The Catholic World Volume I Part 122

before the fire, could not be got under 55_s._ after it.

Later in time, Little Britain, from Duck-lane to the Pump, became a literary quarter. When Benjamin Franklin first visited London he took lodgings in Little Britain at 3_s_. 6_d_, per week, next door to a bookseller's, from whom, as circulating libraries were not in vogue, he purchased volumes, read them, sold them again to the same man, and bought others.

A great deal of information on bookselling and other subjects that interested the people near 200 years since, may be obtained from the perusal of the "Life and Errors of John Dunton," bookseller, an autobiography. The son of a clergyman in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, he says he learned Latin so as to speak it pretty well extempore, but he could not get on well with the Greek; and this, coupled with an affection entertained for a "virgin in his father's house," such pa.s.sion carefully concealed from its object, completely unhinged the cla.s.sical and clerical designs of his father on him. He became a bookseller's apprentice, and in {841} 1685 a bookseller in his own person. He speaks very disparagingly of the mere men of letters of his day. He says, good simple-minded man, that what they got per sheet interested them more than zeal for the advancement of literature. Very little we blame the poor fellows, but they were really inexcusable for pretending to have ransacked the whole Bodleian Library, to have gone through the fathers, and to have read and digested all human and ecclesiastical history, while they had never mastered a single page in "St. Cyprian," nor could tell whether the fathers lived before or after our Saviour.

That was the golden age of sermons and pamphlets, the latter occupying the place of our monthlies. Mr. John Dunton's first essay in the publis.h.i.+ng line was "The Sufferings of Christ," by the Rev. Mr.

Doolittle. All the trade took copies in exchange for their own books, a feature peculiar to the business 160 years since. John throve and took a helpmate to himself, not Mrs. Mary Saunders, the virgin before mentioned. The beautiful Rachel Seaton, the innocent Sarah Day, the religious Sarah Briscow, had successively paled the image of the preceding lady in the mirror of his rather susceptible heart, and at the end he became the fond husband of Miss Annesley, daughter of a nonconformist divine. The happy pair always called each other by the endearing and poetic names of _Iris_ and _Philaret_, but this tender attachment did not prevent Philaret from leaving Iris alone, and making excursions to Ireland, to America, and to Holland, and delaying in those regions for long periods. These separations and distant wanderings did not tend to make our bookseller's old age comfortable and independent.

Dunton has left an interesting account of most of the then eminent booksellers in the three kingdoms. He says that in general they were not much better than knaves and atheists. He also gave information of the writers he employed, the licensers of the press, etc. It would appear that the publis.h.i.+ng business of the time was in a very vigorous condition. The shoals of pamphlets satisfied the literary hunger of those to whom, if they lived in the nineteenth century, _Athenaeums_ and _Examiners_, _Chambers's Journals_ and _All the Year Rounds_, would be as necessary as atmospheric air. The chief booksellers of that day, if not to be compared with continental Alduses or Stephenses or Elzevirs, were men of good literary taste and much information. Of the booksellers amber-preserved in the "Dunciad," Dunton mentions only Lintot and Tonson. The disreputable Curll was not known in his day.

This genius, embalmed in the hearts of the rascally paper-men of Holywell street, being once condemned for a vile publication, and promoted to the pillory, cunningly averted the wrath of the mob by a plentiful distribution of handbills, in which he stated his offence to be a pamphlet complimentary to the memory of good Queen Anne. Edward Cave, in starting the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 31st January, 1731, gave healthy employment to many a pamphleteer, though he diminished the number of separate pamphlets.

BEN JONSON AND LINCOLN'S INN.

Our fancy to speak of books, and their writers and sellers, has led us aside from the area marked out by Mr. Thornbury for his own explorations, so we must return to bounds, within which we find Lincoln's-Inn Fields. These inns were originally established as places of entertainment, where pilgrims and other travellers were hospitably attended by the monks. The town houses of n.o.blemen were also called inns, just as in Paris they were styled hostels. The inn in question derives its name from the Earl of Lincoln, Henry de Lacy, to whom it was granted by Edward I. Many eminent men have used chambers in Lincoln's Inn, since it became the resort {842} of legal students. Sir Thomas More had chambers there, and there Dr. Donne, the poetical divine, attempted to study law in his seventeenth year. Dr. Tillotson preached to the lawyers (with what effect is not told) in 1663, our own Archbishop Ussher in 1647. Sir Mathew Hale was at first a wild student of Lincoln's Inn, till reclaimed by the sight of a drunkard seized by a fit. Shaftesbury; Ashmole, the antiquary; Prynne, of pillory notoriety; Secretary Thurloe; Sir John Denham; George Wither, omitting mention of modern celebrities, all endeavored to penetrate the mysteries of law and equity in this long-enduring inst.i.tution.

One of the most remarkable, though not the most reputable, of lawyers connected with Lincoln's Inn was Sir Edmund Saunders, who gave his aid to the crown while endeavoring, in 1683, to overthrow the charter of London. The following extract concerning him is taken from Granger: "Sir Edmund Saunders was originally a strolling beggar about the streets, without known parents or relations. He came often to beg sc.r.a.ps at Clement's Inn, where he was taken notice of for his uncommon sprightliness; and as he expressed a strong inclination to learn to write, one of the attorney's clerks taught him, and soon qualified him for a hackney writer. He took all opportunities of improving himself by reading such books as he borrowed from his friends; and in the course of a few years became an able attorney and a very eminent counsel. His practice in the Court of King's Bench was exceeded by none. His art and cunning was equal to his knowledge, and he gained many a cause by laying snares. If he was detected he was never put out of countenance, but evaded the matter with a jest, which he had always at hand. He was much employed by the king (Charles II.) against the city of London in the business of the _Quo Warranto_. His person was as heavy and _ungain_ as his wit was alert and sprightly. He is said to have been a mere lump of morbid flesh. The smell from him was so offensive that people held their noses when he came into court. One of his jests on such occasions was, 'That none could say he wanted issue, for he had no less than nine on his back.'"

The literary students of the inn, as they sit in their lonely chambers, or converse with their comrades, Arthur Pendennis and Mr.

Warrington, in the pleasant grounds, delight to fancy brave old Ben Jonson helping to raise the wall on the Chancery lane side, and reciting a pa.s.sage from Homer. Whether Sutton or Camden sent him back to college to pursue his studies is not so certain. His fighting single-handed in Flanders in the sight of the two armies, and the subsequent carrying away of the _"Spolia Opima"_ of his foeman, were in strict accordance with the practice of the heroes of his studies.

His college life and his deeds in foreign fields were all over in his twenty-third year, 1597, when we find him a player and writer for the stage in London; his critics a.s.serting that he walked the boards as if he were treading mortar. Poor Ben, with a countenance compared to a rotten russet apple, and described by himself as remarkable for a "mountain belly and a rocky face," was equally ragged in temper.

Quarreling with a brother actor, he killed him in a duel in Hogsden Fields, and was brought very near the gallows-foot for his non-command of temper. He had not the gentle character nor the expansive intellect of his friend, the "Gentle Shakespeare," nor did his characters embrace entire humanity, nor did he possess the soaring and far-seizing imagination of his brother poet and player, but he more closely pictured the modes of society in which they moved, the social and politic features of the locality and the era; all those outward manifestations, in fact, that distinguish the intercourse, and the morals, and the character of this or that locality or time, from those of {843} its neighbors. Hence a better idea can be had of the scenic features of Old London, and the costumes, the idioms, and usages of its people at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, from the literary remains of Ben Jonson than from those of William Shakespeare. Aubrey remarked that "Shakespeare's comedies would remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood; while our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and c.o.xcombeties, that twenty years hence they will not be understood."

London was Ben Jonson's world; its people, such as they appeared to him, the whole human race. The humorists that he knew were reproduced with the utmost truth--and the cla.s.s-modes and manners that came under his observation were sketched from and to the life. There was local truth of costume and character, but little generalization.

Ill.u.s.trative instances abound in all his plays and poems. In Elizabeth's time, Finsbury Fields were covered with trees and windmills. So we find Master Stephen ("Every Man in his Humor"), who dwells at Hogsden (Hoxton), despising the archers of Finsbury and the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington Ponds. "The Strand was the chief road for ladies to pa.s.s through in their coaches, and there _Lafoole_ in the 'Silent Woman' has a lodging to watch when ladies are gone to the china houses or the exchange, that he may meet them by chance, and give them presents. The general character of the streets before the fire is not forgotten. In 'The Devil is an a.s.s' the lady and her lover speak closely and gently from the windows of two contiguous buildings. Such are a few of the examples of the local proprieties which constantly turn up in Jonson's dramas."

To those who accuse rare Ben of intemperate habits it is useless to object that he lashed intemperance and the other vices of his time as severely as the most rigid moralist could; there are too many instances extant of the sons of Satan correcting sin in their speeches and writings. However, the club at the Mermaid in Friday street to which he belonged, consisted of such men as we cannot suppose to be of intemperate habits, nor willing to cherish a noted drunkard. For Sir Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, flashes of wit, and sallies of imagination, and touches of genial humor, had more charms then beastly wallowing in liquor. Hear what Jonson himself says in his invitation to a friend to supper where canary, his darling liquor, was to flow:

"Of this we will sup free but moderately, Nor shall our cups make any guilty men, But at our parting we will be as when We innocently met. No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board Shall make us sad next morning, or affright The liberty that we'll enjoy to-night."

It was to the middle aisle of the old cathedral of St. Paul's that Jonson and others like him resorted to obtain such wayward and grotesque characters as would take the attention of an audience. It was the favorite lounge at the time of c.o.xcombs, bullies, adventurers, and cut-purses. Here a new man, wis.h.i.+ng to be in the height of fas.h.i.+on, would bring his tailor, and set him to mark the garb of the foremost gallant in vogue. Country squires anxious for a varnis.h.i.+ng of courtly polish, would be found there observing the dress and demeanor of the people of fas.h.i.+on, and afterward flinging away the produce of their good lands in entertainments shared with these envied darlings of the courtly G.o.ddess. _Captain Bobadil_, we may be certain, was met among the crowd at Paul's. Here it was that all those niceties of the mode which crop up through his plays were observed. In the "Midas" of Lily, quoted by Charles Knight in his "London," are found collected several of these distinctive marks of the courtier _comme il faut:_

"How will you be trimmed, sir? Will you have your beard like a spade {844} or a bodkin? A pent-house on your upper lip, or an alley on your chin? A low curl on your head like a bull, or dangling locks like a spaniel? Your mustachioes sharp at the end like shoemakers' awls, or hanging down to your mouth like goat's flakes? Your love-locks wreathed like a silken twist, or s.h.a.ggy, to fall on your shoulder?"

Few dramatists in his or our days would venture to speak so fearlessly to his audience as honest Ben Jonson:

"If any here chance to behold himself, Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong; For if he shame to have his follies known, First he should shame to act 'em. My strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe, Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls As lick up every idle vanity."

Our bard was not left to struggle with the hards.h.i.+ps of an ordinary theatrical career. He was employed to compose the plots and verses of the stately and splendid masques in which Elizabeth, and Anne of Denmark, and her "Royal Doggie" delighted. Had s.p.a.ce permitted, we should gladly have quoted some of the verses and stage directions of these court shows. Among the rest is an Irish masque in which Dennish, Donnell, Dermott, and Patrick come in their long glibbs and s.h.a.ggy mantles to present their compliments to King _Yamish_, and congratulate him on the marriage of some lord or other. Having been roughly received by the janitors, they sounded their grievance aloud:

"_Don_.--Ish it te fas.h.i.+on to beate te imbashaters here? and knock 'hem o' te head phit te phoite stick?"

"_Der_.--Ant make ter mes.h.a.ge run out a ter mouthsh before tey shpeake vit te king?"

They announce their intention to dance as well as that of their masters, who as yet stand outside:

"_Don_.--But tey musht eene come, and daunch i' teyr mantles, and show tee how teye can foot te _fading_ and te _fadow_, and te phip a dunboyne I trow."

"_Der_.--Tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mishtress tere." [Footnote: 203]

[Footnote 203: As out of all late or still living writers, not natives of Ireland, there are not three who quote our peasant-p.r.o.nunciation correctly, so it is more than probable that Jonson, acute as his observation was, mistook the p.r.o.nunciation of his own day.]

After much soft-sawder about their love and their loyalty to Shamus, six men and boys danced to bagpipes and other rude music. Then the Irish gentlemen danced in their mantles to the sound of harps; and one of them called on a bard to celebrate the fame of him who was to make Erin the world's wonder for peace and plenty:

"Advance, immortal bard; come up and view The gladdening face of that great king, in whom So many prophecies of thine are knit.

This is that James, of which long since thou sungst, Should end our country's most unnatural broils."

Would he had done so! Ben was not so blind but that he could spy out some little defects in Solomon and his queen. As he could not apply his talents to their correction, he recompensed himself in unmerciful handling of court vices. Toward the end of James's reign he enjoyed a competent fortune, and owned an extensive library. Distress and illness succeeded; but Charles I. being made aware of his forlorn condition, granted him an additional pension, and that tierce of canary, whose successors have been drained by all poet-laureates since his day. A blue marble stone lies over his remains in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. The epitaph, RARE BEN JONSON, was cut in the flag at the order and charge of Jack Young (afterward knighted).

Eighteen-pence requited the sculptor.

Whether we have improved on the feats of artists of another kind, in Queen Anne's reign, is questionable. At Bartholomew Fair, in the reign of that good-natured sovereign, a girl, of ten years, walked backward up a sloping rope, driving a wheelbarrow behind her. {845} Scaramouch danced on the rope with two children, and a dog, in a wheelbarrow, and a duck on his head. Our authority leaves us in some doubt as to the relative positions of man, children, dog, duck, and wheel-barrow, and whether the duck took position on head of dog or man. The eighteenth century was inaugurated by an intelligent tiger picking the feathers from a fowl in such style as to elicit the hearty applause of a discerning public. Continental sovereigns of our own time prefer the stirring spectacle of men and horses gored by sharp horned bulls. The tiger merely removed the feathers from the skin of the dead fowl; the viscera of the living quadruped follow the thrust of the bull's horn.

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Litteraires, par des Peres de la Compagnie de Jesus.

THE ORIGIN AND MUTABILITY OF SPECIES.

_Origines et Transformations de l'homme et des autres etres. lre partie. Par_ TReMAUX. Paris: Hachette. 1865.

Anthropology is a recent science, and yet its votaries have produced numerous treatises. The delicate questions which it raises have given birth to various and contradictory opinions. The most important problem of this science is that which relates to the origin of man. At what epoch did man for the first time tread the surface of our globe?

How did he appear? What cause produced him? Two first cla.s.s scholars, Humboldt and Bompland, said, not long ago, "The general question of the origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits prescribed to history, perhaps it is not even a philosophical question." Bolder than they, the anthropologists put a question a thousand times more complex, as to the origin of the whole human race, and they do not hesitate to believe that, sooner or later, science will be able to answer it with certainty. As to the present, we may say, _Quot capita, tot sensus;_ the most opposite ideas divide the world, and _it is the main discord which pervades science._ These last words are those of M. Tremaux. To remedy this confusion, the learned traveller puts forth a new idea, which in his opinion should, in throwing light on all the aspects of the question, cause the discord to vanish; trace the way we ought to follow; and at no very distant day arrive at a complete solution. It remains to be seen whether these happy auguries will be realized, or if, on the contrary, the theory of M. Tremaux, added to the others, will not have the fatal effect of increasing the confusion it would abolish.

The opinions relating to the origin of man may be reduced to three. In the first place, we will state that of the monogenists, who behold in all the human types scattered over the world only races and varieties of the same species, and regard mankind as descending, or at least as capable of descending, from a single couple primitively sprung from the hands of the Creator. This opinion is evidently conformable to the Bible narrative; this reflection will not escape the sincere Christian, and we must make it at the risk of exciting the pity or indignation of certain positivists, who reproach us with bringing into scientific questions prejudices and arguments which are extra-scientific.

{846}

The opinion of the polygenists is diametrically opposed to the preceding. According to them, the typical differences which exist between the races of men are so decided, so profound, that they could not be the result of the conditions of existence; these differences are then original; men, instead of belonging to a single zoological species, form a genera or even a family, the bimanous family; community of origin is then impossible, and the account in Genesis must be considered as legendary.

Lastly, a third school separates itself entirely from the preceding, and considers the question under discussion as a phase of the general question--the stability of the species. The naturalists connected with this school regard the species as something essentially changeable.

They deduce this opinion from the examples of the endless varieties of forms which our domestic animals above all others present. It is possible, by known processes, to obtain, after several generations, products so different from the primitive type, that to judge them by the form only we should believe in the existence of a new species; the continued fecundity between the two varieties alone attesting the specific unity of both types. Would it not be possible, by new methods, or by a better employment of the means already known, to arrive at such a complete transformation that the fecundity between the new and the primitive species should cease to exist, or at least cease to be unlimited? We should have thus obtained a novel species by a simple transformation due to the forces of nature. The result which man might obtain at the end of several generations, nature, left to itself, would inevitably arrive at, after a longer or shorter time, according as circ.u.mstances should be more or less favorable. This is admitted by Lamark, and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; it is admitted also by the English naturalist Darwin. The latter regards all animals actually existing as descending from four or five progenitors; an equal number would suffice for plants. He even adds that, guided by a.n.a.logy, he would willingly admit that, all organized beings, plants and animals, descend from one single primordial type, and that man should const.i.tute no exception to the general laws; he springs from the ape or some extinct type, and thence from the primitive.

It is to this last school that M. Tremaux belongs: the t.i.tle of his book sufficiently shows it. He concedes the variability and the transformation of the species; but separates himself distinctly from Darwin relative to the causes which produce this variation.

M. Tremaux' book may be summed up entirely in the statement of the great law of the improvement of beings which is printed in large letters on the front page of the first part: "The improvement of creatures is or becomes proportionate to the degree of elaboration of the soil on which they live! And the soil is in general elaborated in proportion as it belongs to a more recent geological formation." To prove this law, and to deduce from it every possible consequence, is the object of the book.

The first requisite in judging a work is to understand its aim or end.

Thus we have endeavored to seize the sense and the bearing which the author attaches to the great law he thinks he has discovered. Such a soil gives such a product, we are told. We understand this when the direct fruits of the earth are in question that is, of the vegetables which draw directly from the earth the principles which should a.s.similate them. But as to animals, what influence can the soil exercise over them? This is what M. Tremaux should have explained, and what he has forgotten to tell us. Must we understand that the land, by virtue of its chemical and mineralogical composition, possesses a mysterious action of an unknown nature, determining according to the case the improvement or degeneracy of the species of {847} animals?

Such is in fact the meaning which many pa.s.sages seem to attribute to this law. Thus, after having shown that the causes generally a.s.signed cannot explain those typical changes which nature presents, the author adds: "By the action of cross-breeding, food, and climate alone, we shall meet with contradictions at every step. With the action of the sun, the whole globe exhibits the same effects." Since it is neither through food nor by climate that the sun acts, it is by some mysterious agency; and behold us thus, in the nineteenth century, thrown back upon occult causes. May we be permitted to observe that this is not scientific?

Entirely engaged in proving by facts the law which must serve as a oasis to his system, M. Tremaux seems never to have thought of explaining to himself the manner of the earth's action. Thus, beside numerous places which clearly imply an immediate action, others could be quoted which only attribute to the soil an indirect action due to the aliments drawn from it. For example, _apropos_ of cretinism, we read: "This scourge is above all endemical, because in fact those persons who can profit by the _products_ of another soil feel in a lesser degree the unfavorable results of that condition." And further on: "To avoid living permanently on a soil which produces cretinism is the sole remedy, or rather the only palliative, against its pernicious effects on man. It is best to abandon it completely, or at least _to make use of products other than those destined to feed its inhabitants._" In brief, what is necessary to bring humanity to perfection? "Firstly, To choose carefully those lands whose products are more directly intended for man. Secondly, To have recourse to every proper means of improving the land. Thirdly, Planting with suitable trees those lands which are unfavorable to the growth of human food. Fourthly, To subject to agriculture those forest lands which occupy a favorable soil."

These pa.s.sages appear clear that it is not of itself, but by its productions, and also doubtless through its climate, the soil acts on man and on the animals. This explanation is more philosophical than novel.

Between the monogenists and the polygenists, the question reduces itself very nearly to this: Can beings differing so much as the Europeans and the Bushmen, the Hottentot and the Australian, descend from the same ancestors? No, reply the polygenists; for the differences are greater than those which characterize certain species.

In order to meet this objection, the monogenists have had recourse to what is called the middle theory, and to that of the cross-breeds. The whole of the external circ.u.mstances under which the representatives of a species exist, const.i.tute what is called the middle or medium, to which monogenists, supporting themselves on undoubted facts, attribute the power of gradually changing the medium type of a species. The crossing of many types thus modified will give birth to new forms, all, however, belonging to one common kind.