Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 49

The most curious work of Raynaud connected with literature, I possess; it is ent.i.tled _Erotemata de malis ac bonis Libris, deque justa aut injusta eorundem confixione. Lugduni_, 1653, 4to, with necessary indexes. One of his works having been condemned at Rome, he drew up these inquiries concerning good and bad books, addressed to the grand inquisitor. He divides his treatise into "bad and nocent books; bad books but not nocent; books not bad, but nocent; books neither bad nor nocent." His immense reading appears here to advantage, and his Ritsonian feature is prominent; for he a.s.serts, that when writing against heretics all mordacity is innoxious; and an alphabetical list of abusive names, which the fathers have given to the heterodox is ent.i.tled _Alphabetum b.e.s.t.i.a.litatis Haeretici, ex Patrum Symbolis_.

After all, Raynaud was a man of vast acquirement, with a great flow of ideas, but tasteless, and void of all judgment. An anecdote may be recorded of him, which puts in a clear light the state of these literary men. Raynaud was one day pressing hard a reluctant bookseller to publish one of his works, who replied--"Write a book like Father Barri's, and I shall be glad to print it." It happened that the work of Barri was pillaged from Raynaud, and was much liked, while the original lay on the shelf. However, this only served to provoke a fresh attack from our redoubtable hero, who vindicated his rights, and emptied his quiver on him who had been ploughing with his heifer.

Such are the writers who, enjoying all the pleasures without the pains of composition, have often apologised for their repeated productions, by declaring that they write only for their own amus.e.m.e.nt; but such private theatricals should not be brought on the public stage. One Catherinot all his life was printing a countless number of _feuilles volantes_ in history and on antiquities, each consisting of about three or four leaves in quarto: Lenglet du Fresnoy calls him "grand auteur des pet.i.ts livres." This gentleman liked to live among antiquaries and historians; but with a crooked headpiece, stuck with whims, and hard with knotty combinations, all overloaded with prodigious erudition, he could not ease it at a less rate than by an occasional dissertation of three or four quarto pages. He appears to have published about two hundred pieces of this sort, much sought after by the curious for their rarity: Brunet complains he could never discover a complete collection. But Catherinot may escape "the pains and penalties" of our voluminous writers, for De Bure thinks he generously printed them to distribute among his friends. Such endless writers, provided they do not print themselves into an alms-house, may be allowed to print themselves out; and we would accept the apology which Monsieur Catherinot has framed for himself, which I find preserved in _Beyeri Memoriae Librorum Rariorum_.

"I must be allowed my freedom in my studies, for I subst.i.tute my writings for a game at the tennis-court, or a club at the tavern; I never counted among my honours these _opuscula_ of mine, but merely as harmless amus.e.m.e.nts. It is my partridge, as with St. John the Evangelist; my cat, as with Pope St. Gregory; my little dog, as with St.

Dominick; my lamb, as with St. Francis; my great black mastiff, as with Cornelius Agrippa; and my tame hare, as with Justus Lipsius." I have since discovered in Niceron that this Catherinot could never get a printer, and was rather compelled to study economy in his two hundred quartos of four or eight pages: his paper was of inferior quality; and when he could not get his dissertations into his prescribed number of pages, he used to promise the end at another time, which did not always happen. But his greatest anxiety was to publish and spread his works; in despair he adopted an odd expedient. Whenever Monsieur Catherinot came to Paris, he used to haunt the _quaies_ where books are sold, and while he appeared to be looking over them, he adroitly slided one of his own dissertations among these old books. He began this mode of publication early, and continued it to his last days. He died with a perfect conviction that he had secured his immortality; and in this manner had disposed of more than one edition of his unsaleable works. Niceron has given the t.i.tles of 118 of his things, which he had looked over.

END OF VOL. II.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The prince and duke travelled under the a.s.sumed names of John and Thomas Smith. King James wrote a poem on this expedition, of which the first and last verses are as follow. A copy is preserved among the Rawlinson MSS., Bodleian Library:--

"What sudden change hath darked of late The glory of the Arcadian state?

The fleecy flocks refuse to feed, The lambs to play, the ewes to breed; The altars smoke, the offerings burn, Till Jack and Tom do safe return.

"Kind shepherds that have loved them long, Be not too rash in censuring wrong; Correct your fears, leave off to mourn, The heavens shall favour their return!

Commit the care to Royal Pan, Of Jack his son, and Tom his man."

[Footnote 2: In MS. Harl., 6987, is preserved Buckingham's letter to James I, describing the first interview. Speaking of the prince, he says, "Baby Charles is himself so touched at the heart, that he confesses all he ever yet saw is nothing to her, and swears, that if he want her, there shall be blows."]

[Footnote 3: Though Buckingham and Charles were _exigeant_ of jewels for presents, the king was equally profuse in sending until he had exhausted his store. Considerably more than 150,000_ l._ worth were consigned to Spain. In a letter from Newmarket, March 17, 1623, preserved in Harleian MS. 6987, he enumerates a large quant.i.ty to be presented to the Infanta; and he is equally careful that Prince Charles should be well supplied; "As for thee, my sweet gossip, I send thee a fair table diamond for wearing in thy hat." The king ingeniously prompts them to present the Infanta with a small looking-gla.s.s to hang at her girdle, and to a.s.sure her that "by art magic, whensoever she shall be pleased to look in it, she shall see the fairest lady that either her brother's or your father's dominions can afford."]

[Footnote 4: On his first coming to court he was made cup-bearer to the king, then Master of the Horse, then enn.o.bled, made Lord High Admiral, Warden of the Cinque Ports, Constable of Windsor Castle, Ranger of Royal Parks, &c. &c. A list of the public plunderings of himself and family is given in Sloane MS. 826, amounting to more than 27,000 _l._ per annum in rents of manors, irrespective of 50,000 _l._ "paid to the duke by privie seale of free guifts, but alleged to be intended for the navie." Many pensions and customs were also made over to his use.]

[Footnote 5: King James delighted in calling the Duke of Buckingham "Steenie," as has been already instanced in the letter quoted, p. 463, Vol. I. This was not the duke's Christian name, but was invented for him by his royal master, who fancied his features resembled those usually given to St. Stephen, and whose face was usually depicted in accordance with the description in Acts vi. 15, "as it had been the face of an angel."]

[Footnote 6: The great exhibition of fireworks at Rome, at the castle of St. Angelo, during the festivities of the Holy Week, preserve the character of the displays of fireworks adopted on great occasions in the seventeenth century. An enormous explosion of squibs, crackers, and rockets was the _tour de force_ in such celebrations. The volume describing the entry of Louis XIII. to Lyons in 1624, contains an engraving of the fireworks constructed on barges in the river on that occasion; a blazing crowned sun, surrounded by a wheel of stars, squibs, star-rockets, and water-serpents flying about it, composed the _feu d'artifice_. In the volume descriptive of the rejoicings in the same city on the ratification of peace between France and Spain in 1660, are several engravings in which fireworks are shown, but they exhibit no novelties, being restricted to rockets and pots of fire bursting into coloured stars. Henry Van Etten's "Mathematical Recreations," 1633, notes the princ.i.p.al "artificial fireworks" then in use, and gives engravings of several, and instructions to make them. Rockets, fire-b.a.l.l.s, stars, golden-rain, serpents, and Catharine wheels are the princ.i.p.al noted. "Fierie dragons combatant" running on lines, and filled with fireworks, were the greatest stretch of invention at this time; and our author says they may be made "to meete one another, having lights placed in the concavity of their bodies, which will give great grace to the action."]

[Footnote 7: Specimens of most of these modes of writing may be seen at the British Museum. No. 3478, in the Sloanian library, is a Nabob's letter, on a piece of bark, about two yards long, and richly ornamented with gold. No. 3207 is a book of Mexican hieroglyphics, painted on bark.

In the same collection are various species, many from the Malabar coast and the East. The latter writings are chiefly on leaves. There are several copies of Bibles written on palm leaves. The ancients, doubtless, wrote on any leaves they found adapted for the purpose.

Hence, the _leaf_ of a _book_, alluding to that of a tree, seems to be derived. At the British Museum we have also Babylonian _tiles_, or _broken pots_, which the people used, and made their contracts of business on; a custom mentioned in the Scriptures.]

[Footnote 8: This speech was made by Claudius (who was born at Lyons), when censor, A.D. 48, and was of the highest importance to the men of Lyons, inasmuch as it led to the grant of the privileges of Roman citizens.h.i.+p to them. This important inscription was discovered in 1528, on the heights of St. Sebastian above the town.]

[Footnote 9: The paintings discovered at Pompeii give representations of these books and implements.]

[Footnote 10: The use of the table-book was continued to the reign of James I. or later. Shakspeare frequently alludes to them--

"And therefore will he wipe his tables clean, And keep no tell-tale to his memory."

They were in the form of a modern pocket-book, the leaves of a.s.ses'

skin, or covered with a composition, upon which a silver or leaden style would inscribe memoranda capable of erasure.]

[Footnote 11: A box containing such written rolls is represented in one of the pictures exhumed at Pompeii.]

[Footnote 12: See note to Vol. I. p. 5.]

[Footnote 13: The ink of old ma.n.u.scripts is generally a thick solid substance, and sometimes stands in relief upon the paper. The red ink is generally a body-colour of great brilliancy.]

[Footnote 14: This was, in fact, a realization of the traditional representations of the Flight into Egypt, in which the Virgin, having the Saviour in her lap, is always depicted seated on an a.s.s, which is led by Joseph.]

[Footnote 15: See Article _Ancient and Modern Saturnalia_, in this Volume.]

[Footnote 16: In the romances and poems of the Middle Ages, the heroines are generally praised for the abundance and beauty of their "yellow hair"--

Her yellow haire was braided in a tresse Behinde her backe, a yarde longe, I guesse.

CHAUCER'S _Knight's Tale_.

Queen Elizabeth had yellow hair, hence it became the fas.h.i.+on at her court, and ladies dyed their hair of the Royal colour. But this dyeing the hair yellow may be traced to the cla.s.sic era. Galen tells us that in his time women suffered much from headaches, contracted by standing bare-headed in the sun to obtain this coveted tint, which others attempted by the use of saffron. Bulwer, in his "Artificiall Changeling," 1653, says--"The Venetian women at this day, and the Paduan, and those of Verona, and other parts of Italy, practice the same vanitie, and receive the same recompense for their affectation, there being in all those cities open and manifest examples of those who have undergone a kind of martyrdome, to render their haire yellow."]

[Footnote 17: That is, carriages of the modern form, and such as became common toward the end of Elizabeth's reign; but _waggons_ and _chares_, covered with tapestry, and used by ladies for journeys, may be seen in illuminated MSS. of the fourteenth century. There is a fine example in the Loutterell Psalter, published in "Vetusta Monumenta."]

[Footnote 18: The use of censers or firepans to "sweeten" houses by burning coa.r.s.e perfumes is noted by Shakespeare. His commentator, Steevens, points out a pa.s.sage in a letter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who when keeping Mary Queen of Scots under his surveillance, notes "That her Majesty was to be removed for 5 or 6 dayes to clense her chamber, being kept very unclenly." That annoyances of a very disagreeable kind were constantly felt, he instances in a pa.s.sage from the Memoir of Anne, Countess of Dorset, who relates that a n.o.ble party were infested with insects not now to be named, though named plainly by the lady, and all this "by sitting in Sir Thomas Erskine's chamber."]

[Footnote 19: He gives this piece of autobiography in his first sermon preached before Edward VI., 1549:--"My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or foure pound by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men.

He had a walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He kept me to school. He married my sisters with five pound, or twenty n.o.bles a piece; so that he brought them up in G.o.dliness."]

[Footnote 20: Lower's "English Surnames; an Essay on Family Nomenclature," may be profitably studied in connexion with this curious subject.]

[Footnote 21: Fortunate names, the _bona nomina_ of Cicero, were chiefly selected in accordance with the cla.s.sic maxim, _bonum nomen, bonum omen_.]

[Footnote 22: "Plautus thought it quite enough to d.a.m.n a man that he bore the name of Lyco, which is said to signify a greedy-wolf; and Livy calls the name Atrius Umber _abominandi ominis nomen_, a name of horrible portent."--Nares' _Heraldic Anomalies_.]

[Footnote 23: The names adopted by the Romans were very significant. The _Nomen_ was indicative of the branch of the family distinguished by the _Cognomen_; while the _Prenomen_ was invented to distinguish one from the rest. Thus, a man of family had three names, and even a fourth was added when it was won by great deeds.]

[Footnote 24: Edgar Poe's account of the regular mode by which he designed and executed his best and most renowned poem, "The Raven," is an instance of the use of methodical rule successfully applied to what appears to be one of the most fanciful of mental works.]

[Footnote 25: The old poet is the most fresh and powerful in his words.

The pa.s.sage is thus given in Wright's edition:--

The busy lark, messenger of day, Saluteth in her song the morrow gray; And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright, That all the orient laugheth of the light.

Leigh Hunt remarks with justice that "Dryden falls short of the freshness and feeling of the sentiment. His lines are beautiful, but they do not come home to us with so happy and cordial a face."]