DR. SOUTHEY. JOHN BUNYAN. BARTHOLOMÆUS SCHERÆUS. TERTULLIAN. DOMENICO
BERNINO. PETRARCH. JEREMY TAYLOR. HARTLEY COLERIDGE. DIEGO DE SAN
PEDRO, AND ADAM LITTLETON.
Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray;
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.
Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in!
Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky!
Liard, Robin, you must bob in!
Round, around, around, about, about!
All _good_ come running in, all _ill_ keep out.
MIDDLETON.
Nine years after the convention of Cintra a representation was made to
the Laureate in favour of some artillery horses employed in Sir Arthur
Wellesley's army. They were cast-off Irish cavalry, and their
efficiency had been called in question; indeed it had been affirmed
that they were good for nothing; attestations to disprove this were
produced, and the Laureate was requested to set this matter right in
his History of the Peninsular War. The good-natured historian has
given accordingly a note to the subject, saying that he thought
himself bound to notice the representation were it only for the
singularity of the case. If Dr. Southey thought it became him for that
reason and for truth's sake, to speak a good word of some poor horses
who had long ago been worked to death and left to the dogs and wolves
by the way side, much more may I feel myself bound for the sake of Dr.
Dove to vindicate the daughter of his old schoolmaster from a
splenetic accusation brought against her by her husband. The reader
who knows what the Doctor's feelings were with regard to Mr. Guy, and
what mine are for the Doctor, would I am sure excuse me even if on
such an occasion I had travelled out of the record.
Gent when he penned that peevish page seems to have thought with Tom
Otter, that a wife is a very scurvy clogdogdo! And with John Bunyan
that “Women, whenever they would perk it and lord it over their
husbands, ought to remember that both by creation and transgression
they are made to be in subjection to them.” “Such a thing,” says the
Arch-tinker, “may happen, as that the woman, not the man, may be in
the right, (I mean when both are godly) but ordinarily it is
otherwise!”
Authors of a higher class than the York printer and topographist have
complained of their wives. We read in Burton that Bartholomæus
Scheræus, Professor of Hebrew at Wittenberg, whom he calls “that
famous Poet Laureate,” said in the introduction to a work of his upon
the Psalms, he should have finished it long before, but amongst many
miseries which almost broke his back (his words were _inter alia dura
et tristia, quæ misero mihi pene tergum fregerunt_,) he was yoked to a
worse than Xantippe. A like lamentation is made more oddly and with
less excuse, by Domenico Bernino, the author of a large history of All
Heresies, which he dedicated to Clement XI. Tertullian, he says, being
ill advised in his youth, and deceived by that shadow of repose which
the conjugal state offers to the travellers in this miserable world,
threw himself into the troubled sea of matrimony. And no sooner had he
taken a wife, than being made wise by his own misfortunes, he composed
his laborious treatise _de molestiis nuptiarum_, concerning the
troubles of marriage, finding in this employment the only relief from
those continual miseries, to which, he adds, we who now write may bear
our present and too faithful testimony,—_delle quali Noi ancora che
queste cose scriviamo, siamo per lui testimonio pur troppo vero e
presente._
The Historian of Heresy and the Hebrew Professor might have learnt a
lesson from Petrarch's Dialogue _de importunâ Uxore_, in that work of
his _de Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ_. When DOLOR complains of having a
bad wife, RATIO reminds him that he might blame his ill fortune for
any other calamity, but this he had brought upon himself and the only
remedy was patience.
_Est mala crux, conjux mala; crux tamen illa ferenda est
Quâ nemo nisi Mors te relevare potest._
“It is the unhappy chance of many,” says Jeremy Taylor, “that finding
many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend
into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles, and there they
enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or
woman's peevishness; and the worst of the evil is, they are to thank
their own follies, for they fell into the snare by entering an
improper way.” To complain of the consequences, which are indeed the
proper punishment, is to commit a second folly by proclaiming the
first, and the second deserves the ridicule it is sure to meet with.
Hartley Coleridge has well said, that there must always be something
defective in the moral feelings or very unfortunate in the
circumstances of a man who makes the public his confidant!
If Thomas Gent had read Lord Berners' Castle of Love, which might
easily, rare as it has now become, have fallen in his way a hundred
years ago, he would there have seen fifteen reasons why men do wrong
when they speak ill of women, and twenty reasons why they ought to
speak well of them. All lovers of our old literature know how greatly
we are beholden to John Bouchier, Knight, Lord Berners, who when
Deputy General of the Kings Town of Calais and Marches of the same,
employed his leisure in translating books out of French into English.
But he must have been one of those persons who with a great appetite
for books have no discriminating taste, or he would not have
translated Arthur of Little Britain, when Gyron le Courtoys and
Meliadus were not extant in his own language; nor would he, even at
the instance of Lady Elizabeth Carew, if he had known a good book from
a bad one, have englished from its French version the Carcel de Amor,
which Diego de San Pedro composed at the request of the Alcayde de los
Donzelles, D. Diego Hernandez, and of other Knights and Courtiers.
The reader will please to observe that though all worthless books are
bad, all bad books are not necessarily worthless. A work however bad,
if written, as the Carcel de Amor was, early in the sixteenth century,
and translated into Italian French and English, must be worth reading
to any person who thinks the history of literature (and what that
history includes) a worthy object of pursuit. If I had not been one of
those who like Ludovicus Bosch—(my friend in the caxon)—are never
weary of hunting in those woods, I could not, gentle reader, have set
before you as I shall incontinently proceed to do, the fifteen
above-mentioned and here following reasons, why you will commit a sin
if you ever speak in disparagement of womankind.
First then, Leriano, the unhappy hero of Diego de San Pedro's tragic
story, says that all things which God has made are necessarily good;
women therefore being his creatures, to calumniate them is to
blaspheme one of his works.
Secondly, there is no sin more hateful than ingratitude; and it is
being ungrateful to the Virgin Mary if we do not honour all women for
her sake.
Thirdly, it is an act of cowardice for man who is strong, to offend
woman who is weak.
Fourthly, the man who speaks ill of woman brings dishonour upon
himself, inasmuch as every man is of woman born.
Fifthly, such evil speaking is, for the last mentioned reason, a
breach of the fifth commandment.
Sixthly, it is an obligation upon every noble man to employ himself
virtuously both in word and deed; and he who speaks evil incurs the
danger of infamy.
Seventhly, because all knights are bound by their order to show
respect and honour to all womankind.
Eighthly, such manner of speech brings the honour of others in
question.
Ninthly, and principally, it endangers the soul of the evil speaker.
Tenthly, it occasions enmities and the fatal consequences resulting
therefrom.
Eleventhly, husbands by such speeches may be led to suspect their
wives, to use them ill, to desert them, and peradventure to make away
with them.
Twelfthly, a man thereby obtains the character of being a slanderer.
Thirteenthly, he brings himself in jeopardy with those who may think
themselves bound to vindicate a lady's reputation or revenge the wrong
which has been done to it.
Fourteenthly, to speak ill of women is a sin because of the beauty
which distinguishes their sex, which beauty is so admirable that there
is more to praise in one woman than there can be to condemn in all.
Fifteenthly, it is a sin because all the benefactors of mankind have
been born of women, and therefore we are obliged to women for all the
good that has ever been done in the world.
Such are the fifteen reasons which Diego de San Pedro excogitated to
show that it is wrong for men to speak ill of women; and the twenty
reasons which he has superinduced to prove that they are bound to
speak well of them are equally cogent and not less curious. I have a
reason of my own for reserving these till another opportunity. Not
however to disappoint my fair readers altogether of that due praise
which they have so properly expected, I will conclude the present
chapter with a few flowers taken from the pulpit of my old
acquaintance Adam Littleton. There is no impropriety in calling him
so, though he died before my grandfathers and grandmothers were born;
and when I meet him in the next world I hope to improve this one sided
acquaintance by introducing myself and thanking him for his Dictionary
and his Sermons.
The passage occurs in a sermon preached at the obsequies of the Right
Honourable the Lady Jane Cheyne. The text was “Favour is deceitful,
and Beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be
praised:” in which proposition, says the Preacher, we have first the
subject, _Woman_, with her qualification _that fears the Lord_:
Secondly the predicate, _she shall be praised_.
“WOMAN, in the primitive design of Nature, God's master-piece, being
the last work of creation, and made with a great deal of deliberation
and solemnity.
“For to look upon her as a supernumerary creature, and one brought
into the world by the bye, besides the Creator's first intention, upon
second thoughts,—is to lay a foul imputation upon Divine Wisdom, as if
it had been at a stand, and were to seek.
“Wherefore, as we use to argue that all things were made for the use
and service of man, because he was made last of all; I do not see, if
that argument be good, why the same consequences should not be of like
force here too, that Man himself was made for the affectionate care of
Woman, who was framed not only _after_ him, but _out of_ him too, the
more to engage his tenderest and dearest respects.
“Certainly this manner of production doth plainly evince the equality
of the Woman's merits and rights with Man; she being a noble cyon
transplanted from his stock, and by the mystery of marriage implanted
into him again, and made one with him.
“She is then equally at least partaker with him of all the
_advantages_ which appertain to human nature, and alike capable of
those _improvements_ which by the efforts of reason, and the methods
of education and the instincts of the Blessed Spirit, are to be made
upon it,—
“Hence it was that all Arts and Sciences, all Virtues and Graces, both
divine and moral, are represented in the shape and habit of Women. Nor
is there any reason for fancying Angels themselves more of our sex
than of the other, since amongst them there is no such distinction,
but they may as well be imagined female as male.
“Above all for Piety and Devotion, which is the top-perfection of our
nature, and makes it most like angelical; as the capacity of Women is
as large, so their inclinations are generally more vigorous, the
natural bias and tendency of their spirits lying that way, and their
softer temper more kindly receiving the supernatural impression of
God's Spirit.
“This is _that_, if any thing, which gives their sex the pre-eminence
above us men and gains them just advantages of praise; that whereas
those who have only a handsome shape and good features to commend
them, are adored and idolized by persons of slight apprehensions and
ungoverned passions, pious and virtuous women command the veneration
of the most judicious, and are deservedly admired by holy men and
Angels.”
Thus saith that Adam of whom even Adam Clarke might have been proud as
a namesake; and whose portrait the Gentlemen of the name of Adam who
meet and dine together at a tavern in London, once a year, ought to
have in their club room.