But my shortening space warns me to stop; and I must cease, for the

present, from these thoughts of Future Years,--cease, I mean, from

writing about that mysterious tract before us: who can cease from

thinking of it? You remember how the writer of that little poem which

has been quoted asks Time to touch gently him and his. Of course he

spoke as a poet, stating the case fancifully,--but not forgetting, that,

when we come to sober sense, we must prefer our requests to an Ear more

ready to hear us and a Hand more ready to help. It is not to Time that I

shall apply to lead me through life into immortality! And I cannot think

of years to come without going back to a greater poet, whom we need not

esteem the less because his inspiration was loftier than that of the

Muses, who has summed up so grandly in one comprehensive sentence all

the possibilities which could befall _him_ in the days and ages before

him. "Thou shall guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to

glory!" Let us humbly trust that in that sketch, round and complete, of

all that can ever come to us, my readers and I may be able to read the

history of our Future Years!

BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT FOR SISTER CAROLINE.

She has gone,--she has left us in passion and pride,--

Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side!

She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,

And turned on her brother the face of a foe!

O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,

We can never forget that our hearts have been one,--

Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name,

From the fountain of blood with the finger of flame!

You were always too ready to fire at a touch;

But we said, "She is hasty,--she does not mean much."

We have scowled, when you uttered some turbulent threat;

But Friendship still whispered, "Forgive and forget!"

Has our love all died out? Have its altars grown cold?

Has the curse come at last which the fathers foretold?

Then Nature must teach us the strength of the chain

That her petulant children would sever in vain.

They may fight till the buzzards are gorged with their spoil,

Till the harvest grows black as it rots in the soil,

Till the wolves and the catamounts troop from their caves,

And the shark tracks the pirate, the lord of the waves:

In vain is the strife! When its fury is past,

Their fortunes must flow in one channel at last,

As the torrents that rush from the mountains of snow

Roll mingled in peace through the valleys below.

Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky:

Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts the die!

Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel,

The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal!

O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,

There are battles with Fate that can never be won!

The star-flowering banner must never be furled,

For its blossoms of light are the hope of the world!

Go, then, our rash sister! afar and aloof,--

Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof;

But when your heart aches and your feet have grown sore,

Remember the pathway that leads to our door!

ORIGINAL MEMORIALS OF MRS. PIOZZI.

Ninety years ago, one of the pleasantest houses near London, for the

society that gathered within it, was Mr., or rather, Mrs. Thrale's,

at Streatham Park. To be a guest there was to meet the best people in

England, and to hear such good talk that much of it has not lost its

flavor even yet. Strawberry Hill, Holland House, or any other famous

house of that day, has left but faint memories of itself, compared with

those of Streatham. Boswell, the most sagacious of men in the hunt after

good company, had the good wit and good fortune to get entrance here.

One day, in 1769, Dr. Johnson delivered him "a very polite card" from

Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, inviting him to Streatham. "On the 6th of October,

I complied," he says, "with their obliging invitation, and found, at

an elegant villa six miles from town, every circumstance that can make

society pleasing." Upon the walls of the library hung portraits of the

master and mistress of the house, and of their most familiar friends and

guests, all by Sir Joshua. Madame d'Arblay, in her most entertaining

"Diary," gives a list of them,--and a list is all that is needed of such

famous names. "Mrs. Thrale and her eldest daughter were in one piece,

over the fireplace, at full length. The rest of the pictures were all

three-quarters. Mr. Thrale was over the door leading to his study.

The general collection then began by Lord Sandys and Lord Westcote,

(Lyttelton,) two early noble friends of Mr. Thrale. Then followed Dr.

Johnson, Mr. Burke, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Baretti,

Sir Robert Chambers, and Sir Joshua Reynolds himself,--all painted in

the highest style of this great master, who much delighted in this his

Streatham Gallery. There was place left but for one more frame when the

acquaintance with Dr. Burney began at Streatham."

A household which had such men for its intimates must have had a more

than common charm in itself, and at Streatham this charm lay chiefly in

the character of its mistress. It was Mrs. Thrale who had the rare power

"to call together the most select company when it pleased her." In 1770

she was thirty years old. A small and not beautiful woman, but with

a variety of expression that more than compensated for the want of

handsome features, with a frank, animated manner, and that highest tact

which sets guests at ease, there was something specially attractive in

her first address. But beyond this she was the pleasantest converser of

all the ladies of the day. In that art in which one "has all mankind for

competitors," there was no one equal to her in her way. Gifted with the

readiest of well-stored memories, with a lively wit and sprightly fancy,

with a strong desire to please and an ambition to shine, she never

failed to win admiration, while her sweetness of temper and delicate

consideration for others gained for her a general regard. For many years

she was the friend who did most to make Johnson's life happy. He was a

constant inmate at Streatham. "I long thought you," wrote he, "the first

of womankind." It was her "kindness which soothed twenty years of a life

radically wretched." "To see and hear you," he wrote, "is always to hear

wit and to see virtue." She belonged, in truth, to the most serviceable

class of women,--by no means to the highest order of her sex. She was

not a woman of deep heart, or of noble or tender feeling; but she had

kindly and ready sympathies, and such a disposition to please as gave

her the capacity of pleasing. Her very faults added to her success. She

was vain and ambitious; but her vanity led her to seek the praises of

others, and her ambition taught her how to gain them. She was selfish;

but she pleased herself not at the expense of others, but by paying them

attentions which returned to her in personal gratifications. She was

made for such a position as that which she held at Streatham. The

highest eulogy of her is given in an incidental way by Boswell. He

reports Johnson as saying one day, "'How few of his friends' houses

would a man choose to be at when he is sick!' He mentioned one or two. I

recollect only Thrale's."

All the world of readers know the main incidents of Mrs. Thrale's life.

Her own books, Boswell, Madame d'Arblay, have made us almost as familiar

with her as with Dr. Johnson himself. Not yet have people got tired of

wondering at her marriage with Piozzi, or of amusing themselves with

the gossip of the old lady who remained a wit at eighty years old, and,

having outlived her great contemporaries, was happy in not outliving

her own faculties. Few characters not more remarkable have been more

discussed than hers. Macaulay, with characteristic unfairness, gave

a view of her conduct which Mr. Hayward, in his recently published

entertaining volumes,[A] shows to have been in great part the invention

of the great essayist's lively and unprincipled imagination. In the

autobiographical memorials of Mrs. Piozzi, now for the first time

printed, there is much that throws light on her life, and her relations

with her contemporaries. They do not so much raise one's respect for

her, as present her to us as a very natural and generally likable sort

of woman, even in those acts of her life which have been the most

blamed.

[Footnote A: _Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs.

Piozzi (Thrale)_. Edited, with Notes and an Introductory Account of her

Life and Writings, by A. Hayward, Esq., Q.C. In Two Volumes. London,

1861. Reprinted by Ticknor & Fields.]

If she had but died while she was mistress of Streatham, we should have

only delightful recollections of her. She would have been one of the

most agreeable famous women on record. But the last forty years of her

life were not as charming as the first. Her weaknesses gained mastery

over her, her vanity led her into follies, and she who had once been the

favorite correspondent of Dr. Johnson now appears as the correspondent

of such inferior persona that no association is connected with their

names. Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Piozzi are two different persons. One

belongs to Streatham, the other to Bath; one is "always young and always

pretty," the other a rouged old woman. But it is unfair to push the

contrast too far. Mrs. Piozzi at seventy or eighty was as sprightly,

as good-natured, as Mrs. Thrale at thirty or forty. She never lost her

vivacity, never her desire to please. But it is a sadly different thing

to please Dr. Johnson, Burke, or Sir Joshua, and to please

Those real genuine no-mistake Tom Thumbs,

The little people fed on great men's crumbs.

One of the most marked and least satisfactory expressions of Mrs.

Piozzi's character during her later years was a fancy that she took to

Conway, a young and handsome actor, who appeared in Bath, where she was

then living, in the year 1819. From the time of her first acquaintance

with him, till her death, in 1821, she treated him with the most

flattering regard,--with an affection, indeed, that might be called

motherly, had there not been in it an element of excitement which was

neither maternal nor dignified. Conway was a gentleman in feeling, and

seems to have had not only a grateful sense of the old lady's partiality

for him, but a sincere interest also in hearing from her of the days and

the friends of her youth. So she wrote letters to him, gave him books

filled with annotations, (it was a favorite habit of hers to write notes

on the margins of books,) wrote for him the story of her life, and drew

on the resources of her marvellous memory for his amusement. The old

woman's kindness was one of the few bright things in poor Conway's

unhappy life. His temperament was morbidly sensitive; and when, in 1821,

while acting in London, Theodore Hook attacked him in the most cruel

and offensive manner in the columns of the "John Bull," he threw up his

engagement, determined to act no more in London, and for a time left the

stage. A year or two afterwards he came to this country, and met with a

very considerable success. But he fancied himself underrated, and, after

performing in Philadelphia in the winter of 1826, he took passage for

Charleston, and on the voyage threw himself overboard and was lost. His

effects were afterwards sold by auction in New York. Among them were

many interesting relics and memorials of Mrs. Piozzi. Mr. Hayward

mentions "a copy of the folio edition of Young's 'Night Thoughts,' in

which he had made a note of its having been presented to him by his

'dearly attached friend, the celebrated Mrs. Piozzi.'" But there were

other books of far greater interest and value than this. There was, as

we have been informed, a copy of Malone's Shakspeare, with numerous

notes in the handwriting of Dr. Johnson,--and a copy of "Prayers and

Meditations by Samuel Johnson," with several additional manuscript

prayers, and Mrs. Piozzi's name upon one of the fly-leaves. But more

curious still was a copy of Mrs. Piozzi's "Journey through France,

Italy, and Germany," both volumes of which are full of marginal notes,

while, inserted at the beginning and the end, are many pages of Mrs.

Piozzi's beautifully written manuscript, containing a narrative and

anecdotes of portions of her life. These volumes now lie before us,[B]

and their unpublished contents are as lively, as entertaining, and as

rich in autobiographic illustration, as any of the material of which Mr.

Hayward's recent book is composed.

[Footnote B: This unique copy of the _Journey through France_, etc., is

in the possession of Mr. Duncan C. Pell, of Newport, R.I. It is to his

liberality that we are indebted for the privilege of laying before

the readers of the Atlantic the following portions of Mrs. Piozzi's

manuscript.]

On the first fly-leaf is the following inscription:--

"These Books do not in any wise belong to me; they are the property of

William Augustus Conway, Esq., who left them to my care, for purpose of

putting notes, when he quitted Bath, May 14, 1819.

"Hester Lynch Piozzi writes this for fear lest her death happening

before his return, these books might be confounded among the others in

her study."

On the next page the narrative begins, and with a truly astonishing

spirit for the writing of a woman in her eightieth year. Her old

vivacity is still natural to her; there is nothing forced in the

pleasantry of this introduction.

"A Lady once--'t was many years ago--asked me to lend her a book out

of my library at Streatham Park. 'A book of entertainment,' said J, 'of

course.' 'That I don't know or rightly comprehend;' was her odd answer;

'I wish for an _Abridgment_.' 'An Abridgment of what?' '_That_,' she

replied, 'you must tell _me_, my Dear; for I am no reader, like you and

Dr. Johnson; I only remember that the last book I read was very pretty,

and my husband called it an Abridgment.'.... And if I give some account

of myself here in these few little sheets prefixed to my 'Journey thro'

Italy,' you must kindly accept

"The Abridgment."

The first pages of the manuscript are occupied by Mrs. Piozzi with an

account of her family and of her own early life. They contain in brief

the same narrative that she gave in her "Autobiographical Memoirs,"

printed by Mr. Hayward, in his first volume. Here is a story, however,

which we do not remember to have seen before.

"My heart was free, my head full of Authors, Actors, Literature in every

shape; and I had a dear, dear friend, an old Dr. Collier, who said he

was sixty-six years old, I remember, the day I was sixteen, and whose

instructions I prized beyond all the gayeties of early life: nor have I

ever passed a day since we parted in which I have not recollected with

gratitude the boundless obligations that I owe him. He was intimate with

the famous James Harris of Salisbury, Lord Malmesbury's father, of whom

you have heard how Charles Townshend said, when he took his seat in the

House of Commons,--'Who is this man?'--to his next neighbour;

'I never saw him before.' 'Who? Why, Harris the author, that wrote one

book about Grammar [so he did] and one about Virtue.' 'What does he come

here for?' replies Spanish Charles; 'he will find neither Grammar nor

Virtue _here_.' Well, my dear old Dr. Collier had much of both, and

delighted to shake the superflux of his full mind over mine, ready to

receive instruction conveyed with so much tender assiduity."

In both her autobiographies, the printed as well as the manuscript, Mrs.

Piozzi speaks in very cold and disparaging terms of her first husband,

Mr. Thrale. Her marriage with him had not been a love-match; but we

suspect that the long course of years had been unfavorable to his memory

in her recollection, and that the blame with which his friends visited

her second marriage, which was in all respects an affair of the heart,

produced in her a certain bitterness of feeling toward Mr. Thrale, as if

he had been the author of these reproaches. It is impossible to believe

that he was as indifferent to her as she represents, and that her

marriage with him was not moderately happy. Had it been otherwise,

however well appearances might have been kept up, Dr. Johnson could

hardly have been deceived concerning the truth, and would hardly have

ventured to write to her in his letter of consolation upon Mr. Thrale's

death in 1781,--

"He that has given you happiness in marriage, to a degree of which,

without personal knowledge, I should have thought the description

fabulous, can give you another mode of happiness as a mother."

One of her most decided intellectual characteristics was her

versatility, or, to give it a harder name, what Johnson called her

"instability of attention." Dulness was, in her code, the unpardonable

sin. Variety was the charm of life, and of books. She never dwelt long

on one idea. Her letters and her books are pieces of mosaic-work, the

bits of material being put together without any regular pattern, but

often with a pretty effect. Here is an illustration of her style.

"In a few years (our Letters tell the date) Johnson was introduced; and

now I must laugh at a ridiculous _Retrospection_. When I was a very

young wench, scarce twelve years old I trust, my notice was strongly

attracted by a Mountebank in some town we were passing through. 'What a

fine fellow!' said I; 'dear Papa, do ask him to dinner with us at our

inn!--or, at least, Merry Andrew, because he could tell us such _clever

stories of his master_.' My Father laughed sans intermission an hour by

the dial, as Jacques once at Motley.--Yet did dear Mr. Conway's fancy

for H.L.P.'s conversation grow up, at first, out of something not unlike

this, when, his high-polished mind and fervid imagination taking fire

from the tall Beacon bearing Dr. Johnson's fame above the clouds, he

thought some information might perhaps be gained by talk with the old

female who so long _carried coals to it_. She has told all, or nearly

all, she knew,--

'And like poor Andrew must advance,

Mean mimic of her master's dance;--

But similes, like songs in love,

Describing much, too little prove.'

"So now, leaving Prior's pretty verses, and leaving Dr. Johnson too, who

was himself severely censured for his rough criticism on a writer who

had pleased all in our Augustan age of Literature, poor H.L.P. turns

egotist at eighty, and tells her own adventures."

But the octogenarian egotist has something to tell about beside herself.

Here is a passage of interest to the student of Shakspearian localities,

and bearing on a matter in dispute from the days of Malone and Chalmers.

"For a long time, then,--or I thought it such,--my fate was bound up

with the old Globe Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark; the alley it

had occupied having been purchased and thrown down by Mr. Thrale to

make an opening before the windows of our dwelling-house. When it lay

desolate in a black heap of rubbish, my Mother, one day, in joke,

called it the Ruins of Palmyra; and after they had laid it down in a

grass-plot, Palmyra was the name it went by, I suppose, among the clerks

and servants of the brew-house; for when the Quaker Barclay bought the

whole, I read that name with wonder in the Writings."--"But there

were really curious remains of the old Globe Playhouse, which, though

hexagonal in form without, was round within, as circles contain more

space than other shapes, and Bees make their cells in hexagons only

because that figure best admits of junction. Before I quitted the

premises, however, I learned that Tarleton, the actor of those times,

was not buried at St. Saviour's, Southwark, as he wished, near Massinger

and Cower, but at Shoreditch Church. _He_ was the first of the

profession whose fame was high enough to have his portrait solicited for

to be set up as a Sign; and none but he and Garrick, I believe, ever

obtained that honour. Mr. Dance's picture of our friend David lives in a

copy now in Oxford St.,--the character, King Richard."

Somewhat more than three years after her first husband's death, Mrs.

Thrale, in spite of the opposition of her friends, the repugnance of

her daughters, and the sneers of society, married Piozzi. He was a poor

Italian gentleman, whose only fortune was in his voice and his musical

talent. He had been for some time an admired public singer in London and

Paris. There was nothing against him but the opinion of society. Mrs.

Thrale set this opinion at defiance: a rash thing for a woman to do, and

hardly an excusable one in her case; for she was aware that she would

thus alienate her daughters, and offend her best friends. But she was in

love with him; and though for a time she tried to struggle against her

passion, it finally prevailed over her prudence, her pride, and such

affections as she had for others. Her health suffered during

the struggle, the termination of which she thus narrates in her

"Abridgment." The account differs in some slight particulars from that

in her "Autobiographical Memoirs"; but a comparison between the two

serves rather to confirm than to impugn her general accuracy.

"I hoped," she says, "in defiance of probability, to live my sorrows

out, and marry the man of my choice. Health, however, began to give

way, as my Letters to Dr. Johnson testify; and when my kind physician,

Dobson, from Liverpool, found it in actual and positive danger,--'Now,'

said he, 'I have respected your delicacy long enough; tell me at once

who he is that holds _such_ a life in his power: for write to him I must

and will; it is my sacred duty.' 'Dear Sir,' said I, 'the difficulty

is to keep him at a distance. Speak to these cruel girls, if you will

speak.' 'One of whose lives your assiduous tenderness,' cried he,

'saved, with my little help, only a month ago!'--and ran up-stairs to

the ladies. 'We know,' was their reply, 'that she is fretting after a

fellow; but where he is--you may ask her--we know not.' 'He is at Milan,

with his friend the Marquis of Aracieli,' said I,--'from whom I had a

letter last week, requesting Piozzi's recall from banishment, as he

gallantly terms it, little conscious of what I suffer.' So we wrote; and

he returned on the eleventh day after receiving the letter. Meanwhile

my health mended, and I waited on the lasses to their own house at

Brighthelmstone, leaving Miss Nicholson, a favorite friend of theirs,

and all their intolerably insolent servants, with them. Piozzi's return

accelerated the recovery of your poor friend, and we married in both

Churches,--at St. James', Bath, on St. James' Day, 1784,--thirty-five

years ago now that I write this Abridgment. When we came to examine

Papers, however, our attorney, Greenland, discovered a _suppression_

of fifteen hundred pounds, which helped pay our debts, discharge the

mortgage, etc., as Piozzi, like Portia, permitted me not to sleep by his

side with an unquiet soul. He settled everything with his own money,

depended on God and my good constitution for our living long and happily

together,--and so we did, twenty-five years,--said change of scenery

would complete the cure, and carried me off in triumph, as he called

it, to shew his friends in Italy the foreign wife he had so long been

sighing for. 'Ah, Madam!' said the Marquis, when he first saluted me,

'we used to blame dear Piozzi;--now we envy him!'"

Of Mrs. Piozzi's journey on the Continent we shall speak in another

article. After a residence abroad of two years and a half, she and her

husband returned to London in March, 1787. Mrs. Piozzi had come home

determined to resume, if it were possible, her old place in society, and

to assert herself against the attacks of wits and newspapers, and the

coldness of old friends. She had been hardly and unfairly dealt with

by the public, in regard to her marriage. The appearance, during

her absence, of her volume of "Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson" had given

unfriendly critics an opportunity to pass harsh judgment upon her

literary merits, and had excited the jealousy of rival biographers

of the dead lion. Boswell, Hawkins, Baretti, Chalmers, Peter Pindar,

Gifford, Horace Walpole, all had their fling at her. Never was an

innocent woman in private life more unfeelingly abused, or her name

dragged before the public more wantonly, in squibs and satires, jests

and innuendoes. The women who transgress social conventionalities are

often treated as if they had violated the rules of morals. But she was

not to be put down in this way. Her temperament enabled her to escape

much of the pain which a more sensitive person would have suffered. She

hardened herself against the malice of her satirists; and in doing so,

her character underwent an essential change. She was truly happy with

Piozzi, and she preserved, by strength of will, an inexhaustible fund of

good spirits.

On first reaching London, "we drove," she writes in the Conway MSS., "to

the Royal Hotel in Pall Mall, and, arriving early, I proposed going to

the Play. There was a small front box, in those days, which held only

two; it made the division, or connexion, with the side boxes, and,

being unoccupied, we sat in it, and saw Mrs. Siddons act Imogen, I well

remember, and Mrs. Jordan, Priscilla Tomboy. Mr. Piozzi was amused, and

the next day was spent in looking at houses, counting the cards left

by old acquaintances, etc. The lady-daughters came, behaved with cold

civility, and asked what I thought of their decision concerning Cecilia,

then at school--No reply was made, or a gentle one; but she was the

first cause of contention among us. The lawyers gave her into my care,

and we took her home to our new habitation in Hanover Square, which we

opened with Music, cards, etc., on, I think, the 22 March. Miss Thrales

refused their company; so we managed as well as we could. Our affairs

were in good order, and money ready for spending. The World, as it is

called, appeared good-humored, and we were soon followed, respected, and

admired. The summer months sent us about visiting and pleasuring, ...

and after another gay London season, Streatham Park, unoccupied by

tenants, called us as if _really home_. Mr. Piozzi, with more generosity

than prudence, spent two thousand pounds on repairing and furnishing it

in 1790;--and we had danced all night, I recollect, when the news came

of Louis Seize's escape from, and recapture by, his rebel subjects."

Poor old woman, who could thus write of her own daughters!--poor old

woman, who had not heart enough either to keep the love of her children

or to grieve for its loss! Cecilia was her fourth and youngest child,

and her story, as her mother tells it, may as well be finished here.

After speaking in her manuscript of a claim on some Oxfordshire

property, disputed by her daughters, she says, in words hard and cold

as steel,--"We threw it up, therefore, and contented ourselves with the

plague Cecilia gave us, who, by dint of intriguing lovers, teazed my

soul out before she was fifteen,--when she fortunately ran away,

jumping out of the window at Streatham Park, with Mr. Mostyn of

Segraid,--a young man to whom Sir Thomas Mostyn's title will go, if he

does not marry, but whose property, being much encumbered, made him no

match for Cecy and her forty thousand pounds; and we were censured

for not taking better care, and suffering her to wed a _Welsh_

gentleman,--object of ineffable contempt to the daughters of Mr. Thrale,

with whom she always held correspondence while living with us, who

indulged her in every expense and every folly,--although allowed only

one hundred and forty pounds per ann. on her account."

After two or three years spent in London, the Piozzis resided for some

time at Streatham,--how changed in mistress and in guests from the

Streatham of which Mrs. Thrale had been the presiding genius! But after

a while they removed to Wales, where, on an old family estate belonging

to Mrs. Piozzi, they built a house, and christened the place with the

queer Welsh-Italian compound name of Brynbella. "Mr. Piozzi built the

house for me, he said; my own old chateau, Bachygraig by name, tho' very

curious, was wholly uninhabitable; and we called the Italian villa he

set up as mine in the Vale of Cluid, North Wales, Brynbella, or the

beautiful brow, making the name half Welsh and half Italian, as we

were." Here they lived, with occasional visits to other places, during

the remainder of Piozzi's life. "Our head quarters were in Wales, where

dear Piozzi repaired my church, built a new vault for my old ancestors,

chose the place in it where he and I are to repose together..... He

lived some twenty-five years with me, however, but so punished with

Gout that we found Bath the best wintering-place for many, many

seasons.--Mrs. Siddons' last appearance there he witnessed, when she

played Calista to Dimond's Lothario, in which he looked _so_ like

Garrick it shocked us _all three_, I believe; for Garrick adored Mr.

Piozzi, and Siddons hated the little great man to her heart. Poor

Dimond! he was a well-bred, pleasing, worthy creature, and did the

honours of his own house and table with peculiar grace indeed. No

likeness in private life or manner,--none at all; no wit, no fun, no

frolic humour had Mr. Dimond:--no grace, no dignity, no real unaffected

elegance of mien or behaviour had his predecessor, David,--whose

partiality to my fastidious husband was for that reason never returned.

Merriment, difficult for _him_ to comprehend, made no amends for the

want of that which no one understood better;--so he hated all the wits

but Murphy."

And now that we are on anecdotes of the Theatre, here is another good

story, which belongs to a somewhat earlier time, but of which Mrs.

Piozzi does not mention the exact date. "The Richmond Theatre at that

time attracted all literary people's attention, while a Coterie of

Gentlemen and Noblemen and Ladies entertained themselves with getting up

Plays, and acting them at the Duke of Richmond's house, Whitehall. Lee's

'Theodosius' was the favorite. Lord Henry Fitzgerald played Varanus very

well,--for a Dilettante; and Lord Derby did his part surprisingly. But

there was a song to be sung to Athenais, while she, resolving to take

poison, sits in a musing attitude. Jane Holman--then Hamilton--_would_

sing an air of Sacchini, and the manager _would not_ hear Italian words.

The ballad appointed by the author was disapproved by all, and I pleased

everybody by my fortunate fancy of adapting some English verses to the

notes of Sacchini's song; and Jane Hamilton sung them enchantingly:--

'Vain's the breath of Adulation,

Vain the tears of tenderest Passion,

Whilst a strong Imagination

Holds the wandering Mind away;

Art in vain attempts to borrow

Notes to soothe a rooted sorrow;

Fixed to die, and die to-morrow,

What can touch her soul to-day?'

"The lines were printed, but I lost them. 'What a wild Tragedy is this!'

said I to Hannah More, who was one of the audience. 'Wild enough,' was

her reply; 'but there's good Poetry in it, and good Passion, _and they

will always do_.'

"Hannah More never goes now to a Theatre. How long is H.L. Piozzi likely

to be seen there? How long will Mr. Conway keep the stage?"

In the year 1798, the family of Mr. Piozzi having suffered greatly from

the French invasion of Lombardy, he sent for the son of his youngest

brother, a "little boy just turned of five years old." "We have got him

here," wrote Mrs. Piozzi in a letter from Bath, dated January, 1799,

published by Mr. Hayward, "and his uncle will take him to school next

week." "As he was by a lucky chance baptized, in compliment to me, John

Salusbury, [Salusbury was her family name,] he will be known in England

by no other, and it will be forgotten he is a foreigner." "My poor

little boy from Lombardy said, as I walked with him across our market,

'These are sheeps' heads, are they not, aunt? I saw a hasket of men's

heads at Brescia.'" Little John, though he went to school, was often at

home. After writing of the troubles with her own daughters, Mrs. Piozzi

says in the manuscript before us,--"Had we vexations enough? We had

certainly many pleasures. The house in Wales was beautiful, and the Boy

was beautiful too. Mr. Piozzi said I had spoiled my own children and was

spoiling his. My reply was, that I loved spoiling people, and hated any

one I could not spoil. Am I not now trying to spoil dear Mr. Conway?"

Piozzi was not far from wrong in his judgment of her treatment of this

boy, if we may trust to her complaints of his coldness and indifference

to her. In 1814, at the time of his marriage, five years after Piozzi's

death, she gave to him her Welsh estate; and it may have been a greater

satisfaction to her than any gratification of the affections could have

afforded, to see him, before she died, high sheriff of his county, and

knighted as Sir John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury.

There was little gayety in the life at Brynbella, or at Bath,--and the

society that Mrs. Piozzi now saw was made up chiefly of new and for the

most part uninteresting acquaintances. The old Streatham set, with a few

exceptions, were dead, and of the few that remained none retained their

former relations with its mistress. But she suffered little from the

change, was contented to win and accept the flattery of inferior people,

and, instead of spending her faculties in soothing the "radically

wretched life" of Johnson, used them, perhaps not less happily, in

lightening the sufferings of Piozzi during his last years. She tells a

touching story of him in these days.

"Piozzi's fine hand upon the organ and pianoforte deserted him. Gout,

such as I never knew, fastened on his fingers, distorting them into

every dreadful shape. ... A little girl, shewn to him as a musical

wonder of five years old, said,' Pray, Sir, why are your fingers wrapped

up in black silk so?' 'My Dear,' replied he, 'they are in mourning for

my Voice.' 'Oh, me!' cries the child, _'is she dead_?' He sung an easy

song, and the Baby exclaimed, 'Ah, Sir! you are very naughty,--you tell

fibs!' Poor Dears! and both gone now!!"

There were no morbid sensibilities in Mrs. Piozzi's composition. She can

tell all her sorrows without ever a tear. A mark of exclamation looks

better than a blot. And yet she had suffered; but it had been with such

suffering as makes the soul hard rather than tender. The pages with

which she ends this narrative of her life are curiously characteristic.

"When life was gradually, but perceptibly, closing round him [Piozzi] at

Bath, in 1808, I asked him if he would wish to converse with a Romish

priest,--we had full opportunity there. 'By no means,' said he. 'Call

Mr. Leman of the Crescent.' We did so,--poor Bessy ran and fetched him.

Mr. Piozzi received the blessed Sacrament at his hands; but recovered

sufficiently to go home and die in his own house. I sent for Salusbury,

but he came three hours too late,--his master, Mr. Shephard, with him.

In another year he went to Oxford, where he spent me above seven hundred

pounds per annum, and kept me in continual terror lest the bad habits of

the place should ruin him, body, soul, and purse. His old school-fellow,

Smythe Owen,--then. Pemberton,--accompanied him, and to that gentleman's

sister he of course gave his heart. The Lady and her friends took

advantage of my fondness, and insisted on my giving up the Welsh

estate. I did so, hoping to live at last with my own children, at

Streatham Park;--there, however, I found no solace of the sort. So,

after entangling my purse with new repairing and furnishing that place,

retirement to Bath with my broken heart and fortune was all I could wish

or expect. Thither I hasted, heard how the possessors of Brynbella,

lived and thrived, but

'Who set the twigs will he remember

Who is in haste to sell the timber?'

"Well, no matter! One day before I left it there was talk how Love had

always Interest annexed to it. 'Nay, then,' said I, 'what is my love

for Salusbury?' 'Oh!' replied Shephard, 'there is Interest there. Mrs.

Piozzi cannot, could not, I am sure, exist without some one upon whom to

energize her affections; his Uncle is gone, and she is much obliged

to young Salusbury for being ready at her hand to pet and spoil;

her children will not suffer her to love them, and'--with a coarse

laugh--'what will she do when this fellow throws her off, as he soon

will?' Shephard was right enough. I sunk into a stupor, worse far

than all the torments I had endured: but when Canadian Indians take a

prisoner, dear Mr. Conway knows what agonies they put them to; the

man bears all without complaining,--smokes, dances, triumphs in his

anguish,--

'For the son of Alcnoomak shall never complain.'

"When a little remission comes, however, then comes the torpor too;--he

cannot then be waked by pain or moderate pleasure: and such was my

case, when your talents roused, your offered friendship opened my heart

to enjoyment Oh! never say hereafter that the obligations are on your

side. Without you, dulness, darkness, stagnation of every faculty would

have enveloped and extinguished all the powers of hapless

"H.L.P."

The picture that Mrs. Piozzi paints of herself in these last words is a

sad one. She herself was unconscious, however, of its real sadness. In

its unintentional revelations it shows us the feebleness without the

dignity of old age, vivacity without freshness of intellect, the

pretence without the reality of sentiment. "Hapless H.L.P."--to have

lived to eighty years, and to close the record of so long a life with

such words!

A little more than a year after this "Abridgment" was written, in May,

1821, Mrs. Piozzi died. Her children, from whom she had lived separated,

were around her death-bed.[C]

[Footnote C: It is but four years ago that the Viscountess Keith, Mrs.

Piozzi's eldest daughter, died. She was ninety-five years old. Her long

life connected our generation with that of Johnson and Burke. She was

the last survivor of the Streatham "set,"--for, as "Queeney," she had

held a not unimportant place in it. She was at Johnson's death-bed. At

their last interview he said,--"My dear child, we part forever in this

world; let us part as Christian friends should; let us pray together."

It was in 1808 that Miss Thrale married Lord Keith, a distinguished

naval officer.

In _The Gentleman's Magazine_, for May, 1657, is an interesting notice

of Lady Keith. "During many years," it is there said, "Viscountess Keith

held a distinguished position in the highest circles of the fashionable

world in London; but during the latter portion of her life.... her time

was almost entirely devoted to works of charity and to the performance

of religious duties. No one ever did more for the good of others, and

few ever did so much in so unostentatious a manner."]

In judging her, it is to be borne in mind that the earlier and the later

portions of her life are widely different from each other. As we have

before said, Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Piozzi are two distinct persons. Mrs.

Thrale, whom the world smiled upon, whom the wits liked and society

courted, who had the best men in England for her friends, is a woman who

will always be pleasant in memory. Her unaffected grace, her kindliness,

her good-humor, her talents, make her perpetually charming. She was

helped by her surroundings to be good, pleasant, and clever; and she

will always keep her place as one of the most attractive figures in the

circle which was formed by Johnson, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Fanny

Burney, and others scarcely less conspicuous. But Mrs. Piozzi, whom the

world frowned upon, whom the wits jeered at, and society neglected,

whose friends nobody now knows, will be best remembered and best liked

as having once been Mrs. Thrale. There is no great charge against her;

she was more sinned against than sinning; she was only weak and foolish,

only degenerated from her first excellence. And even in her old age some

traits of her youthful charms remain, and, seeing these, we regard

her with a tender compassion, and remember of her only the bright

helpfulness and freshness of her younger days, when Johnson "loved her,

esteemed her, reverenced her, and thought her the first of womankind."

* * * * *

THE NIGER, AND ITS EXPLORERS.

A century ago, the interior of Africa was a sealed book to the civilized

world. Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, had been noticed in Holy Writ;

the Nile with Thebes and Memphis on its banks, and a ship-canal to

the Red Sea with triremes on its surface, had not escaped the eye of

Herodotus: but the countries which gave birth to Queen and River were

alike unknown. The sunny fountains, the golden sands, the palmy plains

of Africa were to be traced in the verses of the poet; but he dealt

neither in latitude nor longitude. The maps presented a _terra

incognita_, or sterile mountains, where modern travellers have found

rivers, lakes, and alluvial basins,--or exhibited barren wastes, where

recent discoveries find rich meadows annually flowed, studded with

walled towns and cities, enlivened by herds of cattle, or cultivated in

plantations of maize and cotton.

Although the northern coast of Africa had once been the granary of

Carthage and Rome, cultivation had receded, and the corn-ship of

antiquity had given place to the felucca of the corsair, preying upon

the commerce of Europe. A few caravans, laden with a little ivory and

gold-dust or a few packages of drugs and spices, crept across the

Desert, and the slave-trade principally, if not alone, drew to Africa

the attention of civilized nations. Egypt, Tripoli and Tunis, Turkey and

the Spanish Provinces, the West India Isles and the Southern States,

knew it as the mart where human beings were bought and sold; and

Christians were reconciled to the traffic by the hope that it might

contribute to the moral, if not physical, welfare of the captive, by his

removal to a more civilized region.

During the last three centuries, millions of Africans have perished

either on their way to slavery or in exhausting toil under a tropical

sun; and the flag of England has been the most prominent in this

demoralizing traffic. But it is due to England to say, that, since she

withdrew from it, she has aimed to atone for the past by a noble

and persevering devotion to the improvement of Africa. By repeated

expeditions, by missions, treaties, colonies, and incentives to

commerce, she has spread her light over the interior, and is now

recognized both by the tribes of the Desert and by civilized nations as

the great protector of Africa, and both geography and commerce owe to

her most of their advances on the African continent.

So little was known of Africa, that, when Mungo Park made his report, in

1798, of the discovery of the Niger, and described large cities on its

banks, and vessels of fifty tons burden navigating its waters, the world

was incredulous; and his subsequent fate threw a cloud over the subject

which was not entirely dispelled until his course was traced and his

statements verified by modern travellers.

The route of Dr. Park was from the west coast, near Sierra Leone, to the

upper branches of the Niger. On his second expedition he took with him

a detachment of British soldiers, and a number of civilians, fresh from

England, none of whom survived him. It appears from his journal that his

men followed the foot-paths of the natives, slept in the open air, were

exposed to the dews at night, and were overtaken by the rainy season

before they embarked upon the Niger. Unacclimated, with no proper means

of conveyance, no suitable clothing, and no precautions against

the fever of the country, they nearly all became victims to their

indiscretions. Park, however, at length launched his schooner on the

Niger, passed the city of Timbuctoo, and, with two or three Englishmen,

followed the river more than a thousand miles to Boussa. Reaching the

rapids at this point in a low stage of the water, he was so indiscreet

as to fire on the natives, and was drowned in his attempt to escape from

them; but his fate remained in uncertainty for eighteen years.

The long struggle with Napoleon, the fearful loss of life which attended

the journey of Park, and the doubts as to his fate, checked for many

years the exploration of Africa. In 1821, a third attempt to explore

the Niger was made by a Major Laing, who failed in his efforts to reach

Timbuctoo, and fell a victim to Mahometan intolerance.

In 1822, a new effort was made by England to reach the interior, and

Messrs. Denham and Clapperton joined the caravan from Tripoli, and

crossed the Desert to the Soudan. They explored the country to the ninth

degree of north latitude, found large Negro and Mahometan states in the

interior, and visited Saccatoo, Kano, Murfeia, Tangalra, and other large

towns, some of which contained twenty or thirty thousand people.

In their journal we find a vivid sketch of a Negro army marching from

Bornou to the South, with horsemen in coats-of-mail, as in the days of

chivalry, and armed, as in those days, with lances and bows and arrows.

A glowing description is given of the ravages that attended their march.

When they entered an enemy's country, desolation marked their path,

houses and corn-fields were destroyed, all the full-grown males were put

to death, and the women and children reduced to servitude.

It was obvious that an incessant struggle was in progress between the

Mahometan and Negro states, and that the Mahometan faith and Arab blood

were slowly gaining an ascendency over the Negro even down to the

equator. The conquering tribes, by intermarriage with the females,

were gradually changing the race, and introducing greater energy and

intelligence; and the mixed races have exhibited great proficiency in

various branches of manufacture. The invaders took with them large herds

of cattle, and pursued a pastoral life, leaving the culture of the land

principally to the Negro.

In 1825 Clapperton made his second expedition to the interior,

accompanied by Richard Lander. In this journey the adventurous

travellers landed at Badagry, and crossed through Yarriba to the Niger.

On their way they spent several days at Katunga, the capital of Yarriba,

a city so extensive that one of its streets is described as five miles

in length. The town of Koofo, with twenty thousand inhabitants, as also

large cotton-plantations, are mentioned by these travellers; and some

idea of the territory they explored may be formed from the following

extract from their narrative:--

"The further we penetrate into the country, the more dense we find the

population to be, and civilization becomes at every step more strikingly

apparent. Large towns, at a distance of only a few miles from each

other, we were informed, lay on all sides of us, the inhabitants of

which pay the greatest respect to the laws, and live under a regular

form of government."

It is to this fertile, populous, and peaceful region of the interior

that the most successful efforts of the English missionaries have been

of late directed.

In this expedition, Captain Clapperton died of the fever of the country.

His faithful servant, Lander, after publishing his journal, returned to

Africa, in 1830, with his brother, landed at Badagry, and again crossed

the country to the Niger.

At Boussa, they obtained the first authentic information of the death of

Park, and recovered his gun, robe, and other relics. Here, embarking in

canoes, they ascended the river through its rapids to Yaouri, and

thence traced it to the sea in the Bight of Benin. On their way, they

discovered the Benue, which joins the Niger two hundred and seventy

miles from the ocean, with a volume of water and a width nearly equal to

its own. They encountered a large number of canoes, nearly fifty feet

in length, armed in some cases with a brass six-pounder at the bow, and

each manned by sixty or seventy men actively engaged in the slave-trade.

Forty of these canoes were found together at Eboe, near the mouth of the

Niger.

During the interval between the two expeditions of Lander to trace the

course of this mysterious river, France was exploring its upper waters.

In 1827, René Caillié, a Frenchman, adopting the disguise of a

Mahometan, left the western coast at Kakundy, a few miles north of

Sierra Leone, and crossed the intervening highlands to the affluents of

the Niger, which he struck within two hundred and fifty miles of the

coast.

He first came to the Tankesso, a rapid stream flowing into the Niger

just below its cascades, and noticed here a mountain of pale pink quartz

in regular strata of eighteen inches in thickness, a few miles below

which the river flows in a wide and tranquil stream through extensive

plains, which it fertilizes by its inundations. One hundred miles below,

at Boure, were rich gold mines within twenty miles of the Niger. In the

dry season, he found its waters very cold and waist-deep.

Caillié travelled by narrow paths impervious to horses or carriages, and

with a party of natives bearing merchandise on their heads. His route

was through a country gradually ascending and occasionally mountainous,

but fertile in the utmost degree, and watered by numerous streams and

rivulets which kept the verdure constantly fresh, with delightful plains

that required only the labor of the husbandman to produce everything

necessary for human life.

Proceeding westward, he reached the main Niger, which he found, at

the close of the dry season, and before it had received its principal

tributaries, nine feet deep and nine hundred feet in width, with a

velocity of two and a half miles an hour.

To this point, where the river becomes navigable for steamers, a common

road or railway of three hundred miles in length might be easily

constructed from Sierra Leone; and it is a little surprising that Great

Britain, with her solicitude to reach the interior, should not have been

tempted by the fertility, gold mines, and navigable waters in the rear

of Sierra Leone, so well pictured by Caillié, to open at least a common

highway to the Niger, an enterprise which might be effected for fifty

thousand pounds. Although this may be so easily accomplished, the

principal route to the interior of Africa is still the caravan track

from Tripoli through the Desert, requiring three months by a hazardous

and most fatiguing journey of fifteen hundred miles. The first movement

for a road to the interior has been recently made in Yarriba, by T.J.

Bowen, the American Baptist missionary, who pronounces it to be the

prerequisite to civilization and Christianity.

Caillié readied the Niger in May, just as the rainy reason commenced,

but, finding no facilities for descending the stream, he proceeded to

the southwest, crossed many of its affluents, traversed a rich country,

and, having exposed himself to the fever and met with many detentions,

finally embarked in the succeeding March at Djenne, in a vessel of

seventy tons burden, for Timbuctoo. He describes this vessel as one

hundred feet in length, fourteen feet broad, and drawing seven feet

of water. It was laden with rice, millet, and cotton, and manned by

twenty-one men, who propelled the frail bark by poles and paddles. With

a flotilla of sixty of these vessels he descended the Niger several

hundred miles to Timbuctoo. He speaks of the river as varying from half

to three-fourths of a mile in width, annually overflowing its banks and

irrigating a large basin generally destitute of trees. After paying toll

to the Tasaareks, a Moorish tribe, on the way, and losing one of the

flotilla, he landed safely at Timbuctoo, and probably was the first

European who visited that remote city, although Adams, an American

sailor wrecked on the coast, claims to have been carried there before as

a captive.

From the narratives of Park, Clapperton, Lander, and Caillié, confirmed

by Bairkie and Barth, the latter of whom explored the banks of the Niger

from Timbuctoo to Boussa, it has been ascertained to be a noble stream,

navigable for nearly twenty-five hundred miles, with an average width

of more than half a mile, and an average depth of three fathoms,

--comparing favorably with our own Mississippi. There appears to be but

one portion of the stream difficult for navigation, and that is the

portion from Yaouri to Lagaba, a distance of eighty miles. In this space

are several reefs and ledges, mostly bare at low water, and the river is

narrowed in width by mountains on either side; but in the wet season it

overflows its banks at this point, and is then navigated by the larger

class of canoes. There can be little doubt that it is susceptible of

navigation above and below by the largest class of river steamers, and

that the rapids themselves may in the higher stages of water be ascended

by the American high-pressure steamers which navigate our Western

rivers, drawing, as they do in low stages of the Ohio and Missouri, but

sixteen to eighteen inches.

As soon as it was ascertained that the Niger reached the ocean in the

Bight of Benin, and that its upper waters had been navigated by Caillié

and Park, a private association, aided by the British government, fitted

out a brig and several steamers, with a large party of scientific men,

who, in 1833, entered the Niger from the sea.

Great Britain, though enterprising and persevering, is slow in adapting

means to ends, and made a series of mistakes in her successive

expeditions, which might have been avoided, if she would have

condescended to profit by the experience of her children on this side of

the Atlantic.

The expedition of 1833 was deficient in many things. The power and speed

of the steamers were insufficient, their draught of water too great, and

they were so long delayed in their outfit and in their sea-voyage that

they found the river falling, and were detained by shoals and sand-bars.

The accommodations were unsuitable; and the men, exposed to a bad

atmosphere among the mangroves at the mouth of the river, and confined

in the holds of the vessels, were attacked by fever, and but ten of them

survived. The expedition, however, succeeded in reaching Rabba, on the

Niger, five hundred miles from the sea, ascended the Benue, eighty miles

above the confluence, and charts were made and soundings taken for the

distance explored.

In 1842 the British government made a new effort to explore the Niger,

and built for that purpose three iron steamers, the Wilberforce, Albert,

and Soudan, vessels of one hundred to one hundred and thirty-nine feet

in length. The error committed in the first expedition, of too great

draught, was avoided; but the steamers had so little power and keel that

their voyage to the Niger was both tedious and hazardous, and their

speed was found insufficient to make more than three knots per hour

against the current of the river. Arriving on the coast late in the

season, they were unable to ascend above the points already explored,

and the officers and men, suffering from the tedious navigation, close

cabins, and effluvia from the falling river, lost one-fourth of their

number by fever, while the African Kroomen, accustomed to the climate

and sleeping on the open deck, enjoyed perfect health. It was the

intention of government to establish a model farm and mission at the

confluence of the Niger and Benue; but the officers, discouraged by

sickness, abandoned their original purpose, and the expedition proved

another failure, involving a loss of at least sixty thousand pounds.

After the lapse of twelve years, it was ascertained that private

steamers and sailing vessels were resorting to the Niger, and that an

active trade was springing up in palm-oil, the trees producing which

fringe the banks of the river for some hundreds of miles from the sea;

and in 1853, a Liverpool merchant, McGregor Laird, who had accompanied

the former expedition, fitted out, with the aid of government, the

Pleiad steamer for a voyage up the Niger.

One would imagine that by this time the British government would have

corrected their former errors; and a part were corrected. The speed of

this steamer surpassed that of her predecessors, and her draught did not

exceed five feet. She was well provided with officers, and a crew of

native Kroomen from the coast; and she was supplied with ample stores

of quinine. But, singular as it may appear, this steamer, destined, to

ascend the great rivers up which the former expedition found a strong

breeze flowing daily, was not furnished with a _sail_; and although the

banks of the Niger were lined with forest-trees, and the supply of coal

was sufficient for a few days only, not a single _axe_ or _saw_ was

provided for cutting wood, and the Kroomen hired from the coast were

compelled to trim off with shingle-hatchets nearly all the fuel used

in ascending the river,--and in descending, the steamer was obliged to

drift down with the current. Moreover, she was but one hundred feet

in length, with an engine and boiler occupying thirty feet of her

bold,--thus leaving but thirty-five feet at each end for officers, men,

and stores. Neither state-room, cabin, nor awning was provided on deck

to shelter the crew from an African sun.

With all these deficiencies, however, they achieved a partial triumph.

Entering the river in July, they ascended the southern branch, now

known as the Benue, for a distance of seven hundred miles from the sea,

reaching Adamawa, a Mahometan state of the Soudan. On the fifteenth of

August they encountered the rise of waters, and found the Benue nearly a

mile in width and from one to three fathoms in depth. They observed it

overflowing its banks for miles and irrigatin extensive and fertile

plains to the depth of several feet, and saw reason to believe that this

river, which flows westerly from the interior, may be navigated at least

one thousand miles from the sea. As Dr. Barth visited it at a city

several hundred miles above the point reached by the Pleiad, and found

it flowing with a wide and deep current, it may be regarded as the

gateway into the interior of Africa.

One of our light Western steamers, manned by our Western boatmen and

axemen, with its three decks, lofty staterooms, superior speed,

and light draught, would have been most admirably fitted for this

exploration.

But the expedition, with all its deficiencies, achieved a further

triumph. Dr. Bairkie, by using quinine freely, and by removing the beds

of the officers from the stifling cabins to the deck, escaped the loss

of a single man, although four months on the river,--thus demonstrating

that the white man can reach the interior of Africa in safety, a problem

quite as important to be solved as the course and capacity of the Niger

and its branches.

Thus have been opened to navigation the waters of the Mysterious River.

When the Landers first floated down the stream in their canoe, thirty

years since, they found vast forests and little cultivation, and the

natives seemed to have no commerce except in slaves and yams for their

support. But an officer who accompanied the several steam expeditions

was astonished in his last visit to see the change which a few years

had produced. New and populous towns had sprung up, extensive groves

of palm-trees and gardens lined the banks, and vessels laden with oil,

yams, ground-nuts, and ivory indicated the progress of legitimate

commerce.

The narrative of Dr. Bairkie, a distinguished German scholar, who has

written an account of the voyage of the Pleiad, will be found both

interesting and instructive; and we may some day expect another volume,

for he has returned to the scene of his adventures.

Another German in the service of Great Britain has given us a vivid

picture of Central Africa north of the equator. Dr. Henry Barth has

recently published, in four octavo volumes, a narrative of his travels

in Africa for five years preceding 1857. During this period, he

accompanied the Sheik of Bornou, one of the chief Negro states of

Africa, on his march as far south as the Benue, explored the borders of

Lake Tsadda, crossed the Niger at Sai, and visited the far-famed city

of Timbuctoo. Here he incurred some danger from the fanaticism of

the Moslems; but his command of Arabic, his tact and adroitness in

distinguishing the Protestant worship of the Deity from the homage

paid by Roman Catholics to images of the Virgin and Saints, and in

illustrating the points in which his Protestant faith agreed with the

Koran, extricated him from his embarrassment.

Dr. Barth found various Negro cities with a population ranging from

fifteen to twenty thousand, and observed large fields of rice, cotton,

tobacco, and millet. On his way to Timbuctoo, he saw a field of this

last-named grain in which the stalks stood twenty-four feet high. Our

Patent Office should secure some of the seed which he has doubtless

conveyed to Europe. The following prices, which he names, give us an

idea of the cheapness of products in Central Africa:--An ox two dollars,

a sheep fifty cents, tobacco one to two cents per pound.

From the sketch we have given of the Niger and its branches, and of the

countries bordering upon them, it would appear to be the proper policy

of Great Britain and other commercial nations to open a way from Sierra

Leone to the Niger, and to establish a colony near the confluence of

this river with the Benue. From this point, which is easily accessible

from the sea and the ports of the British colonies on the western coast

of Africa, light steamers may probably ascend to Sego and Djenne,

encountering no difficulties except at the rapids near Boussa, and may

penetrate into the heart of the Soudan. In this region are mines of

lead, copper, gold, and iron, a rich soil, adapted to cotton, rice,

indigo, sugar, coffee, and vegetable butter, with very cheap labor. With

steamers controlling the rivers, a check could here be given to the

slave-trade, and to the conflicts between the Moors and Negroes, and

Christianity have a fair prospect of diffusion. Such a colony is

strongly recommended by Lieutenant Allen, who accompanied the

expeditions of 1833 and 1842; and there can be no doubt that it would

attract the caravans from the remote interior, and put an end to the

perilous and tedious expeditions across the Desert.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola Illustrato nella Vita e nelle Opere, e di

lui Comento Latino sulla Divina Commedia di Dante Allghieri voltalo in

Italiano dall' Avvocato_ GIOVANNI TAMBURINI. Imola. 1855-56. 3 vol.

in 8vo. [The Commentary of Benvenuto Rambaldi of Imola on the _Divina

Commedia_, translated from Latin into Italian, by Giovanni Tamburini.]

Almost five centuries have passed since Benvenuto of Imola, one of

the most distinguished men of letters of his time, was called by the

University of Bologna to read a course of lectures upon the "Divina

Commedia" before the students at that famous seat of learning. From

that time till the present, a great part of his "Comment" has lain in

manuscript, sharing the fate of the other earliest commentaries on the

poem of Dante, not one of which, save that of Boccaccio, was given to

the press till within a few years. This neglect is the more strange,

since it was from the writers of the fourteenth century, almost

contemporary as they were with Dante, that the most important

illustrations both of the letter and of the sense of the "Divina

Commedia" were naturally to be looked for. When they wrote, the lapse of

time had not greatly obscured the memory of the events which the poet

had recorded, or to which he had referred. The studies with which he had

been familiar, the external sources from which he had drawn inspiration,

had undergone no essential change in direction or in nature. The same

traditions and beliefs possessed the intellects of men. Similar social

and political influences moulded their characters. The distance that

separated Dante from his first commentators was mainly due to the

surpassing nature of his genius, which, in some sort, made him, and

still makes him, a stranger to all men, and very little to changes like

those which have slowly come about in the passage of centuries, and

which divide his modern readers from the poet.

It was the intention of Benvenuto, as he tells us, "to elucidate what

was dark in the poem being veiled under figures, and to explain what

was involved in its multiplex meanings." But his Comment is more

illustrative than analytic, more literal than imaginative, and its chief

value lies in the abundance of current legends which it contains, and

in the number of stories related in it, which exhibit the manners or

illustrate the history of the times. So great, indeed, is the value

of this portion of his work, that Muratori, to whom a large debt of

gratitude is due from all students of Italian history, published in

1738, in the first volume of his "Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi," a

selection of such passages, amounting altogether to about one half of

the whole Comment. However satisfactory this incomplete publication

might be to the mere historical investigator, the students of the

"Divina Commedia" could not but regret that the complete work had not

been printed,--and they accordingly welcomed with satisfaction the

announcement, a few years since, of the volumes whose title stands at

the head of this article, which professed to contain a translation of

the whole Comment. It seemed a pity, indeed, that it should have been

thought worth while to translate a book addressing itself to a very

limited number of readers, most of whom were quite as likely to

understand the original Latin as the modern Italian, while also a

special value attached to the style and form in which it was first

written. But no one could have suspected what "translation" meant in the

estimation of the Signor Tamburini, whose name appears on the title-page

as that of the translator.

_Traduttore--traditore_, "Translator--traitor," says the proverb; and of

all traitors shielded under the less offensive name, Signor Tamburini

is beyond comparison the worst we have ever had the misfortune to

encounter. A place is reserved for him in that lowest depth in which,

according to Dante's system, traitors are punished.

It appears from his preface that Signor Tamburini is not without

distinction in the city of Imola. He has been President of the Literary

Academy named that of "The Industrious." To have been President of all

Academy in the Roman States implies that the person bearing this honor

was either an ecclesiastic or a favorite of ecclesiastics. Hitherto,

no one could hold such an office without having his election to it

confirmed by a central board of ecclesiastical inspectors (_la Sacra

Congregazione degli Studj_) at Rome. The reason for noticing this fact

in connection with Signor Tamburini will soon become apparent.

In his preface, Signor Tamburini declares that in the first division of

the poem he has kept his translation close to the original, while in

the two later divisions he had been _meno legato_, "less exact," in his

rendering. This acknowledgment, however unsatisfactory to the reader,

presented at least an appearance of fairness. But, from a comparison of

Signor Tamburini's work with the portions of the original preserved by

Muratori, we have satisfied ourselves that his honesty is on a level

with his capacity as a translator, and what his capacity is we propose

to enable our readers to judge for themselves. For our own part, we have

been unable to distinguish any important difference in the methods of

translation followed in the three parts of the Comment.

So far as we are aware, this book has not met with its dues in Europe.

The well-known Dantophilist, Professor Blanc of Halle, speaks of it in a

note to a recent essay (_Versuch einer blos philogischen Erklärung der

Göttlichen Komödie_, von Dr. L.G. Blanc, Halle, 1860, p. 5) as "a

miserably unsatisfactory translation," but does not give the grounds of

his assertion. We intend to show that a grosser literary imposition has

seldom been attempted than in these volumes. It is an outrage on the

memory of Dante not less than on that of Benvenuto. The book is worse

than worthless to students; for it is not only full of mistakes of

carelessness, stupidity, and ignorance, but also of wilful perversions

of the meaning of the original by additions, alterations, and omissions.

The three large volumes contain few pages which do not afford examples

of mutilation or misrepresentation of Benvenuto's words. We will begin

our exhibition of the qualities of the Procrustean mistranslator with

an instance of his almost incredible carelessness, which is, however,

excusable in comparison with his more wilful faults. Opening the first

volume at page 397, we find the following sentence,--which we put side

by side with the original as given by Muratori. The passage relates to

the 33d and succeeding verses of Canto XVI.

TAMBURINI

Qui Dante fa menzione di Guido Guerra, e meravigliano molti della

modestia dell' autore, che da costui e dalla di lui moglie tragga

l'origine sua, mentre poteva derivarla care di gratitudine affettuosa a

quella,--Gualdrada,--stipito suo,--dandole nome e tramandandola quasi

all' eternità, mentre per sè stessa sarebbe forse rimasta sconosciuta.

BENVENUTO.

Et primo incepit a digniori, scilicet a Guidone Guerra; et circa istius

descriptionem lectori est aliqualiter immorandum, quia multi mirantur,

immo truffantur ignoranter, quod Dantes, qui poterat describere istum

praeclarum virum a claris progenitoribus et ejus claris gestis,

describit eum ab una femina, avita sua, Domna Gualdrada. Sed certe

Auctor fecit talem descriptionem tam laudabiliter quam prudenter, ut

heic implicite tangeret originem famosae stirpis istius, et ut daret

meritam famam et laudem huic mulieri dignissimae.

A literal translation will afford the most telling comment on the nature

of the Italian version.

TRANSLATION.

Here Dante makes mention of Guido Guerras, and many marvel at the

modesty of the Author, in deriving his own origin from him and from his

wife, when he might have derived it from a more noble source. But I find

in such modesty the greater merit, in that he did not wish to fail in

affectionate gratitude toward her,--Gualdrada,--his ancestress,--giving

her name and handing her down as it were to eternity, while she by

herself would perhaps have remained unknown.

TRANSLATION.

In the first place he began with the worthiest, namely, Guido Guerra;

and in regard to the description of this man it is to be dwelt upon a

little by the reader, because scoff at Dante, because, when he might

have described this very distinguished man by his distinguished

ancestors and his distinguished deeds, he does describe him by a woman,

his grandmother, the Lady Gualdrada. But certainly the author did this

not less praiseworthily than wisely, that he might here, by implication,

touch upon the origin of that famous family, and might give a merited

fame and praise to this most worthy woman.

It will be noticed that Signor Tamburini makes Dante derive _his own_

origin from Gualdrada,--a mistake from which the least attention to the

original text, or the slightest acquaintance with the biography of the

poet, would have saved him.

Another amusing instance of stupidity occurs in the comment on the 135th

verse of Canto XXVIII., where, speaking of the young king, son of Henry

II. of England, Benvenuto says, "Note here that this youth was like

another Titus the son of Vespasian, who, according to Suetonius, was

called the love and delight of the human race." This simple sentence is

rendered in the following astounding manner: "John [the young king] was,

according to Suetonius, another Titus Vespasian, the love and joy of the

human race"!

Again, in giving the account of Guido da Montefeltro, (_Inferno_, Canto

XXVII.,) Benvenuto says on the lines,

--e poi fui Cordeliero,

Credendomi si cinto fare ammenda,

"And then I became a Cordelier, believing thus girt to make

amends,"--"That is, hoping under such a dress of misery and poverty

to make amends for my sins; but others did not believe in him [in his

repentance]. Wherefore Dominus Malatesta, having learned from one of

his household that Dominus Guido had become a Minorite Friar, took

precautions that he should not be made the guardian of Rimini." This

last sentence is rendered by our translator,--"One of the household

of Malatesta related to me (!) that Ser Guido adopted the dress of a

Minorite Friar, and sought by every means not to be appointed guardian

of Rimini." A little farther on the old commentator says,--"He died and

was buried in Ancona, and I have heard many things about him which may

afford a sufficient hope of his salvation"; but he is made to say by

Signor Tamburini,--"After his death and burial in Ancona many works of

power were ascribed to him, and I have a sweet hope that he is saved."

We pass over many instances of similar misunderstanding of Benvenuto's

easily intelligible though inelegant Latin, to a blunder which would be

extraordinary in any other book, by which our translator has ruined a

most characteristic story in the comment on the 112th verse of Canto

XIV. of the "Purgatory." We must give here the two texts.

BENVENUTO

Et heic nota, ut videas, si magna nobilitas vigebat paulo ante in

Bretenorio, quod tempore istius Guidonis, quando aliquis vir nobilis

et honorabilis applicabat ad terram, magna contentio erat inter multos

nobiles de Bretenorio, in cujus domum ille talis forensis deberet

declinare. Propter quod concorditer convenerunt inter se, quod columna

lapidea figeretur in medio plateae cum multis annulis ferreis, et omnis

superveniens esset hospes illius ad cujus annulum alligaret equum.

TRANSLATION.

And here take notice, that you may see if great nobility flourished a

little before this time in Brettinoro, that, in the days of this Guido,

when any noble and honorable man came to the place, there was a great

rivalry among the many nobles of Brettinoro, as to which of them should

receive the stranger in his house. Wherefore they harmoniously agreed

that a column of stone should be set up in the middle of the square,

furnished with many iron rings, and any one who arrived should be the

guest of him to whose ring he might tie his horse.

TAMBURINI.

Al tempo di Guido in Brettinoro anche i nobili aravano le terre; ma

insorsero discordie fra essi, e sparve la innocenza di vita, e con essa

la liberalità. I brettinoresi determinarono di alzare in piazza una

colonna con intorno tanti anelli di ferro, quanto le nobili famiglie di

quel castello, e chi fosse arrivato ed avesse legato il cavallo ad uno

de' predetti anelli, doveva esser ospite della famiglia, che indicava l'

anello cui il cavallo era attaccato.

TRANSLATION.

In the time of Guido in Brettinoro even the nobles ploughed the land;

but discords arose among them, and innocence of life disappeared, and

with it liberality. The people of Brettinoro determined to erect in the

pub lic square a column with as many iron rings upon it as there were

noble families in that stronghold, and he who should arrive and tie his

horse to one of those rings was to be the guest of the family pointed

out by the ring to which the horse was attached.

Surely, Signor Tamburini has fixed the dunce's cap on his own head so

that it can never he taken off. The commonest Latin phrases, which the

dullest schoolboy could not mistranslate, he misunderstands, turning

the pleasant sense of the worthy commentator into the most

self-contradictory nonsense.

"Ad confirmandum propositum," says Benvenuto, "oceurrit mihi res

jocosa,"[A]--"In confirmation of this statement, a laughable matter

occurs to me"; and he goes on to relate a story about the famous

astrologer Pietro di Abano. But our translator is not content without

making him stultify himself, and renders the words we have quoted, "A

maggiore conferma referiro un fatto a me accaduto"; that is, he makes

Benvenuto say, "I will report an incident that happened to me," and then

go on to tell the story of Pietro di Abano, which had no more to do with

him than with Signor Tamburini himself.

[Footnote A: Comment on Purg. xvi. 80.]

We might fill page after page with examples such as these of the

distortions and corruptions of Benvenuto's meaning which we have noted

on the margin of this so-called translation. But we have given more than

enough to prove the charge of incompetence against the President of

the "Academy of the Industrious," and we pass on to exhibit him now no

longer as simply an ignoramus, but as a mean and treacherous rogue.

Among the excellent qualities of Benvenuto there are few more marked

than his freedom in speaking his opinion of rulers and ecclesiastics,

and in holding up their vices to reproach, while at the same time he

shows a due spirit of respect for proper civil and ecclesiastical

authority. In this he imitates the temper of the poet upon whose work he

comments,--and in so doing he has left many most valuable records of

the character and manners especially of the clergy of those days--He

loved a good story, and he did not hesitate to tell it even when it went

hard against the priests. He knew and he would not hide the corruptions

of the Church, and he was not the man to spare the vices which were

sapping the foundations not so much of the Church as of religion itself.

But his translator is of a different order of men, one of the devout

votaries of falsehood and concealment; and he has done his best to

remove some of the most characteristic touches of Benvenuto's work,

regarding them as unfavorable to the Church, which even now in the

nineteenth century cannot well bear to have exposed the sins committed

by its rulers and its clergy in the thirteenth or fourteenth. Signor

Tamburini has sought the favor of ecclesiastics, and gained the contempt

of such honest men as have the ill-luck to meet with his book. Wherever

Benvenuto uses a phrase or tells an anecdote which can be regarded as

bearing in any way against the Church, we may be sure to find it either

omitted or softened down in this Papalistic version. We give a few

specimens.

In the comment on Canto III. of the "Inferno," Benvenuto says, speaking

of Dante's great enemy, Boniface VIII.,--"Auctor ssepissime dicit

de ipso Bonifacio magna mala, qui de rei veritate fuit magnanimus

peccator": "Our author very often speaks exceedingly ill of Boniface,

who was in very truth a grand sinner." This sentence is omitted in the

translation.

Again, on the well-known verse, (_Inferno,_ xix. 53,) "Se' tu già costì

ritto, Bonifazio?" Benvenuto commenting says,--"Auctor quando ista

scripsit, viderat pravam vitam Bonifacii, ct ejus mortem rabidam.

Ideo bene judicavit eum damnatum.... Heic dictus Nicolaus improperat

Bonifacio duo mala. Primo, quia Sponsam Christ! fraudulenter assumpsit

de manu simplicis Pastoris. Secundo, quia etiam earn more meretricis

tractavit, simoniacc vendcndo eam, et tyrannice tractando": "The author,

when he wrote these things, had witnessed the evil life of Boniface, and

his raving death. Therefore he well judged him to be damned.... And

here the aforementioned Pope Nicholas charges two crimes upon Boniface:

first, that he had taken the Bride of Christ by deceit from the hand of

a simple-minded Pastor; second, that he had treated her as a harlot,

simoniacally selling her, and tyrannically dealing with her."

These two sentences are omitted by the translator; and the long further

account which Benvenuto gives of the election and rule of Boniface is

throughout modified by him in favor of this "_magnanimus peccator_." And

so also the vigorous narrative of the old commentator concerning Pope

Nicholas III. is deprived of its most telling points: "Nam fuit primus

in cujus curia palam committeretur Simonia per suos attinentes.

Quapropter multum ditavit eos possessionibus, pecuniis et castellis,

super onmes Romanos": "For he was the first at whose court Simony was

openly committed in favor of his adherents. Whereby he greatly enriched

them with possessions, money, and strongholds, above all the Romans."

"Sed quod Clerici capiunt raro dimittunt": "What the clergy have once

laid hands on, they rarely give up." Nothing of this is found in

the Italian,--and history fails of her dues at the hands of this

tender-conscienced modernizer of Benvenuto. The comment on the whole

canto is in this matter utterly vitiated.

In the comment on Canto XXIX. of the "Inferno," which is full of

historic and biographic material of great interest, but throughout

defaced by the license of the translator, occurs a passage in regard

to the Romagna, which is curious not only as exhibiting the former

condition of that beautiful and long-suffering portion of Italy, but

also as applying to its recent state and its modern grievances.

BENVENUTO.

Judicio meo mihi videtur quod quatuor deduxerunt eam nobilem provinciam

ad tantam desolationem. Primum est avaritia Pastorum Ecclesiae, qui nunc

vendunt unam terram, nunc aliam; et nunc unus favet uni Tyranno, nunc

alius alteri, secundum quod saepe mutantur officiales. Secundum est

pravitas Tyrannorum suorum, qui semper inter se se lacerant et rodunt,

et subditos excoriant. Tertium est fertilitas locorum ipsius provinciae,

cujus pinguedo allicit barbaros et externos in praedam. Quartum est

invidia, quae viget in cordibus ipsorum incolarum.

TAMBURINI.

Per me ritengo, che quattro fossero le cagioni per cui la Romagna

si ridusse a tanta desolazione: l' abuso per avarizia di alcuni

ecclesiastici, che alienarono or una, or un' altra terra, e si misero

d' accordo coi tiranni,--i tiranni stessi che sempre erano discordi fra

loro a danno de' sudditi,--la fertilità de' terreni, che troppo alletta

gli strani, ed i barbari,--l' invidia, che regna fra gli stessi roma

gnuoli.

"In my judgment," says Benvenuto, who speaks with the authority of long

experience and personal observation, "it seems to me that four things

have brought that noble province to so great desolation. The first of

which is, the avarice of the Pastors of the Church, who now sell one

tract of its land, and now another; while one favors one Tyrant, and

another another, so that the men in authority are often changed. The

second is, the wickedness of the Tyrants themselves, who are always

tearing and biting each other, and fleecing their subjects. The third

is, the fertility of the province itself, which by its very richness

allures barbarians and foreigners to prey upon it. The fourth is, that

spirit of jealousy which flourishes in the hearts of the inhabitants

themselves." It will be noticed that the translator changes the phrase,

"the avarice of the Pastors of the Church," into "the avarice of some

ecclesiastics," while throughout the passage, as indeed throughout every

page of the work, the vigor of Benvenuto's style and the point of

his animated sentences are quite lost in the flatness of a dull and

inaccurate paraphrase.

A passage in which the spirit of the poet has fully roused his manly

commentator is the noble burst of indignant reproach with which

he inveighs against and mourns over Italy in Canto VI. of the

"Purgatory":--

Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,

Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,

Non donna di provincie, ma bordello.

"Nota metaphoram pulcram: sicut enim in lupanari venditur caro humana

pretio sine pudore, ita meretrix magna, idest Curia Romana, et Curia

Imperialis, vendunt libertatem Italicam.... Ad Italiam concurrunt omnes

barbarae nationes cum aviditate ad ipsam conculcandam.... Et heic,

Lector, me excusabis, qui antequam ulterius procedam, cogor facere

invectivam contra Dantem. O utinam, Poeta mirifice, rivivisceres modo!

Ubi pax, ubi tranquillitas in Italia?... Nunc autem dicere possim de

tola Italia quod Vergilius tuus de una Urbe dixit:

----'Crudelis ubique

Lucutus, ubique pavor, et plurima mortis imago.'

.... Quanto ergo excusabilius, si fas esset, possem exclamare ad

Omnipotentem quam tu, qui in tempora felicia incidisti, quibus nos omnes

nunc viventes in misera Italia possumus invidere? Ipse ergo, qui potest,

mittat amodo Veltrum, quem tu vidisti in Somno, si tamen umquam venturus

est."

"Note the beauty of the metaphor: for, as in a brothel the human body is

sold for a price without shame, so the great harlot, the Court of Rome,

and the Imperial Court, sell the liberty of Italy.... All the barbarous

nations rush eagerly upon Italy to trample upon her.... And here,

Reader, thou shalt excuse me, if, before going farther, I am forced to

utter a complaint against Dante. Would that, O marvellous poet, thou

wert now living again! Where is peace, where is tranquillity in

Italy?... But I may say now of all Italy what thy Virgil said of a

single city,--'Cruel mourning everywhere, everywhere alarm, and the

multiplied image of death.' ...With how much more reason, then, were it

but right, might I call upon the Omnipotent, than thou who fellest upon

happy times, which we all now living in wretched Italy may envy! Let

Him, then, who can, speedily send the Hound that thou sawest in thy

dream, if indeed he is ever to come!"

It would be surprising, but for what we have already seen of the manner

in which Signor Tamburini performs his work, to find that he has here

omitted all reference to the Church, omitted also the address to Dante,

and thus changed the character of the whole passage.

Again, in the comment on Canto XX. of the "Purgatory," where Benvenuto

gives account of the outrage committed, at the instigation of Philippe

le Bel, by Sciarra Colonna, upon Pope Boniface VIII., at Anagni, the

translator omits the most characteristic portions of the original.

* * * * *

BENVENUTO.

Sed intense dolore superante animum ejus, conversus in rabiem furoris,

coepit se rodere totum. Et sic verificata est prophetia simplicissimi

Coelestini, qui praedixerat sibi: Intrâsti ut Vulpes, Regnabis ut Leo,

Morieris ut Canis.

TAMBURINI.

L'angoscia per altro là vinse sul di lui animo, perchè fu preso da tal

dolore, che si mordeva e lacerava le membra, e cosi terminò sua vita. In

tal modo nel corso della vita di Bonifazio fu verificata la profezia di

Celestino.

* * * * *

"But his intense mortification overcoming the mind of the Pope, he fell

into a rage of madness, and began to bite himself all over his body.

And thus the prophecy of the simple-minded Celestine came true, who had

predicted to him. Thou hast entered [into the Papacy] like a Fox, thou

wilt reign like a Lion, thou wilt die like a Dog."

It wilt be observed that the prophecy is referred to by the translator,

but that its stinging words are judiciously left out.

The mass of omissions such as these is enormous. We go forward to the

comment on Canto XII. of the "Paradiso," which exhibits a multitude of

mutilations and alterations. For instance, in the comment on the lines

in which Dante speaks of St. Dominick as attacking heresies most eagerly

where they were most firmly established, (_dove le resistenze eran più

grosse_,) our translator represents Benvenuto as saying, "That is, most

eagerly in that place, namely, the district of Toulouse, where the

Albigenses had become strong in their heresy and in power." But

Benvenuto says nothing of the sort; his words are, "Idest, ubi erant

majores Haeretici, vel ratione scientiae, vel potentiae. Non enim fecit

sicut quidam moderni Inquisitores, qui non sunt audaces nec solertes,

nisi contra quosdam divites denariis, pauperes amicis, qui non possunt

facere magnam resistentiam, et extorquent ab eis pecunias, quibus postea

emunt Episcopatum."

"That is, where were the greatest Heretics, either through their

knowledge or their power. For he did not do like some modern

Inquisitors, who are bold and skilful only against such as are rich in

money, but poor in friends, and who cannot make a great resistance, and

from these they squeeze out their money with which they afterwards buy

an Episcopate."

Such is the way in which what is most illustrative of general history,

or of the personal character of the author himself, is constantly

destroyed by the processes of Signor Tamburini. From the very next page

a passage of real value, as a contemporary judgment upon the orders of

St. Dominick and St. Francis, has utterly disappeared under his hands.

"And here take notice, that our most far-sighted author, from what he

saw of these orders, conjectured what they would become. For, in very

truth, these two illustrious orders of Preachers and Minorites, formerly

the two brightest lights of the world, now have indeed undergone an

eclipse, and are in their decline, and are divided by quarrels and

domestic discords. And consequently it seems as if they were not to last

much longer. Therefore it was well answered by a monk of St. Benedict,

when he was reproached by a Franciscan friar for his wanton life,--When

Francis shall be as old as Benedict, then you may talk to me."

But there is a still more remarkable instance of Signor Tamburini's

tenderness to the Church, and of the manner in which he cheats his

readers as to the spirit and meaning of the original, in the comment on

the passage in Canto XXI. of the "Paradise," where St. Peter Damiano

rebukes the luxury and pomp of the modern prelates, and mentions, among

their other displays of vanity, the size of their cloaks, "which cover

even their steeds, so that two beasts go under one skin." "Namely," says

the honest old commentator, "the beast of burden, and the beast who is

borne, who in truth is the more beastly of the two. And, indeed, were

the author now alive, he might change his words, and say, So that three

beasts go under one skin,--to wit, a cardinal, a harlot, and a horse;

for thus I have heard of one whom I knew well, that he carried his

mistress to the chase, seated behind him on the croup of his horse or

mule, and he himself was in truth 'as the horse or as the mule, which

have no understanding.'... And wonder not, Reader, if the author as a

poet thus reproach these prelates of the Church; for even great Doctors

and Saints have not been able to abstain from rebukes of this sort

against such men in the Church." Nothing of all this is to be found in

the Italian version.

But it is not only in omission that the translator shows his devotion

to the Church. He takes upon himself not infrequently to alter the

character of Benvenuto's narratives by the insertion of phrases or the

addition of clauses to which there is nothing corresponding in the

original. The comment on Canto XIX. of the "Inferno" affords several

instances of this unfair procedure. "Among the Cardinals," says

Benvenuto, "was Benedict of Anagni, a man most skilful in managing great

affairs and in the rule of the world; who, moreover, sought the highest

dignity." "Vir astutissimus ad quseque magna negotia et imperia mundi;

qui etiam affectabat summam dignitatem." This appears in the translation

as follows: "Uomo astutissimo, perito d' affari, e conoscitore delle

altre corti: affettava un contegno il più umile, e reservato." "A man

most astute, skilled in affairs, and acquainted with other courts; he

assumed a demeanor the most humble and reserved." A little farther on,

Benvenuto tells us that many, even after the election of Benedict to the

Papacy, reputed Celestine to be still the true and rightful Pope, in

spite of his renunciation, because, they said, such a dignity could not

be renounced. To this statement the translator adds, "because it comes

directly from God,"--a clause for the benefit of readers under the

pontificate of Pius IX.

In the comment on Canto XIX. of the "Purgatory" occurs the following

striking passage: "Summus Pontificatus, si bene geritur, est summus

honor, summum onus, summa servitus, summus labor. Si vero male, est

summum periculum animae, summum malum, summa miseria, summus pudor. Ergo

dubium est ex omni parte negotium. Ideo bene praefatus Adrianus Papa IV.

dicebat, Cathedram Petri spinosam, et Mantum ejus acutissimis per totum

consertum aculeis, et tantae gravitatis, ut robustissimos premat et

conterat humeros. Et concludebat, Nonne miseria dignus est qui pro tanta

pugnat miseria?"

"The Papacy, if it be well borne, is the chief of honors, of burdens, of

servitudes, and of labors; but if ill, it is the chief of perils for the

soul, the chief of evils, of miseries, and of shames. Wherefore, it is

throughout a doubtful affair. And well did the aforesaid Pope Adrian IV.

say, that the Chair of Peter was thorny, and his Mantle full of sharpest

stings, and so heavy as to weigh down and bruise the stoutest shoulders;

and, added he, Does not that man deserve pity, who strives for a woe

like this?"

This passage, so worthy of preservation and of literal translation, is

given by Signor Tamburini as follows: "The tiara is the first of honors,

but also the first and heaviest of burdens, and the most rigorous

slavery; it is the greatest risk of misfortune and of shame. The Papal

mantle is pierced with sharp thorns; who, then, will excuse him who

frets himself for it?"

But it is not only in passages relating to the Church that the

translator's faithlessness is displayed. Almost every page of his work

exhibits some omission, addition, transposition, or paraphrase, for

which no explanation can be given, and not even an insufficient excuse

be offered. In Canto IX. of the "Paradise," Dante puts into the mouth of

Cunizza, speaking of Foulques of Marseilles, the words, "Before his fame

shall die, the hundredth year shall five times come around." "And note

here," says Benvenuto, "that our author manifestly tells a falsehood;

since of that man there is no longer any fame, even in his own country.

I say, in brief, that the author wishes tacitly to hint that he will

give fame to him by his power,--a fame that shall not die so long as

this book shall live; and if we may conjecture of the future, it is to

last for many ages, since we see that the fame of our author continually

increases. And thus he exhorts men to live virtuously, that the wise may

bestow fame upon them, as he himself has now given it to Cunizza,

and will give it to Foulques." Not a word of this appears in Signor

Tamburini's pages, interesting as it is as an early expression of

confidence in the duration of Dante's fame.

A similar omission of a curious reference to Dante occurs in the comment

on the 23d verse of Canto XXVII. of the "Inferno," where Benvenuto,

speaking of the power of mental engrossment or moral affections to

overcome physical pain, says, "As I, indeed, have seen a sick man cause

the poem of Dante to be brought to him for relief from the burning pains

of fever."

Such omissions as these deprive Benvenuto's pages of the charm of

_naïveté_, and of the simple expression of personal experience and

feeling with which they abound in the original, and take from them

a great part of their interest for the general reader. But there

is another class of omissions and alterations which deprives the

translation of value for the special student of the text of Dante,--a

class embracing many of Benvenuto's discussions of disputed readings and

remarks upon verbal forms. Signor Tamburini has thus succeeded in making

his book of no use as an authority, and prevented it from being referred

to by any one desirous of learning Benvenuto's judgment in any case

of difficulty. To point out in detail instances of this kind is not

necessary, after what we have already done.

The common epithets of critical justice fail in such a case as that of

this work. The facts concerning it, as they present themselves one after

another, are stronger in their condemnation of it than any words. It

would seem as if nothing further could be added to the disgrace of the

translator; but we have still one more charge to prove against him,

worse than the incompetence, the ignorance, and the dishonesty of which

we have already found him guilty. In reading the last volume of his

work, after our suspicions of its character had been aroused, it seemed

to us that we met here and there with sentences which had a familiar

tone, which at least resembled sentences we had elsewhere read. We

found, upon examination, that Signor Tamburini, under the pretence of a

translation of Benvenuto, had inserted through his pages, with a liberal

hand, considerable portions of the well-known notes of Costa, and, more

rarely, of the still later Florentine editor, the Abate Bianchi. It

occurred to us as possible that Costa and Bianchi had in these passages

themselves translated from Benvenuto, and that Signor Tamburini had

simply adopted their versions without acknowledgment, to save himself

the trouble of making a new translation. But we were soon satisfied that

his trickery had gone farther than this, and that he had inserted the

notes of these editors to fill up his own pages, without the slightest

regard to their correspondence with or disagreement from the original

text. It is impossible to discover the motive of this proceeding; for

it certainly would seem to be as easy to translate, after the manner

in which Signor Tamburini translates, as to copy the words of other

authors. Moreover, his thefts seem quite without rule or order: he takes

one note and leaves the next; he copies a part, and leaves the other

part of the same note; he sometimes quotes half a page, sometimes only a

line or two in many pages. Costa's notes on the 98th and 100th verses

of Canto XXI. of the "Paradise" are taken out without the change of a

single word, and so also his note on v. 94 of the next Canto. In this

last instance we have the means of knowing what Benvenuto wrote,

because, although the passage has not been given by Muratori, it is

found in the note by Parenti, in the Florentine edition of the "Divina

Commedia" of 1830. "Vult dicere Benedictus quod miraculosius fuit

Jordanem converti retrorsum, et Mare Rubrum aperiri per medium, quam

si Deus succurreret et provideret istis malis. Ratio est quod utrumque

praedictorum miraculorum fuit contra naturam; sed punire reos et

nocentes naturale est et usitatum, quamvis Deus punierit peccatores

AEgyptios per modum inusitatum supernaturaliter Jordanus sic nominatur

a duobus fontibus, quorum unus vocatur JOR et alius vocatur DAN: inde

JORDANUS, ut ait Hieronymus, locorum orientalium persedulus indagator.

_Volto ritrorso;_ scilicet, versus ortum suum, vel contra: _el mar

fugire;_ idest, et Mare Rubrum fugere hinc inde, quando fecit viam

populo Dei, qui transivit sicco pede: _fu qui mirabile a vedere;_ idest,

miraculosius, _chel soccorso que,_ idest, quam esset mirabile succursum

divinum hic venturum ad puniendos perversos." Now this whole passage is

omitted in Signor Tamburini's work; and in its place appears a literal

transcript from Costa's note, as follows: "Veramente fu più mirabile

cosa vedere il Giordano volto all' indietro o fuggire il mare, quando

così volle Iddio, che non sarebbe vedere qui il provvedimento a quel

male, che per colpa de' traviati religiosi viene alia Chiesa di Dio."

Another instance of this complete desertion of Benvenuto, and adoption

of another's words, occurs just at the end of the same Canto, v. 150;

and the Florentine edition again gives us the original text. It is even

more inexplicable why the so-called translator should have chosen this

course here than in the preceding instance; for he has copied but a line

and a half from Costa, which is not a larceny of sufficient magnitude to

be of value to the thief.

We have noted misappropriations of this sort, beside those already

mentioned, in Cantos II. and III. of the "Purgatory," and in Cantos I.,

II., XV., XVI., XVIII., XIX., and XXIII., of the "Paradise." There are

undoubtedly others which have not attracted our attention.

We have now finished our exposure of the false pretences of these

volumes, and of the character of their author. After what has been said

of them, it seems hardly worth while to note, that, though handsome in

external appearance, they are very carelessly and inaccurately printed,

and that they are totally deficient in needed editorial illustrations.

Such few notes of his own as Signor Tamburini has inserted in the course

of the work are deficient alike in intelligence and in object.

A literary fraud of this magnitude is rarely attempted. A man must be

conscious of being supported by the forces of a corrupt ecclesiastical

literary police before venturing on a transaction of this kind. No shame

can touch the President of the "Academy of the Industrious." His book

has the triple _Imprimatur_ of Rome. It is a comment, not so much on

Dante, as on the low standard of literary honesty under a government

where the press is shackled, where true criticism is forbidden, where

the censorship exerts its power over the dead as well as the living, and

every word must be accommodated to the fancied needs of a despotism the

more exacting from the consciousness of its own decline.

It is to be hoped, that, with the new freedom of Italian letters, an

edition of the original text of Benvenuto's Comment will be issued under

competent supervision. The old Commentator, the friend of Petrarch and

Boccaccio, deserves this honor, and should have his fame protected

against the assault made upon it by his unworthy compatriot.

_Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character_. By E.E. RAMSAY, M.A.,

LL.D., F.R. S.E., Dean of Edinburgh. From the Seventh Edinburgh Edition.

Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

This book was not made, but grew. The foundation was a short lecture

delivered in Edinburgh. It was so popular that it was published in a

pamphlet form. The popularity of the pamphlet induced Dean Ramsay to

recall many anecdotes illustrating national peculiarities which could

not be compressed into a lyceum address. The result was that the

pamphlet became a thin volume, which grew thicker and thicker as edition

after edition was called for by the curiosity of the public. The

American reprint is from the seventh and last Edinburgh edition, and is

introduced by a genial preface, written especially for American readers.

The author is more than justified in thinking that there are numerous

persons scattered over our country, who, from ties of ancestry or

sympathy with Scotland, will enjoy a record of the quaint sayings and

eccentric acts of her past humorists,--"her original and strong-minded

old ladies,--her excellent and simple parish ministers,--her amusing

parochial half-daft idiots,--her pawky lairds,--and her old-fashioned

and now obsolete domestic servants and retainers." Indeed, the Yankee is

sufficiently allied, morally and intellectually, with the Scotchman, to

appreciate everything that illustrates the peculiarities of Scottish

humor. He has shown this by the delight he has found in those novels

of Scott's which relate exclusively to Scotland. The Englishman, and

perhaps the Frenchman, may have excelled him in the appreciation of

"Ivanhoe" and "Quentin Durward," but we doubt if even the first

has equalled him in the cozy enjoyment of the "Antiquary" and "Guy

Mannering." And Dean Ramsay's book proves how rich and deep was the

foundation in fact of the qualities which Sir Walter has immortalized

in fiction. He has arranged his "Reminiscences of Scottish Life and

Character" under five heads, relating respectively to the religious

feelings and observances, the conviviality, the domestic service, the

language and proverbs, and the peculiarities of the wit and humor of

Scotland. In New England, and wherever in any part of the country

the New-Englander resides, the volume will receive a most cordial

recognition. Dean Ramsay's qualifications for his work are plainly

implied in his evident understanding and enjoyment of the humor of

Scottish character. He writes about that which he feels and knows; and,

without any exercise of analysis and generalization, he subtly conveys

to the reader the inmost spirit of the national life he undertakes to

illustrate by narrative, anecdote, and comment. The finest critical and

artistic skill would be inadequate to insinuate into the mind so

keen and vivid a perception of Scottish characteristics as escape

unconsciously from the simple statements of this true Scotchman, who is

in hearty sympathy with his countrymen.

_The Pulpit of the American Revolution: or, The Political Sermons of

the Period of_ 1776. With a Historical Introduction, Notes, and

Illustrations. By JOHN WINGATE THORNTON, A.M. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

12mo.

This is a volume worthy a place in every American library, public or

private. It consists of nine discourses by the same number of patriotic

clergymen of the Revolution. Mr. Thornton, the editor, has supplied an

historical introduction, full of curious and interesting matter, and has

also given a special preface to each sermon, with notes explaining all

those allusions in the text which might puzzle an ordinary reader of the

present day. His annotations have not only the value which comes from

patient research, but the charm which proceeds from loving partisanship.

He transports himself into the times about which he writes, and

almost seems to have listened to the sermons he now comes forward to

illustrate. The volume contains Dr. Mayhew's sermon on "Unlimited

Submission," Dr. Chauncy's on the "Repeal of the Stamp Act," Rev. Mr.

Cooke's Election Sermon on the "True Principles of Civil Government,"

Rev. Mr. Gordon's "Thanksgiving Sermon in 1774," and the discourses,

celebrated in their day, of Langdon, Stiles, West, Payson, and Howard.

Among these, the first rank is doubtless due to Dr. Mayhew's remarkable

discourse at the West Church on the 30th of January, 1750. The topics

relating to "non-resistance to the higher powers," which Macaulay treats

with such wealth of statement, argument, and illustration, in his

"History of England," are in this sermon discussed with equal

earnestness, energy, brilliancy, fulness, and independence of thought.

If all political sermons were characterized by the rare mental and moral

qualities which distinguish Jonathan Mayhew's, there can be little doubt

that our politicians and statesmen would oppose the intrusion of parsons

into affairs of state on the principle of self-preservation, and not on

any arrogant pretension of superior sagacity, knowledge, and ability.

In the power to inform the people of their rights and teach them their

duties, we would be willing to pit one Mayhew against a score of

Cushings and Rhetts, of Slidells and Yanceys. The fact that Mayhew's

large and noble soul glowed with the inspiration of a quick moral and

religious, as well as common, sense, would not, in our humble opinion,

at all detract from his practical efficiency.

_Works of Charles Dickens Household Edition_. Illustrated from Drawings

by F.O.C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Pickwick Papers. New York: W.A.

Townsend & Co. 4 vols. 12mo.

We have long needed a handsome American edition of the works of the most

popular English novelist of the time, and here we have the first volumes

of one which is superior, in type, paper, illustrations, and general

taste of mechanical execution, to the best English editions. It is to

be published at the rate of two volumes a month until completed, and in

respect both to cheapness and elegance is worthy of the most extensive

circulation. Such an enterprise very properly commences with "The

Pickwick Papers," the work in which the hilarity, humor, and tenderness

of the author's humane and beautiful genius first attracted general

regard; and it is to be followed by equally fine editions of the

romances which succeeded, and, as some think, eclipsed it in merit and

popularity. We most cordially wish success to an undertaking which

promises to substitute the finest workmanship of the Riverside Press for

the bad type and dingy paper of the common editions, and hope that the

publishers will see the propriety of adequately remunerating the author.

It is pleasant to note that years and hard work have not dimmed the

brightness or impaired the strength of Dickens's mind. The freshness,

vigor, and affluence of his genius are not more evident in the "Old

Curiosity Shop" than in "Great Expectations," the novel he is now

publishing, in weekly parts, in "All the Year Round." Common as is the

churlish custom of depreciating a new work of a favorite author by

petulantly exalting the worth of an old one, no fair reader of "Great

Expectations" will feel inclined to say that Dickens has written

himself out. In this novel he gives us new scenes, new incidents, new

characters, and a new purpose; and from his seemingly exhaustless fund

of genial creativeness, we may confidently look for continual additions

to the works which have already established his fame. The characters

in "Great Expectations" are original, and some of them promise to rank

among his best delineations. Pip, the hero, who, as a child, "was

brought up by hand," and who appears so far to be led by it,--thus

illustrating the pernicious effect in manhood of that mode of taking

nourishment in infancy,--is a delicious creation, quite equal to David

Copperfield. Jaggers, the peremptory lawyer, who carries into ordinary

conduct and conversation the habits of the criminal bar, and bullies and

cross-examines even his dinner and his wine,--Joe, the husband of "the

hand" by which Pip was brought up,--Wopsle, Wemmick, Orlick, the family

of the Pockets, the mysterious Miss Havisham, and the disdainful

Estella, are not repetitions, but personages that the author introduces

to his readers for the first time. The story is not sufficiently

advanced to enable us to judge of its merit, but it has evidently been

carefully meditated, and here and there the reader's curiosity is stung

by fine hints of a secret which the weaver of the plot still contrives

to keep to himself. The power of observation, satire, humor, passion,

description, and style, which the novel exhibits, gives evidence that

Dickens is putting forth in its production his whole skill and strength.

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