Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 12

An angel may be the same with a body.

In the same body there are, the soul formally giving being, and operating natural operations; and the angel operating supernatural operations.

Angels administer and govern every corporeal creature.

G.o.d, an angel, and the soul, are not contained in s.p.a.ce, but contain it.

Many angels cannot be in the same s.p.a.ce.

The motion of an angel in s.p.a.ce is nothing else than different contacts of different successive places.

The motion of an angel is a succession of his different operations.

His motion may be continuous and discontinuous as he will.

The continuous motion of an angel is necessary through every medium, but may be discontinuous without a medium.

The velocity of the motion of an angel is not according to the quant.i.ty of his strength, but according to his will.

The motion of the illumination of an angel is threefold, or circular, straight, and oblique.

In this account of the motion of an angel we are reminded of the beautiful description of Milton, who marks it by a continuous motion,

"Smooth-sliding without step."

The reader desirous of being _merry_ with Aquinas's angels may find them in Martinus Scriblerus, in Ch. VII. who inquires if angels pa.s.s from one extreme to another without going through the _middle_? And if angels know things more clearly in a morning? How many angels can dance on the point of a very fine needle, without jostling one another?

All the questions in Aquinas are answered with a subtlety of distinction more difficult to comprehend and remember than many problems in Euclid; and perhaps a few of the best might still be selected for youth as curious exercises of the understanding. However, a great part of these peculiar productions are loaded with the most trifling, irreverent, and even scandalous discussions. Even Aquinas could gravely debate, Whether Christ was not an hermaphrodite? Whether there are excrements in Paradise? Whether the pious at the resurrection will rise with their bowels? Others again debated--Whether the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary in the shape of a serpent, of a dove, of a man, or of a woman? Did he seem to be young or old? In what dress was he? Was his garment white or of two colours? Was his linen clean or foul? Did he appear in the morning, noon, or evening? What was the colour of the Virgin Mary's hair? Was she acquainted with the mechanic and liberal arts? Had she a thorough knowledge of the Book of Sentences, and all it contains? that is, Peter Lombard's compilation from the works of the Fathers, written 1200 years after her death.--But these are only trifling matters: they also agitated, Whether when during her conception the Virgin was seated, Christ too was seated; and whether when she lay down, Christ also lay down? The following question was a favourite topic for discussion, and the acutest logicians never resolved it: "When a hog is carried to market with a rope tied about his neck, which is held at the other end by a man, whether is the _hog_ carried to market by the _rope_ or the _man_?"

In the tenth century[29], after long and ineffectual controversy about the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, they at length universally agreed to sign a peace. This mutual forbearance must not, however, be ascribed to the prudence and virtue of those times. It was mere ignorance and incapacity of reasoning which kept the peace, and deterred them from entering into debates to which they at length found themselves unequal!

Lord Lyttleton, in his Life of Henry II., laments the unhappy effects of the scholastic philosophy on the progress of the human mind. The minds of men were turned from cla.s.sical studies to the subtilties of school divinity, which Rome encouraged, as more profitable for the maintenance of her doctrines. It was a great misfortune to religion and to learning, that men of such acute understandings as Abelard and Lombard, who might have done much to reform the errors of the church, and to restore science in Europe, should have depraved both, by applying their admirable parts to weave those cobwebs of sophistry, and to confound the clear simplicity of evangelical truths, by a false philosophy and a captious logic.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: Jortin's _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_, vol. v. p.

17.]

FAME CONTEMNED.

All men are fond of glory, and even those philosophers who write against that n.o.ble pa.s.sion prefix their _names_ to their own works. It is worthy of observation that the authors of two _religious books_, universally received, have concealed their names from the world. The "Imitation of Christ" is attributed, without any authority, to Thomas A'Kempis; and the author of the "Whole Duty of Man" still remains undiscovered.

Millions of their books have been dispersed in the Christian world.

To have revealed their _names_ would have given them as much worldly fame as any moralist has obtained--but they contemned it! Their religion was raised above all worldly pa.s.sions! Some profane writers, indeed, have also concealed their names to great works, but their _motives_ were of a very different cast.

THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE.

Nothing is so capable of disordering the intellects as an intense application to any one of these six things: the Quadrature of the Circle; the Multiplication of the Cube; the Perpetual Motion; the Philosophical Stone; Magic; and Judicial Astrology. "It is proper, however," Fontenelle remarks, "to apply one's self to these inquiries; because we find, as we proceed, many valuable discoveries of which we were before ignorant." The same thought Cowley has applied, in an address to his mistress, thus--

"Although I think thou never wilt be found, Yet I'm resolved to search for thee: The search itself rewards the pains.

So though the chymist his great secret miss, (For neither it in art nor nature is) Yet things well worth his toil he gains; And does his charge and labour pay With good unsought experiments by the way."

The same thought is in Donne; perhaps Cowley did not suspect that he was an imitator; Fontenelle could not have read either; he struck out the thought by his own reflection, Glauber searched long and deeply for the philosopher's stone, which though he did not find, yet in his researches he discovered a very useful purging salt, which bears his name.

Maupertuis observes on the _Philosophical Stone_, that we cannot prove the impossibility of obtaining it, but we can easily see the folly of those who employ their time and money in seeking for it. This price is too great to counterbalance the little probability of succeeding in it.

However, it is still a bantling of modern chemistry, who has nodded very affectionately on it!--Of the _Perpetual Motion_, he shows the impossibility, in the sense in which it is generally received. On the _Quadrature of the Circle_, he says he cannot decide if this problem be resolvable or not: but he observes, that it is very useless to search for it any more; since we have arrived by approximation to such a point of accuracy, that on a large circle, such as the orbit which the earth describes round the sun, the geometrician will not mistake by the thickness of a hair. The quadrature of the circle is still, however, a favourite game with some visionaries, and several are still imagining that they have discovered the perpetual motion; the Italians nickname them _matto perpetuo_: and Bekker tells us of the fate of one Hartmann, of Leipsic, who was in such despair at having pa.s.sed his life so vainly, in studying the perpetual motion, that at length he hanged himself!

IMITATORS.

Some writers, usually pedants, imagine that they can supply, by the labours of industry, the deficiencies of nature. Paulus Manutius frequently spent a month in writing a single letter. He affected to imitate Cicero. But although he painfully attained to something of the elegance of his style, dest.i.tute of the native graces of unaffected composition, he was one of those whom Erasmus bantered in his _Ciceronia.n.u.s_, as so slavishly devoted to Cicero's style, that they ridiculously employed the utmost precautions when they were seized by a Ciceronian fit. The _Nosoponus_ of Erasmus tells of his devotion to Cicero; of his three indexes to all his words, and his never writing but in the dead of night, employing months upon a few lines; and his religious veneration for _words_, with his total indifference about the _sense_.

Le Brun, a Jesuit, was a singular instance of such unhappy imitation. He was a Latin poet, and his themes were religious. He formed the extravagant project of subst.i.tuting a _religious Virgil_ and _Ovid_ merely by adapting his works to their t.i.tles. His _Christian Virgil_ consists, like the Pagan Virgil, of _Eclogues_, _Georgics_, and of an _Epic_ of twelve books; with this difference, that devotional subjects are subst.i.tuted for fabulous ones. His epic is the _Ignaciad_, or the pilgrimage of Saint Ignatius. His _Christian Ovid_, is in the same taste; everything wears a new face. His _Epistles_ are pious ones; the _Fasti_ are the six days of the Creation; the _Elegies_ are the six Lamentations of Jeremiah; a poem on _the Love of G.o.d_ is subst.i.tuted for the _Art of Love_; and the history of some _Conversions_ supplies the place of the _Metamorphoses_! This Jesuit would, no doubt, have approved of a _family Shakspeare_!

A poet of a far different character, the elegant Sannazarius, has done much the same thing in his poem _De Partu Virginis_. The same servile imitation of ancient taste appears. It professes to celebrate the birth of _Christ_, yet his name is not once mentioned in it! The _Virgin_ herself is styled _spes deorum_! "The hope of the G.o.ds!" The _Incarnation_ is predicted by _Proteus_! The Virgin, instead of consulting the _sacred writings_, reads the _Sibylline oracles_! Her attendants are _dryads_, _nereids_, &c. This monstrous mixture of polytheism with the mysteries of Christianity, appears in everything he had about him. In a chapel at one of his country seats he had two statues placed at his tomb, _Apollo_ and _Minerva_; catholic piety found no difficulty in the present case, as well as in innumerable others of the same kind, to inscribe the statue of _Apollo_ with the name of _David_, and that of _Minerva_ with the female one of _Judith_!

Seneca, in his 114th Epistle, gives a curious literary anecdote of the sort of imitation by which an inferior mind becomes the monkey of an original writer. At Rome, when Sall.u.s.t was the fas.h.i.+onable writer, short sentences, uncommon words, and an obscure brevity, were affected as so many elegances. Arruntius, who wrote the history of the Punic Wars, painfully laboured to imitate Sall.u.s.t. Expressions which are rare in Sall.u.s.t are frequent in Arruntius, and, of course, without the motive that induced Sall.u.s.t to adopt them. What rose naturally under the pen of the great historian, the minor one must have run after with ridiculous anxiety. Seneca adds several instances of the servile affectation of Arruntius, which seem much like those we once had of Johnson, by the undiscerning herd of his apes.

One cannot but smile at these imitators; we have abounded with them. In the days of Churchill, every month produced an effusion which tolerably imitated his slovenly versification, his coa.r.s.e invective, and his careless mediocrity,--but the genius remained with the English Juvenal.

Sterne had his countless mult.i.tude; and in Fielding's time, Tom Jones produced more b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in wit than the author could ever suspect. To such literary echoes, the reply of Philip of Macedon to one who prided himself on imitating the notes of the nightingale may be applied: "I prefer the nightingale herself!" Even the most successful of this imitating tribe must be doomed to share the fate of Silius Italicus, in his cold imitation of Virgil, and Cawthorne in his empty harmony of Pope.

To all these imitators I must apply an Arabian anecdote. Ebn Saad, one of Mahomet's amanuenses, when writing what the prophet dictated, cried out by way of admiration--"Blessed be G.o.d, the best Creator!" Mahomet approved of the expression, and desired him to write those words down as part of the inspired pa.s.sage.--The consequence was, that Ebn Saad began to think himself as great a prophet as his master, and took upon himself to imitate the Koran according to his fancy; but the imitator got himself into trouble, and only escaped with life by falling on his knees, and solemnly swearing he would never again imitate the Koran, for which he was sensible G.o.d had never created him.

CICERO'S PUNS.

"I should," says Menage, "have received great pleasure to have conversed with Cicero, had I lived in his time. He must have been a man very agreeable in conversation, since even Caesar carefully collected his _bons mots_. Cicero has boasted of the great actions he has done for his country, because there is no vanity in exulting in the performance of our duties; but he has not boasted that he was the most eloquent orator of his age, though he certainly was; because nothing is more disgusting than to exult in our intellectual powers."

Whatever were the _bons mots_ of Cicero, of which few have come down to us, it is certain that Cicero was an inveterate punster; and he seems to have been more ready with them than with repartees. He said to a senator, who was the son of a tailor, "_Rem acu tetigisti_." You have touched it sharply; _acu_ means sharpness as well as the point of a needle. To the son of a cook, "_ego quoque tibi jure favebo_." The ancients p.r.o.nounced _coce_ and _quoque_ like _co-ke_, which alludes to the Latin _cocus_, cook, besides the ambiguity of _jure_, which applies to _broth_ or _law--jus_. A Sicilian suspected of being a Jew, attempted to get the cause of Verres into his own hands; Cicero, who knew that he was a creature of the great culprit, opposed him, observing "What has a Jew to do with swine's flesh?" The Romans called a boar pig Verres. I regret to afford a respectable authority for forensic puns; however, to have degraded his adversaries by such petty personalities, only proves that Cicero's taste was not exquisite.

There is something very original in Montaigne's censure of Cicero.

Cotton's translation is admirable.

"Boldly to confess the truth, his way of writing, and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious; for his preface, definitions, divisions, and etymologies, take up the greatest part of his work; whatever there is of life and marrow, is smothered and lost in the preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for me, and recollect what I have thence extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but wind: for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose, and the reasons that should properly help to loose the knot I would untie. For me, who only desired to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian disquisitions of poets are of no use. I look for good and solid reasons at the first dash. I am for discourses that give the first charge into the heart of the doubt; his languish about the subject, and delay our expectation. Those are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake a quarter of an hour after, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a design, right or wrong, to incline to favour his cause; to children and common people, to whom a man must say all he can. I would not have an author make it his business to render me attentive; or that he should cry out fifty times _O yes_! as the clerks and heralds do.