The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical Part 2

The above line is said, in an old book, to have "cost the inventor much foolish labor, for it is perfect verse, and every word is the very same both backward and forward."

_Supposed to be a Genuine Island._

When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More was first published, it occasioned quite a complimentary blunder. This political romance represents a perfect but visionary republic, in an island supposed to have been newly discovered in America. As this was the age of discovery (says Granger), the learned Budaeus, and others, took it for a genuine history, and considered it as highly expedient that missionaries should be sent thither, in order to convert so wise a nation to Christianity.

_King of India's Library._

Dabshelim, King of India, had so numerous a library, that a hundred brachmans were scarcely sufficient to keep it in order, and it required a thousand dromedaries to transport it from one place to another. As he was not able to read all these books, he proposed to the brachmans to make extracts from them of the best and most useful of their contents.

These learned personages went so heartily to work, that in less than twenty years they had compiled of all these extracts a little encyclopaedia of twelve thousand volumes, which thirty camels could carry with ease. They presented them to the king, but what was their amazement to hear him say that it was impossible for him to read thirty camel-loads of books. They therefore reduced their extracts to fifteen, afterwards to ten, then to four, then to two dromedaries, and at last there remained only enough to load a mule of ordinary size.

Unfortunately, Dabshelim, during this process of melting down his library, grew old, and saw no probability of living long enough to exhaust its quintessence to the last volume. "Ill.u.s.trious Sultan," said his vizier, "though I have but a very imperfect knowledge of your royal library, yet I will undertake to deliver you a very brief and satisfactory abstract of it. You shall read it through in one minute, and yet you will find matter in it to reflect upon throughout the rest of your life." Having said this, Pilpay took a palm leaf, and wrote upon it with a golden style the four following paragraphs:

1. The greater part of the sciences comprise but one single word-_Perhaps_, and the whole history of mankind contains no more than three-they are _born_, _suffer_, _die_.

2. Love nothing but what is good, and do all that thou lovest to do; think nothing but what is true, and speak not all that thou thinkest.

3. O kings! tame your pa.s.sions, govern yourselves, and it will be only child's play to govern the world.

4. O kings! O people! it can never be often enough repeated to you, what the half-witted venture to doubt, that there is no happiness without virtue, and no virtue without G.o.d.

_Palindromes._

One of the most remarkable palindromes is the following-

SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS.

Its distinguis.h.i.+ng peculiarity is that the first letter of each successive word writes to spell the first word; the second letter of each the second word, and so on throughout; and the same will be found as precisely true upon reversal. But the neatest and prettiest that has yet appeared comes from a highly cultivated lady who was attached to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Having been banished from the court on suspicion of too great familiarity with a n.o.bleman in high favor, the lady adopted this device-_a moon covered by a cloud_-and the following palindrome for a motto-

ABLATA ATALBA. (Secluded but Pure.)

The merit of this kind of composition was never in any example so heightened by appropriateness and delicacy of sentiment.

_Chronogram._

Such was the name given to a whimsical device of the later Romans, resuscitated during the _renaissance_ period, by which a date is given by selecting certain letters amongst those which form an inscription, and printing them larger than the others. The principle will be understood from the following chronogram made from the name of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham-

Georg IVs. DVX. bVCkIngaMIae.

The date MDCXVVVIII (1628), is that of the year in which the Duke was murdered by Felton, at Portsmouth.

_Instance of Remarkable Perseverance._

The Rev. Wm. Davy, a Devons.h.i.+re curate, in the year 1795, begun a most desperate undertaking, viz: that of himself printing twenty-six volumes of sermons, which he actually did, working off page by page, for fourteen copies, and continued the almost hopeless task for twelve years, in the midst of poverty. Such wonderful perseverance almost amounts to a ruling pa.s.sion.

_Alliterative Whims._

Mrs. Crawford says she wrote one line in her song, "Kathleen Mavourneen," for the express purpose of confounding the c.o.c.kney warblers, who sing it thus-

"The 'orn of the 'unter is 'eard on the 'ill."

Moore has laid the same trap in the _Woodp.e.c.k.e.r_-

"A 'eart that is 'umble might 'ope for it 'ere."

And the elephant confounds them the other way-

"A helephant heasily heats at his hease, Hunder humbrageous humbrella trees."

_Alliterations carried to Absurd Excess._

In the early part of the seventeenth century the fas.h.i.+on of hunting after alliterations was carried to an absurd excess. Even from the pulpit the chosen people were addressed as "the _c_hickens of the _c_hurch, the _s_parrows of the _s_pirit, and the _s_weet _s_wallows of _s_alvation." "Ane New-Year Gift," or address, presented to Mary Queen of Scots by the poet Alexander Scot, concludes with a stanza running thus-

"Fresh, fulgent, flourist, fragrant flower formose, Lantern to love, of ladies lamp and lot, Cherry maist chaste, chief, carbuncle and chose, &c."

_Vacillating Newspapers._

The newspapers of Paris, under censors.h.i.+p of the press, in 1815, announced in the following manner Bonaparte's departure from the Isle of Elba, his march across France and his entrance into the French Capital:-

"9th March.-The Cannibal has escaped from his den. 10th.-The Corsican Ogre has just landed at Cape Juan. 11th.-The Tiger has arrived at Gap.

12th.-The Monster has pa.s.sed the night at Gren.o.ble. 13th.-The Tyrant has crossed Lyons. 14th.-The Usurper is directing his course toward Dijon, but the brave and loyal Burgundians have risen in a body and they surround him on all sides. 18th.-Bonaparte is sixty leagues from the Capital; he has had skill enough to escape from the hands of his pursuers. 19th.-Bonaparte advances rapidly, but he will never enter Paris. 20th.-To-morrow _Napoleon_ will be under our ramparts.

21st.-The _Emperor_ is at Fontainebleau. 22d.-His _Imperial_ and _Royal Majesty_ last evening made his entrance into his Palace of the Tuileries, amidst the _joyous_ acclamations of an _adoring_ and _faithful people_."

_Dr. Johnson's Blunders._

Considering that Doctor Johnson was himself a severe verbal critic, it might be expected that his own writings would be correct. But he wrote: "Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a _dead_ language it will always _live_." Another Johnsonian lapsus is palpable in the lines-

"Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled, But still fought on, _nor knew that he was dead_."

It would puzzle the reader to understand how a warrior could continue fighting after he was dead.

_Blunders of Painters._

Tintoret, an Italian painter, in a picture of the Children of Israel gathering manna, represents them armed with guns. In Cigoli's painting of the circ.u.mcision of the infant Saviour, the aged Simeon has a pair of spectacles on his nose. In a picture by Verrio of Christ healing the sick, the by-standers have periwigs on their heads. A Dutch painter, in a picture of the Wise Men wors.h.i.+pping the Holy Child, has drawn one of them in a white surplice, and in boots and spurs, and he is in the act of presenting to the children a model of a Dutch man-of-war. In a Dutch picture of Abraham offering up his son, instead of the patriarch "stretching forth and taking the knife," he is represented as holding a blunderbuss to Isaac's head. Berlin represents in a picture the Virgin and Child listening to a violin. A French artist, in a painting of the Lord's Supper, has the table ornamented with tumblers filled with cigar lighters. Another French painting exhibits Adam and Eve in all their primeval simplicity, while near them, in full costume, is seen a hunter with a gun, shooting ducks.

_Thackeray's Geographical Blunders._

The novelist, in "The Virginians," makes Madam Esmond, of Castlewood, in Westmoreland county, a neighbor of Was.h.i.+ngton at Mt. Vernon, on the Potomac, fifty miles distant, and a regular attendant at public wors.h.i.+p at Williamsburg, half-way between the York and James rivers, fully one hundred and twenty-five miles from Mt. Vernon; and so "immensely affected" are the colored hearers of a young preacher at Williamsburg "that there was such a negro chorus about the house as might be heard across the Potomac," the nearest bank of which is fifty-seven miles away.