This peculiar faculty was well known to the ancients. Hippocrates verily
believed that there did exist individuals who could draw a voice from
their belly. He speaks of the wife of Polimarchus, who, being affected
with a quinsy, spoke in this manner; hence this power was called
_Engastrimysm_. Plato gives the history of Euricles, who mentions three
persons whom St. Chrysostom and Oecumenius considered to be endowed with
a heavenly gift. Caelius Rhodiginus describes an old woman of Rovigo who
used to deliver her oracles in the like manner, and who was never so
eloquent as when stripped to the skin, when she would answer most
accurately all the questions put to her by a familiar who attended upon
her, and was called Cincinnatulus. Anthony Vandael, a physician of Harlem,
considered ventriloquism as a supernatural power, enabling the voice to
proceed "ex ventre inferiore et partibus genitalibus;" and he describes a
woman of seventy-three years of age, called Barbara Jacobi, who used to
ventriloquise with an imp of the name of Joachim, who would weep most
piteously, or fall into roars of laughter, and sometimes danced and sung
with remarkable grace and elegance, according to the depressing or the
exhilarating nature of Mrs. Jacobi's communications. In the Septuagint the
Hebrew word _Ob_ is rendered by _Engastrimythos_; and it was supposed that
the Pythoness who evoked Samuel had recourse to this power. Oleaster,
Grand Inquisitor of Portugal, in a work published at Lisbon in 1656,
mentions a woman of the name of Cecilia who was brought before the court,
and expressed herself in a ventriloquial voice, which she said was that of
one Peter John, who had been dead for many years; but Peter John pleaded
in vain for his hostess, for, despite his abdominal eloquence, she was
sentenced to be transported. Whether Peter John accompanied her in exile
is not stated. In 1643, Dickinson mentions a man at Oxford, who was called
the King's Whisperer, and who expressed himself most clearly without
opening the mouth or moving the lips. This faculty has frequently been
employed in various speculations. In the sixteenth century, Borden relates
the story of a valet of Francis I., named Brabant, who thus persuaded the
mother of a young girl he courted to grant her consent to their marriage
as speedily as possible, if she wished her husband's soul to get out of
the torments of purgatory: after marriage, however, he was disappointed in
his pecuniary expectations, and he applied his powers of ventriloquism to
terrify a rich banker of Lyons, of the name of Corner, to bestow a fortune
upon his wife; for which purpose he assumed the voice of Corner's father,
who supplicated him to give the money as the only means of sending his
poor consuming soul to paradise.
One of the most celebrated ventriloquists was a grocer of St. Germains,
one St. Gilles; but he applied the faculty he possessed to benevolent
purposes. Being called to reclaim a newly-married young man from a
disgraceful connexion, which rendered his wife most unhappy, his
supernatural voice, supposed to come from heaven, succeeded; and he was
equally fortunate in bringing to a sense of propriety one of the most
sordid misers of his time.
St. Gilles was not so felicitous in a trick he played to some monks,
vainly attempting to prove the absurdity of their superstitious notions.
One of the community had lately died, and, according to custom, the
deceased was laid out in the church, and his brethren, grouped around him,
were pouring forth prayers for the repose of his soul, when St. Gilles,
throwing his voice into the coffin, returned them all the thanks of the
departed friar for their supplications in his behalf. The astonished monks
were most edified at this miraculous event; and their prior, who knew St.
Gilles to be a freethinker, endeavoured to impress upon his mind the
wonder that he himself had performed, and to inveigh most earnestly
against the impiety and incredulity of modern philosophers, who
entertained sceptic ideas concerning miracles. After a long exhortation,
our ventriloquist burst into a fit of laughter, and avowed the deception
he had practised: to convince the brotherhood of the veracity of his
assertion, he gave them various specimens of his skill,--but to no
purpose; he was called an infidel, a scoffer, an atheist, and, had it been
in Spain, the stake would in all probability have rewarded his perilous
frolic, or his stiff-necked impiety in refusing to believe in his own
miracles.
It is now pretty generally admitted that ventriloquism simply consists in
a slow and gradual expiration, preceded by a strong and deep inspiration,
by which a considerable quantity of air is introduced into the lungs,
which is afterwards acted upon by the flexible powers of the larynx and
the trachea: any person therefore, by practice, can obtain more or less
expertness in this exercise; in which, although not apparently, the voice
is still modified by the mouth and the tongue. Mr. Lespagnol, in a very
able dissertation on this subject, has demonstrated that ventriloquists
have acquired by practice the power of exercising the veil of the palate
in such a manner, that, by raising or depressing it, they dilate or
contract the inner nostrils. If they are closely contracted, the sound
produced is weak, dull, and seems to be more or less distant; if, on the
contrary, these cavities are widely dilated, the sound is strengthened by
these tortuous infractuosities, and the voice becomes loud, sonorous, and
apparently close to us. Thus any able mimic who can with facility disguise
his voice, with the aid of this power of modifying sounds, may in time
become a ventriloquist.