The literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the malice of Men
as well as that of Time. It is remarkable that conquerors, in the moment
of victory, or in the unsparing devastation of their rage, have not been
satisfied with destroying _men_, but have even carried their vengeance
to _books_.
The Persians, from hatred of the religion of the Phoenicians and the
Egyptians, destroyed their books, of which Eusebius notices a great
number. A Grecian library at Gnidus was burnt by the sect of
Hippocrates, because the Gnidians refused to follow the doctrines of
their master. If the followers of Hippocrates formed the majority, was
it not very unorthodox in the Gnidians to prefer taking physic their own
way? But Faction has often annihilated books.
The Romans burnt the books of the Jews, of the Christians, and the
Philosophers; the Jews burnt the books of the Christians and the Pagans;
and the Christians burnt the books of the Pagans and the Jews. The
greater part of the books of Origen and other heretics were continually
burnt by the orthodox party. Gibbon pathetically describes the empty
library of Alexandria, after the Christians had destroyed it. "The
valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near
twenty years afterwards the appearance of the _empty shelves_ excited
the regret and indignation of every spectator, whose mind was not
totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient
genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have
been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and
instruction of succeeding ages; and either the zeal or avarice of the
archbishop might have been satiated with the richest spoils which were
the rewards of his victory."
The pathetic narrative of Nicetas Choniates, of the ravages committed by
the Christians of the thirteenth century in Constantinople, was
fraudulently suppressed in the printed editions. It has been preserved
by Dr. Clarke; who observes, that the Turks have committed fewer
injuries to the works of art than the barbarous Christians of that age.
The reading of the Jewish Talmud has been forbidden by various edicts,
of the Emperor Justinian, of many of the French and Spanish kings, and
numbers of Popes. All the copies were ordered to be burnt: the intrepid
perseverance of the Jews themselves preserved that work from
annihilation. In 1569 twelve thousand copies were thrown into the flames
at Cremona. John Reuchlin interfered to stop this universal destruction
of Talmuds; for which he became hated by the monks, and condemned by the
Elector of Mentz, but appealing to Rome, the prosecution was stopped;
and the traditions of the Jews were considered as not necessary to be
destroyed.
Conquerors at first destroy with the rashest zeal the national records
of the conquered people; hence it is that the Irish people deplore the
irreparable losses of their most ancient national memorials, which their
invaders have been too successful in annihilating. The same event
occurred in the conquest of Mexico; and the interesting history of the
New World must ever remain imperfect, in consequence of the unfortunate
success of the first missionaries. Clavigero, the most authentic
historian of Mexico, continually laments this affecting loss. Everything
in that country had been painted, and painters abounded there as scribes
in Europe. The first missionaries, suspicious that superstition was
mixed with all their paintings, attacked the chief school of these
artists, and collecting, in the market-place, a little mountain of these
precious records, they set fire to it, and buried in the ashes the
memory of many interesting events. Afterwards, sensible of their error,
they tried to collect information from the mouths of the Indians; but
the Indians were indignantly silent: when they attempted to collect the
remains of these painted histories, the patriotic Mexican usually buried
in concealment the fragmentary records of his country.
The story of the Caliph Omar proclaiming throughout the kingdom, at the
taking of Alexandria, that the Koran contained everything which was
useful to believe and to know, and therefore he commanded that all the
books in the Alexandrian library should be distributed to the masters of
the baths, amounting to 4000, to be used in heating their stoves during
a period of six months, modern paradox would attempt to deny. But the
tale would not be singular even were it true: it perfectly suits the
character of a bigot, a barbarian, and a blockhead. A similar event
happened in Persia. When Abdoolah, who in the third century of the
Mohammedan æra governed Khorassan, was presented at Nishapoor with a MS.
which was shown as a literary curiosity, he asked the title of it--it
was the tale of Wamick and Oozra, composed by the great poet Noshirwan.
On this Abdoolah observed, that those of his country and faith had
nothing to do with any other book than the Koran; and all Persian MSS.
found within the circle of his government, as the works of idolaters,
were to be burnt. Much of the most ancient poetry of the Persians
perished by this fanatical edict.
When Buda was taken by the Turks, a Cardinal offered a vast sum to
redeem the great library founded by Matthew Corvini, a literary monarch
of Hungary: it was rich in Greek and Hebrew lore, and the classics of
antiquity. Thirty amanuenses had been employed in copying MSS. and
illuminating them by the finest art. The barbarians destroyed most of
the books in tearing away their splendid covers and their silver bosses;
an Hungarian soldier picked up a book as a prize: it proved to be the
Ethiopics of Heliodorus, from which the first edition was printed in
1534.
Cardinal Ximenes seems to have retaliated a little on the Saracens; for
at the taking of Granada, he condemned to the flames five thousand
Korans.
The following anecdote respecting a Spanish missal, called St.
Isidore's, is not incurious; hard fighting saved it from destruction. In
the Moorish wars, all these missals had been destroyed, excepting those
in the city of Toledo. There, in six churches, the Christians were
allowed the free exercise of their religion. When the Moors were
expelled several centuries afterwards from Toledo, Alphonsus the Sixth
ordered the Roman missal to be used in those churches; but the people of
Toledo insisted on having their own, as revised by St. Isidore. It
seemed to them that Alphonsus was more tyrannical than the Turks. The
contest between the Roman and the Toletan missals came to that height,
that at length it was determined to decide their fate by single combat;
the champion of the Toletan missal felled by one blow the knight of the
Roman missal. Alphonsus still considered this battle as merely the
effect of the heavy arm of the doughty Toletan, and ordered a fast to be
proclaimed, and a great fire to be prepared, into which, after his
majesty and the people had joined in prayer for heavenly assistance in
this ordeal, both the rivals (not the men, but the missals) were thrown
into the flames--again St. Isidore's missal triumphed, and this iron
book was then allowed to be orthodox by Alphonsus, and the good people
of Toledo were allowed to say their prayers as they had long been used
to do. However, the copies of this missal at length became very scarce;
for now, when no one opposed the reading of St. Isidore's missal, none
cared to use it. Cardinal Ximenes found it so difficult to obtain a
copy, that he printed a large impression, and built a chapel,
consecrated to St. Isidore, that this service might be daily chaunted as
it had been by the ancient Christians.
The works of the ancients were frequently destroyed at the instigation
of the monks. They appear sometimes to have mutilated them, for passages
have not come down to us, which once evidently existed; and occasionally
their interpolations and other forgeries formed a destruction in a new
shape, by additions to the originals. They were indefatigable in erasing
the best works of the most eminent Greek and Latin authors, in order to
transcribe their ridiculous lives of saints on the obliterated vellum.
One of the books of Livy is in the Vatican most painfully defaced by
some pious father for the purpose of writing on it some missal or
psalter, and there have been recently others discovered in the same
state. Inflamed with the blindest zeal against everything pagan, Pope
Gregory VII. ordered that the library of the Palatine Apollo, a treasury
of literature formed by successive emperors, should be committed to the
flames! He issued this order under the notion of confining the attention
of the clergy to the holy scriptures! From that time all ancient
learning which was not sanctioned by the authority of the church, has
been emphatically distinguished as _profane_ in opposition to _sacred_.
This pope is said to have burnt the works of Varro, the learned Roman,
that Saint Austin should escape from the charge of plagiarism, being
deeply indebted to Varro for much of his great work "the City of God."
The Jesuits, sent by the emperor Ferdinand to proscribe Lutheranism from
Bohemia, converted that flourishing kingdom comparatively into a desert.
Convinced that an enlightened people could never be long subservient to
a tyrant, they struck one fatal blow at the national literature: every
book they condemned was destroyed, even those of antiquity; the annals
of the nation were forbidden to be read, and writers were not permitted
even to compose on subjects of Bohemian literature. The mother-tongue
was held out as a mark of vulgar obscurity, and domiciliary visits were
made for the purpose of inspecting the libraries of the Bohemians. With
their books and their language they lost their national character and
their independence.
The destruction of libraries in the reign of Henry VIII. at the
dissolution of the monasteries, is wept over by John Bale. Those who
purchased the religious houses took the libraries as part of the booty,
with which they scoured their furniture, or sold the books as waste
paper, or sent them abroad in ship-loads to foreign bookbinders.[23]
The fear of destruction induced many to hide manuscripts under ground,
and in old walls. At the Reformation popular rage exhausted itself on
illuminated books, or MSS. that had red letters in the title page: any
work that was decorated was sure to be thrown into the flames as a
superstitious one. Red letters and embellished figures were sure marks
of being papistical and diabolical. We still find such volumes mutilated
of their gilt letters and elegant initials. Many have been found
underground, having been forgotten; what escaped the flames were
obliterated by the damp: such is the deplorable fate of books during a
persecution!
The puritans burned everything they found which bore the vestige of
popish origin. We have on record many curious accounts of their pious
depredations, of their maiming images and erasing pictures. The heroic
expeditions of one Dowsing are journalised by himself: a fanatical
Quixote, to whose intrepid arm many of our noseless saints, sculptured
on our Cathedrals, owe their misfortunes.
The following are some details from the diary of this redoubtable Goth,
during his rage for reformation. His entries are expressed with a
laconic conciseness, and it would seem with a little dry humour. "At
_Sunbury_, we brake down ten mighty great angels in glass. At _Barham_,
brake down the twelve apostles in the chancel, and six superstitious
pictures more there; and eight in the church, one a lamb with a cross
(+) on the back; and digged down the steps and took up four
superstitious inscriptions in brass," &c. "_Lady Bruce's house_, the
chapel, a picture of God the Father, of the Trinity, of Christ, the Holy
Ghost, and the cloven tongues, which we gave orders to take down, and
the lady promised to do it." At another place they "brake six hundred
superstitious pictures, eight Holy Ghosts, and three of the Son." And in
this manner he and his deputies scoured one hundred and fifty parishes!
It has been humorously conjectured, that from this ruthless devastator
originated the phrase to _give a Dowsing_. Bishop Hall saved the windows
of his chapel at Norwich from destruction, by taking out the heads of
the figures; and this accounts for the many faces in church windows
which we see supplied by white glass.
In the various civil wars in our country, numerous libraries have
suffered both in MSS. and printed books. "I dare maintain," says Fuller,
"that the wars betwixt York and Lancaster, which lasted sixty years,
were not so destructive as our modern wars in six years." He alludes to
the parliamentary feuds in the reign of Charles I. "For during the
former their differences agreed in the _same religion_, impressing them
with reverence to all allowed muniments! whilst our _civil wars_,
founded in _faction_ and _variety_ of pretended _religions_, exposed all
naked church records a prey to armed violence; a sad vacuum, which will
be sensible in our _English historie_."
When it was proposed to the great Gustavus of Sweden to destroy the
palace of the Dukes of Bavaria, that hero nobly refused; observing, "Let
us not copy the example of our unlettered ancestors, who, by waging war
against every production of genius, have rendered the name of GOTH
universally proverbial of the rudest state of barbarity."
Even the civilisation of the eighteenth century could not preserve from
the destructive fury of an infuriated mob, in the most polished city of
Europe, the valuable MSS. of the great Earl of Mansfield, which were
madly consigned to the flames during the riots of 1780; as those of Dr.
Priestley were consumed by the mob at Birmingham.
In the year 1599, the Hall of the Stationers underwent as great a
purgation as was carried on in Don Quixote's library. Warton gives a
list of the best writers who were ordered for immediate conflagration by
the prelates Whitgift and Bancroft, urged by the Puritanical and
Calvinistic factions. Like thieves and outlaws, they were ordered _to be
taken wheresoever they may be found_.--"It was also decreed that no
satires or epigrams should be printed for the future. No plays were to
be printed without the inspection and permission of the archbishop of
Canterbury and the bishop of London; nor any _English historyes_, I
suppose novels and romances, without the sanction of the privy council.
Any pieces of this nature, unlicensed, or now at large and wandering
abroad, were to be diligently sought, recalled, and delivered over to
the ecclesiastical arm at London-house."
At a later period, and by an opposite party, among other extravagant
motions made in parliament, one was to destroy the Records in the Tower,
and to settle the nation on a new foundation! The very same principle
was attempted to be acted on in the French Revolution by the "true
sans-culottes." With us Sir Matthew Hale showed the weakness of the
project, and while he drew on his side "all sober persons, stopped even
the mouths of the frantic people themselves."
To descend to the losses incurred by individuals, whose names ought to
have served as an amulet to charm away the demons of literary
destruction. One of the most interesting is the fate of Aristotle's
library; he who by a Greek term was first saluted as a collector of
books! His works have come down to us accidentally, but not without
irreparable injuries, and with no slight suspicion respecting their
authenticity. The story is told by Strabo, in his thirteenth book. The
books of Aristotle came from his scholar Theophrastus to Neleus, whose
posterity, an illiterate race, kept them locked up without using them,
buried in the earth! Apellion, a curious collector, purchased them, but
finding the MSS. injured by age and moisture, conjecturally supplied
their deficiencies. It is impossible to know how far Apellion has
corrupted and obscured the text. But the mischief did not end here; when
Sylla at the taking of Athens brought them to Rome, he consigned them
to the care of Tyrannio, a grammarian, who employed scribes to copy
them; he suffered them to pass through his hands without correction, and
took great freedoms with them; the words of Strabo are strong: "Ibique
Tyrannionem grammaticum iis usum atque (ut fama est) _intercidisse_, aut
_invertisse_." He gives it indeed as a report; but the fact seems
confirmed by the state in which we find these works: Averroes declared
that he read Aristotle forty times over before he succeeded in perfectly
understanding him; he pretends he did at the one-and-fortieth time! And
to prove this, has published five folios of commentary!
We have lost much valuable literature by the illiberal or malignant
descendants of learned and ingenious persons. Many of Lady Mary Wortley
Montague's letters have been destroyed, I am informed, by her daughter,
who imagined that the family honours were lowered by the addition of
those of literature: some of her best letters, recently published, were
found buried in an old trunk. It would have mortified her ladyship's
daughter to have heard, that her mother was the Sévigné of Britain.
At the death of the learned Peiresc, a chamber in his house filled with
letters from the most eminent scholars of the age was discovered: the
learned in Europe had addressed Peiresc in their difficulties, who was
hence called "the attorney-general of the republic of letters." The
niggardly niece, although repeatedly entreated to permit them to be
published, preferred to use these learned epistles occasionally to light
her fires![24]
The MSS. of Leonardo da Vinci have equally suffered from his relatives.
When a curious collector discovered some, he generously brought them to
a descendant of the great painter, who coldly observed, that "he had a
great deal more in the garret, which had lain there for many years, if
the rats had not destroyed them!" Nothing which this great artist wrote
but showed an inventive genius.
Menage observes on a friend having had his library destroyed by fire, in
which several valuable MSS. had perished, that such a loss is one of the
greatest misfortunes that can happen to a man of letters. This gentleman
afterwards consoled himself by composing a little treatise _De
Bibliothecæ incendio_. It must have been sufficiently curious. Even in
the present day men of letters are subject to similar misfortunes; for
though the fire-offices will insure books, they will not allow _authors
to value their own manuscripts_.
A fire in the Cottonian library shrivelled and destroyed many
Anglo-Saxon MSS.--a loss now irreparable. The antiquary is doomed to
spell hard and hardly at the baked fragments that crumble in his
hand.[25]
Meninsky's famous Persian dictionary met with a sad fate. Its excessive
rarity is owing to the siege of Vienna by the Turks: a bomb fell on the
author's house, and consumed the principal part of his indefatigable
labours. There are few sets of this high-priced work which do not bear
evident proofs of the bomb; while many parts are stained with the water
sent to quench the flames.
The sufferings of an author for the loss of his manuscripts strongly
appear in the case of Anthony Urceus, a great scholar of the fifteenth
century. The loss of his papers seems immediately to have been followed
by madness. At Forli, he had an apartment in the palace, and had
prepared an important work for publication. His room was dark, and he
generally wrote by lamp-light. Having gone out, he left the lamp
burning; the papers soon kindled, and his library was reduced to ashes.
As soon as he heard the news, he ran furiously to the palace, and
knocking his head violently against the gate, uttered this blasphemous
language: "Jesus Christ, what great crime have I done! who of those who
believed in you have I ever treated so cruelly? Hear what I am saying,
for I am in earnest, and am resolved. If by chance I should be so weak
as to address myself to you at the point of death, don't hear me, for I
will not be with you, but prefer hell and its eternity of torments." To
which, by the by, he gave little credit. Those who heard these ravings,
vainly tried to console him. He quitted the town, and lived franticly,
wandering about the woods!
Ben Jonson's _Execration on Vulcan_ was composed on a like occasion; the
fruits of twenty years' study were consumed in one short hour; our
literature suffered, for among some works of imagination there were many
philosophical collections, a commentary on the poetics, a complete
critical grammar, a life of Henry V., his journey into Scotland, with
all his adventures in that poetical pilgrimage, and a poem on the ladies
of Great Britain. What a catalogue of losses!
Castelvetro, the Italian commentator on Aristotle, having heard that his
house was on fire, ran through the streets exclaiming to the people,
_alla Poetica! alla Poetica! To the Poetic! To the Poetic_! He was then
writing his commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle.
Several men of letters have been known to have risen from their
death-bed to destroy their MSS. So solicitous have they been not to
venture their posthumous reputation in the hands of undiscerning
friends. Colardeau, the elegant versifier of Pope's epistle of Eliosa to
Abelard, had not yet destroyed what he had written of a translation of
Tasso. At the approach of death, he recollected his unfinished labour;
he knew that his friends would not have the courage to annihilate one of
his works; this was reserved for him. Dying, he raised himself, and as
if animated by an honourable action, he dragged himself along, and with
trembling hands seized his papers, and consumed them in one
sacrifice.--I recollect another instance of a man of letters, of our own
country, who acted the same part. He had passed his life in constant
study, and it was observed that he had written several folio volumes,
which his modest fears would not permit him to expose to the eye even of
his critical friends. He promised to leave his labours to posterity; and
he seemed sometimes, with a glow on his countenance, to exult that they
would not be unworthy of their acceptance. At his death his sensibility
took the alarm; he had the folios brought to his bed; no one could open
them, for they were closely locked. At the sight of his favourite and
mysterious labours, he paused; he seemed disturbed in his mind, while he
felt at every moment his strength decaying; suddenly he raised his
feeble hands by an effort of firm resolve, burnt his papers, and smiled
as the greedy Vulcan licked up every page. The task exhausted his
remaining strength, and he soon afterwards expired. The late Mrs.
Inchbald had written her life in several volumes; on her death-bed, from
a motive perhaps of too much delicacy to admit of any argument, she
requested a friend to cut them into pieces before her eyes--not having
sufficient strength left herself to perform this funereal office. These
are instances of what may be called the heroism of authors.
The republic of letters has suffered irreparable losses by shipwrecks.
Guarino Veronese, one of those learned Italians who travelled through
Greece for the recovery of MSS., had his perseverance repaid by the
acquisition of many valuable works. On his return to Italy he was
shipwrecked, and lost his treasures! So poignant was his grief on this
occasion that, according to the relation of one of his countrymen, his
hair turned suddenly white.
About the year 1700, Hudde, an opulent burgomaster of Middleburgh,
animated solely by literary curiosity, went to China to instruct himself
in the language, and in whatever was remarkable in this singular people.
He acquired the skill of a mandarine in that difficult language; nor did
the form of his Dutch face undeceive the physiognomists of China. He
succeeded to the dignity of a mandarine; he travelled through the
provinces under this character, and returned to Europe with a collection
of observations, the cherished labour of thirty years, and all these
were sunk in the bottomless sea.
The great Pinellian library, after the death of its illustrious
possessor, filled three vessels to be conveyed to Naples. Pursued by
corsairs, one of the vessels was taken; but the pirates finding nothing
on board but books, they threw them all into the sea: such was the fate
of a great portion of this famous library.[26] National libraries have
often perished at sea, from the circumstance of conquerors transporting
them into their own kingdoms.