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling.[7]
Footnote 7:
Pliny, Hist. Nat. xii. 18.
RHYME.
Every language has powers, and graces, and music peculiar to itself; and
what is becoming in one, would be ridiculous in another. Rhyme was
barbarous in Latin and Greek verse, because these languages by the
sonorousness of their words, by their liberty of transposition and
inversion, by their fixed quantities and musical pronunciation, could
carry on the melody of verse without its aid; and an attempt to
construct English verses after the form of hexameters, and pentameters,
and sapphics, is as barbarous among us. It is not true that rhyme is
merely a monkish invention. On the contrary, it has obtained under
different forms in the versification of most known nations. It is found
in the ancient poetry of the northern nations of Europe; it is said to
be found among the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians, and the Americans.
This shews that there is something in the return of similar sounds,
which is grateful to the ears of most part of mankind.
The present form of our English heroic rhyme in couplets, is a modern
species of versification. The measure generally used in the days of
queen Elizabeth, king James, and king Charles I. was the stanza of eight
lines, such as Spenser employs, borrowed from the Italian, a measure
very constrained and artificial. Waller was the first who brought
couplets into vogue;[8] and Dryden afterwards established the usage.
Waller first smoothed our verse; Dryden perfected it. Pope’s
versification has a peculiar character. It is flowing and smooth in the
highest degree; far more laboured and correct than that of any who went
before him. He introduced one considerable change into heroic verse, by
almost throwing aside the triplets, or three lines rhyming together, in
which Dryden abounded. Dryden’s versification, however, has very great
merit; and like all his productions, has much spirit, mixed with
carelessness. If not so smooth and correct as Pope’s, it is however more
varied and easy. He subjects himself less to the rule of closing the
sense with the couplet; and frequently takes the liberty of making his
couplets run into one another, with somewhat of the freedom of blank
verse.
Footnote 8:
Shakespeare, occasionally, in his plays, uses couplets.
M. COQUEBERT DE MONTBRET.
This gentleman was one of the commercial commissioners from France to
England during the short peace which took place after the treaty of
Amiens. In March, 1803, I was in company with M. de Montbret, who
expressed his dissatisfaction in very angry terms, because he was not
able to procure specimens of the different clays made use of by Mr.
Wedgwood in his manufacture of earthen ware in Staffordshire. He urged
with much vehemence the politeness and attention that were shewn to Mr.
Thomas Wedgwood in France the preceding summer, when on a visit to that
country, and who it appeared had made something like a promise that he
would send to France specimens of the various clays made use of in the
potteries. In answer to Monsieur de Montbret it was observed, that Mr.
Thomas Wedgwood had no concern whatever in the potteries, and that his
brother, Mr. Josiah Wedgwood, who was the proprietor, would never give
his consent that specimens of the clays should be sent to France, but on
the contrary always strongly resisted every application for that
purpose. M. de Montbret replied, that as clay was a natural production,
if there was not that particular sort in France, it would be impossible
to form it by any artificial means—besides, he only wished to have those
things as specimens of English earths, merely with a view of forming a
collection of the earths and minerals of this country.
DR. THOMAS PIERCE.
Dr. Pierce, Dean of Sarum, a perpetual controversialist, and to whom it
was dangerous to refuse a request, lest it might raise a controversy,
asked Dr. Ward, bishop of Salisbury, for a Prebend for his son. He was
refused; and studying revenge, he opened a controversy with the bishop,
maintaining that the king had the right of bestowing every dignity in
all the Cathedral Churches of the kingdom, and not the bishops. This
required a reply from the bishop, who had formerly been an active
controversialist himself. Dean Pierce renewed his attack with a folio
volume, entitled “A vindication of the king’s sovereign right, &c.” Thus
it proceeded, and the web thickened round the bishop in replies and
rejoinders. It cost him many tedious journeys to London, through bad
roads, fretting at “the king’s sovereign right” all the way; and in the
words of a witness, “in unseasonable times and weather, that by degrees
his spirits were exhausted, his memory quite gone, and he was totally
unfitted for business.” Such was the fatal disturbance occasioned by
Dean Pierce’s folio of “The king’s sovereign right.”
WRITING AMONG THE GREEKS.
As a proof of the simplicity of the times described by Homer, it is a
great doubt if his kings and heroes could write or read; at least when
the Grecian leaders cast lots who should engage Hector in single combat,
in the seventh Iliad, they only made their marks, for when the lot
signed by Ajax fell out of the helmet, and was carried round by the
herald, none of the chiefs knew to whom it belonged till it was brought
to Ajax himself.