fact expressed by Thucydides, that ignorance is bold and knowledge
reserved? or that by Thomas Fuller, that learning has gained most by
those books by which the printers have lost? or that by Pascal, that it
is wonderful a thing so obvious as the vanity of the world is so little
known, and that it is a strange and surprising thing to say that seeking
its honors is a folly? or that by John Selden, that of all actions of a
man's life his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all
actions of his life 'tis most meddled with by other people? or that by
Goldsmith, that the most delicate friendships are always most sensible
of the slightest invasion, and the strongest jealousy is ever attendant
on the warmest regard? or that by Hazlitt, that every man, in his own
opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of humanity? or that
by Emerson, that the astonishment of life is the absence of any
appearance of reconciliation between the theory and practice of life? or
that by Foster, that millions of human beings are at this very hour
acting in violation of the laws of goodness, while those laws are
clearly admitted, not only as impositions of moral authority but as the
vital principles of their own true self-interest? or that by Prescott,
that in every country the most fiendish passions of the human heart are
those kindled in the name of religion? Strange! that labor is so scarce
in China that vast tracts of land lie waste because there are no
laborers to reclaim them. That in the pontifical army, not long before
Victor Emanuel, Spain--"the bones of whose children for centuries had
whitened every battle-field where she found it necessary to defend her
religion"--was represented by but thirty-eight soldiers, while
Holland--"which protected the Reformation by its Princes of Orange, and
introduced liberty of religious opinion into the modern world"--was
represented by hundreds and hundreds of volunteers. That the best
building in Iceland is the jail at Reikiavik, which, during the many
years since its erection, has never contained a prisoner. That in the
Arctic region a smaller proportion of fuel is consumed than in any other
habitable part of the globe. That the next use of the Mayflower, after
carrying the Pilgrims, was to transport a cargo of slaves to the West
Indies. That the plant papyrus, which gave its name to our word
paper--first used for writing between three and four thousand years
ago--of more importance in history than cotton and silver and gold--once
so common in Egypt--has become so scarce there that Emerson in his late
visit searched in vain for it. That house-building, which ought to be
among the most perfect of the arts, after the experience and efforts of
myriads in every generation, has produced no stereotyped models of taste
and convenience. That the founder and editor of one of the great London
periodicals never wrote a line for his journal; and when he died, the
review which he had built up by his individual ability made not the
slightest mention of the event. That the three books which have been so
widely read, and which have exercised incalculable influence upon morals
and politics,--The Imitation of Christ, The Whole Duty of Man, and the
Letters of Junius,--are of unknown or disputed authorship. That the
Bible,--incomparably the wisest and best book, the Book of books, the
guide of life, the solace in death, the way to heaven,--is so little
read by the many and so little understood by the few. That the one
subject (religion) which is "by general consent proscribed in general
society is that which by general consent is allowed to be the most
important, and which one might therefore suppose to be the most
interesting." That the brain, in subordination to the mind, the physical
centre of all sensation, is insensible to the wounds which are torture
to the skin, and which wounds the brain alone enables us to feel. ("It
is as insensible," says Sir Charles Bell, "as the leather of our shoe,
and a piece may be cut off without interrupting the patient in the
sentence that he is uttering.") That the heart, to which we refer our
joys, our sorrows, and our affections, when grasped with the fingers,
gives no information of the fact to the possessor, unmistakably
responding at the same time to the varied emotions of his mind. (The
famous Dr. Harvey examined, at the request of Charles I., a nobleman of
the Montgomery family, who, in consequence of an abscess, had a
fistulous opening into the chest, through which the heart could be seen
and handled. The great physiologist was astonished to find it
insensible. "I then brought him," he says, "to the king that he might
behold and touch so extraordinary a thing, and that he might perceive,
as I did, that when he touched the outer skin, or when he saw our
fingers in the cavity, this young nobleman knew not that we touched the
heart.") That one of our modern English poets, who has written lyrics so
passionate as to be hounded down for their immorality, has so lived,
according to a fellow-poet, as never to have kissed any one but his
mother. That the one man who can read the Eliot Bible is getting tired
of his distinction, just as a veteran poet, it is declared, hated to
hear praised one of the productions of his youth, at eighty not having
surpassed, in popular estimation, a school-boy poem, written at
eighteen. That the man whom Walter consulted in the management of the
Times newspaper, and who in Walter's absence, according to Robinson,
decided in the dernier resort, was at the time, and until the end of his
life, an inhabitant of the King's Bench Prison, and when he frequented
Printing House Square it was only by virtue of a day rule. (Combe was
his name: Old Combe, as he was familiarly called. He was the author of
the famous Letters of a Nobleman to his Son, generally ascribed to Lord
Lyttelton. He was a man of fortune when young, and traveled in Europe,
and even made a journey with Sterne. Walter offered to release him from
prison by paying his debts. This he would not permit, as he did not
acknowledge the equity of the claim for which he suffered imprisonment.
He preferred living on an allowance from Walter, and was, he said,
perfectly happy.) How difficult it is to realize that Dr. Johnson, the
great Cham of English literature, spent more than one half of his days
in penury; that the "moral, pious Johnson," and the "gay, dissipated
Beauclerc," were companions; that they ever spent a whole day together,
"half-seas over," strolling through the markets, cracking jokes with the
fruit and fish women, on their way to Billingsgate. It is hard to
believe that that great moralist ever wandered whole nights through the
streets of London, with the unfortunate, gifted Savage, too miserably
poor to hire lodgings. And it is still harder to believe that the best
biography of that great man, and the best biography in our language, was
written by a gossiping, literary bore--the "bear-leader to the Ursa
Major," as Irving calls him--whom Johnson pretended to despise, and of
whom he once said, "if he thought Boswell intended to write his
(Johnson's) life he would take Boswell's." We wonder that the great,
strong-minded Luther ever flung an inkstand at the devil's head. We
cannot conceive that Wesley and Johnson and Addison believed in ghosts.
It looks strange to us that Socrates, who taught the doctrines of the
one Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, bowed down to a
multiplicity of idols; and after he had swallowed the fatal hemlock,
directed the sacrifice of a cock to AEsculapius. We cannot credit the
fact that Marlborough, at the moment he was the terror of France and the
glory of Germany, was held under the finger of his wife by the meanest
of passions, avarice. We utterly refuse to believe the complaint of
Burns, the greatest of lyric poets, that he "could never get the art of
commanding respect." It seems incredible that Goldsmith ever "talked
like poor Poll," when he "wrote like an angel." It appears strange
enough that Sir George Mackenzie wrote an elegant and eloquent treatise
in favor of solitude, while living a most active life; and still more
strange that his arguments were triumphantly answered by Evelyn, who
passed his days in tranquillity and solitude. We only believe when we
are compelled by authority, that Tycho Brahe changed color, and his legs
shook under him, on meeting with a hare or a fox. That Dr. Johnson would
never enter a room with his left foot foremost. That Caesar Augustus was
almost convulsed by the sound of thunder, and always wanted to get into
a cellar, or under-ground, to escape the dreadful noise. That Talleyrand
trembled when the word death was pronounced. That Marshal Saxe ever
screamed in terror at the sight of a cat. That the smell of fish sent
Erasmus into a fever. That Scaliger shivered at the sight of
water-cress. That Boyle was convulsed at the falling of water from a
tap. That Peter the Great could never be persuaded to cross a bridge;
and though he tried to master the terror, he failed to do so. That Byron
would never help any one to salt at the table, nor be helped himself.
That an air that was beneficial to Schiller acted upon Goethe like
poison. ("I called on him one day," said Goethe to Soret, "and as I did
not find him at home, and his wife told me that he would soon return, I
seated myself at his work-table to note down various matters. I had not
been seated long before I felt a strange indisposition steal over me,
which gradually increased, until at last I nearly fainted. At first I
did not know to what cause I should ascribe this wretched and, to me,
unusual state, until I discovered that a dreadful odor issued from a
drawer near me. When I opened it, I found to my astonishment that it was
full of rotten apples. I immediately went to the window and inhaled the
fresh air, by which I felt myself instantly restored. In the meantime
his wife had reentered, and told me that the drawer was always filled
with rotten apples, because the scent was beneficial to Schiller, and he
could not live or work without it.") That Queen Elizabeth issued
proclamations against excessive apparel, leaving three thousand changes
of dress in the royal wardrobe. That Bayle, the faithful compiler of
impurities, "resisted the corruption of the senses as much as Newton."
That Smollett, who has so grossly offended decency in his novels, had an
immaculate private character. That Cowley, who boasts with so much
gayety of the versatility of his passion amongst so many sweethearts,
wanted the confidence even to address one. That Seneca philosophized so
wisely and eloquently upon the blessings of poverty and moderate
desires, while usuriously lending his seven millions, and writing his
homilies on a table of solid gold. That Sir Thomas More, who, in his
Utopia, declares that no man should be punished for his religion, was a
fierce persecutor, racking and burning men at the stake for heresy. That
Young, the author of the sombre Night Thoughts, was known as the gayest
of his circle of acquaintance. That Moliere, the famous French humorist
and writer of comedies, bore himself with habitual seriousness and
melancholy. That he married an actress, who made him experience all
those bitter disgusts and embarrassments which he himself played off at
the theatre. That the cynicism and bitterness exhibited in the writings
of Rousseau were in consequence of an unfortunate marriage to an
ill-bred, illiterate woman, who ruled him as with a rod of iron. That
Addison's fine taste in morals and in life could suffer the ambition of
a courtier to prevail with himself to seek a countess, who drove him
contemptuously into solitude and shortened his days. That the impulsive
and genial Steele married a cold, precise Miss Prue, as he called her,
from whom he never parted without bickerings. That Shenstone, while
surrounding himself with the floral beauties of Paradise, exciting the
envy and admiration and imitation of persons of taste throughout
England, lived in utter wretchedness and misery. That Swift, with all
his resources of wit and wisdom, died, to use his own language, "in a
rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." That the thoughtful, cast-iron
essays of John Foster were originally written as love epistles to the
lady who became his wife. That the only person who could make George
Washington laugh was an officer in the army so obscure in rank and
character as not to be even mentioned in popular history. That the man
whom Daniel Webster pronounced the best conversationalist he ever knew,
is now unknown or forgotten outside of his neighborhood. That the pious
Cowper attempted suicide; and had as intimate associate the swearing
Lord Chancellor Thurlow,--with whom, he confesses, he spent three years,
"giggling and making giggle." That Lord Chancellor Eldon, who, while
simple John Scott, son of a Newcastle coal-fitter, ran away with Bessy
Surtees, daughter of a prosperous banker of the same town, and who was
so proud of the exploit that he never tired of referring to it, when his
eldest daughter, Lady Elizabeth, gave her hand, without his consent, to
an ardent lover of respectable character and good education, but not of
much wealth, permitted years to roll away before he would forgive her.
That not long after the elopement referred to, while a law student at
Oxford, having been appointed to read to the class at a small salary,
the lectures of one of the professors who was then absent in the East
Indies, it happened that the first lecture he had to read was upon the
statute (4 & 5 P. & M. c. 8) "Of young men running away with maidens."
("Fancy me," he said, "reading, with a hundred and forty boys and young
men all giggling.") That Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who was never married
at all, was so outraged at the love marriage, against his consent, of
his third and favorite daughter, that though he became reconciled to
her, he never would consent to see her husband. That, according to John
Lord Campbell, so many of the most important points in the law of real
property have been settled in suits upon the construction of the wills
of eminent judges. That "the religious, the moral, the immaculate" Sir
Matthew Hale, when chief justice of the king's bench, allowed the
infamous Jeffreys, who "was not redeemed from his vices by one single
solid virtue," to gain, in the opinion of Roger North, "as great an
ascendant over him as ever counsel had over a judge." That the gentle
Charles and Mary Lamb were confined in a mad-house, and that the latter
cut the throat of her mother at the dinner-table. That Tasso lamented
the publication of Jerusalem Delivered, and that its publication was the
one great cause of his insanity. That Thomson, the poet of the Seasons,
composed so much of his classic and vigorous verse in bed; or was seen
in Lord Burlington's garden, with his hands in his waistcoat pockets,
biting off the sunny sides of the peaches. That King Solomon, who wrote
so wisely of training children, had so wicked a son as Rehoboam. That
the good stoic, Marcus Aurelius, of proverbial purity, had so doubtful a
wife as Faustina, and so vicious a son as Commodus. That that good old
Roman emperor, whose Meditations rank with the best works of the
greatest moralists, breathing and inculcating the spirit of
Christianity, was the bitter persecutor of the Christians in Gaul. That
his graceless heir, Commodus, left the Christians wholly untroubled,
through the influence of his mistress Marcia. That the English-reading
world is directly indebted to the Reign of Terror--the horrors of
Robespierre's tyranny--for the most popular translation of St. Pierre's
sweet story of Paul and Virginia. That the author of the Marseillaise
first heard of the great fame of his piece in the mountains of Piedmont,
when fleeing from France as a political refugee; and upon the return of
the Bourbons to power wrote an anthem which is characterized as the most
anti-republican ever penned. That that ode to temperance, The Old Oaken
Bucket, was written by Woodworth, a journeyman printer, under the
inspiration of brandy. That so many of the exquisite letters of Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu were destroyed by her mother, who "did not approve
that she should disgrace her family by adding to it literary honors."
That the famous speech of Pitt, in reply to Walpole's taunt of being "a
young man," was composed by Dr. Johnson. That Johnson, looking at
Dilly's edition of Lord Chesterfield's miscellaneous works, laughed and
said, "Here are now two speeches ascribed to him, both of which were
written by me: and the best of it is, they have found out that one is
like Demosthenes, and the other like Cicero." That many of the sermons
of famous contemporaneous clergymen were the productions of the same
laborious Grub Street drudge, forty or more of which have been reclaimed
and published, and conceded to have been written by the inexhaustible
Johnson. That the only paper of The Rambler which had a prosperous sale,
and may be said to have been popular, was one which Johnson did not
write--No. 97, written by Richardson. That the essays of The Rambler,
elaborate as they appear, were written rapidly, seldom undergoing
revision, whilst the simple language of Rousseau, which seems to come
flowing from the heart, was the slow production of painful toil, pausing
on every word, and balancing every sentence. That Burke's Reflections
on the Revolution in France, which has the free and easy flow of
extemporaneous eloquence, was polished with extraordinary care,--more
than a dozen proofs being worked off and destroyed, according to
Dodsley's account, before he could please himself. That the winged
passages in Curran's speeches, which seem born of the moment, were the
results of painstaking, protracted labor. ("My dear fellow," said he to
Phillips, "the day of inspiration has gone by. Everything I ever said
which was worth remembering, my de bene esses, my white horses, as I
call them, were all carefully prepared.") That the Essay on Man,
according to Lord Bathurst, "was originally composed by Lord
Bolingbroke, in prose, and Pope did no more than to put it into verse."
That those brilliant wits and prolific dramatists, Peele, Greene, and
Marlowe, the associates of Shakespeare, to whom the great dramatist was
so much indebted, were all wretched and unsuccessful,--the first dying
in utter want, the second of excessive pickled herring, at the point
nearly of starvation, the third being stabbed in the head in a drunken
brawl at a tavern by his own dagger in his own hand. That Shakespeare
married at eighteen, had three children at twenty, removed to London at
twenty-three, begun writing plays at twenty-seven, and, a little more
than twenty years after, returned to his native town, rich and immortal.
That but a few signatures--differently spelled--is all of his
handwriting that has been preserved. That so many critics should
believe, and some ingenious books have been printed to prove, that the
authorship of the plays of Shakespeare belongs to Bacon--the only man
then living, they claim, who knew enough to write them. That the great
Bacon was unable to grasp the great discoveries of his time--rejecting
the Copernican system to the last, and treating not only with
incredulity, but with the most arrogant contempt, the important
discoveries of Gilbert about the magnet. That Apuleius, author of the
Metamorphosis of the Golden Ass (a paraphrase, according to Bayle, of
what he had taken from Lucian, as Lucian had taken it from Lucius, one
of the episodes of which--Psyche--furnished Moliere with matter for one
of his dramas, and La Fontaine materials for a romance), who did not, to
use his own language, "make the least scruple of expending his whole
fortune in acquiring what he believed to be more valuable, a contempt of
it," married a woman more than twice his own age, thirteen years a
widow, to procure for himself, as he acknowledged, "a large settlement,
and an easy condition of life." That Pythagoras, the first of the
ancient sages who took the name of philosopher; who made himself so
illustrious by his learning and virtue; who proved so useful in
reforming and instructing the world; whose eloquence moved the
inhabitants of a great city, plunged in debauchery, to avoid luxury and
good cheer, and to live according to the rules of virtue; who prevailed
upon the ladies to part with their fine clothes, and all their
ornaments, and to make a sacrifice of them to the chief deity of the
place; who engaged his disciples to practice the most difficult things,
making them undergo a novitiate of silence for at least two years, and
extending it to five years for those whom he knew to be more inclined to
speak,--peremptorily ordered his disciples to abstain from eating beans,
choosing himself rather, as some authorities have it, to be killed by
those that pursued him, than to make his escape through a field of
beans, so great was his respect for or abhorrence of that plant. That
Luther, the greatest of the reformers, and Baxter, the greatest of the
Puritans, and Wesley, the greatest religious leader of the last century,
believed in witchcraft. That Dr. Johnson, who thought Swift's reputation
greater than he deserved, questioning his humor, and denying him the
authorship of the Tale of a Tub, could take into his confidence, and
reverence for his piety, George Psalmanazar, who deceived the world for
some time by pretending to be a native of the island of Formosa, to
support which he invented an alphabet and a grammar. ("I should," said
Johnson, "as soon think of contradicting a bishop.") That Coleridge was
able to depict Mont Blanc and the Vale of Chamouni at sunrise in such an
overpowering manner, when he had never seen the Alps; while
half-oriental Malta and classical Italy, both of which he had seen, gave
him no fruits of poetry. That Schiller wrote his William Tell without
ever seeing any of the glories of Lake Lucerne. That Scott, who told how
to see "fair Melrose aright," never saw the famous Abbey by moonlight.
(Talking of Scott at a dinner-party, Moore said, "He was the soul of
honesty. When I was on a visit to him, we were coming up from Kelso at
sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon, I quoted to him his own rule
for seeing 'fair Melrose aright,' and proposed to stay an hour and enjoy
it. 'Bah!' said Scott, 'I never saw it by moonlight.'" "The truth was,"
says Sir David Brewster, "Scott would not go there for fear of bogles.")
That Lalla Rookh, rich, melodious, and glowing with a wealth of imagery
which wearies by its very excess, is the production of one who never
visited the people or scenes he therein describes. (So true,
nevertheless, were its pictures of Eastern life that Colonel Wilks, the
historian of British India, could not believe that Moore had never
traveled in the East; and the compliment which Luttrell paid him, when
he told him that his "lays are sung... by moonlight in the Persian
tongue along the streets of Ispahan," is literally true, the work having
been translated into Persian, and read with avidity among many Oriental
nations.) That Kant, who startled an Englishman with a description of
Westminster Bridge, so minutely detailed that his listener in amazement
asked him how many years he had lived in London, was never out of
Prussia--scarcely out of Koenigsberg. That Barry Cornwall, although the
author of one of the most stirring and popular sea songs in the
language--The sea, the sea, the open sea!--was very rarely upon the
tossing element, having a great fear of being made ill by it. ("I think
he told me," said a visitor, "that he had never dared to cross the
Channel even, and so had never seen Paris. He said, like many others, he
delighted to gaze upon the waters from a safe place on land, but had a
horror of living on it even for a few hours. I recalled to his
recollection his own lines--'I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea! I am where
I would ever be;' and he shook his head, and laughingly declared I must
have misquoted his words, or that Dibdin had written the piece and put
Barry Cornwall's signature to it.") That Michelet, who wrote a book on
The Sea, had a like horror of it. ("I love the sea," he said, "but as in
the case of a crowd, I love it at a distance.") That Vathek, that
splendid Oriental tale, was written by a young man of twenty-two who had
never visited the countries whose manners he so vividly described; and
that of all the glories and prodigalities of the English Sardanapalus,
his slender romance, the work of three days, is the only durable
memorial. That Beckford's father, while Lord Mayor of London, became
especially famous for a speech that was never delivered--the speech in
reply to the king, written after the event by Horne Tooke, and engraved
on the pedestal of a statue of Beckford erected in Guildhall. That
Michel Angelo, unconsciously, laid the first stone of the Reformation.
("History tells us that Julius II. gave him an unlimited commission to
make a mausoleum, in which their mutual interests should be combined.
The artist's plan was a parallelogram, and the superstructure was to
consist of forty statues, many of which were to be colossal, and
interspersed with ornamental figures and bronze basso-rilievos, besides
the necessary architecture, with appropriate decorations to unite the
composition into one stupendous whole. To make a fitting place for it,
the pope determined to rebuild St. Peter's itself; and this is the
origin of that edifice, which took one hundred and fifty years to
complete, and is now the grandest display of architectural splendor that
ornaments the Christian world. To prosecute the undertaking, money was
wanted, and indulgences were sold to supply the deficiency of the
treasury; and a monk of Saxony, opposing the authority of the church,
produced this singular event, that whilst the most splendid edifice
which the world had ever seen was building for the Catholic faith, the
religion to which it was consecrated was shaken to its foundation.")
That the erection of one of the pyramids has been ascribed to a
Pharaonic princess, of great beauty, who, like Aspasia and Thargelia,
became ambitious in her intimacies. (The story is that she was one day
taunted by her father with the inutility of the admiration that she
excited. Pyramid-building was then the fashion in the family, and she
vowed that she would leave behind her a monument of the power of her
charms as durable as her august relations did of the power of their
armies. The number of her lovers was increased by all those who were
content to sacrifice their fortunes for her smiles. The pyramid rose
rapidly; with the frailty of its foundress, the massive monument
increased; her lovers were ruined, but the fair architect became
immortal, and found celebrity long afterward in Sappho's song.) That
Gulliver's Travels, the severest lampoon upon humanity, is the favorite