Amenities of Literature Part 35

When we had climb'd the cliff, and were ash.o.r.e.

instead of

When we had come ash.o.r.e, and climb'd the cliff.

The _hipallage_ he calls _the changeling_, when changing the place of words changes the sense; as in the phrase "come dine with me, and stay not," turned into "come stay with me, and dine not." This change of sense into nonsense he called "the changeling," in allusion to the nursery legend when fairies steal the fairest child, and subst.i.tute an ill-favoured one. This at least is a most fanciful account of nonsense!

I will give the technical terms of satire; they display a refinement of conception which we hardly expected from the native effusions of the wits of that day. _Ironia_, he calls the _dry-mock_; _sarcasmus_, the _bitter taunt_; the Greek term _asteismus_ he calls _the merry scoff_--it is the jest which offends not the hearer. When we mock scornfully comes the _micterismus_, the _fleering frumpe_, as he who said to one to whom he gave no credit, "_No doubt, sir, of that!_" The _antiphrasis_, or the _broad flout_, when we deride by flat contradiction, ant.i.thetically calling a dwarf a giant; or addressing a black woman, "In sooth ye are a fair one!" The _charientismus_ is _the privy nippe_, when you mock a man in a _sotto voce_; and the _hyperbole_, as the Greeks term the figure, and the Latins _dementiens_, our vernacular critic, for its immoderate excess, describes as "the over-reacher, or the loud liar." The rhetorical figures of our critic exceed a hundred in number, if Octavius Gilchrist has counted rightly, all which are ingeniously ill.u.s.trated by fragments of our own literature, and often by poetical and historical anecdotes by no means common and stale. We must appreciate this treasure of our own antiquity, though we may smile when we learn that while we speak or write, however naturally, we are in fact violating, or ill.u.s.trating, this heap of rhetorical figures, without whose aid unconsciously our _fleering frumpes_, our _merry scoffs_, and our _privy nippes_, have been intelligible all our days.

In the more elevated spirit of this work, the writer opens by defining the poet, after the Greek, to be "a maker" or creator, drawing the verse and the matter from his native invention,--unlike the _translator_, who therefore may be said to be a versifier, and not a poet. This canon of criticism might have been secure from the malignity of hypercriticism.

It happened, however, that in the year following that in which "The Art of Poetry" was published, Sir John Harrington put forth his translation of Ariosto, and, presuming that none but a poet could translate a poet, he caught fire at the solemn exclusion. The vindictive "versifier"

invented a merciless annihilation both of the critic and his "Art," by very unfair means; for he proved that the critic himself was a most detestable poet, and consequently the very existence of "The Art" itself was a nullity! "All the receipts of poetry prescribed," proceeds the enraged translator of Ariosto, "I learn out of this very book, never breed excellent poets. For though the poor gentleman laboureth to make poetry an art, he proveth nothing more plainly than that it is a _gift_ and not an _art_, because making himself and many others so cunning in the art, yet he sheweth himself so slender a gift in it."

Was this critic qualified by nature and art to arbitrate on the destinies of the Muses? Were his taste and sensibility commensurate with that learning which dictated with authority, and that ingenuity which reared into a system the diversified materials of his critical fabric?

We hesitate to allow the claims of a critic whose trivial taste values "the courtly trifles," which he calls "pretty devices," among the inventions of poesy; we are startled by his elaborate exhibition of "geometrical figures in verse," his delight in egg or oval poems, tapering at the ends and round in the middle, and his columnar verse, whose pillars, shaft, and capital, can be equally read upwards and downwards. This critic, too, has betrayed his utter penury of invention in "parcels of his own poetry," obscure conceits in barbarous rhymes; by his intolerable "triumphals," poetical speeches for recitation; and a series of what he calls "partheniades, or new year's gifts,"--bloated eruptions of those hyperbolical adulations which the maiden queen could endure, but which bear the traces of the poetaster holding some appointment at court.

When the verse flowed beyond the mechanism of his rule of scanning, and the true touch of nature beyond the sympathy of his own emotions, the rhetorician showed the ear of Midas. He condemns the following lines as "going like a minstrel's music in a metre of eleven, very harshly in my ear, whether it be for lack of good rime or of good reason, or of both, I wot not." And he exemplifies this lack of "good rime and good reason, or both," by this exquisitely tender apostrophe of a mother to her infant:

Now suck, child, and sleep, child, thy mother's own joy, Her only sweet comfort to drown all annoy; For beauty, surpa.s.sing the azured sky, I love thee, my darling, as ball of mine eye.

Such a stanza indeed may disappoint the reader when he finds that we are left without any more.

In the history of this ambiguous book, and its anonymous author, I discover so many discrepancies and singularities, such elaborate poetical erudition, combined with such inept.i.tude of poetic taste, that I am inclined to think that the more excellent parts could never have been composed by the courtly trifler. It is remarkable that this curious Art of English Poetry was ascribed to SIDNEY; and Wanley, in his catalogue of the Harley Library, a.s.signs this volume to Spenser.[4] I lay no stress on the singular expression of Sir John Harrington, applied to the present writer, as "the unknown _G.o.dfather_," which seems to indicate that the presumed writer had named an offspring without being the parent. Nor will I venture to suggest that this work may at all have been connected with that treatise of "the English poets," which Spenser, we know, had lost and never recovered. The poet lived ten years after the present publication, and it does not appear that he ever claimed this work. Ma.n.u.scripts, however, we may observe, strangely wandered about the world in that day, and such literary foundlings often fell into the hands of the charitable. In that day of modest publication, some were not always solicitous to claim their own; and there are even instances of the original author, residing at a distance from the metropolis, who did not always discover that his own work had long pa.s.sed through the press; so narrow then was the sphere of publication, and so partial was all literary communication.

One more mystery is involved in the authors.h.i.+p of this remarkable work: first printed in 1589, we gather from the book itself that it was in hand at least as early as in 1553. This glorious retention of a work during nearly forty years, would be a literary virtue with which we cannot honour the trifler who complacently alludes to so many of his own writings which no one else has noticed, and unluckily for himself has furnished for us so many "parcels of his poetry," to exemplify "the art."

If we resolve the enigma, by acknowledging that this learned and curious writer has not been the only critic who has proved himself to be the most woful of poetasters, this decision will not account for the mysterious silence of the writer in allowing an elaborate volume, the work of a great portion of a life, to be cast out into the world unnamed and unowned.

I find it less difficult to imagine that some stray ma.n.u.script, possibly from the relics of SIDNEY, or perhaps the lost one of SPENSER, might have fallen into the hands of some courtly critic, or "the Gentleman Pensioner," who inlaid it with many of his own trivialities: the discrepancy in the ingenuity of the writing with the genius of the writer in this combination of learning and inept.i.tude would thus be accounted for; at present it may well provoke our scepticism.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "The Arte of English Poesie, contrived in three bookes--the first of Poets and Poesie, the second of Proportion, the third of Ornament," 1589, 4to.

[2] Ames appears first to have called him _Webster_ Puttenham.

Possibly Ames might have noted down the name from Carew, as Master Puttenham, which by an error of the pen, or the printer, was transformed into the remarkable Christian name of _Webster_. I cannot otherwise account for this misnomer. Steevens, in an indistinct reference to a ma.n.u.script, revealed it to be _George_; and probably was led to that opinion by the knowledge of a ma.n.u.script work in the Harleian Collection by a George Puttenham. It is a defence of Elizabeth in the matter of the Scottish Queen. Ellis, our poetic antiquary, has distinguished our author as "Webster, _alias_ George."

All this taken for granted, the last editor, probably in the course of his professional pursuits, falls on a nuncupative will, dated 1590, of a _George_ Puttenham; already persuaded that such a name appertained to the author of the "Art of English Poetry," he ventured to corroborate what yet remained to be ascertained. All that he could draw from the nuncupative will of this _George_ Puttenham is, that he "left all his goods, movable and immovable, moneys, and bonds," to Mary Symes, a favourite female servant; but he infers that "he probably was our author." Yet, at the same time, there turned up another will of one _Richard_ Puttenham, "a prisoner in her Majesty's Bench." _Richard_, therefore, may have as valid pretensions to "The Arte of English Poesie," as _George_, and neither may be the author.

This matter is trivial, and hardly worth an inquiry.

Haslewood, laborious but unfortunately uneducated, is the editor of an elegant reprint of this "Arte of English Poesie." A modern reader may therefore find an easy access to a valuable volume which had been long locked up in the antiquary's closet.

[3] See page 157 of "The Arte of English Poesie."

[4] The following letter is an evidence of the uncertain accounts respecting this author among the most knowing literary historians.

Here, too, we find that Webster, or George, or Richard, is changed into Jo!--

"What authority Mr. Wood has for Jo. Puttenham's being the author of the 'Art of English Poetry' I do not know. Mr. Wanley, in his 'Catalogue of the Harley Library,' says that _he had been told that Edmund Spenser was the author of that book, which came out anonymous_. But Sir John Harrington, in his preface to 'Orlando Furioso,' gives so hard a censure of that book, that Spenser could not possibly be the author."--"Letter from THOMAS BAKER to the Hon.

James West," printed in the "European Magazine," April, 1788.

THE DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT.

A single volume sent forth from the privacy of a retired student, by its silent influence may mark an epoch in the history of the human mind among a people.

Such a volume was "The Discoverie of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot," a singular work which may justly claim the honour in this country of opening that glorious career which is dear to humanity and fatal to imposture.

Witchcraft and magic, and some similar subjects, through a countless succession of ages, consigned the human intellect to darkness and to chains. In this country these conspiracies against mankind were made venerable by our laws and consecrated by erring piety. They were long the artifices of malignant factions, who found it mutually convenient to destroy each other by the condemnation of crimes which could never be either proved or disproved. The sorcerers and witches under the Church of Rome were usually the heretics; and our Henry the Eighth, who was a Protestant pope, transferred the grasp of power to the civil law, and an Act of Parliament of the Reformation made witchcraft felony. Dr.

Bulleyn, a celebrated physician and a reformer, who lived through the gloomy reign of Philip and Mary, bitterly laments "that while so many blessed men are burned, witches should walk at large." When the Act fell into disuse, Elizabeth was reminded, by pet.i.tions from the laity and by preaching from the clergy, that "witches and sorcerers were wonderfully increasing, and that her Majesty's subjects pined away until death."

Witchcraft was again confirmed to be felony.

The learned and others were fostering the traditions of the people about spirits, the incubus, and the succubus, the a.s.semblies of witches, and the sabbaths of Satan. Some constructed their theories to explain the inexplicable; and too many, by torture, extorted their presumed facts and delusive confessions. The sage doated--the legal functionaries were only sanguinary executioners; and the merciful, with the kindest intentions, were practising every sort of cruelty, by what was termed trials to save the accused. The history of these dismal follies belongs even to a late period of the civilization of Christian Europe! An enlightened physician of Germany had raised his voice in defence of the victims who were suffering under the imputation of Sorcery;[1] not denying the Satanic potency, he maintained that the devil was very well able to execute his own malignant purposes without the aid of such miserable agents. It required a protracted century ere Balthaser Bekker's "World Bewitched" could deprive Satan himself of his personality, indeed of his very existence. But it was a subject to be tenderly touched; superst.i.tion was a sacred thing, and too often riveted with theology; and though the learned Wierus had thus guarded his system, to a distant day he encountered the polemical divines. One of his fiercest a.s.sailants was a layman, the learned Bodin, he who has composed so admirable a treatise on Government, now deeply plunged into the "Demonomanie des Sorciers." The volume of Wierus, he tells us, "made his hair stand on end." "Shall we," he cries, "credit a little physician" before all the philosophers of the world, and the laws of G.o.d which condemn sorcerers?

While Wierus and Bodin had been thus employed, an Englishman, Reginald Scot, in the serene retreat of a studious life, was silently labouring on the development of this great moral conquest over the prejudices of Europe. Reginald Scot, who pa.s.sed his life in the occupation of his studies, seems to have concentrated them on this great subject, for he has left no other work, except an esteemed tract on the cultivation of the hop--the vine of his Kentish county. Although he took no degree at college, his erudition was not the less extensive, as appears by his critical knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek. But it was chiefly by his miscellaneous reading, where nothing seems to have escaped his insatiable curiosity on the extraordinary subjects which he ventured to scrutinise with such minute attention, that he was enabled to complete one of the most curious investigations of the age. Anthony Wood, in his peculiar style, tells us that "Scot gave himself up solely to _solid reading_, and to the perusal of _obscure authors_ that had by the generality of the learned been neglected." This is a curious description of the early state of our vernacular literature, and of those students who, watchful over the spirit of the times, sought a familiar acquaintance with the opinions of their contemporaries. All writers were condemned as "obscure" who stood out of the pale of cla.s.sical antiquity; and plain Anthony, who rarely dipped into the writings of Greece and Rome, but was an incessant lover of the miscellaneous writers of modern date, distinguishes his favourites as "solid reading." In the days of Reginald Scot our scholars never ventured to quote other authority than some ancient; but the poets from Homer to Ovid, the historians from Tacitus to Valerius Maximus, and the essayists from Plutarch to Aulus Gellius, could not always supply arguments and knowledge for an age and on topics which had nothing in common with their own.

With more elevated views than Wierus, Scot denied the power of sorcerers, because it attributed to them an omnipotence which can only be the attribute of divine power. Our philosopher could publish only half the truth. "My question is not, as many fondly suppose, whether there be witches or not, but whether they can do such miraculous works as are imputed unto them." He thus adroitly eludes an argument which the public mind was not yet capable of comprehending. The "Discoverer" had to encounter a fierce host in shaking the predominant creed. The pa.s.sions of mankind were enlisted against the zealous antagonist of an ancient European prejudice; the vital interests of priestly exorcists were at stake. To doubt of a supernatural agency seemed to some to be casting a suspicion over miracles and mysteries. The most ticklish point was the difficulty of explaining Scriptural phrases, which Reginald Scot denied related to witches, in the ordinary sense attached to these miserable women; the Hebrew term merely designating a female who practised the arts of "a poisoner," or "a cozener or cheat." The whole scene of the witch of Endor seems to have racked the "Discoverer's"

invention through several chapters, to unveil the preparatory management of such incantations, by the ventriloquising Pythonissa, and her confederate, some l.u.s.ty priest. All these Scot presumes to trace in the obscure and interrupted narrative of the Israelitish Macbeth, who, in his despair, hastened by night to listen to his approaching fate, which hardly required the gift of prophecy to predict.

Our "Discoverer" prepared his readers for a revolution in their opinions. It appears that in his day, notwithstanding some fairies still lurking in the bye-corners of our poets, the whole fairy creed had in fact pa.s.sed away. He appeals to this native mythology, now utterly exploded, as an evidence of popular infatuation; and our philosopher observes that he cannot hope that the partial reader should look with impartial eyes on this book; it were labour lost to ask for this, for, he adds, "I should no more prevail therein than if _a hundred years since I should have entreated your predecessors_ to believe that Robin Goodfellow, that great but antient bull-beggar, had been but a cousening merchant, and no devil indeed." This was a philosophical parallelism; and the corollary pinched the present generation concerning their witches, they who were now holding their fathers dotards for their belief in fairies.

The volume abounds with many strange incidents, which its singular subject involved. The solitary witch of the homestead was not the poetic witch uttering her incantations at her mystic cauldron. Her homely feats are familiar, but the revelations of the impostures are not. "The devils and spirits," the powers of the kingdom of darkness, are more fantastic.

These raw materials have been woven in the rich looms of Shakspeare and Goethe. Our author included in his volume a complete treatise of legerdemain, or the conjuring art. To convince the people that many acts may appear miraculous without the intervention of a miracle, he ingeniously initiated himself into the deceptious practices of the juggler; but he dreaded lest the spectators of his dexterity should depose against his own witchcraft, and "the Familiar," his confederate.

Our seer, to save himself from fire or water, has not only minutely explained these "deceitful arts," but cautiously accompanied them by woodcuts of the magical instruments used on these occasions. At the time, these were surprising revelations. The sagacity of our author antic.i.p.ated the fate of his work. It appears to have shaken the credulity of a very few reflecting magistrates; yet such scholars as Sir Thomas Smith, the great political writer, when he retired from public life, as a justice of peace, was active in punis.h.i.+ng witches. But the book was denounced by the divines.

When Reginald Scot's work was translated into Dutch, we learn from an arch-enemy of philosophy, the intolerant Calvinistical polemic, Voetius, that "this book was an inexhaustible source, whence not a few learned and unlearned persons in the Netherlands have begun to doubt, and grow sceptics and libertines with regard to witchcraft. Our country is infected with libertines and half libertines, and they have proceeded to such a pitch of ignorance, that this set of new Sadducees laugh at all the operations and apparitions of the devils as phantoms and fables of old women, and timorous superst.i.tion." The work was more successful abroad than at home; and, indeed, how often have the benefactors of mankind experienced that the voice of foreigners is the voice of posterity! They decide without prepossessions.

The FIRST edition of the "Discoverie of Witchcraft," 1584, is of extreme rarity, the copies having been burned by the order of James, on his accession to the English throne, in compliance with the act of parliament of 1603, which ratified a belief in witchcraft throughout the three kingdoms; but the author had not survived to see that day. This awful prejudice broke out afresh under the fanatical government, and gave rise to an infamous cla.s.s of men who were called "witch-finders."

When a reward was publicly offered, there seemed to be no end in finding witches. It was probably this great evil which reminded the people of Scot, whose work was reprinted in 1651, but the public so eagerly required another edition, that it was again republished in 1665. The fact was, that justices, judges, and juries, had so little improved by the _second_ edition, that many had kept with great care their note-books of "Examinations of Witches," and were discovering "h.e.l.lish knots of them." It was only in the preceding year that Sir Matthew Hale had left for execution two female victims, without even summing up the evidence, solely resting on the fact that "there were witches," for which a.s.sumption he appealed "to the Scriptures," and he added, to "the wisdom of all nations!" What is not less remarkable in this trial, the ill.u.s.trious corrector of "vulgar errors," Sir Thomas Browne, in his medical character examining the accused person, who was liable to fainting fits, acknowledged that the fits were natural and common; but the philosopher was so prepossessed that the woman was a witch, that he p.r.o.nounced against her, alleging this mystical explanation of "the subtleties of the devil," who had taken this opportunity of her natural fits to be "co-operating with her malice!" What a demonstration that superst.i.tion holds its mastery even over the philosophic intellect!

The popular prejudice was confirmed by narratives of witchcraft, by Joseph Glanvil, one of the early founders of the Royal Society; by the visionary learning of the platonic Dr. More; and by the theological dogmatism of Meric Casaubon. Dr. More was desirous that every parish should keep a register of all authentic histories of apparitions and witchcraft: and Glanvil was so staunch a believer, that he considered that the strong unbelief in some persons was an evidence of what they denied; for that so confident an opinion could not be held but by some kind of witchcraft and fascination in the senses. All these, and such as these, treat with extreme contempt and cover with obloquy "the Father of the modern Witch-advocates," "the Gallant of the Old Hags!" This was our Reginald Scot.

The most elaborate treatise on the subject was now sent forth by John Webster; "The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft," 1677, fo. He defends Scot and Wierus against Glanvil and Casaubon. He was a clergyman, and dares not agitate the question, _an sint_, whether there be witches or not; but _quomodo sint_, in what manner they act, and what the things are they do, or can perform. The state of the question is not simply the being of witches, or _de existencia_, but only _de modo existendi_. The dispute of their manner of existing necessarily supposes their existence. He has, however, detected many singular impostures, and the volume is full and curious.[2]

Glanvil and his "Sadducismus Triumphatus, or full evidence concerning Witches," 1668, a book so popular that I have never met with a very fair copy, introduced with plenary evidence a minute narrative of "the Demon of Tedworth," whose invisible drum beat every night for above a year, in the house of some reverend magistrate, who had evidently raised a spirit which he could not lay, and whose Puck-like pranks wofully deranged the whole unsuspicious family. This tale, confirmed by affidavits, but shaken by demurrers, was long an article of faith, but finished by furnis.h.i.+ng the comedy of Addison's "Drummer." The controversy about witches, including that of ghosts, which were equally the incessant but volatile phantoms of their chase, now a.s.sumed a more serious aspect than ever. The ill.u.s.trious Boyle, who had observed the unguarded heat with which it was pursued, vainly cautioned the parties, that even religion might suffer by weak arguments drawn from uncertain statements. Boyle had more reason to say this than one might suppose; for Dr. More, ever too vehement and too fanciful, had exclaimed in his unhappy conviction, "No bishop, no king! no spirit, no G.o.d!"[3]

Shadwell in his "Lancas.h.i.+re Witches," resolved to advance nothing without authority, accompanies that comedy with ample notes, drawn from the writings of witch-believers. His witches, therefore, are far beneath those of Shakspeare, for they do nothing but what we are told witches do; the whole system of witchery is here exhibited. In his remarkable preface, Shadwell tells us, that if he had not represented them as _real_ witches, "it would have been called atheistical by a prevailing party."

The belief in witchcraft was maintained chiefly by that fatal error which had connected the rejection of any supernatural agency in old women with religious scepticism; and it was fostered by the statutes, which with the lawyer admitted of no doubt. "We cannot doubt of the existence of witchcraft, seeing that our law ordains it to be punished by death," was the argument of Sir George Mackenzie, the great Scottish advocate; nor is it less sad to see such minds as that of the great Dr.

Clarke, celebrated for his logical demonstrations, thus reasoning on witchcraft, astrology, and fortune-telling; "All things of this sort, whenever they have any reality in them, are evidently diabolical; and when they have no reality, they are cheats and lying impostures."[4] The great demonstrator thus confesses "the reality" of these chimeras!

Another not less celebrated divine, Dr. Bentley, infers that "no English priest need affirm the existence of sorcery or witchcraft, since they now have a public law which they neither enacted nor procured, declaring these practices to be felony!"[5] Did the doctor know that churchmen have had no influence in creating that belief, or in enacting this statute?

The gravity of Blackstone seems strangely disturbed when as a lawyer he was compelled to acknowledge its existence. "It is a crime of which one knows not well what account to give." The commentator on the laws of England found no other resource than to turn to Addison, whose gentle sagacity could only discover that "_in general_, there has been such a thing as witchcraft, though one cannot give credit to any _particular_ modern instance of it." Not one of these writers had yet ventured to detect the hallucinations of self-credulity in the victims, and the crimes of remorseless men in their persecutors. The name and the volume of their own countryman had never reached them, who two centuries before had elucidated these chimeras.

After the statute against witchcraft had been repealed in England, we must not forget that an act of the a.s.sembly of the Calvinistic Church of Scotland confesses "as a great national sin, the act of the British Parliament abolis.h.i.+ng the burning and hanging of witches."

The name of Reginald Scot does not appear in the "Biographia Britannica;" and it was only from a short notice by Bayle, that Dr.

Birch, in his translation of the General Dictionary, was induced to draw up a life of our earliest philosopher. Such was the fate of this "English gentleman," as Bayle has described him; and the philosophical reader, in what is now before him, may detect the s.h.i.+fting shades of truth, till it settles in its real and enduring colour; the philosopher had demonstrated a truth which it required a century and a half for the world to comprehend.