A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA
A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA
BY LEIGH HUNT
_ILLUSTRATED BY RICHARD DOYLE_
A NEW EDITION
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1883
TO
HORACE SMITH,
WHO, THOUGH HE SUPPRESSES THE PASTORALS WHICH HE WROTE
IN HIS YOUTH,
WILL RETAIN AS LONG AS HE LIVES,
A HEART OPEN TO EVERY NATURAL AND NOBLE IMPRESSION,
THESE PAGES,
WITHOUT HIS KNOWLEDGE, BUT CONFIDING IN HIS INDULGENCE,
ARE INSCRIBED,
BY HIS EVER GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,
LEIGH HUNT.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHRISTMAS AND ITALY: OR, A PREFATORY ESSAY, SHOWING THE EXTREME
FITNESS OF THIS BOOK FOR THE SEASON 1
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
A BLUE JAR FROM SICILY, AND A BRASS JAR FROM THE “ARABIAN
NIGHTS;” AND WHAT CAME OUT OF EACH 25
CHAPTER II. SICILY, AND ITS MYTHOLOGY.
ISLAND OF SICILY, AND MOUNT ÆTNA.--STORIES OF TYPHŒUS,
POLYPHEMUS, SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS, GLAUCUS AND SCYLLA, ALPHEUS
AND ARETHUSA, THE SIRENS, AND THE RAPE OF PROSERPINE 34
CHAPTER III. GLANCES AT ANCIENT SICILIAN HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.
VICISSITUDES OF SICILIAN GOVERNMENT.--GLANCES AT PHALARIS,
STESICHORUS, EMPEDOCLES, HIERO I., SIMONIDES, EPICHARMUS,
DIONYSIUS I., DAMON AND PYTHIAS, DAMOCLES, DIONYSIUS II., DION,
PLATO, AGATHOCLES, HANNIBAL, HIERO II., THEOCRITUS, ARCHIMEDES,
MARCELLUS, VERRES; AND PARTICULARS RELATING TO GELLIAS 58
CHAPTER IV. THEOCRITUS.
PASTORAL POETRY.--SPECIMENS OF THE STRENGTH AND COMIC HUMOUR OF
THEOCRITUS.--THE PRIZE-FIGHT BETWEEN POLLUX AND AMYCUS.--THE
SYRACUSAN GOSSIPS 71
CHAPTER V. THEOCRITUS.--(CONCLUDED.)
SPECIMENS OF THE PATHOS AND PASTORAL OF THEOCRITUS.--THE CYCLOPS
IN LOVE.--POETICAL FEELING AMONG UNEDUCATED CLASSES IN THE
SOUTH.--PASSAGES FROM THEOCRITUS’S FIRST IDYLL.--HIS
VERSIFICATION AND MUSIC.--PASTORAL OF BION AND MOSCHUS 88
CHAPTER VI. NORMAN TIMES--LEGEND OF KING ROBERT.
HOW KING ROBERT OF SICILY WAS DISPOSSESSED OF HIS THRONE; AND
WHO SAT UPON IT.--HIS WRATH, SUFFERINGS, AND REPENTANCE 107
CHAPTER VII. ITALIAN AND ENGLISH PASTORAL.
TASSO’S ERMINIA AMONG THE SHEPHERDS, AND ODE ON THE GOLDEN
AGE.--GUARINI’S RETURN OF SPRING.--SHEPHERD’S VISION OF THE
HUNDRED MAIDENS IN SPENSER.--“SAD SHEPHERD” OF BEN JONSON 123
CHAPTER VIII. ENGLISH PASTORAL--(CONTINUED); AND SCOTCH PASTORAL.
FLETCHER’S “FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS.”--PROBABLE REASON OF ITS
NON-SUCCESS.--“COMUS” AND “LYCIDAS.”--DR. JOHNSON’S “WORLD.”--
BURNS AND ALLAN RAMSAY 147
CHAPTER IX. ENGLISH PASTORAL.--(CONCLUDED.)
PASTORALS OF WILLIAM BROWNE.--PASTORAL MEN: CERVANTES,
BOCCACCIO, CHAUCER, COWLEY, THOMSON, SHENSTONE, ETC. 162
CHAPTER X. RETURN TO SICILY AND MOUNT ÆTNA.
SUBJECT OF MOUNT ÆTNA RESUMED:--ITS BEAUTIES--ITS HORRORS--
REASON WHY PEOPLE ENDURE THEM.--LOVE-STORY OF AN EARTHQUAKE 177
CHAPTER XI. BEES.
THE BEAUTIFUL NEVER TO BE THANKED TOO MUCH, OR TO BE
SUFFICIENTLY EXPRESSED.--BEES AND THEIR ELEGANCE.--THEIR ADVICE
TO AN ITALIAN POET.--WAXEN TAPERS.--A BEE DRAMA.--MASSACRES OF
DRONES.--HUMAN PROGRESSION 198
CHAPTER XII. MISCELLANEOUS FEELINGS RESPECTING SICILY, ITS MUSIC,
ITS RELIGION, AND ITS MODERN POETRY.
DANTE’S EVENING.--AVE MARIA OF BYRON.--THE SICILIAN VESPERS.--
NOTHING “INFERNAL” IN NATURE.--SICILIAN MARINER’S HYMN.--
INVOCATION FROM COLERIDGE.--PAGAN AND ROMAN CATHOLIC WORSHIP.--
LATIN AND ITALIAN COUPLET.--WINTER’S “RATTO DI PROSERPINA.”--A
HINT ON ITALIAN AIRS.--BELLINI, MELI, THE MODERN THEOCRITUS 211
OVERFLOWINGS OF THE JAR.
PAGE
THE JOURNEY TO THE FEAST (FROM THEOCRITUS) 237
ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION (FROM MOSCHUS) 243
THE SHIP OF HIERO 248
SERENADES IN SICILY AND NAPLES 250
SICILIAN BANDITTI IN THE YEAR 1770 255
GOOD-NATURED HOSPITALITY, AND FACETIOUS IGNORANT OLD GENTLEMAN 260
SPECIMEN OF HIGHER SOCIETY 261
POETICAL TURN OF THE SICILIANS 263
A MEETING OF ENGLISH AND SICILIAN DISHES ON CHRISTMAS-DAY 265
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DESIGNED AND DRAWN ON WOOD BY RICHARD DOYLE
PAGE
A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA (_Frontispiece_)
THE FISHERMAN AND THE GENIE 25
SICULO-SARACENIC JAR 33
THE SIRENS AND ULYSSES 34
THE RAPE OF PROSERPINE 53
PRESIDING DEITY OF HYBLA, FROM A SICILIAN COIN 57
INFANT PLATO AND THE BEES 58
FAIRY AND BEE 70
SHEPHERDESS AND FLOCK 71
THEOCRITUS, FROM THE RECEIVED PORTRAIT OF HIM 87
POLYPHEMUS 88
SICILIAN PEASANT 106
KING ROBERT AND THE ANGEL 107
KING ROBERT, FROM A SICILIAN COIN 122
SIR CALIDORE 123
TASSO 146
ELVES AND SQUIRRELS 147
SHEPHERD AND DOG 161
ENGLISH PASTORAL 162
CHAUCER 176
MOUNT ÆTNA 177
CHARLES OF ANJOU, KING OF SICILY 197
SICILIAN BEE-HIVES 198
ENGLISH BEE-HIVES 210
SICILIAN VESPERS 211
MELI, FROM A MEDALLION 235
[Illustration]
CHRISTMAS AND ITALY; OR A PREFATORY ESSAY, SHOWING THE EXTREME FITNESS OF
THIS BOOK FOR THE SEASON.
In one of the volumes of that celebrated French publication, the _Almanach
des Gourmands_, which sounds the depth of the merit of soups, and decides
on the distracting claims of the most affinitive relishes, there is a
frontispiece presenting to the respectful eyes of the reader a “Jury of
Tasters.” They form a board of elderly gentlemen with the most thoughtful
faces, and are in the act of chewing each his mouthful, and profoundly
ruminating on its pretensions. Having seen but this single volume of the
work, and that only for a short time (which we mention with becoming
regret), we are not qualified to report its verdicts; but one of them made
an impression on us not to be forgotten. It ran as follows:--“With this
sauce a man might eat his father.”
Now, far are we, in the most ambitious moments of our honey-making, from
aspiring at a judgment upon us like that;--sad evidence of the excesses of
imagination into which the most serious intellects may be transported, in
consequence of giving way to their appetites. One of the especial parts of
our vocation is to draw sweet out of bitter; and the only association of
ideas which these unfilial sages brought to our mind, was that of an
equally searching, but far nobler set of judges, who, when this our Honey
first made its appearance at the periodical table of Mr. Ainsworth, and
was thence diffused over the country, exclaimed from all quarters, after
the most benignant meditation, “With this sauce a man might swallow some
of the bitterest morsels of life.” “This is the condiment to sweeten every
man’s daily bread.” “There is the right Christian aroma in the sacrificial
part of the offering of these dulcitudes.”
We blush, of course, with the requisite modesty in repeating these
approvals; and, indeed, should blush a great deal more if we thought that
the contents of our Jar (as far as they originate with ourselves) had any
merit beyond such as might easily be competed with by thousands
throughout the land, upon the strength of their own thoughts and
good-will, assisted by a little reading and cheerfulness; but the truth
is, that our friends in Cornhill, having purchased the stock in
consequence of those approvals, and thinking it worth their while, after
it had been clarified and augmented, to put it into elegant vehicles of
their own, and so qualify it to be made into Christmas presents, we are
desirous to show how fit it is for that purpose; nay, how emphatically it
would have been so considered in the “good old Christmas times.”
It is true, that besides the good old Christmas times, there are such
things as good new Christmas times; and in respect to the great object of
both, we are heartily of opinion that the latter far surpass the former,
and that no literary fare for the season ever came up to the substantial
as well as exquisite food set forth for us in the pages of _Chimes_ and
_Christmas Carols_. They are nectar and ambrosia for the spirit in the
humblest shapes of the flesh. They are the sermons of the morning rescued
from the dead letter of mere assent and custom, reproduced with all the
allurements of wit and pathos, and made contributory to the greatest
practical workings of the time. And the time has no greater glory than the
fact of the conversion of satire itself to a beneficent spirit, which
(with a few occasional deviations, that must be pardoned for habit’s
sake) it obviously and largely possesses, and which it will complete ere
long, by an impartiality towards every rank and description of men.
These exceptions to our claims being admitted, we shall grow bold on the
strength of our candour; and aver, that our Jar of Honey is eminently
suited to almost all other old Christmas associations (of an unvulgar
order), while at the same time it does not omit, if it does not
prominently put forth, this modern one of the right Christian spirit; as
indeed, by the favour of the critics, has already been noticed. Christmas
amusements of old were a mixture of poetry, piety, revelry, superstition,
story-telling, and masquing, particularly Pagan and Arcadian masquing; and
here you have them all. But they were not confined to these. At no time
does talk run freer on all subjects than at Christmas, because at no time
are the animal spirits set more at liberty; and hence no topic is baulked
if it come uppermost, any more than it is in these pages. And as to the
foreign part of our title, when Shakspeare wrote his _Winter’s Tale_ (and
a Winter’s Tale was emphatically a Christmas Tale) he laid the scene of it
in the same country as that of our little Jar. Shakspeare’s Christmas Tale
is a Sicilian tale, and it presents the same mixture as we do, of old
Sicilian story and English pastoral. To be exclusively English was never
the contemplation of any Christmas talk. No later than the other day,
Coleridge wrote a play in professed imitation of the _Winter’s Tale_. He
calls it “Zapolya, a _Christmas_ Tale,” and the scene is laid in Illyria;
which, by the way, is that of Shakspeare’s _Twelfth-Night_, another play
of the season, for Twelfth-Night is included in Christmas. Indeed, if you
would banish foreign matters from Christmas, you must banish Christmas
itself. You must sweep away mince-pies, with their currants from Greece,
their cloves and mace from the Spice Islands, and their peel of lemon from
_Sicily_. You must abolish your plum-pudding, with its raisins from
Malaga, your boar’s head from Germany, chestnuts from Spain and France,
oranges from Portugal, wines every one of them, except British, all your
hot pickles, all your teas and coffees, your very twelfth-cake with its
sugar: nay, even the name of the season, to say nothing of things too
reverend to be specified. You would not have a mahogany table to dine
upon. Sixpence would not be left you to buy a cigar, nor a cigar to be
bought; and if you wished to console yourself with singing a carol, ten to
one but the tune would be taken out of your mouth, being found to belong
to Pergolese or Palestrina, or some other Italian inventor of the phrases
of melody.
Italian! Why, Italy will be talked about this Christmas at half the
tables in England, with the Pope and Mr. Cobden at its head; and we think
we see our little Blue Jar the more valued accordingly. Mr. Cobden has
returned from Italy, brimful, as such a man ought to be, of its beauties
and merits. He himself will talk plentifully about it; and others will
talk, because he has talked already. The Duke of Devonshire has been in
Italy. Lord John has an Envoy in Italy. Every reigning circle of private
and public life has had its representative visitor in that country.
Everybody, indeed, may be said to visit it every day in the newspapers, to
see how the Pope and Reform are going on; poor Sicily has been in trouble
with its “Captain Romeo” (strange link of times past and present); and Mr.
Cobden has the magnanimity to express his regret that he had not made
himself a master, when he was young, of the language of the beautiful
peninsula.
Now, one of the great objects of the present writer, for many years past,
has been to lure his readers into the love of other languages,
particularly of this most beautiful of them all. It is for this reason he
has scarcely ever quoted the most trivial expression from any one of them
without giving a version of it; knowing well, how many intelligent men
there are who would enjoy the original, if they knew it, far better than
many an accidental scholar, and who are therefore willing to have the
least glimpse of it afforded them. It has been well said, that “mankind
will cease to quarrel with one another, when they understand one another.”
Mr. Cobden, in his entertaining and instructive speech at the Manchester
Athenæum, has told us how he was struck with this conviction during his
tour. But he arrived at it before, by the intuition of a happy nature.
Why, for his own delight, does he not make himself a master of the
language he so admires? He is a reader by the fireside; and one hour’s
reading, _per diem_, would render such a man more intimate with it in the
course of a year than nine-tenths of its masters in England. But perhaps
he is such. At all events, he may have become acquainted with it
sufficiently for enjoyment; as much, for instance, as ourselves; more so,
if he speaks it; for though we read, well enough, most of the languages
that we translate, we can speak them no better than just to make our way
through Italy and France. We mention this, partly that we may not seem to
know more than we do, and partly to encourage others to learn. A little
hearty love is better in this, as in all other cases, than a heap of
indifferent knowledge. We are ashamed to say, that we know less of Greek,
in one sense of the word, than we did when young, and are obliged to look
out more words in the dictionary; for to a dictionary we are still forced
to resort, though we love the language next to Italian, and hold it in
higher admiration. But then we know our ignorance better than we did at
that time; are more aware of beauties to be enjoyed, and nice meanings to
be discovered; and the consequence is, that whenever we undertake to
translate a passage from Greek, we take our love on one side of us, and
our dictionary on the other, and before we set about it, make a point of
sifting every possible meaning and root of meaning, not excepting those in
words the most familiar to us, in order that not an atom of the writer’s
intention may be missed. We do not say, of course, that we always succeed
in detecting it; but it is not for want of painstaking.
The labour we delight in, physicks pain.
Now by a like respect for the good old maxim of “slow and sure,” and by
dint of doing a little, or even a very little, every day, there is no
lover of poetry and beauty who in the course of a few months might not be
as deep as a bee in some of the sweetest flowers of other languages; and
it is for readers of this sort that we have not only translated and
commented on Greek and other passages in the book before us, but in some
instances given intimations of the spirit in which we have studied
them;--being anxious to allure to the study such as can find time for it,
and to give some little taste of their exquisiteness to those who cannot.
For all sorts of benefits lie in a knowledge of languages, both to men out
of the world and men in it;--all additions to the stock of profit and
pleasure,--to the certainty of knowing (as the phrase is) “what to be at”
on occasions where profitable information is required; of not losing any
advantage, either of relative or of positive gain; of growing superior to
debasing fears and to ignorant and inhuman assumptions; and above all, of
assisting the great cause of the advancement and mutual intercourse of all
men, which shall put an end to narrow-minded ideas of profit and loss, and
open up that moral, and intellectual, and cordial as well as commercial
Free Trade, without which we should remain little better for ever than a
parcel of ill-taught children, willing, if not able, to cheat one another
in corners. But all this cannot be done, unless knowledge and taste go
hand-in-hand; or, in other words, unless we learn to perceive the finally
pleasurable, as well as the intermediately profitable; otherwise, when we
come to the end of our gain, we shall be but at the beginning of a sense
of our unfitness to enjoy it; and this, too, after missing a thousand
graces by the way. Supposing health, for instance, and other favourable
circumstances to have been on a par, which of any two men in the age of
Shakspeare was the more capable of enjoying the whole round of his
Christmas holidays,--he who had plenty of money to disburse for them, but
no taste for their plays and pageants beyond what was shared by everybody
who had eyes and ears; or he who understood all the beauties of their
imagery and their allusions; who saw their colours with the eye of a
painter, and heard their words with the apprehension of a poet; to whom
the music was not a mere prettiness to patronise, or movement to beat time
to, but an interweaving of shapes of grace and circles of harmony; to whom
gods indeed descended from heaven, and nymphs brought back ages of gold;
to whom terror itself was but a passing phase of the operation of good;
and by, as well as for, whom, some justice, however small, was thus done
to that magnificence of sight and suggestiveness with which heaven has
adorned the universe, and that tendency to hope the best of all things
which no seeming contradiction can do away? To feel thus is not only to be
able to endure the perplexities presented to the mind by Christmas itself,
its poor, and its polemics, but to pass the “flaming bounds” of telescope
and microscope, and repose in serenities beyond the finite.
We have been led into an unexpected strain of enthusiasm and exaltation;
but this is as natural to the season as a church-organ, or as the memory
of the Sermon on the Mount. Christmas sees fair play to all reasonable
moods of mind, the cheerful being predominant, as the height of reason.
After church comes an interval, and after the interval dinner, which is a
mixture of the serious and the lively; solid as to the beef and pudding,
but light as regards the laughter and the whipped syllabub. Then ensue
pastimes for a succession of days, including Twelfth-Day, with reading of
books in the morning, and cards and conversation at night; the young
chiefly being the players at the once courtly games of forfeits and “Bob,”
and the old the performers at whist and the wine-bottle. Our modern
Christmas entertainments will not bear comparison for vigour of enjoyment
with those of our ancestors before Cromwell’s time, either out of doors or
in. They have never recovered the blow given them by the invidious
heaviness of the Puritans. But to make amends, we have refined on some of
their pleasures; have multiplied others, as in the case of the theatres;
and we possess an overflow of their own favourite reading, such as their
poets might have envied us. Rare manuscripts have been set free in popular
editions; we read the stories which our ancestors used to tell, with
thousands of new novels to boot; Christmas alone brings with it a shower
of gorgeous and sometimes admirable publications, as if flowers came
pouring down with its snow; and in fine, beloved reader, here is our (and
your) Jar of Honey, full of the sweet Paganism that was dear to the
Shakspeares and Miltons, of the Pastoral which they loved also, of the
right Christmas adventures of _King Robert of Sicily_, (which they perused
under another title in the _Gesta Romanorum_,) of all sorts of good
Italianate things, (then, as now, looked upon with wonderful curiosity and
respect;) and finally, if loving wishes deceive us not, a sample and
prelibation of that quintessential extract of the spirit of Christianity
itself, the effect of which is to take away all doubt respecting the
celestial balsam, and to make men wonder how they came to mistake for it
anything containing the least taste of the fiery, the bitter, or the sour.
If the great and good Pope now reigning (for such he seems to be, in spite
of some official drawbacks) has goodness enough to feel the wish, and
could ever find greatness enough in him to dare to venture the act, of
summoning a new Council of the Church, that should set on its altar this
pure and unadulterated attraction of all hearts, instead of the unseemly
manufactures of Councils of Trent and Priests of St. Januarius, he would
give St. Peter’s its only final chance of continuing to be the throne of
the Christian world, and of flourishing under the sweet and only desirable
blossom, that shall have done some day for ever with its thorns.
But to return from these altitudes. The story of King Robert, we beg
leave to say, is an especial delight of our soul, and gave us some
exquisite moments in the writing. How came Shakspeare to let such a
subject escape him? or Beaumont and Fletcher? or Decker? or any of the
great and loving spirits that abounded in that romantic age? It was extant
in manuscript; it abounded, under another name, in print; it presented the
most striking dramatic points; extremes of passion were in the characters;
pride and its punishment were in it; humility and its reward; a court, a
chapel, an angel; pomp, music, satire, buffoonery, sublimity, tears. O
Fate! give us a dozen years more life, and a lift in our faculties,
immense; and let us try still if even our own verses cannot do something
with it.
There is not, we will venture to say, a single portion of our Jar, which
does not contain appropriate reading for Christmas.
The first chapter concerns the _Arabian Nights_; and every little boy
knows that the _Arabian Nights_ are reading for all seasons, particularly
holidays.
The second chapter is full of the Fairy Tales of Antiquity; things which
people used to relate round their fires during the ancient Saturnalia,
just as our ancestors used to do at Christmas, and as boys read them
still. And the Saturnalia were not only, to the ancients, what the
Christmas holidays are to us, but the veritable parents and progenitors
of those holidays, as every antiquary knows. It is doubtful whether
Macrobius, who wrote a _Saturnalia_, or Christmas Holiday Book, of his
time, was a Pagan or a Christian; but, at all events, his book is full of
every kind of miscellaneous reading and gossiping, from Scipio’s Dream
down to a scandalous anecdote and a disputed passage in Virgil. Such was
the pastime, he tells us, at that season, of the best-informed circles at
Rome.
Our third chapter contains, among other Saturnalian subjects, the story of
the truly Christmas-like personage, Gellias, one of the wittiest and most
hospitable of entertainers, a noble-hearted merchant-prince, who kept
seven hundred gallons of wine in his house, and was famous for making his
workmen happy.
Our fourth and fifth chapters, besides some Saturnalian stories, include
an account of an ancient holiday, full of gossip, and show, and leafy
boughs, together with a vast deal of Pastoral,--a summer recollection, to
which Christmas has always been fond of reverting, at least in books and
among the poets; probably on the principle of extremes meeting, and by a
happy rule of contraries. It is observable how fond we are at Christmas of
what our forefathers used to call “greens,” that is to say, boughs and
flowers and everything which can force the summer, as it were, to remain
with us by our firesides.
The sixth chapter is our beloved subject, the story of King Robert
aforesaid.
The seventh brings us, through Italian Pastoral, to the Christmas poetical
entertainments of our ancestors.
In the eighth and ninth we are in the Old English Poetical Works. In the
tenth at Mount Ætna with its stories. In the eleventh with the Bees. In
the twelfth with the musical services of the Church, with cheerful pieties
of all sorts, and with the jovial Sicilian poet, Meli, one of the most
universal of men.
Some persons have fancied that our book would be too learned! The most
unlearned of such readers as we hope to possess will see what a notion
this is, and to what plain English all our Greek and Latin has turned. We
have the greatest contempt for learning, merely so called; together with
the greatest respect for it when it sees through the dead letter of time
and words into the spirit that concerns all ages and all descriptions of
men. Every clever unlearned man in England, rich and poor, if we had the
magic to do it, should be gifted to-morrow with all the learning that
would adorn and endear his commerce to him, his agriculture, and the
poorest flower-pot at his window. It would satisfy the longings that are
born with such a man, and are natural to his powers; and would enable him,
while he no longer envied such right parliamentary quoters of Virgil as
the Minister, or Macaulay, or Sir Robert, or Brougham, or Lord Ellesmere,
or Lord Morpeth, or Fox, to laugh at such educated ignoramuses as A, B,
and C, who, though the classics were beaten into their heads at school,
have no more real taste for what they quote, than the wall has for the
pictures that are hung upon it with nail and hammer.
Spirit is everything, and letter is nothing; except inasmuch as it is a
vehicle for spirit. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” A
learned quotation is as ridiculous in some people’s mouths as a flower
would be stuck in the mouth of a barber’s block. What would the best
claret be to one that could not perceive the odour of it? or the nicest of
mince-pies, or college-puddings, to a mouth that had no taste? We are but
dull ourselves in such matters (the more’s the pity), and would fain
share, when at table, the nicest discernments of sharp and sweet,
possessed by the luckier palates around us; but we should only laugh at
the poor devil of a pretender, who, with nothing but a palate of silver,
and no taste at all, should affect to emulate the _Almanach des
Gourmands_, and give his opinion of the contending sauces.
May we take, by the way, a Saturnalian liberty, and ask Members of
Parliament why they quote no language but Latin, and in Latin no writers
but Virgil and Horace? We believe there is an occasional venture on
Lucretius, and perhaps on Juvenal. Also, two passages from Ovid, one in
praise of the Fine Arts, and another about preferring wrong pursuits to
right perceptions. But French has lately been thought worthy of
cultivation, even at public schools; almost every man of rank speaks it,
and Italian is an ordinary accomplishment. Ariosto, Berni, and others,
would supply an admirable crop of new parliamentary quotations; or, if
there was a fear of the delicacy of the pronunciation, what hinders us
from being refreshed with something from Molière, La Fontaine, Pascal, or
a hundred other wits and thinkers among our gallant neighbours? New paths
of quotation are due to railroads and Free Trade. There would be a sort of
extension of Parliament itself into Paris and Rome, if we occasionally
spoke the languages of those illustrious cities. France and Italy would be
pleased; books benefited; politics smoothed; intercourse gladdened and
enlarged. Even a bit of Greek might be ventured upon, if short and sweet;
and Mr. Hume feel relieved in hearing (on the authority of the philosophic
Hesiod) that “half” was “better than the whole” (πλέον ἥμισυ παντός).
The reverend maxim we have quoted respecting spirit and letter reminds us
of a little Christmas story which has never been in print, and which, in
accordance with the season, we shall take this opportunity of relating.
It was brought to our recollection by meeting with the following exquisite
passage from Bacon:--
“As those wines which flow from the first treading of the grape are
sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives
them the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines
best and sweetest which flow from _a gentle crush_ of the Scriptures,
and are not wrung into controversies and commonplaces.”
That metaphor of the “husk” is one that has haunted us (so to speak), in
connexion with the subject here alluded to, for half our lives; not
suggested, we beg leave to say, by the great philosopher--(qualified
though he be to suggest hundreds of things to us beyond our powers of
origination)--but by the greater force of the necessity of admitting evil
and reconciling it to good. And in that point of view the husk we allude
to is nobler than Bacon’s, or at least, than what seems to have been in
his construction of the word; for we took it in the light of a necessary
enclosure and safeguard of a future bud. But to drop this collateral
reminiscence, and come to our story. It is entitled
THE ELIXIR AND THE VIALS.
Once on a time there was a dispute respecting the possession of a
certain elixir, called by some Flower of Thorn, by others Spirit of
Lily, by others Spirit of Love, and by others various other names not
necessary to mention, but agreed by all to produce the most wonderful
effects on the mind, of peace and benevolence. The parties who laid
claim to the glory and emoluments of this possession, said it was kept
in a particular kind of vial distinguishable from every other, and
belonging exclusively to one single proprietor; and each claimant
declared, nay swore, that he was that one. Indeed, it was remarkable,
that for persons valuing themselves on the possession of an essence,
or spirit, producing such gentle effects, they were, most of them,
wonderfully given to swearing, not hesitating to use the most
extraordinary oaths, both in assertion of their own claims, and in
condemnation of those of the rest. One of these gentlemen, holding up
his vial, which was a very pretty thing to look at, exclaimed that
every man might be,----nay, was----(we do not like to repeat the
word), who did not see plainly that that was the only spirit. Another
uttered the very same threats, though he held up a vial of a totally
different appearance. The case was the same with a third, a fourth,
and a fifth, nay, with a fiftieth. There was nothing to be seen but a
flourishing of vials, and nothing to be heard but a storm of voices.
At length, from words (as might be expected of such words) they
proceeded to blows; and what was very astonishing, they were so moved
and provoked out of their wits as to convert their respective vials
into weapons of offence, and so absolutely endeavour to fight it out
with the fragile materials.
The consequences may be guessed. Not only were heads broken, but the
vials also; and not only did the spirit in the vials evaporate, but by
the fury of the combatants, both before and after the breakage, it
became manifest that no such thing as a spirit producing the effects
they pretended, had been in the vials at all.
The scene ended with the laughter of the spectators; and worse
consequences might have ensued, but for the appearance of a third set
of persons bringing forward another vial. It was totally unlike all
the former, except in one part of it; and this part, which was of the
real crystal which the others only pretended to be, was said to
contain, and did absolutely contain, the veritable peace-making
elixir, as was proved by a very simple but incontrovertible
circumstance; namely, the peace-making itself. The proprietors neither
swore, nor threatened, nor fought, nor tried to identify the vial with
its contents. They proved the effect of those contents upon themselves
by the friendliest behaviour towards all parties present; and though
they had a long and difficult task to induce their rivals to taste it,
yet no sooner had they done so, than the whole place became a scene of
the most enchanting reasonableness and serenity. Everybody embraced
his neighbour with the kindest words, and the combatants themselves
did not scruple to wonder how they could have missed perceiving the
presence of an odour so sweet, so unadulterated, so unquestionable, so
tranquillizing, and so divine.
This story is not so good as Robert of Sicily, or as one that we shall
relate presently; but it is not inferior to either in the conclusions that
may be drawn from it; and assuredly (except from the edification to be
drawn from scandals themselves) it is better than the histories of all the
controversies that have agitated the schools of East and West. As to that
of the Sicilian King, we are so fond of it that we cannot help taking the
opportunity it affords us of thanking the young artist who has illustrated
it, and who, after distinguishing himself with the public for his humour,
has shown in these pages so much promise of a more serious order. He has
not chosen to give his angel much bodily substance; perhaps the better to
intimate the spiritual nature of the being, and give the more supernatural
solemnity to his departure. But nobody can doubt the solidity which
accompanies the grace of King Robert; and the royal penitent has been
judiciously reinvested with the garb of his rank, the moment he resumes
his personal identity. We must be allowed also to express our sense of
the Poussin-like figure of Polyphemus at page 88, with his lumpish but not
ungraceful shoulders (fit symbols of the heaviness of his mind); nor can
we omit noticing the truly pastoral grace and simplicity of the
Shepherdess at page 71, who is leading a flock full of nature and
movement; and we are particularly thankful for the fidelity with which the
artist has transferred to paper the sensitive and benignant profile of the
Sicilian poet Meli, a cast of a medallion of whose likeness we have the
good fortune to possess. Mr. Doyle, throughout his drawings, has shown
great attention to costume and other such proprieties; one of the
evidences of that regard for truth, without which no art of any kind can
ever come to perfection.
We shall conclude this article with a brief Christmas story to which there
is an allusion in the one above mentioned, and which we hold to be worth,
at least, some nine hundred and forty thousand sermons. It is entitled
THE ELEVEN COMMANDMENTS.
A certain bishop who lived some hundred years ago, and who was very
unlike what is reported of her Majesty’s new almoner; also very unlike
the Christian bishops of old, before titles were invented for them;
very unlike Fenelon too, who nevertheless had plenty of titles; very
unlike St. Francis de Sales, who was for talking nothing but “roses;”
very unlike St. Vincent de Paul, who founded the Sisterhood of
Charity; very unlike Rundle, who “had a heart,” and Berkeley, who had
“every virtue under heaven,” and that other exquisite bishop (we blush
to have forgotten his name), who was grieved to find that he had a
hundred pounds at his banker’s when the season had been so bad for the
poor;--this highly unresembling bishop, who, nevertheless, was like
too many of his brethren,--that is to say, in times past (for there is
no bishop, now, at least in any quarter of England, who is not
remarkable for meekness, and does not make a point of turning his
right cheek to be smitten, the moment you have smitten his
left);--this unepiscopal, and yet not impossible bishop, we say, was
once accosted, during a severe Christmas, by a Parson Adams kind of
inferior clergyman, and told a long story of the wants of certain poor
people, of whose cases his lordship was unaware. What the dialogue
was, which led to the remark we are about to mention, the reporters of
the circumstance do not appear to have ascertained; but it seems that,
the representations growing stronger and stronger on one side, and the
determination to pay no attention to them acquiring proportionate
vigour on the other, the clergyman was moved to tell the bishop that
his lordship did not understand his “eleven commandments.”
“Eleven commandments!” cried the bishop; “why, fellow, you are drunk.
Who ever heard of an eleventh commandment? Depart, or you shall be put
in the stocks.”
“Put thine own pride and cruelty in the stocks,” retorted the good
priest, angered beyond his Christian patience, and preparing to return
to the sufferers for whom he had pleaded in vain. “I say there are
_eleven_ commandments, _not_ ten, and that it were well for such
flocks as you govern, if it were added, as it ought to be, to the
others over the tables in church. Does your lordship remember--do you
in fact know anything at all of Him who came on earth to do good to
the poor and woeful, and who said, ‘Behold, I give unto you a _new
commandment_, LOVE ONE ANOTHER?’”
[Illustration]
A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
A BLUE JAR FROM SICILY, AND A BRASS JAR FROM THE “ARABIAN NIGHTS;” AND
WHAT CAME OUT OF EACH.
[Illustration]
Passing one day by the shop of Messrs. Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly, we
beheld in the window a little blue jar, labelled, “Sicilian Honey.”--It
was a jar of very humble pretensions, if estimated according to its price
in the market. Perhaps it might have been worth, as a piece of ware,
about threepence; and, contents and all, its price did not exceed
eighteenpence. People who condescend to look at nothing but what is
costly, and who, being worth a vast deal of money at their bankers’, are
not aware that they are poor devils as men, would have infallibly despised
it; or, at the very utmost, they would have associated it in their minds
with nothing but the confectioner or the store-room. On the other hand, it
might have reminded a Cavendish or a Gower of his Titians and Correggios;
and a Rogers would surely have looked twice at it, for the sake of his
Stothard and his _Italy_. And the poet and the noble dukes would have been
right, not only in the spirit of their recollections, but to the very
letter; for the deep beautiful blue was the same identical blue, the
result of the same mineral, by which such an effect is retained in old
pictures; and the shape of the jar was as classical as that of many a vase
from the antique. Antiquity, indeed, possessed an abundance of precisely
such jars. Furthermore, when you held the jar in the sun, a spot of
insufferable radiance came in the middle of its cheek, like a very laugh
of light. Then it contained honey--a thing which strikes the dullest
imaginations with a sense of sweetness and the flowers; and in addition to
the word “honey” outside, was the word “Sicilian”--a very musical and
meminiscent word.
Now in consequence of this word “Sicilian,” by a certain magical process,
not unlike that of the seal of the mighty Solomon, which could put an
enormous quantity of spirit into a wonderfully small vessel, the inside of
our blue jar (for be sure we bought it) became enriched, beyond its honey,
to an extent which would appear incredible to any readers but such as we
have the honour to address, doubtless the most intelligent of their race.
To introduce it, however, even to them, in a manner befitting their
judgment, it is proper that we call to their recollection the history of a
previous jar of their acquaintance, to which the foregoing paragraph
contains an allusion.
They will be pleased to call to mind that eighteen hundred years after the
death of Solomon, and during the reign of the King of the Black Isles, who
was (literally) half petrified by the conduct of his wife, a certain
fisherman, after throwing his nets to no purpose, and beginning to be in
despair, succeeded in catching a jar of brass. The brass, to be sure,
seemed the only valuable thing about the jar; but the fisherman thought he
could, at least, sell it for old metal. Finding, however, that it was very
heavy, and furthermore closed with a seal, he wisely resolved to open it
first, and see what could be got out of it.
He therefore took a knife--(we quote from Mr. Torrens’s _Arabian Nights_,
not out of disregard for that other interesting version by our excellent
friend Mr. Lane, but we have lent his first volume, and Galland does not
contain the whole passage; he seems to have thought it would frighten the
ladies of his day)--the fisherman, therefore, “took a knife,” says Mr.
Torrens, and “worked at the tin cover till he had separated it from the
jar; and he put it down by his side on the ground. Then he shook the jar,
to tumble out whatever might be in it, and found in it not a thing. So he
marvelled with extreme amazement. But presently there came out of the jar
a vapour, and it rose up towards the heavens, and reached along the face
of the earth; and after this, the vapour reached its height, and
condensed, and became compact, and waved tremulously, and became an Ufreet
(evil spirit), his head in the clouds, and his foot on the soil, _his head
like a dome_, _his hand like a harrow_, his two legs like pillars, his
mouth like a pit, _his teeth like large stones_, and his nostrils like
_basins_, and his eyes were two lamps, _austere and louring_. Now, when
the fisherman _saw that Ufreet_, his muscles shivered, and his teeth
chattered, _and his palate was dried up_, and he knew not where he was.”
This, by the way, is a fine horrible picture, and very like an Ufreet; as
anybody must know, who is intimate with that delicate generation. We are
acquainted with nothing that beats it in its way, except the description
of another in the _Bahar Danush_, who, while sleeping on the ground, draws
the pebbles towards him with his breath, and sends them back again as it
goes forth; though a little further on, in the _Arabian Nights_, is an
Ufreet of a most accomplished ugliness--namely, “_the lord of all that is
detestable to look at_!” What a jurisdiction! And the “lord” too! Fancy a
viscount of that description.
The fright and astonishment conceived by the fisherman at the taste thus
given him of this highly concentrated spirit of _Jinn_ (for such is the
generic Eastern term for the order to which the Ufreet belongs) were not,
however, the only things he got out of his jar. An incarceration of
eighteen hundred years at the bottom of the ocean, under the seal of the
mighty Solomon, had taught its prisoner a little more respect for that
kind of detainder than he had been wont to exhibit; the fisherman exacted
from him an oath of good treatment in the event of his being set free; and
the consequence was, that after the adventures of the coloured fish, of
the appearance of the lady out of the wall, and of the semi-petrifaction
of the King of the Black Islands with his lonely voice, our piscatory
friend is put in possession of his majesty’s throne. So here is an Ufreet
as high as the clouds, fish that would have delighted Titian, (they were
blue, white, yellow, and red,) a lady, full-dressed, issuing out of a
kitchen wall, a king half-turned to stone by his wife, a throne given to a
fisherman, and half-a-dozen other phenomena, _all resulting from one poor
brazen jar_, into which when the fisherman first looked, he saw nothing in
it.
A brass jar by the ocean’s brim,
A yellow brass jar was to him,
And it was nothing more.
Now we might have expected as little from our earthen jar, as the future
monarch did from his jar of metal, had not some circumstances in our life
made us acquainted with the philosophy and occult properties of jars; but
such having been the case, no lover of the _Arabian Nights_ (which is
another term for a reader with a tendency to the universal) will be
surprised at the quantity and magnitude of the things that arose before
our eyes out of the little blue jar in the window of Messrs. Fortnum and
Mason.
“Sicilian Honey.”--We had no sooner read those words, than Theocritus rose
before us, with all his poetry.
Then Sicily arose--the whole island--particularly Mount Ætna. Then Mount
Hybla, with its bees.
Then Rucellai (the Italian poet of the bees) and his predecessor Virgil,
and Acis and Galatea, and Polyphemus, a pagan Ufreet, but mild--mitigated
by love, as Theocritus has painted him.
Then the _Odyssey_, with the giant in his fiercer days, before he had sown
his wild rocks; and the Sirens; and Scylla and Charybdis; and Ovid; and
Alpheus and Arethusa; and Proserpina, and the Vale of Enna--names, which
bring before us whatever is blue in skies, and beautiful in flowers or in
fiction.
Then Pindar, and Plato; and Archimedes (who made enchantments real), and
Cicero (who discovered his tomb), and the Arabs with their architecture,
and the Normans with their gentlemen who were to found a sovereignty, and
the beautiful story of King Robert and the Angel, and the Sicilian Vespers
(horribly so called), and the true Sicilian Vespers, the gentle “_Ave
Maria_,” closing every evening, as it does still, in peace instead of
blood, and ascending from blue seas into blue heavens out of white-sailed
boats.
Item, Bellini, and his Neapolitan neighbour Paesiello.
Item, the modern Theocritus, not undeservedly so called; to wit, the Abate
Giovanni Meli, possibly of Grecian stock himself--for his name is the
Greek as well as Sicilian for honey.
Then, every other sort of pastoral poetry, Italian and English, and
Scotch--Tasso, and Guarini, and Fletcher, and Jonson, and William Brown,
and Pope, and Allan Ramsay.
Item, earthquakes, vines, convents, palm-trees, mulberries, pomegranates,
aloes, citrons, rocks, gardens, banditti, pirates, furnaces under the sea,
the most romantic landscapes and vegetation above it, guitars, lovers,
serenades, and the never-to-be-too-often-mentioned blue skies and blue
waters, whose azure (on the concentrating Solomon-seal principle) appeared
to be specially represented by our little blue jar.
Lastly, the sweetness, the melancholy, the birth, the life, the death, the
fugitive evil, the constant good, the threatening Ætna making every moment
of life precious, and the moment of life so precious, and breathing such a
pure atmosphere, as to enable fear itself to laugh at, nay, to love the
threatening Ætna, and play with it as with a great planetary lion to which
it has become used.
From all this heap of things, or any portion of them, or anything which
they may suggest, we propose, as from so many different flowers, to
furnish our Jar of Honey, careless whether the flower be sweet or bitter,
provided the result (with the help of his good-will) be not un-sweet to
the reader. For honey itself is not gathered from sweet flowers only;
neither can much of it be eaten without a qualification of its dulcitude
with some plainer food. It can hardly be supposed to be as sweet to the
bees themselves, as it is to us. Evil is so made to wait upon good in this
world--to quicken it by alarm, to brighten it by contrast, and render it
sympathetic by suffering--that although there is quite enough
superabundance of it to incite us to its diminution (Nature herself
impelling us to do so), yet tears have their delight, as well as laughter;
and laughter itself is admonished by tears and pain not to be too
excessive. Laughter has occasioned death:--tears have saved more than
life. The readers, therefore, will not suppose that we intend (supposing
even that we were able) to _cloy_ them with sweets. We hope that they will
occasionally look very grave over their honey. We should not be
disconcerted, if some bright eyes even shed tears over it.
[Illustration]