"_Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759._
"Dear Sir,--I beg leave once more to have recourse to your good nature and
to your love of literature, and to presume upon putting you to a piece of
trouble. After considering several subjects for another history, I have at
last fixed upon the reign of Charles V., which contains the first
establishment of the present political system of Europe. I have begun to
labour seriously upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to
form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As I never had access
to very copious libraries, I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of
authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the
subject, and have put them down just in the order which they occurred to
me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. I beg you
would be so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and knowledge
of books is infinitely superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to
make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know
very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one
another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books, but at
the same time when one writes upon any particular period, it is both
necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, upon
which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and
Italian; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter
myself that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former languages,
together with the Latin, will supply me with books in abundance. Mr.
Walpole informed me some time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS.
in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to Charles V.,
it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, but it would be extremely
obliging if you would take the trouble of looking into it and of informing
me in general what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, this
mark × is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this country; if
you yourself, or any friend with whom you can use freedom, have any of the
other books in my list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar,
he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude
and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to offer compliments to
all our common friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be in town
this season. I wish it were in my power to confer any return for all the
trouble you have taken in my behalf--"
FROM DR. BIRCH TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON, AT EDINBURGH.
"_London, 3 Jany. 1760._
"Dear Sir,--Your letter of the 13 Dec'r. was particularly agreeable to me,
as it acquainted me with your resolution to resume your historic pen, and
to undertake a subject which, from its importance and extent, and your
manner of treating it, will be highly acceptable to the public.
"I have perused your list of books to be consulted on this occasion; and
after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. Millar; and shall now make
some additions to it.
"The new 'Histoire d'Allemagne' by Father Barre, chancellor of the
University of Paris, published a few years ago in several volumes in 4^to.,
is a work of very good credit, and to be perused by you; as is likewise
the second edition of 'Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit
public d'Allemagne,' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan of
President Henault's 'Nouvel Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire de France,'
in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be proper to be seen
by you.
"The 'Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cardinal Granvelle,' by Father
Rosper Levesque, a Benedictin monk, which were printed at Paris in two
vol's. 12^o. in 1753, contain some particulars relating to Charles V. But
this performance is much less curious than it might have been, considering
that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above an hundred
volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at Besançon. Among these are
the papers of his eminence's father, who was chancellor and minister to
the Emperor Charles V.
"Bishop Burnet, in the 'Summary of Affairs before the Restoration,'
prefixed to his 'History of his Own Time,' mentions a life of Frederick
Elector Palatine, who first reformed the Palatinate, as curiously written
by Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book, though a very rare one, is in my
study and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts relating to
your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved when the library of
Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican after the taking of
that city in 1622, and it was printed in 1624, at Francfort, in 4^to.
The writer had been secretary and councillor to the elector.
"Another book which I shall transmit to you is a valuable collection of
state papers, made by Mons'r. Rivier, and printed at Blois, in 1665, in
two vols. f^o. They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry II., and
Francis II. of France. The indexes will direct you to such passages as
concern the Emperor.
"As Mons'r. Amelot de la Houssaic, who was extremely conversant in modern
history, has, in the 1st. tome of his 'Mémoires Historiques Politiques et
Littéraires,' from p. 156 to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that
book to my parcel.
"Varillas's 'Life of Henry II. of France' should be looked into, though
that historian has not at present much reputation for exactness and
veracity.
"Dr. Fiddes, in his 'Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has frequent occasion to
introduce the Emperor, his contemporary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary
gives us an express article and not a short one, for it consists of eight
of his pages.
"Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when he was secretary to S'r.
Richard Morysin amb. from K. Edward VI. to the imperial court, wrote to a
friend of his 'a report and discourse of the affairs and state of Germany
and the Emperor Charles's court.' This was printed in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth; but the copies of that edition are now very rare. However this
will be soon made public, being reprinted in an edition of all the
author's English works now in the press.
"The 'Epîtres des Princes,' translated from the Italian by Belleforest,
will probably supply you with some few things to your purpose.
"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some
letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see
an abstract in the printed catalogue.
"In Dr. Hayne's 'Collection of State Papers in the Hatfield History,' p.
56, is a long letter of the lord of the council of Henry VIII., in 1546,
to his amb'r. with the Emperor."
TO DR. BIRCH.
_Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct.
8, 1765._
" . . . I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my 'Charles V.,'
partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from
performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The
historical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a preliminary
book, in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of
society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous
nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious
undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a
few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall
return them carefully as soon as my work is done."
* * * * *
OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS.
In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by
surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed
in flight, oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while
inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor,
one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works
designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have
an appropriate designation for such works, which they call "_ouvrages de
longue haleine_," and it has often happened that the _haleine_ has closed
before the work.
Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this
mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not
yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive
acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian,
who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has
still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the
doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches:--but
he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project!
Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the
nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so
busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those
about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to
have mortality always before him."
A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most
of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not
only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement
which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a
student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound
interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number
of things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to
have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but
rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might
want a world to conquer! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless
employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the
state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his
friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The
flame kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age; and it was in his
senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his _Annali d'Italia_
as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his _Rerum Italicarum
Scriptores_, and the six folios of the _Antiquitates Medii Ævi_! Yet
these vast edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian
has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn
an admirable character of Muratori.
But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the
literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his
great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us,
WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and
just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the
country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our
poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of our
poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious
portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.
Life passes away in collecting materials--the marble lies in blocks--and
sometimes a colonnade is erected, or even one whole side of a palace
indicates the design of the architect. Count MAZZUCHELLI, early in
life, formed a noble but too mighty a project, in which, however, he
considerably advanced. This was an historical and critical account of the
memoirs and the writings of Italian authors; he even commenced the
publication in alphabetical order, but the six invaluable folios we
possess only contain the authors the initial letters of whose names are A
and B! This great literary historian had finished for the press other
volumes, which the torpor of his descendants has suffered to lie in a
dormant state. Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the
days of the patriotic Mazzuchelli were freely given to the most curious
and elegant researches in his national literature; his correspondence is
said to consist of forty volumes; with eight of literary memoirs, besides
the lives of his literary contemporaries;--but Europe has been defrauded
of the hidden treasures.
The history of BAILLET'S "Jugemens des Sçavans sur les Principaux Ouvrages
des Auteurs," or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable
instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to
ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet passed his life in
the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons,
and as an act of gratitude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two
folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly
composed on any subject, but also marked those passages relative to the
subject which other writers had touched on. By means of this catalogue,
the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the
great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries. This
catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and
often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the
skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions
of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of
his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most
magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been
preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions,
with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents
a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive.
The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos,
yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets,
forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great
division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached!
Another literary history is the "Bibliothèque Françoise" of GOUJET, left
unfinished by his death. He had designed a classified history of French
literature; but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the
translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets.
He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed
sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!
A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Littéraire de la
France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive
writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth
century![A]
[Footnote A: This work has been since resumed.]
DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive
bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a
barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes
curious: but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed
as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have
adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of
our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the
writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute,
remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see
so hopelessly interrupted.
When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose "Fabliaux" are so well known, adopted,
in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the
Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the _Mélanges tirés d'une grande
Bibliothèque_, of a picture of the domestic life of the French people from
their earliest periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision; it had
novelty, amusement, and curiosity: "_le sujet m'en parut neuf, riche et
piquant_." He revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the interior
decorations of their houses, their changeable dress, their games, and
recreations; in a word, on all the parts which were most adapted to amuse
the fancy. But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy
scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never-ending labour and
weariness; and the three volumes which we now possess, instead of sports,
dresses, and architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always a
very amusing, account of the food of the French nation.
No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit--he may excite a
smile in those who have never experienced this toil of books and
manuscripts--but he claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their
public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking
picture of these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of
the voluminous author, who is doomed never to finish his curious work:--
"Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, till then, was
unaltered, and which excess of labour has greatly changed, I devoted
myself to write the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century.
Renouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day,
extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this sad life I now wished to draw
breath, turn over what I had amassed, and arrange it. I found myself
possessed of many thousands of _bulletins_, of which the longest did not
exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, from which I was
to form a regular history, I must confess that I shuddered; I felt myself
for some time in a _stupor and depression of spirits_; and now actually
that I have finished this work, _I cannot endure the recollection of that
moment of alarm without a feeling of involuntary terror._ What a business
is this, good God, of a compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it
merits some regard. At length I regained courage; I returned to my
researches: I have completed my plan, though every day I was forced to
_add_, to _correct_, to _change my facts as well as my ideas_; SIX times
has my hand _re-copied my work_; and, however fatiguing this may be, it
certainly is not that portion of my task which has cost me most."
The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. Watt may serve
as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life.
To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty
years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded
down his last page; the son who, during the last four years, had toiled
under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The
work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and
strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours.
One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which
must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the
planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and
timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome
remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that
he is doing what will never benefit himself; and, when he rejoices to see
the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down."
* * * * *
OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED.
It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the
most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their
first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or
the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on
mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find
established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which
has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud
perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and
to that repugnance to alter what is known for that which has not been
sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter
half century considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters,
that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the
usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the
shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never
discovered the practice of washing his hands, but cleansed them as animals
do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against
the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted
the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be
surprised, had he laid before him the history of some of the most familiar
domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred the ridicule of the
wits, and had to pass through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous
opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. The subject requires
no grave investigation; we will, therefore, only notice a few of universal
use. They will sufficiently demonstrate that, however obstinately man
moves in "the march of intellect," he must be overtaken by that greatest
of innovators--Time itself; and that, by his eager adoption of what he had
once rejected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful,
he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former generation, who
were baffled in their attempts to do what we all are now doing.
Forks are an Italian invention; and in England were so perfect a novelty
in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary,"
relating a bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him
from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to
have "his glass or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with his knife,
spoon, _fork."_ This thing was so strange that he found it necessary to
describe it.[A] It is an instrument "to hold the meat while he cuts it;
for they hold it ill-manners that one should touch the meat with his
hands."[B] At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating
as the Turkish _noblesse_ at present do, with only the free use of their
fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to their mouths by their
mere manual dexterity. They were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits,
scattering on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their
tables, the servant bore a long wooden "voiding-knife," by which he
scraped the fragments from the table into a basket, called "a voider."
Beaumont and Fletcher describe the thing,
They sweep the table with a wooden dagger.
[Footnote A: Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely
unknown as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the
"Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving
of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era; they were found with fragments
of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which had been deposited in a
box, of which there were some decayed remains; together with about seventy
pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to
Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons in
the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials,
and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the
Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux
deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in
1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, où il y a ij balays et X
perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the
dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the
celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver
forks to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork
of gold to take sops from wine (à prendre la soupe où vin). They appear to
have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to
lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in
decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the
highest classes; hence their comparative rarity.--Ed.]
[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]
Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first
taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence--
--the laudable use of forks,
To the sparing of napkins.
This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the
traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. He positively claims this
immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this
FORKED _cutting of meat,_ not only while I was in Italy, but also in
Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of
forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where
some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as
an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a
curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St.
Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old
members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their
fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the
dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the
First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and
novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the
Restoration! On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some
difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used. In _The Fox_, Sir
Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes--
--Then you must learn the use
And handling of your silver fork at meals.
[Footnote A: I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the
"Dictionnaire de Trevoux."]
Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more
than one way in which it may be practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau
de l'Angleterre" asserts that "an Englishman may be discovered anywhere,
if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side
of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and
a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by
using it as a toothpick."
Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the
table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately
Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same
anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the
Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as
they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be
unaccompanied by what Massinger in contempt calls
Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork!
Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni's
of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display
them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without
incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as
the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked--namely,
a mincing Frenchman. At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at
a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion--lent as a coach or chair
in a heavy shower--but not commonly carried by the walkers. The _Female
Tatler_ advertises "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house,
who, in fear of rain, borrowed _the umbrella from Wilks' Coffee-house,_
shall the next time be welcome to the maid's _pattens_." An umbrella
carried by a man was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy. As
late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own
life, informs us, that when he carried "a fine silk umbrella, which he had
brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the
people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was,
that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true _esprit
de corps_, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in
1778, gives us further Information:--"At this time there were no umbrellas
worn in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there
was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it
rained, between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to
quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his
umbrella. But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till they took
no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and
then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state
of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number
of umbrellas.
[Footnote A: Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and
may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are also
depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with
their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors
had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom,
appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In
Cædmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British
Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth
century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head
by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings.
The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above,
they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.--Ed.]
Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source of
declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the ascetics of
monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don John of Austria, describing
that golden age, the good old times, when they only used "carts drawn by
oxen, riding in this manner to court," notices that it was found
necessary to prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, "to such a height
was this _infernal vice_ got, which has done so much injury to Castile."
In this style nearly every domestic novelty has been attacked. The
injury inflicted on Castile by the introduction of coaches could only
have been felt by the purveyors of carts and oxen for a morning's ride.
The same circumstances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be
kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found their
"occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their
footmen, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on the river.
Judges and counsellors from their inns would no longer be conveyed by
water to Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor
palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were thrown out of their habitual
employments--the watermen, the hackneymen, and the saddlers. Families
were now jolted, in a heavy wooden machine, into splendour and ruin. The
disturbance and opposition these coaches created we should hardly now have
known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet[A] and man, sent down to us an
invective against coaches, in 1623, dedicated to all who are grieved with
"the world running on wheels."
[Footnote A: Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term
"Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this
quaint title, "The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and
coaches." It is an unsparing satire.--Ed.]
Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, conveys some
information in this rare tract of the period when coaches began to be more
generally used--"Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride
well-mounted, and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended with fourscore
brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation far greater
than forty of these leathern timbrels. Then the name of a _coach_ was
heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip
Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of
coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to
sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole
kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil
brought _tobacco_ into England in _a coach_, for both appeared at the same
time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show,
miserably contracted their domestic establishment; for Taylor, the
Water-poet, complains that when they used formerly to keep from ten to a
hundred proper serving-men, they now made the best shift, and for the sake
of their coach and horses had only "a butterfly page, a trotting footman,
and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler,
which hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons.
Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding this
satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as a man was
knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and could not on any account be
seen but in a coach. As hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust
exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to substitute a
domestic artificial exercise in sawing billets, swinging, or rolling the
great roller in the alleys of their garden. In the change of this new
fashion they found out the inconvenience of a sedentary life passed in
their coaches.[A]
[Footnote A: Stow, in his "Chronicles," has preserved the date of the
first introduction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the
first driver, and first English coachmaker. "In the year 1564 Guilliam
Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first that
brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great
ladies, with as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made them
coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration
of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual
among the nobility and others of sorte, and within twenty years became a
great trade of coachmaking;" and he also notes that in the year of their
introduction to England "Walter Rippon made a _coche_ for the Earl of
Rutland, which was the first _coche_ that was ever made in England."--ED.]
Even at this early period of the introduction of coaches, they were not
only costly in the ornaments--in velvets, damasks, taffetas, silver and
gold lace, fringes of all sorts--but their greatest pains were in matching
their coach-horses. "They must be all of a colour, longitude, latitude,
cressitude, height, length, thickness, breadth (I muse they do not weigh
them in a pair of balances); and when once matched with a great deal of
care, if one of them chance to die, then is the coach maimed till a meet
mate be found, whose corresponding may be as equivalent to the surviving
palfrey, in all respects, as like as a broom to a besom, barm to yeast, or
codlings to boiled apples." This is good natural humour. He proceeds
--"They use more diligence in matching their coach-horses than in the
marriage of their sons and daughters." A great fashion, in its novelty, is
often extravagant; true elegance and utility are never at first combined;
good sense and experience correct its caprices. They appear to have
exhausted more cost and curiosity in their equipages, on their first
introduction, than since they have become objects of ordinary use.
Notwithstanding this humorous invective on the calamity of coaches, and
that "housekeeping never decayed till coaches came into England; and that
a ten-pound rent now was scarce twenty shillings then, till the witchcraft
of the coach quickly mounted the price of all things." The Water-poet,
were he now living, might have acknowledged that if, in the changes of
time, some trades disappear, other trades rise up, and in an exchange of
modes of industry the nation loses nothing. The hands which, like
Taylor's, rowed boats, came to drive coaches. These complainers on all
novelties, unawares always answer themselves. Our satirist affords us a
most prosperous view of the condition of "this new trade of coachmakers,
as the gainfullest about the town. They are apparelled in sattins and
velvets, are masters of the parish, vestrymen, and fare like the Emperor
Heliogabalus and Sardanapalus--seldom without their mackeroones,
Parmisants (macaroni, with Parmesan cheese, I suppose), jellies and
kickshaws, with baked swans, pastries hot or cold, red-deer pies, which
they have from their debtors, worships in the country!" Such was the
sudden luxurious state of our first great coachmakers! to the deadly
mortification of all watermen, hackneymen, and other conveyancers of our
loungers, thrown out of employ!
Tobacco.--It was thought, at the time of its introduction, that the
nation would be ruined by the use of tobacco. Like all novel tastes the
newly-imported leaf maddened all ranks among us, "The money spent in smoke
is unknown," said a writer of that day, lamenting over this "new trade of
tobacco, in which he feared that there were more than seven thousand
tobacco-houses." James the First, in his memorable "Counterblast to
Tobacco," only echoed from the throne the popular cry; but the blast was
too weak against the smoke, and vainly his paternal majesty attempted to
terrify his liege children that "they were making a sooty kitchen in their
inward parts, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous kind of soot, as
hath been found in some great tobacco-eaters, that after their death were
opened." The information was perhaps a pious fraud. This tract, which has
incurred so much ridicule, was, in truth, a meritorious effort to allay
the extravagance of the moment. But such popular excesses end themselves;
and the royal author might have left the subject to the town-satirists of
the day, who found the theme inexhaustible for ridicule or invective.
Coal.--The established use of our ordinary fuel, coal, may be ascribed to
the scarcity of wood in the environs of the metropolis. Its recommendation
was its cheapness, however it destroys everything about us. It has formed
an artificial atmosphere which envelopes the great capital, and it is
acknowledged that a purer air has often proved fatal to him who, from
early life, has only breathed in sulphur and smoke. Charles Fox once said
to a friend, "I cannot live in the country; my constitution is not strong
enough." Evelyn poured out a famous invective against "London Smoke."
"Imagine," he cries, "a solid tentorium or canopy over London, what a mass
of smoke would then stick to it! This fuliginous crust now comes down
every night on the streets, on our houses, the waters, and is taken into
our bodies. On the water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing
upon the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames discern, and bring
home on their bodies." Evelyn has detailed the gradual destruction it
effects on every article of ornament and price; and "he heard in France,
that those parts lying south-west of England, complain of being infected
with smoke from our coasts, which injured their vines in flower." I have
myself observed at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls,
however old they might be, retained their freshness, and were in no
instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which our coal-smoke never
fails to produce. There was a proclamation, so far back as Edward the
First, forbidding the use of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of
the nobility and gentry, that they could not go to London on account of
the noisome smell and thick air. About 1550, Hollingshed foresaw the
general use of sea-coal from the neglect of cultivating timber. Coal fires
have now been in general use for three centuries. In the country they
persevered in using wood and peat. Those who were accustomed to this
sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of
his clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged that
our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why
we ought not to have preferred it. But man accommodates himself even to an
offensive thing whenever his interest predominates.
Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics,
we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new
discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the
improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior
professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that
they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by
the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and
conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved
of so many ages, to be overturned by any person. In phlebotomy we have a
curious instance. In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that
when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other. A
great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion
divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the
novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth;
he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke
of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled. This puzzled
the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.
The introduction of antimony and the jesuits' bark also provoked
legislative interference; decrees and ordinances were issued, and a civil
war raged among the medical faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious
historian. Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public prejudices
against dissection; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led
to so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was hardly
admitted even in the latter days of the old man; Lady Wortley Montague's
introduction of the practice of inoculation met the same obstinate
resistance as, more recently, that of vaccination startled the people.
Thus objects of the highest importance to mankind, on their first
appearance, are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the ineptitude
of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those objects which
that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a tardy patron of true
knowledge.
A nobler theme is connected with the principle we have here but touched
on--the gradual changes in public opinion--the utter annihilation of false
notions, like those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other
superstitions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on
ignorance, and audacity on fear. But one impostor reigns paramount, the
plausible opposition to novel doctrines which may be subversive of some
ancient ones; doctrines which probably shall one day be as generally
established as at present they are utterly decried, and which the
interests of corporate bodies oppose with all their cumbrous machinery;
but artificial machinery becomes perplexed in its movements when worn out
by the friction of ages.
* * * * *
DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS.
The characteristics of servants have been usually known by the broad
caricatures of the satirists of every age, and chiefly by the most
popular--the writers of comedy. According to these exhibitions, we must
infer that the vices of the menial are necessarily inherent to his
condition, and consequently that this vast multitude in society remain
ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning
depredator of the household; the tip-toe spy, at all corners--all ear, all
eye: the parasitical knave--the flatterer of the follies, and even the
eager participator of the crimes, of his superior. The morality of
servants has not been improved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's
"Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates
the practice. This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the
masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the
profligate domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of their base
doings have been suggested to them by their renowned satirist.
Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by thieves and rogues
described and collected together, such a compilation of their artifices
and villanies would serve to put us on our guard. The theorist of
legislation seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man. With the
vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have been
called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how too close an
inspection of crime may grow into criminality itself. Hence it is, that
when some monstrous and unusual crime has been revealed to the public, it
rarely passes without a sad repetition. A link in the chain of the
intellect is struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not
occurred.
Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a brother, more
stupid but more innocent than himself. I take the passage from that
extraordinary Spanish comedy, in twenty-five acts, the _Spanish Bawd_. It
was no doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic,
yet we should regret that the _Spanish Bawd_ was as generally read by
servants as Swift's "Directions":--
"Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant honesty,
thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as most of these masters
now-a-days are. Gain friends, which is a during and lasting commodity;
live not on hopes, relying on the vain promises of masters. The masters
love more themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss; and the like
love ought servants to bear to themselves. Liberality was lost long ago--
rewards are grown out of date. Every one is now for himself, and makes the
best he can of his servant's service, serving his turn, and therefore they
ought to do the same, for they are less in substance. Thy master is one
who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, looking
for much service at their hands. Thy master cannot be thy friend, such
difference is there of estate and condition between you two."
This passage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo of its
sentiments in many a modern domestic. These notions are sacred traditions
among the livery. We may trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as
Swift and Mandeville. Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture
of the state of the domestics, when it seems "they had experienced
professors among them, who could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven
hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind
side of their masters." The footmen, in Mandeville's day, had entered into
a society together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to
carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund was
provided to maintain any suit at law against any rebellious master. This
seems to be a confederacy which is by no means dissolved.
Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper man to doff his
livery, though this valet was to attend his person, when the toilet was a
serious avocation requiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than
he who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This
searching genius of philosophy and _les petites moeurs_ solemnly warned
that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his order, he never
would resume it. About this period the masters were menaced by a sort of
servile war. The famous farce of _High Life below Stairs_ exposed with
great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured
clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever
happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in the result
worked the reform they so greatly dreaded.[A] One of the grievances in
society was then an anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our
country, of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose
establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of the departure of
the guest, this victim had to pass along a line of domestics, arranged in
the hall, each man presenting the visitor with some separate article, of
hat, gloves, coat and cane, claiming their "vails." It would not have been
safe to refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out the
hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.[B]
[Footnote A: The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to
admit any servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were
supposed to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and
dishonesty being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly;
and they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in
future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater
scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were
threatened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this
outbreak on the part of their servants; and alter the whole system of the
household economy which led to such results.--ED.]
[Footnote B: These _vails_, supposed to be the free gratuity of the
invited to the servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that
persons paid servants by that mode only--levying a kind of black-mail on
their friends, which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing,"
says a noble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the _vails_
are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little
control over them; they are said in some instances to have paid for their
places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having,
owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being
well-attended. It was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three
kingdoms, after the riots which resulted from the production of the play
noted above.--ED.]
When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing marketable and
transferable, the single principle judged sufficient to regulate the
mutual conduct of the master and the domestic was, to command and to obey.
It seems still the sole stipulation exacted by the haughty from the
menial. But this feudal principle, unalleviated by the just sympathies of
domesticity, deprives authority of its grace, and service of its zeal. To
be served well, we should be loved a little; the command of an excellent
master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to be useful. The
slave repines, and such is the domestic destitute of any personal
attachment for his master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him
whose beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp? The master dresses and
wages highly his pampered train; but this is the calculated cost of
state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, for a Hercules in the hall,
or an Adonis for the drawing-room; but at those times, when the domestic
ceases to be an object in the public eye, he sinks into an object of
sordid economy, or of merciless caprice. His personal feelings are
recklessly neglected. He sleeps where there is neither light nor air; he
is driven when he is already exhausted; he begins the work of midnight,
and is confined for hours with men like himself, who fret, repine, and
curse. They have their tales to compare together; their unhallowed secrets
to disclose. The masters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and
little deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper
follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the servants
familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, for even the
occupation of such domestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A
cell in Newgate does not always contain more corruptors than a herd of
servants congregated in our winter halls. It is to be lamented that the
modes of fashionable life demand the most terrible sacrifices of the
health, the happiness, and the morals of servants. Whoever perceives that
he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his own thoughts. The heart of
the simple throbs with this emotion; but it hardens the villain who would
rejoice to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; it
extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it stings even the
good-tempered into insolence.
South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an awful interval,
the superior and the domestic. "A servant dwells remote from all knowledge
of his lord's purposes; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same
roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a picture of feudal
manners. But the progress of society in modern Europe has since passed
through a mighty evolution. In the visible change of habits, of feelings,
of social life, the humble domestic has approximated to, and communicated
more frequently even with "his lord." The domestic is now not always a
stranger to "his lord's purposes," but often their faithful actor--their
confidential counsellor--the mirror in which his lordship contemplates on
his wishes personified.
This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of the noble
friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship censures the laughter in
"Rabelais' easy chair" for having directed such intense attention to
affairs solely relating to servants. "Let him jest with dignity, and let
him be ironical upon _useful_ subjects, leaving _poor slaves_ to eat their
porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think
proper." This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning of Sir Walter
Scott:--"The noble lord's feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of
attention that was unconnected with the highest orders of society." Such,
in truth, was too long the vicious principle of those monopolists of
personal distinction, the mere men of elevated rank.
Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapacitated to
comprehend how far the personal interests of servants are folded up with
the interests of the house they inhabit. They are unconscious that they
have any share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree that the
prosperity of the master contributes to the base and momentary purposes of
the servant. But in small communities we perceive how the affections of
the master and the domestic may take root. Look in an ancient retired
family, whose servants often have been born under the roof they inhabit,
and where the son is serving where the father still serves; and sometimes
call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the proud and
endearing term of "our house." We discover this in whole countries where
luxury has not removed the classes of society at too wide distances from
each other, to deaden their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic
Switzerland, among its villages and its pastures; in France, among its
distant provinces; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities; and in
Germany, where simple manners and strong affections mark the inhabitants
of certain localities. Holland long preserved its primitive customs; and
there the love of order promotes subordination, though its free
institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and
there we find a remarkable evidence of domesticity. It is not unusual in
Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mistresses
aunt, and the children of the family their cousins. These domestics
participating in the comforts of the family, become naturalized and
domiciliated; and their extraordinary relatives are often adopted by the
heart. An heroic effort of these domestics has been recorded; it occurred
at the burning of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the
flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.
It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues are most intense;
all concentrating themselves in their private circles, in such localities
there is no public--no public which extorts so many sacrifices from the
individual. Insular situations are usually remarkable for the warm
attachment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the personal regard
of families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is strikingly
displayed in the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia: for there
they provide for the happiness of the humble friends of the house. Boys,
at an early age, are received into families, educated in writing, reading,
and arithmetic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost
born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enterprise. They
form a race of men who are much sought after for servants; and the term
applied to them of "Men of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of
character for unlimited trust and unwearying zeal.
The mode of providing for the future comforts of their maidens is a little
incident in the history of benevolence, which we must regret is only
practised in such limited communities. Malte-Brun, in his "Annales des
Voyages," has painted a scene of this nature, which may read like some
romance of real life. The girls, after a service of ten years, on one
great holiday, an epoch in their lives, receive the ample reward of their
good conduct. On that happy day the mistress and all the friends of the
family prepare for the maiden a sort of dowry or marriage-portion. Every
friend of the house sends some article; and the mistress notes down the
gifts, that she may return the same on a similar occasion. The donations
consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, and other useful articles
for a young woman. These tributes of friendship are placed beside a silver
basin, which contains the annual wages of the servant; her relatives from
the country come, accompanied by music, carrying baskets covered with
ribbons and loaded with fruits, and other rural delicacies. They are
received by the master himself, who invites them to the feast, where the
company assemble, and particularly the ladies. All the presents are
reviewed. The servant introduced kneels to receive the benediction of her
mistress, whose grateful task is then to deliver a solemn enumeration of
her good qualities, concluding by announcing to the maiden that, having
been brought up in the house, if it be her choice to remain, from
henceforward she shall be considered as one of the family. Tears of
affection often fall during this beautiful scene of true domesticity,
which terminates with a ball for the servants, and another for the
superiors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards with their joyous
musicians; and, if the maiden prefers her old domestic abode, she receives
an increase of wages, and at a succeeding period of six years another
jubilee provides her second good fortune. Let me tell one more story of
the influence of this passion of domesticity in the servant;--its merit
equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack on Buenos Ayres, where our
brave soldiers were disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, slaves
as they were, joined the inhabitants to expel the invaders. On this signal
occasion the city decreed a public expression of their gratitude to the
negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the same time awarded the freedom of
eighty of their leaders. One of them, having shown his claims to the boon,
declared, that to obtain his freedom had all his days formed the proud
object of his wishes: his claim was indisputable; yet now, however, to the
amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered freedom! The reason he
alleged was a singular refinement of heartfelt sensibility:--"My kind
mistress," said the negro, "once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in
her infirm old age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals of leisure
she leans on my arm to take the evening air. I will not be tempted to
abandon her, and I renounce the hope of freedom that she may know she
possesses a slave who never will quit her side."
Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking
illustrations of the powerful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we
are without instances in the private history of families among ourselves.
I have known more than one where the servant has chosen to live without
wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed
fortunes; and another where the servant cheerfully worked to support her
old lady to her last day.
Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, turn to the United
States. No system of servitude was ever so preposterous. A crude notion of
popular freedom in the equality of ranks abolished the very designation of
"servant," substituting the fantastic term of "helps." If there be any
meaning left in this barbarous neologism, their aid amounts to little;
their engagements are made by the week, and they often quit their domicile
without the slightest intimation.
Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, imagine that they exist
independent of the virtues of their domestics. The good conduct of the
servant stamps a character on the master. In the sphere of domestic life
they must frequently come in contact with them. On this subordinate class,
how much the happiness and even the welfare of the master may rest! The
gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and await him at all
seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in peril. Feelingly observes Sir
Walter Scott--"In a free country an individual's happiness is more
immediately connected with the personal character of his valet, than with
that of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be deemed extravagant
if I venture to add, that the habitual obedience of a devoted servant is a
more immediate source of personal comfort than even the delightfulness of
friendship and the tenderness of relatives--for these are but periodical;
but the unbidden zeal of the domestic, intimate with our habits, and
patient of our waywardness, labours for us at all hours. It is those feet
which hasten to us in our solitude; it is those hands which silently
administer to our wants. At what period of life are even the great exempt
from the gentle offices of servitude?
Faithful servants have never been commemorated by more heartfelt affection
than by those whose pursuits require a perfect freedom from domestic
cares. Persons of sedentary occupations, and undisturbed habits,
abstracted from the daily business of life, must yield unlimited trust to
the honesty, while they want the hourly attentions and all the cheerful
zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. The mutual affections of the master and
the servant have often been exalted into a companionship of feelings.
When Madame de Genlis heard that POPE had raised a monument not only to
his father and to his mother, but also to the faithful servant who had
nursed his earliest years, she was so suddenly struck by the fact, that
she declared that "This monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for
its singularity, as I know of no other instance." Our churchyards would
have afforded her a vast number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters
to faithful servants;[A] and a closer intimacy with the domestic privacy
of many public characters might have displayed the same splendid examples.
The one which appears to have so strongly affected her may be found on the
east end of the outside of the parish church of Twickenham. The stone
bears this inscription:--
To the memory of
MARY BEACH,
who died November 5, 1725, aged 78.
ALEXANDER POPE,
whom she nursed in his infancy,
and constantly attended for thirty-eight years,
Erected this stone
In gratitude to a faithful Servant.
[Footnote A: Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and
exhibit many grateful EPITAPHS ON SERVANTS.]
The original portrait of SHENSTONE was the votive gift of a master to his
servant, for, on its back, written by the poet's own hand, is the
following dedication:--"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by
her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her
native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.--W.S."
We might refer to many similar evidences of the domestic gratitude of such
masters to old and attached servants. Some of these tributes may be
familiar to most readers. The solemn author of the "Night Thoughts"
inscribed an epitaph over the grave of his man-servant; the caustic
GIFFORD poured forth an effusion to the memory of a female servant,
fraught with a melancholy tenderness which his muse rarely indulged.
The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said justly, the most
sublime, development of this devotion of a master to his servant, is a
letter addressed by that powerful genius MICHAEL ANGELO to his friend
Vasari, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.[A] Published
only in the voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari,
it seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to translate it in
despair: for we feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender
eloquence.
[Footnote A: It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the
great sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would
beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to assert
his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a
somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to
his dying domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attendance at
his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who
was himself at the time eighty-two years of age.--ED.]
MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASARI.
"My Dear George,--I can but write ill, yet shall not your letter remain
without my saying something. You know how Urbino has died. Great was the
grace of God when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the
grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he kept
me living; and in dying he has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with
regret, but with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years had he
served me, and I found him a most rare and faithful man; and now that I
had made him rich, and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose
of my old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than that of
seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of God was this happy death to him;
yet, even more than this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in
this world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself
has departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneliness of
life."
Even the throne has not been too far removed from this sphere of humble
humanity, for we discover in St. George's Chapel a mural monument erected
by order of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant
of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic
affection in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a cherished
inmate.
King George III.
Caused to be interred near this place the body of
MARY GASCOIGNE,
Servant to the Princess Amelia;
and this stone
to be inscribed in testimony of his grateful sense
of the faithful services and attachment
of an amiable young woman to
his beloved Daughter.
This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not peculiar to
the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity
of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed
this equality of affection, which the domestic may participate: monumental
inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves,
have been preserved in the great collections of Graevius and Gruter.[A]
[Footnote A: There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who
consecrate "to themselves and their servants" the sepulchres they erect in
their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from
those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affectionate regard
to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it
is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, "his best
servant" (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which
records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius
Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old
servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and
who is also styled in the epitaph "his sweetest freedman" (liberto
dulcissimo).--ED.]
* * * * *
PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM.
Printed Letters, without any attention to the selection, is so great a
literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to detect the first modern
who obtruded such formless things on public attention. I conjectured that,
whoever he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism and his
knavery. My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct. Nothing less
than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino could have adventured
on this project; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, of
being the first who published Italian letters. Aretino had the hardihood
to dedicate one volume of his letters to the King of England, another to
the Duke of Florence; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope
Julius Third--evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to be
read by the royal and the noble.
Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen of England, on
her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which offers a very extraordinary
catalogue of the ritual and ceremonies of the Romish church. It is
indeed impossible to translate into Protestant English the multiplied
nomenclature of offices which involve human life in never-ceasing service.
As I know not where we can find so clear a perspective of this amazing
contrivance to fetter with religious ceremonies the freedom of the human
mind, I present the reader with an accurate translation of it:--
"_Pietro Aretino to the Queen of England._
"The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the breath of Epistles, and
the Spirit of Gospels, had need unloose the language of my words in
congratulating your superhuman Majesty on having not only restored
conscience to the minds and hearts of Englishmen and taken deceitful
heresy away from them, but on bringing it to pass, when it was least hoped
for, that charity and faith were again born and raised up in them; on
which sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff Julius, the
College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it seems in Rome as if the
shades of the old Cæsars with visible effect showed it in their very
statues; meanwhile the pure mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes
you, and marks you in the catalogue among the Catharines and Margarets,
and dedicates you," &c.
"The stupor of so stupendous a miracle is not the stupefaction of stupid
wonder; and all proceeds from your being in the grace of God in every
deed, whose incomprehensible goodness is pleased with seeing you, in
holiness of life and innocence of heart, cause to be restored in those
proud countries, solemnity to Easters, abstinence to Lents, sobriety to
Fridays, parsimony to Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils,
observances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the dying,
festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, lights to
lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, robings to sacristies,
and decencies to baptisms; and that nothing may be wanting (thanks
to your pious and most entire nature), possession has been regained to
offices, of hours; to ceremonies, of incense; to reliques, of shrines; to
the confessed, of absolutions; to priests, of habits; to preachers,
of pulpits; to ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences; to scriptures, of
interpreters; to hosts, of communions; to the poor, of alms; to the
wretched, of hospitals; to virgins, of monasteries; to fathers, of
convents; to the clergy, of orders; to the defunct, of obsequies; to
tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, and matins, the privileges
of daily and nightly bells."
The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to subsequent publications by
more skilful writers. Nicolo Franco closely followed, who had at first
been the amanuensis of Aretino, then his rival, and concluded his literary
adventures by being hanged at Rome; a circumstance which at the time must
have occasioned regret that Franco had not, in this respect also, been an
imitator of his original, a man equally feared, flattered, and despised.
The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers of that age were
perhaps pleased to have discovered a new and easy path to fame; and
since it was ascertained that a man might become celebrated by writings
never intended for the press, and which it was never imagined could
confer fame on the writers, volumes succeeded volumes, and some authors
are scarcely known to posterity but as letter-writers. We have the
too-elaborate epistles of BEMBO, secretary to Leo X., and the more elegant
correspondence of ANNIBAL CARO; a work which, though posthumous, and
published by an affectionate nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a
publisher, is a model of familiar letters.
These collections, being found agreeable to the taste of their readers,
novelty was courted by composing letters more expressly adapted to public
curiosity. The subjects were now diversified by critical and political
topics, till at length they descended to one more level with the
faculties, and more grateful to the passions of the populace of readers
--Love! Many grave personages had already, without being sensible
of the ridiculous, languished through tedious odes and starch sonnets.
DONI, a bold literary projector, who invented a literary review both of
printed and manuscript works, with not inferior ingenuity, published his
_love-letters;_ and with the felicity of an Italian diminutive, he fondly
entitled them "Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pistole were
designed to be little epistles, or billets-doux, but Doni was one of those
fertile authors who have too little time of their own to compose short
works. Doni was too facetious to be sentimental, and his quill was not
plucked from the wing of Love. He was followed by a graver pedant, who
threw a heavy offering on the altar of the Graces; PARABOSCO, who in six
books of "Lettere Amorose," 1565, 8vo. was too phlegmatic to sigh over his
inkstand.
Denina mentions LEWIS PASQUALIGO of Venice as an improver of these amatory
epistles, by introducing a deeper interest and a more complicate
narrative. Partial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author
as having given birth to those _novels_ in the form of _letters_, with
which modern Europe has been inundated; and he refers the curious in
literary researches, for the precursors of these _epistolary novels_, to
the works of those Italian wits who flourished in the sixteenth century.
"The Worlds" of DONI, and the numerous whimsical works of ORTENSIO LANDI,
and the "Circe" of GELLI, of which we have more than one English
translation, which, under their fantastic inventions, cover the most
profound philosophical views, have been considered the precursors of the
finer genius of "The Persian Letters," that fertile mother of a numerous
progeny, of D'Argens and others.
The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collections of letters,
which seem peculiar to themselves, and which may be considered as the
works of _artists_. They have a collection of "Lettere di Tredici Uomini
Illustri," which appeared in 1571; another more curious, relating to
princes--"Lettere de' Principi le quali o si scrivono da Principi a
Principi, o ragionano di Principi;" Tenezia, 1581, in 3 vols. quarto.
But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the artist, has
appeared in mere recent times, in seven quarto volumes, consisting of the
original letters of the great painters, from the golden age of Leo X.,
gradually collected by BOTTARI, who published them in separate volumes.
They abound in the most interesting facts relative to the arts, and
display the characteristic traits of their lively writers. Every artist
will turn over with delight and curiosity these genuine effusions;
chronicles of the days and the nights of their vivacious brothers.
It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be the first satirist in
the English language, claims also, more justly perhaps, the honour of
being the first author who published familiar letters. In the dedication
of his Epistles to Prince Henry, the son of James the First, Bishop HALL
claims the honour of introducing "this new fashion of discourse by
epistles, new to our language, usual to others; and as novelty is never
without plea of use, more free, more familiar." Of these epistles, in six
decades, many were written during his travels. We have a collection of
Donne's letters abounding with his peculiar points, at least witty, if not
natural.
As we became a literary nation, familiar letters served as a vehicle for
the fresh feelings of our first authors. Howell, whose Epistolæ bears his
name, takes a wider circumference in "Familiar Letters, domestic and
foreign, historical, political, and philosophical, upon emergent
occasions." The "emergent occasions" the lively writer found in his long
confinement in the Fleet--that English Parnassus! Howell is a wit, who, in
writing his own history, has written that of his times; he is one of the
few whose genius, striking in the heat of the moment only current coin,
produces finished medals for the cabinet. His letters are still published.
The taste which had now arisen for collecting letters, induced Sir Tobie
Mathews, in 1660, to form a volume, of which many, if not all, are genuine
productions of their different writers.
The dissipated elegance of Charles II. inspired freedom in letter-writing.
The royal emigrant had caught the tone of Voiture. We have some few
letters of the wits of this court, but that school of writers, having
sinned in gross materialism, the reaction produced another of a more
spiritual nature, in a romantic strain of the most refined sentiment.
Volumes succeeded volumes from pastoral and heroic minds. Katherine
Philips, in the masquerade-dress of "The Matchless Orinda," addressed Sir
Charles Cottrel, her grave "Poliarchus;" while Mrs. Behn, in her loose
dress, assuming the nymph-like form of "Astræa," pursued a gentleman,
concealed in a domino, under the name of "Lycidas."
Before our letters reached to nature and truth, they were strained by one
more effort after novelty; a new species appeared, "From the Dead to the
Living," by Mrs. Rowe: they obtained celebrity. She was the first who, to
gratify the public taste, adventured beyond the Styx; the caprice of
public favour has returned them to the place whence they came.
The letters of Pope were unquestionably written for the public eye. Partly
accident, and partly persevering ingenuity, extracted from the family
chests the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who long remained the
model of letter-writing. The letters of Hughes and Shenstone, of Gray,
Cowper, Walpole, and others, self-painters, whose indelible colours have
given an imperishable charm to these fragments of the human mind, may
close our subject; printed familiar letters now enter into the history of
our literature.
AN INQUIRY
INTO THE
LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF
JAMES THE FIRST;
INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.
"The whole reign of James I. has been represented by a late celebrated pen
(Burnet) to have been a continued course of mean practices; and others,
who have professedly given an account of it, have filled their works with
_libel_ and _invective_, instead of _history_. Both King James and his
ministers have met with a treatment from posterity highly unworthy of
them, and those who have so liberally bestowed their censures were
entirely ignorant of the true springs and causes of the actions they have
undertaken to represent."--SAWYER'S Preface to "Winwood's Memorials."
"Il y auroit un excellent livre à faire sur les INJUSTICES, les OUBLIS, et
les CALOMNIES HISTORIQUES."--MADAME DE GENLIS.
ADVERTISEMENT.
* * * * *
The present inquiry originates in an affair of literary conscience. Many
years ago I set off in the world with the popular notions of the character
of James the First; but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged
comprehension of the age, I was frequently struck by the contrast of his
real with his apparent character; and I thought I had developed those
hidden and involved causes which have so long influenced modern writers in
ridiculing and vilifying this monarch.
This historical trifle is, therefore, neither a hasty decision, nor a
designed inquiry; the results gradually arose through successive periods
of time, and, were it worth the while, the history of my thoughts, in my
own publications, might be arranged in a sort of chronological
conviction.[A]
[Footnote A: I have described the progress of my opinions in "Curiosities
of Literature," vol. i. p. 467, last edition.]
It would be a cowardly silence to shrink from encountering all that
popular prejudice and party feeling may oppose; this were incompatible
with that constant search after truth which we may at least expect from
the retired student.
I had originally limited this inquiry to the _literary_ character of the
monarch; but there was a secret connexion between that and his political
conduct; and that again led me to examine the manners and temper of the
times, with the effects which a peace of more than twenty years operated
on the nation. I hope that the freshness of the materials, often drawn
from contemporary writings which have never been published, may in some
respect gratify curiosity. Of the _political_ character of James the First
opposite tempers will form opposite opinions; the friends of peace and
humanity will consider that the greatest happiness of the people is that
of possessing a philosopher on the throne; let profounder inquirers
hereafter discover why those princes are suspected of being but weak men,
who are the true fathers of their people; let them too inform us, whether
we are to ascribe to James the First, as well as to Marcus Antoninus, the
disorders of their reign, or place them to the ingratitude and wantonness
of mankind.
AN INQUIRY
INTO THE
LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF
JAMES THE FIRST;
INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.
* * * * *
If sometimes the learned entertain false opinions and traditionary
prejudices, as well as the people, they however preserve among themselves
a paramount love of truth, and the means to remove errors, which have
escaped their scrutiny. The occasion of such errors may be complicate,
but, usually, it is the arts and passions of the few which find an
indolent acquiescence among the many, and firm adherents among those who
so eagerly consent to what they do not dislike to hear.
A remarkable instance of this appears in the character of James the First,
which lies buried under a heap of ridicule and obloquy; yet James the
First was a literary monarch at one of the great eras of English
literature, and his contemporaries were far from suspecting that his
talents were inconsiderable, even among those who had their reasons not to
like him. The degradation which his literary character has suffered has
been inflicted by more recent hands; and it may startle the last echoer of
Pope's "Pedant-reign" to hear that more wit and wisdom have been
recorded of James the First than of any one of our sovereigns. An
"Author-Sovereign," as Lord Shaftesbury, in his anomalous but emphatic
style, terms this class of writers, is placed between a double eminence of
honours, and must incur the double perils; he will receive no favour from
his brothers, the _Fainéants_, as a whole race of ciphers in succession on
the throne of France were denominated, and who find it much more easy to
despise than to acquire; while his other brothers, the republicans of
literature, want a heart to admire the man who has resisted the perpetual
seductions of a court-life for the silent labours of his closet. Yet if
Alphonsus of Arragon be still a name endeared to us for his love of
literature, and for that elegant testimony of his devotion to study
expressed by the device on his banner of _an open book_, how much more
ought we to be indulgent to the memory of a sovereign who has written one
still worthy of being opened?
We must separate the literary from the political character of this
monarch, and the qualities of his mind and temper from the ungracious and
neglected manners of his personal one. And if we do not take a more
familiar view of the events, the parties, and the genius of the times, the
views and conduct of James the First will still remain imperfectly
comprehended. In the reign of a prince who was no military character, we
must busy ourselves at home; the events he regulated may be numerous and
even interesting, although not those which make so much noise and show in
the popular page of history, and escape us in its general views. The want
of this sort of knowledge has proved to be one great source of the false
judgments passed on this monarch. Surely it is not philosophical to decide
of another age by the changes and the feelings through which our own has
passed. There is a chronology of human opinions which, not observing, an
indiscreet philosopher may commit an anachronism in reasoning.
When the Stuarts became the objects of popular indignation, a peculiar
race of libels was eagerly dragged into light, assuming the imposing form
of history; many of these state-libels did not even pass through the
press, and may occasionally be discovered in their MS. state. Yet these
publications cast no shade on the _talents_ of James the First. His
literary attainments were yet undisputed; they were echoing in the ear of
the writers, and many proofs of his sagacity were still lively in their
recollections.
* * * * *
THE FIRST MODERN ASSAILANTS OF THE CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
Burnet, the ardent champion of a party so deeply concerned to oppose as
well the persons as the principles of the Stuarts, levelled the father of
the race; we read with delight pages which warm and hurry us on, mingling
truths with rumours, and known with suggested events, with all the spirit
of secret history. But the character of James I. was to pass through the
lengthened inquisitorial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of Harris.[A]
It was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican Catharine Macaulay,
and flouted by the light, sparkling Whig, Horace Walpole.[B] A senseless
cry of pedantry had been raised against him by the eloquent invective of
Bolingbroke, from whom doubtless Pope echoed it in verse which has
outlived his lordship's prose:--
Oh, cried the goddess, for some pedant reign!
Some gentle James to bless the land again;
To stick the doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the council to a grammar-school!
_Dunciad_, book iv. ver. 175.
[Footnote A: The historical works of Dr. William Harris have been recently
republished in a collected form, and they may now be considered as
entering into our historical stores.
HARRIS is a curious researcher; but what appears more striking in his
historical character, is the impartiality with which he quotes authorities
which make against his own opinions and statements. Yet is Harris a writer
likely to impose on many readers. He announces in his title-pages that his
works are "after the manner of Mr. Bayle." This is but a literary
imposition, for Harris is perhaps the meanest writer in our language both
for style and philosophical thinking. The extraordinary impartiality he
displays in his faithful quotations from writers on opposite sides is only
the more likely to deceive us; for by that unalterable party feeling,
which never forsakes him, the facts against him he studiously weakens by
doubts, surmises, and suggestions; a character sinks to the level of his
notions by a single stroke; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose,
he wrests the most violent inferences. All party writers must submit to
practise such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise
themselves under a cover of impartiality. Bayle, intent on collecting
facts, was indifferent to their results; but Harris is more intent on the
deductions than the facts. The truth is, Harris wrote to please his
patron, the republican Hollis, who supplied him with books, and every
friendly aid. "It is possible for an ingenious man to be of a _party_
without being _partial_" says Rushworth; an airy clench on the lips of a
sober matter-of-fact man looks suspicions, and betrays the weak pang of a
half-conscience.]
[Footnote B: Horace Walpole's character of James I., in his "Royal
Authors," is as remarkable as his character of Sir Philip Sidney; he might
have written both without any acquaintance with the works he has so
maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed
over the "Defence of Poetry;" and in his second edition he makes this
insolent avowal, that "he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did
not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he
acquired." Every reader of taste knows the falseness of the criticism, and
how heartless the polished cynicism that could dare it. I repeat, what I
have elsewhere said, that Horace Walpole had something in his composition
more predominant than his wit, a cold, unfeeling disposition, which
contemned all literary men, at the moment his heart secretly panted to
partake of their fame.
Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on
the works of James I.; yet it appears to me that he had never opened that
folio volume he so poignantly ridicules. For he doubts whether these two
pieces, "The Prince's Cabala" and "The Duty of a King in his Royal
Office," were genuine productions of James I. The truth is, they are both
nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles, drawn from
the King's "Basilicon Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts
nor the original. Thus singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and
polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which this noble writer
startled the world by his paradoxes, and at length lived to be mortified
at a reputation which he sported with and lost. I refer the reader to
those extracts from his MS. letters which are in "Calamities of Authors,"
where he has made his literary confessions, and performs his act of
penance.]
* * * * *
THE PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST.
Few of my readers, I suspect, but have long been persuaded that James I.
was a mere college pedant, and that all his works, whatever they maybe,
are monstrous pedantic labours. Yet this monarch of all things detested
pedantry, either as it shows itself in the mere form of Greek and Latin,
or in ostentatious book-learning, or in the affectation of words of remote
signification: these are the only points of view in which I have been
taught to consider the meaning of the term pedantry, which is very
indefinite, and always a relative one.
The age of James I. was a controversial age, of unsettled opinions and
contested principles; an age, in which authority was considered as
stronger than opinion; but the vigour of that age of genius was infused
into their writings, and those citers, who thus perpetually crowded their
margins, were profound and original thinkers. When the learning of a
preceding age becomes less recondite, and those principles general which
were at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all this knowledge to
reproach the fathers of their literature with pedantry? Lord Bolingbroke
has pointedly said of James I. that "his pedantry was too much even for
the age in which he lived." His lordship knew little of that glorious age
when the founders of our literature flourished. It had been over-clouded
by the French court of Charles II., a race of unprincipled wits, and the
revolution-court of William, heated by a new faction, too impatient to
discuss those principles of government which they had established. It was
easy to ridicule what they did not always understand, and very rarely met
with. But men of far higher genius than this monarch, Selden, Usher, and
Milton, must first be condemned before this odium of pedantry can attach
itself to the plain and unostentatious writings of James I., who, it is
remarkable, has not scattered in them those oratorical periods, and
elaborate fancies, which he indulged in his speeches and proclamations.
These loud accusers of the pedantry of James were little aware that the
king has expressed himself with energy and distinctness on this very
topic. His majesty cautions Prince Henry against the use of any "corrupt
leide, as _book-language_, and _pen-and-inkhorn termes_, and, least of
all, nignard and effeminate ones." One passage may be given entire as
completely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. "I would also
advise you to write in _your own language_, for there is _nothing left to
be said in Greek and Latine already_; and, ynewe (enough) of poore
schollers would match you in these languages; and besides that it best
becometh a _King_, to purifie and make famous _his owne tongue_;
therein he may goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe
in all honest and lawful things." No scholar of a pedantic taste could
have dared so complete an emancipation from ancient, yet not obsolete
prejudices, at a time when many of our own great authors yet imagined
there was no fame for an Englishman unless he neglected his maternal
language for the artificial labour of the idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had
even his own domestic Essays translated into Latin; and the king found a
courtier-bishop to perform the same task for his majesty's writings. There
was something prescient in this view of the national language, by the
king, who contemplated in it those latent powers which had not yet burst
into existence. It is evident that the line of Pope is false which
describes the king as intending to rule "senates and courts" by "turning
the council to a grammar-school."
* * * * *
HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES.
This censure of the pedantry of James is also connected with those
studies of polemical divinity, for which the king has incurred much
ridicule from one party, who were not his contemporaries; and such
vehement invective from another, who were; who, to their utter dismay,
discovered their monarch descending into their theological gymnasium to
encounter them with their own weapons.
The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of James I., as in the
preceding one of Elizabeth,[A] were identified together; nor yet have the
same causes in Europe ceased to act, however changed or modified. The
government of James was imperfectly established while his subjects were
wrestling with two great factions to obtain the predominance. The
Catholics were disputing his title to the crown, which they aimed to carry
into the family of Spain, and had even fixed on Arabella Stuart, to marry
her to a Prince of Parma; and the Puritans would have abolished even
sovereignty itself; these parties indeed were not able to take the field,
but all felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of doctrines.
When a religious body has grown into power, it changes itself into a
political one; the chiefs are flattered by their strength and stimulated
by their ambition; but a powerful body in the State cannot remain
stationary, and a divided empire it disdains. Religious controversies have
therefore been usually coverings to mask the political designs of the
heads of parties.
We smile at James the First threatening the States-general by the
English Ambassador about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused
the doctrines of Arminius, and had also vented some metaphysical notions
of his own respecting the occult nature of the Divinity. He was the head
of the Remonstrants, who were at open war with the party called the
Contra-Remonstrants. The ostensible subjects were religious doctrines, but
the concealed one was a struggle between Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by
the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English;
even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the
Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext.[B]
[Footnote A: I have more largely entered into the history of the party who
attempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who
published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, than
had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and those
personages are of some importance and curiosity; but were imperfectly
known to the popular writers of our history.--See "Quarrels of Authors,"
p. 296, _et seq_.]
[Footnote B: Pensionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at
length brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable
pun the occasion; he said that "the _Canons_ of the Synod of Dort had
taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in
his curious "History of the Reformation," is very injurious to the Synod,
since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It never entered into the
mind of these divines that Barnevelt fell, not by the Synod, but by the
Orange and English party prevailing against the French. Lord Hardwicke, a
statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public
history, is a more able judge than the ecclesiastical historian or the
Swiss divine, who could see nothing in the Synod of Dort but what appeared
in it. It is in Lord Hardwicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's
"Letters" that his lordship has made this important discovery.]
What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the Dutch Pensionary, was
much like what was taking place between the King of England and his own
subjects. James I. had to touch with a balancing hand the Catholics and
the Nonconformists,[A]--to play them one against another; but there was a
distinct end in their views. "James I.," says Barnet, "continued always
writing and talking against Popery, but acting for it." The King and the
bishops were probably more tolerant to monarchists and prelatists, than to
republicans and presbyters. When James got nothing but gunpowder and
Jesuits from Rome, he was willing enough to banish, or suppress, but the
Catholic families were ancient and numerous; and the most determined
spirits which ever subverted a government were Catholic.[B] Yet what could
the King expect from the party of the Puritans, and their "conceited
parity," as he called it, should he once throw himself into their hands,
but the fate his son received from them?
[Footnote A: James did all he could to weaken the Catholic party
by dividing them in opinion. When Dr. Reynolds, the head of the
Nonconformists, complained to the king of the printing and dispersing of
Popish pamphlets, the king answered, that this was done by a warrant from
the Court, to nourish the schism between the Seculars and Jesuits, which
was of great service, "Doctor," added the king, "you are a better
clergyman than statesman."--Neale's "History of the Puritans," vol. i. p.
416, 4to.]
[Footnote B: The character and demeanour of the celebrated Guy or Guido
Fawkes, who appeared first before the council under the assumed name of
Johnson, I find in a MS. letter of the times, which contains some
characteristic touches not hitherto published. This letter is from Sir
Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, our ambassador at the court of
Brussels--dated 19th November, 1605. "One Johnson was found in the vault
where the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. He was asked if he was sorry! He
answered that he was only sorry it had not taken place. He was threatened
that he should die a worse death than he that killed the Prince of Orange;
he answered, that he could bear it as well. When Johnson was brought to
the king's presence, the king asked him how he could conspire so hideous a
treason against his children and so many innocent souls who had never
offended him? He answered, that dangerous diseases required a desperate
remedy; and he told some of the Scots that his intent was to have blown
them back again into Scotland!"--Mordacious Guy Fawkes!]
In the early stage of the Reformation, the Catholic still entered into the
same church with the Reformed; this common union was broken by the
impolitical impatience of the court of Rome, who, jealous of the
tranquillity of Elizabeth, hoped to weaken her government by disunion;[A]
but the Reformed were already separating among themselves by a new race,
who, fancying that their religion was still too Catholic, were for
reforming the Reformation. These had most extravagant fancies, and were
for modelling the government according to each particular man's notion.
Were we to bend to the foreign despotism of the Roman Tiara, or that of
the republican rabble of the Presbytery of Geneva?
[Footnote A: Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the
Jesuit, says, "There were no Recusants in England--all came to church
howsoever Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommunicated and
deposed Elizabeth. On this the Papists refused to join in the public
service."--"State Trials," vol. i. p. 242.
The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the Catholic
party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth. Afterwards, when he
found his error, a dispensation was granted by himself and his successor,
that all Catholics might show outward obedience to Elizabeth till a
happier opportunity. Such are Catholic politics and Catholic faith!]
* * * * *
POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL.