Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 17

Villegas monstrously exclaims, "Touch my breast, if you doubt the power of Lydia's eyes--you will find it turned to ashes." Again--"Thou art so great that thou canst only imitate thyself with thy own greatness;" much like our "None but himself can be his parallel."

Gongora, whom the Spaniards once greatly admired, and distinguished by the epithet of _The Wonderful_, abounds with these conceits.

He imagines that a nightingale, who enchantingly varied her notes, and sang in different manners, had a hundred thousand other nightingales in her breast, which alternately sang through her throat--

"Con diferancia tal, con gracia tanta, A quel ruysenor llora, que sospecho Que tiene otros cien mil dentro del pecho, Que alterno su dolor por su garganta."

Of a young and beautiful lady he says, that she has but a few _years_ of life, but many _ages_ of beauty.

"Muchos siglos de hermosura En pocos anos de edad."

Many ages of beauty is a false thought, for beauty becomes not more beautiful from its age; it would be only a superannuated beauty. A face of two or three ages old could have but few charms.

In one of his odes he addresses the River of Madrid by the t.i.tle of the _Duke of Streams_, and the _Viscount of Rivers_--

"Mancanares, Mancanares, Os que en todo el aguatismo, Estois _Duque_ de Arroyos, Y _Visconde_ de los Rios."

He did not venture to call it a _Spanish Grandee_, for, in fact, it is but a shallow and dirty stream; and as Quevedo wittily informs us, "_Mancanares_ is reduced, during the summer season, to the melancholy condition of the wicked rich man, who asks for water in the depths of h.e.l.l." Though so small, this stream in the time of a flood spreads itself over the neighbouring fields; for this reason Philip the Second built a bridge eleven hundred feet long!--A Spaniard pa.s.sing it one day, when it was perfectly dry, observing this superb bridge, archly remarked, "That it would be proper that the bridge should be sold to purchase water."--_Es menester, vender la puente, par comprar agua._

The following elegant translation of a Spanish madrigal of the kind here criticised I found in a newspaper, but it is evidently by a master-hand.

On the green margin of the land, Where Guadalhorce winds his way, My lady lay: With golden key Sleep's gentle hand Had closed her eyes so bright-- Her eyes, two suns of light-- And bade his balmy dews Her rosy cheeks suffuse.

The River G.o.d in slumber saw her laid: He raised his dripping head, With weeds o'erspread, Clad in his wat'ry robes approach'd the maid, And with cold kiss, like death, Drank the rich perfume of the maiden's breath.

The maiden felt that icy kiss: _Her suns unclosed, their flame_ Full and unclouded on th' intruder came.

Amazed th' intruder felt _His frothy body melt And heard the radiance on his bosom hiss_; And, forced in blind confusion to retire, _Leapt in the water to escape the fire_.

SAINT EVREMOND.

The portrait of St. Evremond is delineated by his own hand.

In his day it was a literary fas.h.i.+on for writers to give their own portraits; a fas.h.i.+on that seems to have pa.s.sed over into our country, for Farquhar has drawn his own character in a letter to a lady. Others of our writers have given these self-miniatures. Such painters are, no doubt, great flatterers, and it is rather their ingenuity, than their truth, which we admire in these cabinet-pictures.

"I am a philosopher, as far removed from superst.i.tion as from impiety; a voluptuary, who has not less abhorrence of debauchery than inclination for pleasure; a man who has never known want nor abundance. I occupy that station of life which is contemned by those who possess everything; envied by those who have nothing; and only relished by those who make their felicity consist in the exercise of their reason. Young, I hated dissipation; convinced that man must possess wealth to provide for the comforts of a long life. Old, I disliked economy; as I believe that we need not greatly dread want, when we have but a short time to be miserable. I am satisfied with what nature has done for me, nor do I repine at fortune. I do not seek in men what they have of evil, that I may censure; I only discover what they have ridiculous, that I may be amused. I feel a pleasure in detecting their follies; I should feel a greater in communicating my discoveries, did not my prudence restrain me. Life is too short, according to my ideas, to read all kinds of books, and to load our memories with an endless number of things at the cost of our judgment. I do not attach myself to the observations of scientific men to acquire science; but to the most rational, that I may strengthen my reason. Sometimes I seek for more delicate minds, that my taste may imbibe their delicacy; sometimes for the gayer, that I may enrich my genius with their gaiety; and, although I constantly read, I make it less my occupation than my pleasure. In religion, and in friends.h.i.+p, I have only to paint myself such as I am--in friends.h.i.+p more tender than a philosopher; and in religion, as constant and as sincere as a youth who has more simplicity than experience. My piety is composed more of justice and charity than of penitence. I rest my confidence on G.o.d, and hope everything from His benevolence. In the bosom of Providence I find my repose, and my felicity."

MEN OF GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION.

The student or the artist who may s.h.i.+ne a luminary of learning and of genius, in his works, is found, not rarely, to lie obscured beneath a heavy cloud in colloquial discourse.

If you love the man of letters, seek him in the privacies of his study.

It is in the hour of confidence and tranquillity that his genius shall elicit a ray of intelligence more fervid than the labours of polished composition.

The great Peter Corneille, whose genius resembled that of our Shakspeare, and who has so forcibly expressed the sublime sentiments of the hero, had nothing in his exterior that indicated his genius; his conversation was so insipid that it never failed of wearying. Nature, who had lavished on him the gifts of genius, had forgotten to blend with them her more ordinary ones. He did not even _speak_ correctly that language of which he was such a master. When his friends represented to him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these trivial errors, he would smile, and say--"_I am not the less Peter Corneille!_"

Descartes, whose habits were formed in solitude and meditation, was silent in mixed company; it was said that he had received his intellectual wealth from nature in solid bars, but not in current coin; or as Addison expressed the same idea, by comparing himself to a banker who possessed the wealth of his friends at home, though he carried none of it in his pocket; or as that judicious moralist Nicolle, of the Port-Royal Society, said of a scintillant wit--"He conquers me in the drawing-room, but he surrenders to me at discretion on the staircase."

Such may say with Themistocles, when asked to play on a lute--"I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city."

The deficiencies of Addison in conversation are well known. He preserved a rigid silence amongst strangers; but if he was silent, it was the silence of meditation. How often, at that moment, he laboured at some future Spectator!

Mediocrity can _talk_; but it is for genius to _observe_.

The cynical Mandeville compared Addison, after having pa.s.sed an evening in his company, to "a silent parson in a tie-wig."

Virgil was heavy in conversation, and resembled more an ordinary man than an enchanting poet.

La Fontaine, says La Bruyere, appeared coa.r.s.e, heavy, and stupid; he could not speak or describe what he had just seen; but when he wrote he was a model of poetry.

It is very easy, said a humorous observer on La Fontaine, to be a man of wit, or a fool; but to be both, and that too in the extreme degree, is indeed admirable, and only to be found in him. This observation applies to that fine natural genius Goldsmith. Chaucer was more facetious in his tales than in his conversation, and the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him by saying, that his silence was more agreeable to her than his conversation.

Isocrates, celebrated for his beautiful oratorical compositions, was of so timid a disposition, that he never ventured to speak in public. He compared himself to the whetstone which will not cut, but enables other things to do so; for his productions served as models to other orators.

Vaucanson was said to be as much a machine as any he had made.

Dryden says of himself--"My conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees."[41]

VIDA.

What a consolation for an aged parent to see his child, by the efforts of his own merits, attain from the humblest obscurity to distinguished eminence! What a transport for the man of sensibility to return to the obscure dwelling of his parent, and to embrace him, adorned with public honours! Poor _Vida_ was deprived of this satisfaction; but he is placed higher in our esteem by the present anecdote, than even by that cla.s.sic composition, which rivals the Art of Poetry of his great master.

_Jerome Vida_, after having long served two Popes, at length attained to the episcopacy. Arrayed in the robes of his new dignity, he prepared to visit his aged parents, and felicitated himself with the raptures which the old couple would feel in embracing their son as their bishop. When he arrived at their village, he learnt that it was but a few days since they were no more. His sensibilities were exquisitely pained. The muse dictated some elegiac verse, and in the solemn pathos deplored the death and the disappointment of his parents.

THE SCUDERIES.

Bien heureux SCUDERY, dont la fertile plume Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume.

Boileau has written this couplet on the Scuderies, the brother and sister, both famous in their day for composing romances, which they sometimes extended to ten or twelve volumes. It was the favourite literature of that period, as novels are now. Our n.o.bility not unfrequently condescended to translate these voluminous compositions.

The diminutive size of our modern novels is undoubtedly an improvement: but, in resembling the size of primers, it were to be wished that their contents had also resembled their inoffensive pages. Our great-grandmothers were incommoded with overgrown folios; and, instead of finis.h.i.+ng the eventful history of two lovers at one or two sittings, it was sometimes six months, _including Sundays_, before they could get quit of their Clelias, their Cyrus's, and Parthenissas.

Mademoiselle Scudery had composed _ninety volumes_! She had even finished another romance, which she would not give the public, whose taste, she perceived, no more relished this kind of works. She was one of those unfortunate authors who, living to more than ninety years of age, survive their own celebrity.

She had her panegyrists in her day: Menage observes--"What a pleasing description has Mademoiselle Scudery made, in her Cyrus, of the little court at Rambouillet! A thousand things in the romances of this learned lady render them inestimable. She has drawn from the ancients their happiest pa.s.sages, and has even improved upon them; like the prince in the fable, whatever she touches becomes gold. We may read her works with great profit, if we possess a correct taste, and love instruction. Those who censure their _length_ only show the littleness of their judgment; as if Homer and Virgil were to be despised, because many of their books were filled with episodes and incidents that necessarily r.e.t.a.r.d the conclusion. It does not require much penetration to observe that _Cyrus_ and _Clelia_ are a species of the _epic_ poem. The epic must embrace a number of events to suspend the course of the narrative; which, only taking in a part of the life of the hero, would terminate too soon to display the skill of the poet. Without this artifice, the charm of uniting the greater part of the episodes to the princ.i.p.al subject of the romance would be lost. Mademoiselle de Scudery has so well treated them, and so aptly introduced a variety of beautiful pa.s.sages, that nothing in this kind is comparable to her productions. Some expressions, and certain turns, have become somewhat obsolete; all the rest will last for ever, and outlive the criticisms they have undergone."

Menage has here certainly uttered a false prophecy. The curious only look over her romances. They contain doubtless many beautiful inventions; the misfortune is, that _time_ and _patience_ are rare requisites for the enjoyment of these Iliads in prose.