Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 56

[Footnote 246: Harl. MSS. 646.]

[Footnote 247: One of the poems written at the time begins:--

The Duke is dead!--and we are rid of strife By Felton's hand that took away his life.

Another declares of his a.s.sa.s.sin:--

He shall sit next to Brutus!

[Footnote 248: The fine, fixed originally at 2000, was mitigated, and the corporal punishment remitted, at the desire of the Bishop of London.]

[Footnote 249: The MS. letter giving this account observes, that the words concerning his majesty were not read in open court, but only those relating to the duke and Felton.]

[Footnote 250: Clarendon notices that Felton was "of a gentleman's family in Suffolk, of good fortune and reputation." I find that during his confinement, the Earl and Countess of Arundel, and Lord Maltravers, their son, "he being of their blood," says the letter-writer, continually visited him, gave many proofs of their friends.h.i.+p, and brought his "winding-sheet," for to the last they attempted to save him from being hung in chains: they did not succeed.]

[Footnote 251: Rushworth, vol. i. 638.]

[Footnote 252: The original reads "It is for our sins our hearts are hardened."]

[Footnote 253: Lansdowne MSS. No. 203, f. 147. The original paper above described was in the possession of the late William Upcott; he had it from Lady Evelyn, who found it among John Evelyn's papers at Wotton, in Surrey. Evelyn married the daughter of Sir Richard Browne, who had married the only daughter of Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State, and one of the persons before whom Felton was examined at Portsmouth.

The words on this remarkable paper differ from the transcripts just given, and are exactly these:--"That man is cowardly, base, and deserveth not the name of a gentleman or souldier, that is not willinge to sacrifice his life for the honor of his G.o.d, his Kinge, and his countrie. Lett noe man commend me for doinge of it, but rather discommend themselves as the cause of it, for if G.o.d had not taken away our hearts for our sinnes, he would not have gone so longe unpunished."]

[Footnote 254: Harl. MSS. 7000. J. Mead to Sir Matt. Stuteville, Sept.

27, 1628.]

[Footnote 255: The rack, or brake, now in the Tower, was introduced by the Duke of Exeter in the reign of Henry VI., as an auxiliary to his project of establis.h.i.+ng the civil law in this country; and in derision it was called his daughter.--Cowel's Interp. voc. _Rack_.]

[Footnote 256: This remarkable doc.u.ment is preserved by Dalrymple: it is an indors.e.m.e.nt in the handwriting of Secretary Winwood, respecting the examination of Peacham--a record whose graduated horrors might have charmed the speculative cruelty of a Domitian or a Nero. "Upon these interrogatories, Peacham this day was examined _before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture;_ notwithstanding, nothing could be drawn from him, he persisting still in his obstinate and insensible denials and former answer."--Dalrymple's "Memoirs and Letters of James I." p. 58.]

[Footnote 257: Z. Townley, in 1624, made the Latin oration in memory of Camden, reprinted by Dr. Thomas Smith at the end of "Camden's Life."--Wood's "Fasti." I find his name also among the verses addressed to Ben Jonson prefixed to his works.]

[Footnote 258: The allusion here is to Charles Townley, Esq., whose n.o.ble collection of antique marbles now enrich our British Museum. He was born 1737, and died January 3, 1805. The collection was purchased by a national grant of 28,200 _l_.; and a building being expressly erected for them, in connexion with Montague House, then converted into a national museum, was opened to the public in 1808.]

[Footnote 259: This poem has been collated afresh from the original in the Sloane MS. No. 603. It concludes with the four lines forming the duke's epitaph, as printed in p. 369.]

[Footnote 260: He has added in the Life the name of _Burlington_.]

[Footnote 261: In the Life, Johnson gives Swift's complaint that Pope was never at leisure for conversation, because _he had always some poetical scheme in his head_.]

[Footnote 262: Johnson, in the Life, has given Watts' opinion of Pope's poetical diction.]

[Footnote 263: Ruffhead's "Life of Pope."]

[Footnote 264: In the Life Johnson says, "Expletives he very early rejected from his verses; but he now and then admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of the six first lines of the "Iliad"

might lose two syllables with very little diminution of the meaning; and sometimes, after all his art and labour, one verse seems to be made for the sake of another.]

[Footnote 265: He has a few double rhymes, but always, I think, unsuccessfully, except one, in the Rape of the Lock.--"Life of Pope."

Mrs. Thrale, in a note on this pa.s.sage, mentions the couplet Johnson meant, for she asked him: it is

The meeting points the fatal lock dissever From the fair head--for ever and for ever.

[Footnote 266: Lanzi, Storia Pittorica, v. 85.]

[Footnote 267: D'Argenville, Vies des Peintres, ii. 46.]

[Footnote 268: The curious reader of taste may refer to Fuseli's Second Lecture for a _diatribe_ against what he calls "the Electic School; which, by selecting the beauties, correcting the faults, supplying the defects, and avoiding the extremes of the different styles, attempted to form a perfect system." He acknowledges the greatness of the Caracci; yet he laughs at the mere copying the manners of various painters into one picture. But perhaps--I say it with all possible deference--our animated critic forgot for a moment that it was no mechanical imitation the Caracci inculcated: _nature_ and _art_ were to be equally studied, and _secondo il nativo talento e la propria sua disposizione_. Barry distinguishes with praise and warmth. "Whether," says he, "we may content ourselves with adopting the _manly plan of art_ pursued by the Caracci and their school at Bologna, in uniting the perfections of all the other schools; or whether, which I rather hope, we look farther into the style of design upon our own studies after nature; whichever of these plans the nation might fix on," &c., ii. 518. Thus, three great names, Du Fresnoy, Fuseli, and Barry, restricted their notions of the Caracci plan to a mere imitation of the great masters; but Lanzi, in unfolding Lodovico's project, lays down as his first principle the observation of nature, and, secondly, the imitation of the great masters; and all modified by the natural disposition of the artist.]

[Footnote 269: D'Argenville, Vies des Peintres, ii. 47-68.]

[Footnote 270: Bellori, Le Vite de Pittori, &c.]

[Footnote 271: Pa.s.seri, Vite de Pittori.]

[Footnote 272: D'Argenville, ii. 26.]

[Footnote 273: Fuseli describes the gallery of the Farnese palace as a work of uniform vigour of execution, which nothing can equal but its _imbecility and incongruity of conception_. This deficiency in Annibale was always readily supplied by the taste and learning of Agostino; the vigour of Annibale was deficient both in sensibility and correct invention.]

[Footnote 274: Long after this article was composed, the _Royal Society of Literature_ was projected. It was founded by King George IV., and is said to have originated in a conversation between Dr. Burgess, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, and a member of the royal household, who reported its substance to the king. The bishop was again sent for, and the formation of the society commenced by the offer of premiums for an essay on Homer, the prize being one hundred guineas; a poem on Dartmoor, prize fifty guineas (awarded to Mrs. Hemans); and one of twenty-five guineas, for an essay on the Ancient and Modern Languages of Greece. In 1823 the king granted the society a charter, and placed the annual sum of eleven hundred guineas at its disposal, to be spent in endowing ten a.s.sociates for life, who were to receive one hundred guineas each yearly (as a delicate mode of aiding needy literary men); the remaining one hundred guineas to be expended on two gold medals, to be also awarded to eminent men of letters. Coleridge, Dr. Jameson, Malthus, Roscoe, Todd, and Sharon Turner received annuities among other well-known literary characters; and Mitford, Southey, Scott, Crabbe, Hallam, and Was.h.i.+ngton Irving received medals. On the death of George IV., the grant was discontinued, and the society now exists by the subscriptions of its members.]

[Footnote 275: See an article "On the ridiculous t.i.tles a.s.sumed by the Italian Academies," in a future page of this volume.]

[Footnote 276: In J.T. Smith's "Historical and Literary Curiosities" is engraved a fac-simile of a series of designs for the arms of the Royal Society, drawn by Evelyn, but not used, because the king gave them the choice of using the Royal Arms in a canton. The first of Evelyn's designs exhibits a s.h.i.+p in full sail, with the motto _Et Augebitur Scientia_. The other are as follows:--A hand issuing from the clouds holding a plumb-line--motto, _Omnia probate_; two telescopes saltier-wise, the earth and planets above--motto, _Quantum nescimus_; the sun in splendour--motto, _Ad majorem lumen_; a terrestrial globe, with the human eye above--motto, _Rerum cognoscere causas_.]

[Footnote 277: Evelyn notes in his Diary, August 20, 1662--"The king gave us the armes of England, to be borne in a canton in our armes; and sent us a mace of silver-gilt, of the same fas.h.i.+on and bigness as those carried before his majestie, to be borne before our president on meeting-days." This mace is still used.]

[Footnote 278: It was revived in 1707, by Wanley, the librarian to the Earl of Oxford, who composed its rules; he was joined by Bagford, Elstob, Holmes (keeper of the Tower records), Maddox, Stukely, and Vertue the engraver. They met at the Devil Tavern, Fleet-street, and afterwards in rooms of their own in Chancery-lane. They ultimately removed to apartments granted them in Somerset House by George III., where they still remain.]

[Footnote 279: It was said of Prynne, and his custom of quoting authorities by hundreds in the margins of his books to corroborate what he said in the text, that "he always had his wits beside him in the margin, to be beside his wits in the text." This jest is Milton's.]

[Footnote 280: Southey says--"A quotation may be likened to a text on which a sermon is preached."]

[Footnote 281: Hone had this faculty in a large degree, and one of his best political satires, the "Political Showman at Home," is entirely made out of quotations from older authors applicable to the real or fancied characteristics of the politicians he satirized.]

[Footnote 282: In MS. Bib. Reg. inter lat. No. 2447, p. 134.]

[Footnote 283: In the recent edition of Dante, by Romanis, in four volumes, quarto, the last preserves the "Vision of Alberico," and a strange correspondence on its publication; the resemblances in numerous pa.s.sages are pointed out. It is curious to observe that the good Catholic _Abbate Cancellieri_, at _first_ maintained the _authenticity of the Vision_, by alleging that _similar revelations_ have not been unusual!--the Cavaliere _Gherardi Rossi_ attacked the whole as the crude legend of a boy who was only made the instrument of the monks, and was either a liar or a parrot! We may express our astonishment that, at the present day, a subject of mere literary inquiry should have been involved with "the faith of the Roman church." Cancellieri becomes at length submissive to the lively attacks of Rossi; and the editor gravely adds his "conclusion," which had nearly concluded nothing! He discovers pictures, sculptures, and a mystery acted, as well as Visions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from which he imagines the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso owe their first conception. The originality of Dante, however, is maintained on a right principle; that the poet only employed the ideas and the materials which is found in his own country and his own times.]

[Footnote 284: Michelet, in his "Life of Luther," says the Spanish soldiers mocked and loaded him with insults, on the evening of his last examination before the Diet at Worms, on his leaving the town-hall to return to his hostelry: he ceased to employ arguments after this, and when next day the archbishop of Treves wished to renew them, he replied in the language of Scripture, "If this work be of men, it will come to nought, but if it be of G.o.d, ye cannot overthrow it."]

[Footnote 285: The miracles of Clovis consisted of a s.h.i.+eld, which was picked up after having fallen from the skies; the anointing oil, conveyed from heaven by a white dove in a phial, which, till the reign of Louis XVI. consecrated the kings of France; and the oriflamme, or standard with golden flames, long suspended over the tomb of St. Denis, which the French kings only raised over the tomb when their crown was in imminent peril. No future king of France can be anointed with the _sainte ampoule_, or oil brought down to earth by a white dove; in 1794 it was broken by some profane hand, and antiquaries have since agreed that it was only an ancient lachrymatory!]

[Footnote 286: This fact was probably quite unknown to us, till it was given in the "Quarterly Review," vol. xxix. However, the same event was going on in Italy.]