[1] It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a word in a situation where it would naturally explain itself. But it has become necessary to do so, in consequence of the unscholarlike use of the word sympathy, at present so general, by which, instead of taking it in its proper sense, as the act of reproducing in our minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it is made a mere synonyme of the word pity; and hence, instead of saying "sympathy with another," many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of "sympathy for another."
[2] Kant—who carried his demands of unconditional veracity to so extravagant a length as to affirm, that, if a man were to see an innocent person escape from a murderer, it would be his duty, on being questioned by the murderer, to tell the truth, and to point out the retreat of the innocent person, under any certainty of causing murder. Lest this doctrine should be supposed to have escaped him in any heat of dispute, on being taxed with it by a celebrated French writer, he solemnly reaffirmed it, with his reasons.
[3] "June 1, 1675.—Drinke part of 3 boules of punch, (a liquor very strainge to me,)" says the Rev. Mr. Henry Teonge, in his Diary lately published. In a note on this passage, a reference is made to Fryer's Travels to the East Indies, 1672, who speaks of "that enervating liquor called Paunch, (which is Indostan for five,) from five ingredients." Made thus, it seems the medical men called it Diapente; if with four only, Diatessaron. No doubt, it was its Evangelical name that recommended it to the Rev. Mr. Teonge.
[4] "Page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one"—literally, good reader, and no joke at all.
[5] Arc:—Modern France, that should know a great deal better than myself, insists that the name is not d'Arc, i.e. of Arc, but Darc. Now it happens sometimes, that if a person, whose position guarantees his access to the best information, will content himself with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and saying in a terrific voice—"It is so; and there's an end of it,"—one bows deferentially; and submits. But if, unhappily for himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and arguments, probably one raises an insurrection against him that may never be crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism; he would have entrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points. But coming down to base reasons, he lets in light, and one sees where to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling, is—that Jean Hordal, a descendant of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name Darc, in 1612. But what of that? Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic blockhead, it is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by printers: in France, much more so.
[6] Those that share thy blood:—a collateral relative of Joanna's was subsequently ennobled by the title of du Lys.
[7] "Jean."—M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning at that era in calling a child Jean; it implied a secret commendation of a child, if not a dedication, to St. John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious visions. But, really, as the name was so exceedingly common, few people will detect a mystery in calling a boy by the name of Jack, though it does seem mysterious to call a girl Jack. It may be less so in France, where a beautiful practice has always prevailed of giving to a boy his mother's name—preceded and strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relique, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pacelle must have borne the baptismal names of Jeanne Jean; the latter with no reference to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative.
[8] And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by Paul Richtor, which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post near Moscow—This is the road that leads to Constantinople.
[9] Yes, old—very old phrase: not as ignoramuses fancy, a phrase recently minted by a Repealer in Ireland.
[10] Our sisters are always rather uneasy when we say anything of them in Latin or Greek. It is like giving sealed orders to a sea captain, which he is not to open for his life till he comes into a certain latitude, which latitude, perhaps, he never will come into, and thus may miss the secret till he is going to the bottom. Generally I acknowledge that it is not polite before our female friends to cite a single word of Latin without instantly translating it. But in this particular case, where I am only iterating a disagreeable truth, they will please to recollect that the politeness lies in not translating. However, if they insist absolutely on knowing this very night, before going to bed, what it is that those ill-looking lines contain, I refer them to Dryden's Virgil, somewhere in the 6th Book of the AEneid, except as to the closing line and a half, which contain a private suggestion of my own to discontented nymphs anxious to see the equilibrium of advantages re-established between the two sexes.
[11] Amongst the many ebullitions of M. Michelet's fury against us poor English,
are four which will be likely to amuse the reader; and they are the more
conspicuous in collision with the justice which he sometimes does us, and
the very indignant admiration which, under some aspects, he grants to us.
1. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth. He
pronounces it "fine and sombre," but, I lament to add, "sceptical, Judaic,
Satanic—in a word, Anti-Christian." That Lord Byron should figure as a
member of this diabolical corporation, will not surprise men. It will
surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are
the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, beside Chateaubriand, who have, in
the course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own burning
nationality, in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet of
Milton; and some of them have raised Milton almost to a level with angelic
natures. Not one of them has thought of looking for him below the earth.
As to Shakspeare, M. Michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's
nest. It is this: he does "not recollect to have seen the name of God" in
any part of his works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub one's
eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been
a pure ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the
word "la gloire" never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The great English
nation," says M. Michelet, "has one immense profound vice," to wit,
"pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we have a neighbor not
absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as like ours in color and
shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and
starts, admirable, only that we are detestable; and he would adore some of
our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick
them.
2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd remark
upon Thomas a Kempis: which is, that a man of any conceivable European
blood—a Finlander, suppose, or a Zantiote—might have written Tom; only
not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom, must remain
a matter of doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago. That problem
was intercepted for ever by Tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture
himself. Yet, since nobody is better aware than M. Michelet, that this very
point of Kempis having manufactured Kempis is furiously and hopelessly
litigated, three or four nations claiming to have forged his work for him,
the shocking old doubt will raise its snaky head once more—whether this
forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of English
blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature chiefly
by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's (Dr.
Wolcot) fifty years back, where he is described as
"Kempis Tom,
Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come."
Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist version of
John Wesley. Amongst those few, however, happens to be myself; which arose
from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the
De Imitatione Christi, as a bequest from a relation, who died very young;
from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book, being a
Glasgow reprint, by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound, I was induced
to look into it; and finally read it many times over, partly out of
some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its simplicity and
devotional fervor; but much more from the savage delight I found in
laughing at Tom's Latinity. That, I freely grant to M. Michelet, is
inimitable; else, as regards substance, it strikes me that I could forge a
better De Imitatione myself. But there is no knowing till one tries. Yet,
after all, it is not certain whether the original was Latin. But, however
that may have been, if it is possible that M. Michelet
(Note: "If M. Michelet can be accurate." However, on consideration,
this statement does not depend on Michelet. The bibliographer, Barbier,
has absolutely specified sixty in a separate dissertation, soixante
traductions, amongst those even that have not escaped the search. The
Italian translations are said to be thirty. As to mere editions, not
counting the early MSS. for half a century before printing was introduced,
those in Latin amount to two thousand, and those in French to one thousand.
Meantime, it is very clear to me that this astonishing popularity, so
entirely unparalleled in literature, could not have existed except in Roman
Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any Protestant land. It
was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made this
slender rill of Scripture truth so passionately welcome.)
can be accurate
in saying that there are no less than sixty French versions (not
editions, observe, but separate versions) existing of the De Imitatione,
how prodigious must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious
heart of the fifteenth century! Excepting the Bible, but excepting
that only in Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same
distinction. It is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on record.
3. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we English
males in another. None of us lads could have written the Opera Omnia of
Mr. a Kempis; neither could any of our lasses have assumed male attire like
La Pucelle. But why? Because, says Michelet, English girls and German
think so much of an indecorum. Well, that is a good fault, generally
speaking. But M. Michelet ought to have remembered a fact in the
martyrologies which justifies both parties,—the French heroine for doing,
and the general choir of English girls for not doing. A female saint,
specially renowned in France, had, for a reason as weighty as Joanna's,
viz., expressly to shield her modesty amongst men, wore a male military
harness. That reason and that example authorized La Pucelle; but our
English girls, as a body, have seldom any such reason, and certainly no
such saintly example, to plead. This excuses them. Yet, still, if it is
indispensable to the national character that our young women should now and
then trespass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic
duty in me to assure M. Michelet that we have such ardent females amongst
us, and in a long series—some detected in naval hospitals, when too sick
to remember their disguise; some on fields of battle; multitudes never
detected at all; some only suspected; and others discharged without noise
by war offices and other absurd people. In our navy, both royal and
commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted love, women
have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking contentedly their
daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon balls—anything, in short,
digestible or indigestible, that it might please Providence to send. One
thing, at least, is to their credit: never any of these poor masks, with
their deep silent remembrances, have been detected through murmuring, or
what is nautically understood by "skulking." So, for once, M. Michelet has
an erratum to enter upon the fly-leaf of his book in presentation copies.
4. But the last of these ebullitions is the most lively. We English, at
Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordinary, if all
were told,) fled before the Maid of Arc. Yes, says M. Michelet, you did:
deny it, if you can. Deny it, my dear? I don't mean to deny it. Running
away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent, that no philosopher would,
at times, condescend to adopt any other step. All of us nations in Europe,
without one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at times. Even
people, "qui ne se rendent pas," have deigned both to run and to shout,
"Sauve qui pent" at odd times of sunset; though, for my part, I have
no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave men; and yet,
really, being so philosophic, they ought not to be unpleasant. But
the amusing feature in M. Michelet's reproach, is the way in which he
improves and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were
singing a catch. Listen to him. They "showed their backs," did these
English. (Hip, hip, hurrah! three times three!) "Behind good walls, they
let themselves be taken," (Hip, hip! nine times nine!) They "ran as
fast as their legs could carry them." (Hurrah! twenty-seven times
twenty-seven!) They "ran before a girl;" they did. (Hurrah! eighty-one
times eighty-one!) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old
model in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the
crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid
its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. Whilst the
indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes; and
yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence, and not
always that. N.B.—Not having the French original at hand, I make my
quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation, which
seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically English—liable, in fact,
only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms.
[12] Lady Madeline Gordon.
[13] "Vast distances."—One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers, where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which exactly bisected the total distance.
[14] "Resident."—The number on the books was far greater, many of whom kept up an intermitting communication with Oxford. But I speak of those only who were steadily pursuing their academic studies, and of those who resided constantly as fellows.
[15] "Snobs," and its antithesis, "nobs," arose among the internal fractions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention.
[16] "False echoes"—yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all.—They stand in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering Vengeur, as the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, "La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas," as the repartees of Talleyrand.
[17] "Privileged few." The general impression was, that this splendid costume belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it did belong, as a matter of course, and was essential as an official warrant, and a means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long or special service.
[18] "Households."—Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents, and children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, conciliate to them an interest of a peculiarly tender character, if less dignified by the grandeurs of savage and forest life.
[19] "However visionary."—But are they always visionary? the unicorn, the kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn, for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather too true; for, simply as a monokeras, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere, rather too often for the peace of what in Scotland would be called the intending traveller. That which really is a lie in the account of the unicorn—viz., his legendary rivalship with the lion—which lie may God preserve, in preserving the mighty imperial shield that embalms it—cannot be more destructive to the zoological pretensions of the unicorn, than are to the same pretensions in the lion our many popular crazes about his goodness and magnanimity, or the old fancy (adopted by Spenser, and noticed by so many among our elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden innocence. The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes; nor has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful, is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,) nobody would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c. The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and brush her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as many that are assessed to the poor-rates.
[20] "Audacity!"—Such the French accounted it; and it has struck me that Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said more than once—"Here are the English—we have them: they are caught en flagrant delit" Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in the north of Portugal, during the flight from an English army, and subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles.
[21] "Three hundred." Of necessity this scale of measurement, to an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little lying, by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like these terms:—"And, sir, arriving at London, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of one hundred and seventy miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure falsehood gravely, else one might say that no Englishman out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent; nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil which it drains: yet, if he had been so absurd, the American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water—viz. the Tiber—has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached, nor likely to be reached very soon, by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the density of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these terms:—"These rascals, sir, in France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging; whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country, that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast."
[22] "Sigh-born:" I owe the suggestion of this word to an obscure remembrance of a beautiful phrase in Giraldus Gambrensis, viz., suspiriosae cogilationes.
[23] "Quartering"—this is the technical word; and, I presume derived from the French carlayer, to evade a rut or any obstacle.
[24] "Averted signs."—I read the course and changes of the lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures; but let it be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly.
[25] Campo Santo.—It is probable that most of my readers will be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo at Pisa—composed of earth brought from Jerusalem for a bed of sanctity, as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders could ask or imagine. There is another Campo Santo at Naples, formed, however, (I presume,) on the example given by Pisa. Possibly the idea may have been more extensively copied. To readers who are unacquainted with England, or who (being English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral cities of England, it may be right to mention that the graves within-side the cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses might roll; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral, across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, may have assisted my dream.
[26] "In procinct."—Milton's translation (somewhere in The Paradise Regained) of the technical phrase "in procinctu."
[27] "Geologists know not."—Observe, reader, we are not at all questioning the Scriptural Chronology of the earth as a habitation for man, for on the pre-human earth Scripture is silent: not upon the six thousand years does our doubt revolve, but upon a very different thing, viz. to what age in man these six thousand years correspond by analogy in a planet. In man the sixtieth part is a very venerable age. But as to a planet, as to our little earth, instead of arguing dotage, six thousand years may have scarcely carried her beyond babyhood. Some people think she is cutting her first teeth; some think her in her teens. But, seriously, it is a very interesting problem. Do the sixty centuries of our earth imply youth, maturity, or dotage?
[28] "Everywhere the ancients went to bed, like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock."—As we are perfectly serious, we must beg the reader, who fancies any joke in all this, to consider what an immense difference it must have made to the earth, considered as a steward of her own resources-whether great nations, in a period when their resources were so feebly developed, did, or did not, for many centuries, require candles; and, we may add, fire. The five heads of human expenditure are,—1, Food; 2, Shelter; 3, Clothing; 4, Fuel; 5, Light. All were pitched on a lower scale in the Pagan era; and the two last were almost banished from ancient housekeeping. What a great relief this must have been to our good mother the earth! who, at first, was obliged to request of her children that they would settle round the Mediterranean. She could not even afford them water, unless they would come and fetch it themselves out of a common tank or cistern.
[29] "The manesalutantes."—There can be no doubt that the levees of modern princes and ministers have been inherited from this ancient usage of Rome; one which belonged to Rome republican, as well as Rome imperial. The fiction in our modern practice is—that we wait upon the leve, or rising of the prince. In France, at one era, this fiction was realized: the courtiers did really attend the king's dressing. And, as to the queen, even up to the revolution, Marie Antoinette almost from necessity gave audience at her toilette.
[30] "Or again, 'siccum pro biscodo, ut hodie vocamus, sumemus?'"—It is odd enough that a scholar so complete as Salmasius, whom nothing ever escapes, should have overlooked so obvious an alternative as that of siccus, meaning without opsonium—Scotice, without "kitchen."
[31] "The whole amount of relief;"—from which it appears how grossly Locke (see his Education) was deceived in fancying that Augustus practised any remarkable abstinence in taking only a bit of bread and a raisin or two, by way of luncheon. Augustus did no more than most people did; secondly, he abstained only with a view to dinner; and, thirdly, for this dinner he never waited longer than up to four o'clock.
[32] "Mansiones"—the halts of the Roman legions, the stationary places of repose which divided the marches, were so called.
[33] "The everlasting Jew;"—the German name for what we English call the Wandering Jew. The German imagination has been most struck with the duration of the man's life, and his unhappy sanctity from death; the English by the unrestingness of the man's life, his incapacity of repose.
[34] "Immeasurable toga."—It is very true that in the time of Augustus the toga had disappeared amongst the lowest plebs, and greatly Augustus was shocked at that spectacle. It is a very curious fact in itself, especially as expounding the main cause of the civil wars. Mere poverty, and the absence of bribery from Rome, whilst all popular competition for offices drooped, can alone explain this remarkable revolution of dress.
[35] That boys in the Praetexta did not bathe in the public baths, is certain; and most unquestionably that is the meaning of the expression in Juvenal so much disputed—"Nisi qui nondum aere lavantur." By aes he means the ahenum, a common name for the public bath, which was made of copper; in our navy, "the coppers" is a name for the boilers. "Nobody believes in such tales except children," is the meaning. This one exclusion cut off three eighths of the Roman males.
[36] "His young—English bride."—The case of an old man, or one reputed old, marrying a very girlish wife, is always too much for the gravity of history; and, rather than lose the joke, the historian prudently disguises the age, which, after all, was little above fifty. And the very persons who insist on the late dinner as the proximate cause of death, elsewhere insinuate something else, not so decorously expressed. It is odd that this amiable prince, so memorable as having been a martyr to late dining at eleven, A.M., was the same person who is so equally memorable for the noble answer about a King of France not remembering the wrongs of a Duke of Orleans.
[37] "Took their coena at noon."—And, by the way, in order to show how little coena had to do with any evening hour (though, in any age but that of our fathers, four in the afternoon would never have been thought an evening hour in the sense implied by supper,)—the Roman gourmands and bons vivants continued through the very last ages of Rome to take their coena, when more than usually sumptuous, at noon. This, indeed, all people did occasionally, just as we sometimes give a dinner even now so early as four, P.M., under the name of a dejeuner a la fourchette. Those who took their coena so early as this, were said de die coenare—to begin dining from high day. Just as the line in Horace—"Ut jugulent homines surgunt de nocte latrones," does not mean that the robbers rise when others are going to bed, viz., at nightfall, but at midnight. For, says one of the three best scholars of this earth, de die, de nocte, mean from that hour which was most fully, most intensely day or night, viz., the centre, the meridian. This one fact is surely a clencher as to the question whether coena meant dinner or supper.