Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 25

The custom of drinking at different hours from those a.s.signed for eating exists among many savage nations. Originally begun from necessity, it became a habit, which subsisted even when the fountain was near to them.

A people transplanted, observes an ingenious philosopher, preserve in another climate modes of living which relate to those from whence they originally came. It is thus the Indians of Brazil scrupulously abstain from eating when they drink, and from drinking when they eat.[55]

When neither decency nor politeness is known, the man who invites his friends to a repast is greatly embarra.s.sed to testify his esteem for his guests, and to offer them some amus.e.m.e.nt; for the savage guest imposes on himself this obligation. Amongst the greater part of the American Indians, the host is continually on the watch to solicit them to eat, but touches nothing himself. In New France, he wearies himself with singing, to divert the company while they eat.

When civilization advances, men wish to show their confidence to their friends: they treat their guests as relations; and it is said that in China the master of a house, to give a mark of his politeness, absents himself while his guests regale themselves at his table with undisturbed revelry.[56]

The demonstrations of friends.h.i.+p in a rude state have a savage and gross character, which it is not a little curious to observe. The Tartars pull a man by the ear to press him to drink, and they continue tormenting him till he opens his mouth; then they clap their hands and dance before him.

No customs seem more ridiculous than those practised by a Kamschatkan, when he wishes to make another his friend. He first invites him to eat.

The host and his guest strip themselves in a cabin which is heated to an uncommon degree. While the guest devours the food with which they serve him, the other continually stirs the fire. The stranger must bear the excess of the heat as well as of the repast. He vomits ten times before he will yield; but, at length obliged to acknowledge himself overcome, he begins to compound matters. He purchases a moment's respite by a present of clothes or dogs; for his host threatens to heat the cabin, and oblige him to eat till he dies. The stranger has the right of retaliation allowed to him: he treats in the same manner, and exacts the same presents. Should his host not accept the invitation of him whom he had so handsomely regaled, in that case the guest would take possession of his cabin, till he had the presents returned to him which the other had in so singular a manner obtained.

For this extravagant custom a curious reason has been alleged. It is meant to put the person to a trial, whose friends.h.i.+p is sought. The Kamschatkan who is at the expense of the fires, and the repast, is desirous to know if the stranger has the strength to support pain with him, and if he is generous enough to share with him some part of his property. While the guest is employed on his meal, he continues heating the cabin to an insupportable degree; and for a last proof of the stranger's constancy and attachment, he exacts more clothes and more dogs. The host pa.s.ses through the same ceremonies in the cabin of the stranger; and he shows, in his turn, with what degree of fort.i.tude he can defend his friend. The most singular customs would appear simple, if it were possible for the philosopher to understand them on the spot.

As a distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of their esteem, the negroes of Ardra drink out of one cup at the same time. The king of Loango eats in one house, and drinks in another. A Kamschatkan kneels before his guests; he cuts an enormous slice from a sea-calf; he crams it entire into the mouth of his friend, furiously crying out "_Tana!_"--There! and cutting away what hangs about his lips, s.n.a.t.c.hes and swallows it with avidity.

A barbarous magnificence attended the feasts of the ancient monarchs of France. After their coronation or consecration, when they sat at table, the n.o.bility served them on horseback.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: In Cochin-China, a traveller may always obtain his dinner by simply joining the family of the first house he may choose to enter, such hospitality being the general custom.]

[Footnote 55: _Esprit des Usages, et des Coutumes._]

[Footnote 56: If the master be present, he devotes himself to cramming his guests to repletion.]

MONARCHS.

Saint Chrysostom has this very acute observation on _kings_: Many monarchs are infected with a strange wish that their successors may turn out bad princes. Good kings desire it, as they imagine, continues this pious politician, that their glory will appear the more splendid by the contrast; and the bad desire it, as they consider such kings will serve to countenance their own misdemeanours.

Princes, says Gracian, are willing to be _aided_, but not _surpa.s.sed_: which maxim is thus ill.u.s.trated.

A Spanish lord having frequently played at chess with Philip II., and won all the games, perceived, when his Majesty rose from play, that he was much ruffled with chagrin. The lord, when he returned home, said to his family--"My children, we have nothing more to do at court: there we must expect no favour; for the king is offended at my having won of him every game of chess." As chess entirely depends on the genius of the players, and not on fortune, King Philip the chess-player conceived he ought to suffer no rival.

This appears still clearer by the anecdote told of the Earl of Sunderland, minister to George I., who was partial to the game of chess.

He once played with the Laird of Cluny, and the learned Cunningham, the editor of Horace. Cunningham, with too much skill and too much sincerity, beat his lords.h.i.+p. "The earl was so fretted at his superiority and surliness, that he dismissed him without any reward.

Cluny allowed himself sometimes to be beaten; and by that means got his pardon, with something handsome besides."

In the Criticon of Gracian, there is a singular anecdote relative to kings.

A Polish monarch having quitted his companions when he was hunting, his courtiers found him, a few days after, in a market-place, disguised as a porter, and lending out the use of his shoulders for a few pence. At this they were as much surprised as they were doubtful at first whether the _porter_ could be his _majesty_. At length they ventured to express their complaints that so great a personage should debase himself by so vile an employment. His majesty having heard them, replied--"Upon my honour, gentlemen, the load which I quitted is by far heavier than the one you see me carry here: the weightiest is but a straw, when compared to that world under which I laboured. I have slept more in four nights than I have during all my reign. I begin to live, and to be king of myself. Elect whom you choose. For me, who am so well, it were madness to return to _court_." Another Polish king, who succeeded this philosophic _monarchical porter_, when they placed the sceptre in his hand, exclaimed--"I had rather tug at an _oar_!" The vacillating fortunes of the Polish monarchy present several of these anecdotes; their monarchs appear to have frequently been philosophers; and, as the world is made, an excellent philosopher proves but an indifferent king.

Two observations on kings were offered to a courtier with great _navete_ by that experienced politician, the Duke of Alva:--"Kings who affect to be familiar with their companions make use of _men_ as they do of _oranges_; they take oranges to extract their juice, and when they are well sucked they throw them away. Take care the king does not do the same to you; be careful that he does not read all your thoughts; otherwise he will throw you aside to the back of his chest, as a book of which he has read enough." "The squeezed orange," the King of Prussia applied in his dispute with Voltaire.

When it was suggested to Dr. Johnson that kings must be unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that this was an ill-founded notion.

"Being a king does not exclude a man from such society. Great kings have always been social. The King of Prussia, the only great king at present (this was THE GREAT Frederic) is very social. Charles the Second, the last king of England who was a man of parts, was social; our Henries and Edwards were all social."

The Marquis of Halifax, in his character of Charles II., has exhibited a _trait_ in the royal character of a good-natured monarch; that _trait_, is _sauntering_. I transcribe this curious observation, which introduces us into a levee.

"There was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours which he pa.s.sed amongst his mistresses, who served only to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of pleasure, called SAUNTERING, was the sultana queen he delighted in.

"The thing called SAUNTERING is a stronger temptation to princes than it is to others.--The being galled with importunities, pursued from one room to another with asking faces; the dismal sound of unreasonable complaints and ill-grounded pretences; the deformity of fraud ill-disguised:--all these would make any man run away from them, and I used to think it was the motive for making him walk so fast."

OF THE t.i.tLES OF ILl.u.s.tRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE.

The t.i.tle of _ill.u.s.trious_ was never given, till the reign of Constantine, but to those whose reputation was splendid in arms or in letters. Adulation had not yet adopted this n.o.ble word into her vocabulary. Suetonius composed a book to record those who had possessed this t.i.tle; and, as it was _then_ bestowed, a moderate volume was sufficient to contain their names.

In the time of Constantine, the t.i.tle of _ill.u.s.trious_ was given more particularly to those princes who had distinguished themselves in war; but it was not continued to their descendants. At length, it became very common; and every son of a prince was _ill.u.s.trious_. It is now a convenient epithet for the poet.

In the rage for t.i.tLES the ancient lawyers in Italy were not satisfied by calling kings ILl.u.s.tRES; they went a step higher, and would have emperors to be _super-ill.u.s.tres_, a barbarous coinage of their own.

In Spain, they published a book of _t.i.tles_ for their kings, as well as for the Portuguese; but Selden tells us, that "their _Cortesias_ and giving of t.i.tles grew at length, through the affectation of heaping great attributes on their princes to such an insufferable forme, that a remedie was provided against it." This remedy was an act published by Philip III. which ordained that all the _Cortesias_, as they termed these strange phrases they had so servilely and ridiculously invented, should be reduced to a simple superscription, "To the king our lord,"

leaving out those fantastical attributes of which every secretary had vied with his predecessors in increasing the number.

It would fill three or four of these pages to transcribe the t.i.tles and attributes of the Grand Signior, which he a.s.sumes in a letter to Henry IV. Selden, in his "t.i.tles of Honour," first part, p. 140, has preserved them. This "emperor of victorious emperors," as he styles himself, at length condescended to agree with the emperor of Germany, in 1606, that in all their letters and instruments they should be only styled _father_ and _son_: the emperor calling the sultan his son; and the sultan the emperor, in regard of his years, his _father_.

Formerly, says Houssaie, the t.i.tle of _highness_ was only given to kings; but now it has become so common that all the great houses a.s.sume it. All the great, says a modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to _highness_. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, will usurp that of _majesty_.

Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his queen Isabella of Castile, were only treated with the t.i.tle of _highness_. Charles was the first who took that of _majesty_: not in his quality of king of Spain, but as emperor.

St. Foix informs us, that kings were usually addressed by the t.i.tles of _most ill.u.s.trious_, or _your serenity_, or _your grace_; but that the custom of giving them that of _majesty_ was only established by Louis XI., a prince the least majestic in all his actions, his manners, and his exterior--a severe monarch, but no ordinary man, the Tiberius of France. The manners of this monarch were most sordid; in public audiences he dressed like the meanest of the people, and affected to sit on an old broken chair, with a filthy dog on his knees. In an account found of his household, this _majestic_ prince has a charge made him for two new sleeves sewed on one of his old doublets.

Formerly kings were apostrophised by the t.i.tle of _your grace_. Henry VIII. was the first, says Houssaie, who a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of _highness_; and at length _majesty_. It was Francis I. who saluted him with this last t.i.tle, in their interview in the year 1520, though he called himself only the first gentleman in his kingdom!

So distinct were once the t.i.tles of _highness_ and _excellence_, that when Don Juan, the brother of Philip II., was permitted to take up the latter t.i.tle, and the city of Granada saluted him by the t.i.tle of _highness_, it occasioned such serious jealousy at court, that had he persisted in it, he would have been condemned for treason.

The usual t.i.tle of _cardinals_, about 1600, was _seignoria ill.u.s.trissima_; the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister and cardinal, in his old age, a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of _eccellencia reverendissima_. The church of Rome was in its glory, and to be called _reverend_ was then accounted a higher honour than to be styled _ill.u.s.trious_. But by use _ill.u.s.trious_ grew familiar, and _reverend_ vulgar, and at last the cardinals were distinguished by the t.i.tle of _eminent_.

After all these historical notices respecting these t.i.tles, the reader will smile when he is acquainted with the reason of an honest curate of Montferrat, who refused to bestow the t.i.tle of _highness_ on the duke of Mantua, because he found in his breviary these words, _Tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus_; from all which he concluded, that none but the Lord was to be honoured with the t.i.tle of _highness_! The "t.i.tles of Honour" of Selden is a very curious volume, and, as the learned Usher told Evelyn, the most valuable work of this great scholar. The best edition is a folio of about one thousand pages. Selden vindicates the right of a king of England to the t.i.tle of _emperor_.

"And never yet was t.i.tLE did not move; And never eke a mind, _that_ t.i.tLE did not love."

t.i.tLES OF SOVEREIGNS.

In countries where despotism exists in all its force, and is gratified in all its caprices, either the intoxication of power has occasioned sovereigns to a.s.sume the most solemn and the most fantastic t.i.tles; or the royal duties and functions were considered of so high and extensive a nature, that the people expressed their notion of the pure monarchical state by the most energetic descriptions of oriental fancy.

The chiefs of the Natchez are regarded by their people as the children of the sun, and they bear the name of their father.