Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 28

"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see an abstract in the printed catalogue.

"In Dr. Hayne's 'Collection of State Papers in the Hatfield History,' p.

56, is a long letter of the lord of the council of Henry VIII., in 1546, to his amb'r. with the Emperor."

TO DR. BIRCH.

_Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct.

8, 1765._

" . . . I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my 'Charles V.,'

partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The historical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a preliminary book, in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall return them carefully as soon as my work is done."

OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS.

In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed in flight, oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor, one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have an appropriate designation for such works, which they call "_ouvrages de longue haleine_," and it has often happened that the _haleine_ has closed before the work.

Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian, who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches:--but he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project!

Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him."

A few ill.u.s.trious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number of things in the circ.u.mscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might want a world to conquer! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The flame kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age; and it was in his senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his _Annali d'Italia_ as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, and the six folios of the _Antiquitates Medii aevi_! Yet these vast edifices of history are not all which this ill.u.s.trious Italian has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn an admirable character of Muratori.

But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us, WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of our poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.

Life pa.s.ses away in collecting materials--the marble lies in blocks--and sometimes a colonnade is erected, or even one whole side of a palace indicates the design of the architect. Count MAZZUCh.e.l.lI, early in life, formed a n.o.ble but too mighty a project, in which, however, he considerably advanced. This was an historical and critical account of the memoirs and the writings of Italian authors; he even commenced the publication in alphabetical order, but the six invaluable folios we possess only contain the authors the initial letters of whose names are A and B! This great literary historian had finished for the press other volumes, which the torpor of his descendants has suffered to lie in a dormant state. Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the days of the patriotic Mazzuch.e.l.li were freely given to the most curious and elegant researches in his national literature; his correspondence is said to consist of forty volumes; with eight of literary memoirs, besides the lives of his literary contemporaries;--but Europe has been defrauded of the hidden treasures.

The history of BAILLET'S "Jugemens des Scavans sur les Princ.i.p.aux Ouvrages des Auteurs," or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet pa.s.sed his life in the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons, and as an act of grat.i.tude arranged a cla.s.sified catalogue in thirty-two folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly composed on any subject, but also marked those pa.s.sages relative to the subject which other writers had touched on. By means of this catalogue, the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries. This catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions, with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive.

The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos, yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets, forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great division; to more important cla.s.ses the laborious projector never reached!

Another literary history is the "Bibliotheque Francoise" of GOUJET, left unfinished by his death. He had designed a cla.s.sified history of French literature; but of its numerous cla.s.ses he has only concluded that of the translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets.

He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!

A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Litteraire de la France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth century![A]

[Footnote A: This work has been since resumed.]

DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes curious: but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute, remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see so hopelessly interrupted.

When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose "Fabliaux" are so well known, adopted, in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the _Melanges tires d'une grande Bibliotheque_, of a picture of the domestic life of the French people from their earliest periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision; it had novelty, amus.e.m.e.nt, and curiosity: "_le sujet m'en parut neuf, riche et piquant_." He revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the interior decorations of their houses, their changeable dress, their games, and recreations; in a word, on all the parts which were most adapted to amuse the fancy. But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy scene faded in the length, the repet.i.tion, and the never-ending labour and weariness; and the three volumes which we now possess, instead of sports, dresses, and architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always a very amusing, account of the food of the French nation.

No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit--he may excite a smile in those who have never experienced this toil of books and ma.n.u.scripts--but he claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking picture of these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of the voluminous author, who is doomed never to finish his curious work:--

"Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, till then, was unaltered, and which excess of labour has greatly changed, I devoted myself to write the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century.

Renouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day, extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this sad life I now wished to draw breath, turn over what I had ama.s.sed, and arrange it. I found myself possessed of many thousands of _bulletins_, of which the longest did not exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, from which I was to form a regular history, I must confess that I shuddered; I felt myself for some time in a _stupor and depression of spirits_; and now actually that I have finished this work, _I cannot endure the recollection of that moment of alarm without a feeling of involuntary terror._ What a business is this, good G.o.d, of a compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it merits some regard. At length I regained courage; I returned to my researches: I have completed my plan, though every day I was forced to _add_, to _correct_, to _change my facts as well as my ideas_; SIX times has my hand _re-copied my work_; and, however fatiguing this may be, it certainly is not that portion of my task which has cost me most."

The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. Watt may serve as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life.

To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded down his last page; the son who, during the last four years, had toiled under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours.

One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and, when he rejoices to see the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down."

OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED.

It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and to that repugnance to alter what is known for that which has not been sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter half century considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters, that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never discovered the practice of was.h.i.+ng his hands, but cleansed them as animals do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be surprised, had he laid before him the history of some of the most familiar domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred the ridicule of the wits, and had to pa.s.s through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. The subject requires no grave investigation; we will, therefore, only notice a few of universal use. They will sufficiently demonstrate that, however obstinately man moves in "the march of intellect," he must be overtaken by that greatest of innovators--Time itself; and that, by his eager adoption of what he had once rejected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful, he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former generation, who were baffled in their attempts to do what we all are now doing.

Forks are an Italian invention; and in England were so perfect a novelty in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary,"

relating a bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to have "his gla.s.s or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with his knife, spoon, _fork."_ This thing was so strange that he found it necessary to describe it.[A] It is an instrument "to hold the meat while he cuts it; for they hold it ill-manners that one should touch the meat with his hands."[B] At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating as the Turkish _n.o.blesse_ at present do, with only the free use of their fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to their mouths by their mere manual dexterity. They were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits, scattering on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their tables, the servant bore a long wooden "voiding-knife," by which he sc.r.a.ped the fragments from the table into a basket, called "a voider."

Beaumont and Fletcher describe the thing,

They sweep the table with a wooden dagger.

[Footnote A: Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely unknown as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the "Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era; they were found with fragments of ornaments in silver and bra.s.s, all of which had been deposited in a box, of which there were some decayed remains; together with about seventy pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and n.o.ble persons in the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials, and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in 1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, ou il y a ij balays et X perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver forks to eat pears with; and the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork of gold to take sops from wine (a prendre la soupe ou vin). They appear to have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the highest cla.s.ses; hence their comparative rarity.--Ed.]

[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]

Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence--

--the laudable use of forks, To the sparing of napkins.

This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the traveller, the perpetual b.u.t.t of the wits. He positively claims this immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fas.h.i.+on by this FORKED _cutting of meat,_ not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St.

Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the Restoration! On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used. In _The Fox_, Sir Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes--

--Then you must learn the use And handling of your silver fork at meals.

[Footnote A: I find this circ.u.mstance concerning forks mentioned in the "Dictionnaire de Trevoux."]

Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more than one way in which it may be practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau de l'Angleterre" a.s.serts that "an Englishman may be discovered anywhere, if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by using it as a toothpick."

Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be unaccompanied by what Ma.s.singer in contempt calls

Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork!

Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni's of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked--namely, a mincing Frenchman. At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion--lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower--but not commonly carried by the walkers. The _Female Tatler_ advertises "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house, who, in fear of rain, borrowed _the umbrella from Wilks' Coffee-house,_ shall the next time be welcome to the maid's _pattens_." An umbrella carried by a man was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy. As late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own life, informs us, that when he carried "a fine silk umbrella, which he had brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was, that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true _esprit de corps_, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in 1778, gives us further Information:--"At this time there were no umbrellas worn in London, except in n.o.blemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it rained, between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his umbrella. But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till they took no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number of umbrellas.

[Footnote A: Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and a.s.syria. They are also depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom, appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In Caedmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon ma.n.u.script of the tenth century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings.

The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above, they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.--Ed.]

Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source of declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the ascetics of monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don John of Austria, describing that golden age, the good old times, when they only used "carts drawn by oxen, riding in this manner to court," notices that it was found necessary to prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, "to such a height was this _infernal vice_ got, which has done so much injury to Castile."

In this style nearly every domestic novelty has been attacked. The injury inflicted on Castile by the introduction of coaches could only have been felt by the purveyors of carts and oxen for a morning's ride.

The same circ.u.mstances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found their "occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their footmen, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on the river.

Judges and counsellors from their inns would no longer be conveyed by water to Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were thrown out of their habitual employments--the watermen, the hackneymen, and the saddlers. Families were now jolted, in a heavy wooden machine, into splendour and ruin. The disturbance and opposition these coaches created we should hardly now have known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet[A] and man, sent down to us an invective against coaches, in 1623, dedicated to all who are grieved with "the world running on wheels."