Amenities of Literature Part 13

[8] "Alvearie, or quadruple Dictionary of Four Languages," 1580.

[9] "The English Dictionary, or an Interpreter of Hard English Words," by H. C., gent., 1658. The eleventh and twelfth editions are before me. The last, edited by another person, is not so copious as the former. In c.o.c.kram's own edition we have a first "Book" of his "Hard Words," followed by a second of what he calls "Vulgar Words,"

which are English. The last editor has wholly omitted the second part. Of the first part, or the "Hard Words," c.o.c.kram observes that "They are the _choicest words now in use_, and wherewith our language is enriched and become so copious, to which words the common sense is annexed." [See note on this Dictionary, with some few specimens of its contents, in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii.]

DIALECTS.

Dialects reflect the general language diversified by localities.

A dialect is a variation in the p.r.o.nunciation, and necessarily in the orthography of words, or a peculiarity of phrase or idiom, usually accompanied by a tone which seems to be as local as the word it utters.

It is a language rarely understood out of the sphere of the population by whom it is appropriated. A language is fixed in a nation by a flouris.h.i.+ng metropolis of an extensive empire, a dialect may have existed coeval with that predominant dialect which by accident has become the standard or general language; and moreover, the contemned dialect may occasionally preserve some remains or fragments of the language which, apparently lost, but hence recovered, enable us rightly to understand even the prevalent idiom.

All nations have had dialects. Greece had them, as France, and Italy have them now. Homer could have included in a single verse four or five dialects; but though the Doric and the Ionic were held the most cla.s.sical, none of them were barbarous, since their finest writers have composed in these several dialects. Even some Italian poets and comic writers have adopted a favourite dialect; but no cla.s.sical English author could have immortalised any one of our own.

Ancient Greece, as Mitford describes, "though a narrow country, was very much divided by mountains and politics." And mountains and politics, which impede the general intercourse of men, inevitably produce dialects. Each isolated state with fear or pride affected its independence, not only by its own customs, but by its accent or its phrase. In France the standard language was long but a dialect. There potent n.o.bles, each holding a separate court and sovereignty in his own province, offered many central points of attraction. The Counts of Foix, of Provence and of Toulouse, and the Dukes of Guienne, of Normandy and of Bretagne, were all munificent patrons of those who cultivated what they termed "l'art du beau parler," each in their provincial idiom.

These were all subdivisions of the two rival dialects to which the Romane language had given birth. But the river Loire ran between them; and a great river has often been the boundary of a dialect: France was thus long divided. On the south of the Loire their speech was called the language of _Oc_, and on the north the language of _Oil_; names which they derived from the different manner of the inhabitants p.r.o.nouncing the affirmative _Oui_. The language of the poetical Troubadours on the south of the Loire had not the happier destiny of its rival, used by the Trouveres on the north. It was this which became the standard language, while the other remains a dialect. Here we have a remarkable incident in the history of dialects in a great country; it was long doubtful which was to become the national language; and it has happened, if we may trust an enthusiast of Languedoc, that his idiom, expressing with more vowelly softness and _navete_ the familiar emotions of love and friends.h.i.+p, and gaiety and _bonhomie_, gave way to a harsher idiom and a sharp nasal accent; and all ended by the Parisian detecting the provincials by their s.h.i.+bboleth, and calling them all alike Gascons, and their taste for exaggeration and rhodomontade gasconades; while the southerns, who hold that what is called the French language is only a perversion of their own dialect, like our former John Bull, fling on the Parisian the old Gaulish appellative of _Franchiman_.[1]

The dialects of England were produced by occurrences which have happened to no other nation. Our insular site has laid us open to so many masters, that it was long doubtful whether Britain would ever possess a uniform language. The aboriginal Britons left some of their words behind them in their flight, as the Romans had done in their dominion,[2] and even the visiting Phoenician may have dropped some words on our coasts. The Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons brought in a new language, and, arriving from separate localities, that language came to us diversified by dialects; and the Danes, too, joined the northern brotherhood of pirate-kings who planted themselves in our soil. The gradual predominance of the West-Saxon over the petty kingdoms which subdivided Britain first approached to the formation of a national language. The West-Saxon was the land of Alfred, and the royal cultivation of its dialect, supreme in purity as the realm stood in power, rendered it the standard language which we now call Anglo-Saxon.

"Had the Heptarchy (Octarchy) continued," observed Bishop Percy, "our English language would probably have been as much distinguished for its dialects as the Greek, or at least as that of the several independent states of Italy." In truth, we remained much in that condition while a power hostile to the national character a.s.sumed the sovereignty. So unsettled was the English language, that a writer at the close of the fourteenth century tells us that different parts of the island experienced a difficulty to understand one another. A diversity of p.r.o.nunciation, as well as a diversity in the language, was so prevalent, that the Northern, the Southern, and the Middle-land men were unintelligible when they met; the Middle-land understood the Northern and the Southern better than the Northman and the Southman comprehended one another; the English people seemed to form an a.s.semblage of distinct races. Even to this day, a scene almost similar might be exhibited.

Should a peasant of the Yorks.h.i.+re dales, and one from the vales of Taunton, and another from the hills of the Chiltern, meet together, they would require an interpreter to become intelligible to each other; but in this dilemma what county could produce the Englishman so versed in provincial dialects as to a.s.sist his three honest countrymen?

If etymology often furnishes a genealogy of words through all their authentic descents, so likewise a map of provincial idioms might be constructed to indicate the localities of the dialects. There we might observe how an expansive and lengthened river, or intervening fells and mountains which separate two counties, can stop the course of a dialect, so that the idiom current on one side, when it pa.s.ses the borders becomes intrusive, little regarded, and ere it reaches a third county has expired in the pa.s.sage. Thus the Parret, we are told, is the boundary of the Somersets.h.i.+re dialect; for words used cast of the Parret are only known by synonyms on the west side. The same incident occurs in Italy, where a single river runs through the level plain; there the Piedmontese peasant from the western end meeting with a Venetian from the eastern could hold but little colloquial intercourse together; a Genoese would be absolutely unintelligible to both, for, according to their proverb, "Language was the gift of G.o.d, but the Genoese dialect was the invention of the devil." In those rank dialects left to run to seed in their wild state, without any standard of literature, we hardly recognise the national idiom; the Italian language sprung from one common source--its maternal Latin; but this we might not suspect should we decide solely by its dialects: and we may equally wonder how some of our own could ever have been mangled and distorted out of the fair dimensions of the language of England.

All who speak a dialect contract a particular intonation which, almost as much as any local words, betrays their soil; these provincial tones are listened to from the cradle; and, as all dialects are of great antiquity, this sounding of the voice has been bequeathed from generation to generation.[3] It is sometimes a low muttering in the throat, a thick guttural like the Welsh, or a shrill nasal tw.a.n.g, or a cadence or chant; centuries appear not to have varied the tone more than the vocable. The Romance of "Octavien Imperator," which was written possibly earlier than the reign of Henry VI., is in the Hamps.h.i.+re dialect nearly as it is spoken now. The speech of a Yorks.h.i.+reman is energetically described by our ancient Trevisa. "It is so sharpe, slytting, frotyng, and unshape, that we sothern men maye unneth understond that language." As we advance in the North, the tones of the people are described as "round and sonorous, broad open vowels, and the richness and fulness of the diphthongs fill their mouths" with a firm, hardy speech.

A striking contrast is observable among those who by their secluded position have held little intercourse with their neighbours, and have contracted an overweening estimation of themselves, and a provincial pride in their customs, manners, and language. Norfolk, surrounded on three sides by the sea, remains unaltered to this day, and still designates as "s.h.i.+remen" all who are born out of Norfolk, not without "some little expression of contempt." There is "a narrowness and tenuity in their p.r.o.nunciation," such as we may fancy--for it is but a fancy--would steal out of the lips of reserved, proudful men, and who, as their neighbours of Suffolk run their common talk into strange melancholy cadences, have characterised their peculiar intonation as "the Suffolk whine!" In Derbys.h.i.+re the p.r.o.nunciation is broad, and they change the G into K. The Lancas.h.i.+re folk speak quick and curt, omit letters, or sound three or four words all together; thus, _I wou'didd'n_, or _I woudyedd'd_, is a cacophony which stands for _I wish you would_! When the editor of a Devons.h.i.+re dialect found that it was aspersed as the most uncouth jargon in England, he appealed to the Lancas.h.i.+re.[4]

But such vile rustic dissonance or mere balderdash concerns not our vernacular literature, though it seems that even such agrestic rubbish may have its utility in a provincial vocabulary; for the glossary to the "Exmoor language" was drawn up for the use of lawyers on the western circuit, who frequently mistook the evidence of a rustic witness for want of an interpretation of his words. Some ludicrous misconceptions of equivocal terms or some ridiculous phraseology have been recorded in other counties, among the judges and the bar at a county a.s.size.

But it is among our provincial dialects that we discover many beautiful archaisms, scattered remnants of our language, which explain those obscurities of our more ancient writers, singularities of phrase, or lingual peculiarities, which have so often bewildered the most acute of our commentators. After all their voluminous research and their conjectural temerity, a villager in Devons.h.i.+re or in Suffolk, and, more than either, the remoter native of the North Countree, with their common speech, might have recovered the baffled commentators from their agony.

The corrections of modern editors have often been discovered to be only ingenious corruptions of their own whenever the original provincial idiom has started up.

These provincial modes of speech have often actually preserved for us the origin of English phraseology, and enlightened the philologist in a path unexplored. In one of the most original and most fanciful of the dramas of Ben Jonson, "The Sad Shepherd," the poet designed to appropriate a provincial dialect to the Witch Maudlin's family. He had consulted Lacy the comedian, who was a native of Yorks.h.i.+re, respecting the northern phraseology. Unfortunately, this drama was never finished; and the consequence is, that the dialects are incorrectly given, and are worsened by the orthography of the printer. Yet it was from this imperfect attempt to convey some notion of our dialects that Horne Tooke was able to elucidate one of his grammatical discoveries, in regard to the conjunction IF, which, from "The Sad Shepherd," is demonstrated to be anciently the imperative of the verb GIF, or give. Thus it was, by apparently very rude dialects, this famous philologist was enabled to substantiate beyond doubt a signification which had occurred to no one but himself.[5]

A language in the progress of its refinement loses as well as gains in the amount of words, and the good fortune of expressive phrases. Some become equivocal by changing their signification, and some fall obsolete, one cannot tell why, for custom or caprice arbitrate, guided by no law, and often with an unmusical ear. These discarded but faithful servants, now treated as outcasts, and not even suspected to have any habitation, are safely lodged in some of our dialects. As the people are faithful traditionists, repeating the words of their forefathers, and are the longest to preserve their customs, they are the most certain antiquaries; and their oral knowledge and their ancient observances often elucidate many an archaeological obscurity. Hence, two remarkable consequences have been discovered in the history of our popular idioms; many words and phrases used in the land of c.o.c.kney, now deemed not only vulgar but ungrammatical, are in fact not corruptions of the native tongue, but the remains of what was anciently at different periods the established national dialect.[6] This transmitted language descended to the humbler cla.s.ses, unimpaired and unaugmented, through a long line of ancestry. Again, it is often probable that the provincial word which in its p.r.o.nunciation merely reverses the order of the letters, as now uttered, and which is only heard from the mouths of the people, may convey the original spoken sound, and be the genuine English. Are we quite sure that the polishers may not often have been the corrupters of our language? Nor let us be positive that the metropolitan taste has always fixed on the most felicitous or the most forcible of our idiomatic words or phrases, since we may discover some lingering among our provincial dialects which should never have been dismissed, and which claim to be restored. When JOHNSON compiled his "Dictionary," he was not aware of the authentic antiquity of our dialectic terms and phrases. Our literary antiquities had not yet engaged the attention of general scholars. Provincialisms were not deemed by the legislator of our language legitimate words; he did not recognise their primitive claims, nor their relative affinities, but ejected them as vagabonds.

But words are not barbarous nor obsolete because no longer used in our written composition, since some of the most exquisite and picturesque, which have ceased to enrich our writings, live in immortal pages. After the issue of Johnson's great labour, our national literature began to attract the studies of literary men, who soon perceived how this neglected but existing stock of idiomatic English in our provincialisms more certainly explained our elder writers in verse and prose. Amid the murmurs raised by the archaeologists, ASH attempted to supply the palpable deficiency of Johnson; but the matter was too abundant, and his s.p.a.ce too contracted. In vain he attempted his "Supplement;" all the counties in England seemed to rise against the luckless glossarist; but notwithstanding its limited utility, his vocabulary was often preferred for its copiousness to the more elaborate lexicon. The spirit of inquiry was now abroad after the "winged words;" and ingenious persons, within these twenty years,[7] have produced a number of provincial glossaries; but several are still wanting, particularly those of Kent, and Suss.e.x, and Hamps.h.i.+re. All these glossaries collected together might form a provincial lexicon marking each county. A few might be allowed to enter into the great dictionary of the English language; but that would not be their safest place, for they would then lie at the mercy of successive editors, who would not always discern a precious archaism amid the baseness and corruption of language. The origin, the nature, and the history of our provincial idioms have yet never been investigated, though the subject, freed from its mere barbarisms, opens a diversified field to the philosopher, the antiquary, and the philologist.

Grose, who wrote in 1785, notices the state of those counties which were remote from the metropolis, or which had no immediate intercourse with it before "newspapers and stage-coaches imported scepticism, and made every ploughman and thresher a politician and a freethinker." The accelerated intercourse of the people has long pa.s.sed beyond the diurnal folio and the evanescent stage-coach, and in a century of railroads and national schools the provincial glossary will finally vanish away.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Dictionnaire Languedocien-francois," par l'Abbe de Sauvages.

"_Franchiman_ est forme de l'Allemand, et signifie _homme de France_." The Abbe wrote in 1756, when he did not care to translate too literally; the Frank-man meant the _Free man_, for the Franks called themselves so, as "the free people." This learned Gascon, in his zeal for the _Langue d'oc_, explains, "_Parla Franchiman_," means "parler avec l'accent (bon ou mauvais) des provinces du nord du royaume:" an insinuation that the French accent might not be positively the better one. The good Abbe had such a perfect conviction of the superiority of his Languedocians, that he would have no other servants not only for their superior integrity, but for that of their language.

[2] "Palgrave," 174. They also received some in exchange, many words in Caesar being British.--Hearne's "Leland's Itinerary," vi.

[3] In that very curious "Logonomia Anglica" of the learned Alexander Gill--the father, for his son of the same name succeeded him as master of St. Paul's--we have the orthoepy of our dialects given with great exactness. This work was produced about 1619, and we find the peculiar provincial p.r.o.nunciation of the present day. A work so curious in the history of our vernacular tongue should not have been composed in Latin. Mr. Guest has carefully translated a judicious extract,--"History of English Rhythms," ii, 204.

[4] The late Dr. Valpy told me that Mr. Walker, the orthoepist, had so intimate a knowledge of the provincial peculiarities of p.r.o.nunciation, that in a private course of reading at Oxford with twelve undergraduates, he told each of them the respective place of their birth or early education.

[5] Tooke's "Diversions of Purley," p. 141.

[6] In "Anecdotes of the English Language," by Samuel Pegge, an antiquary, who called himself "an old modern," the reader will find several curious exemplifications of the vulgar dialect, sometimes fancifully, but often satisfactorily ascertained. It is amusing to detect what we call _vulgarisms_ composing the language of Chaucer and Shakspeare, and even our Bibles and Liturgies.

[7] RAY was the first who collected "Local Words, _North Country_ and _South_ and _East Country_." "The Exmoor Scolding and Courts.h.i.+p" is an authentic specimen of the _Exmoor Language_. The words were collected by a blind fiddler, and the dialogues were written by a clergyman with the fiddler's a.s.sistance, before 1725. We have a glossary of Lancas.h.i.+re words and phrases, contained in the humorous works of Tim Bobbin. Other county glossarists have appeared within the last fifteen years:--BROCKETT'S "North Country Words;" "Suffolk Words and Phrases," by Major MOOR; Mr. ROGER WILBRAHAM'S "Attempt at a Glossary of Ches.h.i.+re Words;" Mr. JENNINGS' "Dialect of the West of England," particularly the Somersets.h.i.+re words; Mr. BRITTON on those of Wilts.h.i.+re; and the Rev. JOSEPH HUNTER has given "The Hallams.h.i.+re Glossary," to which are appended "Words used in Halifax," by the Rev.

JOHN WATSON, and also an addition to the "Yorks.h.i.+re Words," by Th.o.r.eSBY, the Leeds antiquary.

An investigation of the origin, nature, and history of DIALECTS was proposed by the late Dr. BOUCHER for a complete glossary of all the dialects of the kingdom. But these precious stores, not only of the vocables but of the domestic history of England--its manners, occupations, amus.e.m.e.nts, diet, dress, buildings, and other miscellaneous topics--rich in all the affluence of the laborious readings of more years than the siege of Troy, was but bread cast away on the waters, and was never given to the public for want of public support. After the author's death, two eminent editors zealously resumed the work, which was already prepared; but the public remained so little instructed of its value, it suddenly ceased! Works of national utility should be consecrated as national property, and means should be always ready to avert such a calamity to the literature of England, and to the information of Englishmen, as was the suppression of the labours of BOUCHER.

MANDEVILLE; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER.

Mandeville was the Bruce of the fourteenth century, as often calumniated and even ridiculed. The most ingenuous of voyagers has been condemned as an idle fabulist; the most cautious, as credulous to fatuity; and the volume of a genuine writer, which has been translated into every European language, has been formally ejected from the collection of authentic travels. His truest vindication will be found by comprehending him; and to be acquainted with his character, we must seek for him in his own age.

At a period when Europe could hardly boast of three leisurely wayfarers stealing over the face of the universe; when the Orient still remained but a Land of Faery, and "the map of the world" was yet unfinished; at a time when it required a whole life to traverse a s.p.a.ce which three years might now terminate, Sir JOHN MANDEVILLE set forth to enter unheard-of regions. Returning home, after an absence of more than thirty years, he discovered a "mervayle" strange as those which he loved to record--that he was utterly forgotten by his friends!

He had returned "maugre himself," for four-and-thirty years had not satiated his curiosity; his n.o.ble career had submitted to ordinary infirmities--to gout and the aching of his limbs; these, he lamentably tells, had "defined the end of my labour against my will, G.o.d knoweth!"

The knight in this pilgrimage of life seems to have contracted a duty with G.o.d, that while he had breath he should peregrinate, and, having nothing to do at home, be honourable in his generation by his enterprise over the whole earth. And earnestly he prays "to all the _readers_ and _hearers_ of my book," (for "hearers" were then more numerous than "readers,") "to say for him a _Pater-Noster_ with an _Ave-Maria_." He wrote for "solace in his wretched rest;" but the old pa.s.sion, the devotion of his soul, finally triumphed over all arthritic pangs. The globe evidently was his true home; and thus Liege, and not London, received the bones of an unwearied traveller, whose thoughts were ever pa.s.sing beyond the equator.

With us, to whom an excursion to "the Londe of Promyssioun or of Behest"

has sometimes arisen out of a morning engagement--we who impelled by steam go "whither we list," with those billets which might serve as letters of recommendation in the steppes of Tartary,--we may wonder how our knight, who would not win his way by the arts of commerce, like his predecessor Marco Polo, bore up his chivalry; for in his traversing he had nothing to offer but his honourable sword, and probably his medical science, which might be sometimes as perilous. But difficulties insuperable to us could not enter into the emotions, nor were they the accidents which impeded the traveller, "who, on the day of St. Michael, in the year of our Lord 1322, pa.s.sed the sea, and went the way to Hierusalem, and to behold the mervayles of Inde." A deep religious emotion, an obscure indefinite curiosity, and a courageous decision to wander wherever the step of man could press on the globe, to tell the world "the mervayles" it unconsciously holds within its...o...b.. were the inspiration of a journey which stood next in solemnity to a departure to the world of spirits. Sir John had prepared himself, for he was learned not only in languages, but in authentic romance, and in romantic history; and he honestly resolved to tell all "the mervayles" which he had seen, and those which he had not; and these last were not the least.

Sir John Mandeville's probity remains unimpeached; for the accuracy of whatever he relates from his own personal observation has been confirmed by subsequent travellers. On his return to Europe he hastened to Rome to submit his book to the Pope, and to "his wise council," and "those learned men of all nations who dwell at that court." The volume was critically reviewed; and his holiness "ratified and confirmed my book in all points," by referring to an account in Latin: this account was probably written by some missionary; Rubriquis had been dispatched on an unsuccessful mission to Christianize the great Khan of Tartary in 1230; or it was the writings of Marco Polo, which could not be unknown at Rome. In that day all real information was consigned to the fugitive ma.n.u.script, partially known, and often subject to the interpolations and capricious alterations of its possessor, and what sometimes occurred, to the silent plagiarisms of other writers--of which even Mandeville himself has been suspected.

The Pope decreed that not only all that Mandeville related was veracious, but that the Latin book which his holiness possessed contained _much more_, and from whence the Mappa Mundi had been made.

Indeed Mandeville has himself told us that he wrote only from his recollections as they "would come into his mind;" these necessarily were often broken and obscure. Some "mervayles" remained unrecorded, and hereafter were to be "more plainly told;" but I fear these are lost for us.

In this "true" book we find many things very untrue, but we may doubt whether any in that day were as positive in this opinion. The author himself designed no imposition on his readers; he tells us what he believed; part of which he had seen and the rest he had heard, and sometimes had transcribed from sources deemed by him authentic. Who can suspect the knight of spotless honour, and whose piety would not relinquish his _Ave-Marias_ for a dominion? Having fought during two years under the ensign of the Sultan of Egypt, and being offered in marriage the Sultan's daughter and a province, he refused both, when his Christianity was to be exchanged for Mahometanism.

This was a period when the marvellous never weakened the authenticity of a tale. The mighty tome of Pliny, that awful repository of all the errors of antiquity, and other writers of equal name, detail prodigies and legends, and so do the Fathers. Who would not have rejoiced to transcribe Pliny or St. Austen? Who imagined that all the delectable adventures of the romances, over which they pa.s.sed many a dreamy day, with the very names of the personages and the very places where they occurred, were solely chimeras of the brain? The learned Mandeville was evidently not one of these sceptics: for he observes, that "the trees of the sun and of the moon are well known to have spoken to King Alisaundre, and warned him of his death." The unquestioned fact is in that famed romance; and others might be referred to if we required additional authority. I have read of these talking trees of the sun and moon in _Guarino detto il Meschino_, who lived a year among them to learn his own genealogy, and then was graceless enough to laugh at these timber-oracles. Mandeville forgot not in the island of Lango, not distant from Crete, the legend of the unfortunate "Lady of the Land,"

who remained a dragoness, because no one had the hardihood to kiss her lips to disenchant her. He tells likewise of the Faery Lady who guarded the sparrow-hawk; whoever ventured to a.s.sist that lady during three days and nights, was rewarded by the boon of having whatever he wished. A king who, not wanting anything, had the audacity to wish to have the lady herself, was fairly warned that he did not know what he asked, as happens to the reckless; but, persisting in his absolute will, he incurred the curse of perpetual war to the last of his race!

We trace such tales among the romances, with all their circ.u.mstances; and some may have reached the listener from the Arabian tale-teller. The monsters he describes Mandeville never invented; these, human and animal, he gave as some of his predecessors had done, from Pliny, or aelian, or Ctesias,[1] who have sent them down to be engraven in the Great Nuremberg Chronicle, and adorned in the immortal page of Shakspeare. Marco Polo had noticed that portentous bird which could lift an elephant by its claws; he does not tell us that he had seen any bird of this wing, but we all know where it is to be found--in the Arabian Tales! Sir Thomas Browne accuses Mandeville of _confirming_ the fabulous accounts of India by Ctesias; but, in truth, our knight does not "confirm these refuted notions of antiquity;" he only repeats them, with the prelude of "men seyn." No one was more honest than Mandeville, for when he had to describe the locality of paradise, he fairly acknowledges that "he cannot speak of it properly, for I was not there; it is far beyond, but as I have _heard say_ of wise men, it is on the highest part of the earth, nigh to the circle of the moon." However, he has contrived to describe the wall, which is not of stone, but of moss, with but a single entrance, "closed with brennynge fyre;" and though no mortal could enter, yet it was known that there was a well in paradise, whence flowed the four floods that run through the earth. "Wise men," he tells us, said this; some of these "wise men" were the Rabbins; and three centuries afterwards, the accounts of paradise, by a finer genius than Mandeville, the ill.u.s.trious Rawleigh, remained much the same.

To explain some of those incredible incidents which occurred to the author himself might exercise some critical ingenuity. Mandeville's adventure in "the Valley Perilous," when he saw the Devil's head with eyes of flame, great plenty of gold and silver, which he was too frightened to touch, and, moreover, a mult.i.tude of dead bodies, as if a battle had been fought there, might probably be resolved into some volcanic eruption, the rest supplied by his own horrifying imagination; for he tells, with great simplicity, "I was more devout then than ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends that _I saw in divers figures_;" that is, at the _shapes_ of the disparted rocks. The travellers were beaten down by tempests, winds, and thunder, which raged in this pent-up vale. As he marks the locality, the spot may yet be ascertained.

There was no imposition practised in all such legends; it is we who are startled by the supernatural in a personal narrative; but in the fourteenth century the more wonderful the tale, the more authentic it appeared, as it sunk into the softest and richest moulds of the most germinating imagination. The readers, or the hearers, were as well prepared to believe, as the writers prompt to gather up, their fictions.

Collections of "Mirabilia Mundi," "Wonders," were a fas.h.i.+onable t.i.tle applied to any single country, as well as to the world--to England or Ireland, to the Holy Land or the Indies. The "Mirabilia" might be the running t.i.tle for a whole system of geography. The age of imagination has long been unfurnished of all its ingenious garniture, and yet we still catch at some evanescent hour of fancy susceptible of those ancient delights. We have lost something for which we have no subst.i.tute. Would not the modern novelist rejoice in the privilege of intermingling supernatural inventions to break the level of his every-day incidents and his trivial pa.s.sions so soon forgotten? But that glowing day has set, leaving none of its ethereal hues in our cold twilight. Mandeville may still be read for those wild arabesques which so long unjustly proved fatal to his authentic narrative. His simplicity often warrants its truth; he a.s.sures us that Jerusalem is placed in the middle of the earth, because when he stuck his staff in the ground, exactly at noon, it cast no shadow; and having ascertained the spherical form of the globe, he marvels how the antipodes, whose feet are right upwards towards us, yet do not fall into the firmament! When he describes the elegant ornaments of "a vine made of gold that goeth all about the hall, with many bunches of grapes, some white, and the red made of rubies," he tells what he had seen in some divan; but when he records that "the Emperor hath in his chamber a pillar of gold, in which is a ruby and carbuncle a foot long, which lighteth all his chamber by night," it may be questioned whether this carbuncle be anything more than an Arabian fancy, a tale to which he had listened. Some of his ocular marvels have been confirmed by no questionable authority.

Mandeville's description of a magical exhibition before the Khan of Tartary is a remarkable instance of the strange optical illusions of the scenical art, and the adroitness of the Indian jugglers--a similar scene appears in a recent version of the autobiography of the Emperor Akber.

What seemed the spells of magic to the Europeans of that age, and of which some marvellous descriptions were brought to Europe by the crusaders or the pilgrims, and embellished the romances, our exquisite masques and our grand pantomimes have realized. Three centuries were to elapse ere the court of England could rival the necromancy of the court of Tartary.