Curiosities of Literature Volume Iii Part 14

A plan of the Isle of Cyprus, where Magius commanded, and his first misfortune happened, his slavery by the Turks.--The painter has expressed this by an emblem of a tree shaken by the winds and scathed by the lightning; but from the trunk issues a beautiful green branch s.h.i.+ning in a brilliant sun, with this device--"From this fallen trunk springs a branch full of vigour."

The missions of Magius to raise troops in the province of La Puglia.--In one of these Magius is seen returning to Venice; his final departure,--a thunderbolt is viewed falling on his vessel--his pa.s.sage by Corfu and Zante, and his arrival at Candia.

His travels to Egypt.--The centre figure represents this province raising its right hand extended towards a palm-tree, and the left leaning on a pyramid, inscribed "Celebrated throughout the world for her wonders." The smaller pictures are the entrance of Magius into the port of Alexandria; Rosetta, with a caravan of Turks and different nations; the city of Grand Cairo, exterior and interior, with views of other places; and finally, his return to Venice.

His journey to Rome.--The centre figure an armed Pallas seated on trophies, the Tyber beneath her feet, a globe in her hands, inscribed _Quod rerum victrix ac domina_,--"Because she is the Conqueress and Mistress of the World." The ten small pictures are views of the cities in the pope's dominion. His first audience at the conclave forms a pleasing and fine composition.

His travels into Syria.--The princ.i.p.al figure is a female, emblematical of that fine country; she is seated in the midst of a gay orchard, and embraces a bundle of roses, inscribed _Mundi deliciae_--"The delight of the universe." The small compartments are views of towns and ports, and the spot where Magius collected his fleet.

His pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was made a knight of the Holy Sepulchre.--The princ.i.p.al figure represents Devotion, inscribed _Ducit_--"It is she who conducts me." The compartments exhibit a variety of objects, with a correctness of drawing which is described as belonging to the cla.s.s, and partaking of the charms of the pencil of Claude Lorraine. His vessel is first viewed in the roadstead at Venice beat by a storm; arrives at Zante to refresh; enters the port of Simiso; there having landed, he and his companions are proceeding to the town on a.s.ses, for Christians were not permitted to travel in Turkey on horses.

In the church at Jerusalem the bishop, in his pontifical habit, receives him as a knight of the Holy Sepulchre, arraying him in the armour of G.o.dfrey of Bouillon, and placing his sword in the hands of Magius. His arrival at Bethlehem, to see the cradle of the Lord--and his return by Jaffa with his companions, in the dress of pilgrims; the groups are finely contrasted with the Turks mingling amongst them.

The taking of the city of Famagusta, and his slavery.--The middle figure, with a dog at its feet, represents Fidelity, the character of Magius, who ever preferred it to his life or his freedom, inscribed _Captivat_--"She has reduced me to slavery." Six smaller pictures exhibit the different points of the island of Cyprus where the Turks effected their descents. Magius retreating to Famagusta, which he long defended, and where his cousin, a skilful engineer, was killed. The Turks compelled to raise the siege, but return with greater forces--the sacking of the town and the palace, where Magius was taken.--One picture exhibits him brought before a bashaw, who has him stripped, to judge of his strength and fix his price, when, after examination, he is sent among other slaves. He is seen bound and tied up among his companions in misfortune--again he is forced to labour, and carries a cask of water on his shoulders.--In another picture, his master, finding him weak of body, conducts him to a slave-merchant to sell him. In another we see him leading an a.s.s loaded with packages; his new master, finding him loitering on his way, showers his blows on him, while a soldier is seen purloining one of the packages from the a.s.s. Another exhibits Magius sinking with fatigue on the sands, while his master would raise him up by an unsparing use of the bastinado. The varied details of these little paintings are pleasingly executed.

The close of his slavery.--The middle figure kneeling to Heaven, and a light breaking from it, inscribed, "He breaks my chains," to express the confidence of Magius. The Turks are seen landing with their pillage and their slaves.--In one of the pictures are seen two s.h.i.+ps on fire; a young lady of Cyprus preferring death to the loss of her honour and the miseries of slavery, determined to set fire to the vessel in which she was carried; she succeeded, and the flames communicated to another.

His return to Venice.--The painter for his princ.i.p.al figure has chosen a Pallas, with a helmet on her head, the aegis on one arm, and her lance in the other, to describe the courage with which Magius had supported his misfortunes, inscribed _Reducit_--"She brings me back." In the last of the compartments he is seen at the custom-house at Venice; he enters the house of his father; the old man hastens to meet him, and embraces him.

One page is filled by a single picture, which represents the senate of Venice, with the Doge on his throne; Magius presents an account of his different employments, and holds in his hand a scroll, on which is written, _Quod commisisti perfeci; quod restat agendum, pare fide complectar_--"I have done what you committed to my care; and I will perform with the same fidelity what remains to be done." He is received by the senate with the most distinguished honours, and is not only justified, but praised and honoured.

The most magnificent of these paintings is the one attributed to Paul Veronese. It is described by the Duke de la Valliere as almost unparalleled for its richness, its elegance, and its brilliancy. It is inscribed _Pater meus et fratres mei dereliquerunt me; Dominus autem a.s.sumpsit me!_--"My father and my brothers abandoned me; but the Lord took me under his protection." This is an allusion to the accusation raised against him in the open senate when the Turks took the Isle of Cyprus, and his family wanted either the confidence or the courage to defend Magius. In the front of this large picture, Magius leading his son by the hand, conducts him to be reconciled with his brothers and sisters-in-law, who are on the opposite side; his hand holds this scroll, _Vos cogitastis de me malum; sed Deus convert.i.t illud in bonum_--"You thought ill of me; but the Lord has turned it to good." In this he alludes to the satisfaction he had given the senate, and to the honours they had decreed him. Another scene is introduced, where Magius appears in a magnificent hall at a table in the midst of all his family, with whom a general reconciliation has taken place: on his left hand are gardens opening with an enchanting effect, and magnificently ornamented, with the villa of his father, on which flowers and wreaths seem dropping on the roof, as if from heaven. In the perspective, the landscape probably represents the rural neighbourhood of Magius's early days.

Such are the most interesting incidents which I have selected from the copious description of the Duke de la Valliere. The idea of this production is new: an autobiography in a series of remarkable scenes, painted under the eye of the describer of them, in which, too, he has preserved all the fulness of his feelings and his minutest recollections; but the novelty becomes interesting from the character of the n.o.ble Magius, and the romantic fancy which inspired this elaborate and costly curiosity. It was not, indeed, without some trouble that I have drawn up this little account; but while thus employed, I seemed to be composing a very uncommon romance.

FOOTNOTE:

[83] The Duke's description is not to be found, as might be expected, in his own valued catalogue, but was a contribution to Gaignat's, ii. 16, where it occupies fourteen pages. This singular work sold at Gaignat's sale for 902 livres. It was then the golden age of literary curiosity, when the rarest things were not ruinous; and that price was even then considered extraordinary, though the work was an unique. It must consist of about 180 subjects, by Italian artists.

CAUSE AND PRETEXT.

It is an important principle in morals and in politics, not to mistake the cause for the pretext, nor the pretext for the cause, and by this means to distinguish between the concealed and the ostensible motive. On this principle, history might be recomposed in a new manner; it would not often describe _circ.u.mstances_ and _characters_ as they usually appear. When we mistake the characters of men, we mistake the nature of their actions; and we shall find in the study of secret history, that some of the most important events in modern history were produced from very different motives than their ostensible ones. Polybius, the most philosophical writer of the ancients, has marked out this useful distinction of _cause_ and _pretext_, and aptly ill.u.s.trates the observation by the facts which he explains. Amilcar, for instance, was the first author and contriver of the second Punic war, though he died ten years before the commencement of it. "A statesman," says the wise and grave historian, "who knows not how to trace the origin of events, and discern the different sources from whence they take their rise, may be compared to a physician who neglects to inform himself of the causes of those distempers which he is called in to cure. Our pains can never be better employed than in searching out the causes of events; for the most trifling incidents give birth to matters of the greatest moment and importance." The latter part of this remark of Polybius points out another principle which has been often verified by history, and which furnished the materials of the little book of "Grands Evenemens par les pet.i.tes Causes."

Our present inquiry concerns "cause and pretext."

Leo X. projected an alliance of the sovereigns of Christendom against the Turks. The avowed object was to oppose the progress of the Ottomans against the Mamelukes of Egypt, who were more friendly to the Christians; but the concealed motive with his holiness was to enrich himself and his family with the spoils of Christendom, and to aggrandise the papal throne by war; and such, indeed, the policy of these pontiffs had always been in those mad crusades which they excited against the East.

The Reformation, excellent as its results have proved in the cause of genuine freedom, originated in no purer source than human pa.s.sions and selfish motives: it was the progeny of avarice in Germany, of novelty in France, and of love in England. The latter is elegantly alluded to by Gray--

And gospel-light first beam'd from Bullen's eyes.

The Reformation is considered by the Duke of Nevers, in a work printed in 1590, as it had been by Francis I., in his Apology in 1537, as a _coup-d'etat_ of Charles V. towards universal monarchy. The duke says, that the emperor silently permitted Luther to establish his principles in Germany, that they might split the confederacy of the elective princes, and by this division facilitate their more easy conquest, and play them off one against another, and by these means to secure the imperial crown hereditary in the house of Austria. Had Charles V. not been the mere creature of his politics, and had he felt any zeal for the Catholic cause, which he pretended to fight for, never would he have allowed the new doctrines to spread for more than twenty years without the least opposition.

The famous League in France was raised for "religion and the relief of public grievances;" such was the pretext! After the princes and the people had alike become its victims, this "league" was discovered to have been formed by the pride and the ambition of the Guises, aided by the machinations of the Jesuits against the attempts of the Prince of Conde to dislodge them from their "seat of power." While the Huguenots pillaged, burnt, and ma.s.sacred, declaring in their manifestoes that they were only fighting to _release the king_, whom they a.s.serted was a prisoner of the Guises, the Catholics repaid them with the same persecution and the same manifestoes, declaring that they only wished _to liberate the Prince of Conde_, who was the prisoner of the Huguenots. The people were led on by the cry of "religion;" but this civil war was not in reality so much Catholic against Huguenot, as Guise against Conde. A parallel event occurred between our Charles I. and the Scotch Covenanters; and the king expressly declared, in "a large declaration, concerning the late tumults in Scotland," that "religion is only _pretended_, and used by them as a cloak to palliate their _intended rebellion_," which he demonstrated by the facts he alleged.

There was a revolutionary party in France, which, taking the name of _Frondeurs_, shook that kingdom under the administration of Cardinal Mazarin, and held out for their pretext the public freedom. But that faction, composed of some of the discontented French princes and the mob, was entirely organized by Cardinal de Retz, who held them in hand, to check or to spur them as the occasion required, from a mere personal pique against Mazarin, who had not treated that vivacious genius with all the deference he exacted. This appears from his own Memoirs.

We have smiled at James I. threatening the States-general by the English amba.s.sador, about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused the doctrines of Arminius against those of the contra-remonstrants, or Calvinists; the ostensible subject was religious, or rather metaphysical-religious doctrines, but the concealed one was a struggle for predominance between the Pensionary Barnevelt, a.s.sisted by the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English.

"These were the real sources," says Lord Hardwicke, a statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public history, and a far more able judge than Diodati the Swiss divine, and Brandt the ecclesiastical historian, who in the synod of Dort could see nothing but what appeared in it, and gravely narrated the idle squabbles on phrases concerning predestination or grace. Hales, of Eaton, who was secretary to the English amba.s.sador at this synod, perfectly accords with the account of Lord Hardwicke. "Our synod," writes that judicious observer, "goes on like a watch; the main wheels upon which the whole business turns are least in sight; for all things of moment are acted in private sessions; _what is done in public is only for show and entertainment_."

The _cause_ of the persecution of the Jansenists was the jealousy of the Jesuits; the _pretext_ was _la grace suffisante_. The learned La Croze observes, that the same circ.u.mstance occurred in the affair of Nestorius and the church of Alexandria; the pretext was orthodoxy, the cause was the jealousy of the church of Alexandria, or rather the fiery and turbulent Cyril, who personally hated Nestorius. The opinions of Nestorius, and the council which condemned them, were the same in effect. I only produce this remote fact to prove that ancient times do not alter the truth of our principle.

When James II. was so strenuous an advocate for _toleration_ and _liberty of conscience_ in removing the Test Act, this enlightened principle of government was only a _pretext_ with that monk-ridden monarch; it is well known that the _cause_ was to introduce and make the Catholics predominant in his councils and government. The result, which that eager and blind politician hurried on too fast, and which therefore did not take place, would have been that "liberty of conscience" would soon have become an "overt act of treason" before an inquisition of his Jesuits!

In all political affairs drop the _pretexts_ and strike at the _causes_; we may thus understand what the heads of parties may choose to conceal.

POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS.

A writer, whose learning gives value to his eloquence, in his Bampton Lectures has censured, with that liberal spirit so friendly to the cause of truth, the calumnies and rumours of parties, which are still industriously retailed, though they have been often confuted. Forged doc.u.ments are still referred to, or tales unsupported by evidence are confidently quoted. Mr. Heber's subject confined his inquiries to theological history; he has told us that "Augustin is not ashamed, in his dispute with Faustus, to take advantage of the popular slanders against the followers of Manes, though his own experience (for he had himself been of that sect) was sufficient to detect this falsehood."

The Romanists, in spite of satisfactory answers, have continued to urge against the English protestant the romance of Parker's consecration;[84]

while the protestant persists in falsely imputing to the catholic public formularies the systematic omission of the second commandment. "The calumnies of Rimius and Stinstra against the Moravian brethren are cases in point," continues Mr. Heber. "No one now believes them, yet they once could deceive even Warburton!" We may also add the obsolete calumny of Jews crucifying boys--of which a monument raised to Hugh of Lincoln perpetuates the memory, and which a modern historian records without any scruple of doubt; several authorities, which are cited on this occasion, amount only to the single one of Matthew Paris, who gives it as a popular rumour. Such accusations usually happened when the Jews were too rich and the king was too poor![85]

The falsehoods and forgeries raised by parties are overwhelming! It startles a philosopher, in the calm of his study, when he discovers how writers, who, we may presume, are searchers after truth, should, in fact, turn out to be searchers after the grossest fictions. This alters the habits of the literary man: it is an unnatural depravity of his pursuits--and it proves that the personal is too apt to predominate over the literary character.

I have already touched on the main point of the present article in the one on "Political Nicknames." I have there shown how political calumny appears to have been reduced into an art; one of its branches would be that of converting forgeries and fictions into historical authorities.

When one nation is at war with another, there is no doubt that the two governments connive at, and often encourage, the most atrocious libels on each other, to madden the people to preserve their independence, and contribute cheerfully to the expenses of the war. France and England formerly complained of Holland--the Athenians employed the same policy against the Macedonians and Persians. Such is the origin of a vast number of supposit.i.tious papers and volumes, which sometimes, at a remote date, confound the labours of the honest historian, and too often serve the purposes of the dishonest, with whom they become authorities.

The crude and suspicious libels which were drawn out of their obscurity in Cromwell's time against James the First have overloaded the character of that monarch, yet are now eagerly referred to by party writers, though in their own days they were obsolete and doubtful. During the civil wars of Charles the First such spurious doc.u.ments exist in the forms of speeches which were never spoken; of letters never written by the names subscribed; printed declarations never declared; battles never fought, and victories never obtained! Such is the language of Rushworth, who complains of this evil spirit of party forgeries, while he is himself suspected of having rescinded or suppressed whatever was not agreeable to his patron Cromwell. A curious, and perhaps a necessary list might be drawn up of political forgeries of our own, which have been sometimes referred to as genuine, but which are the inventions of wits and satirists! Bayle ingeniously observes, that at the close of every century such productions should be branded by a skilful discriminator, to save the future inquirer from errors he can hardly avoid. "How many are still kept in error by the satires of the sixteenth century! Those of the present age will be no less active in future ages, for they will still be preserved in public libraries."

The art and skill with which some have fabricated a forged narrative render its detection almost hopeless. When young Maitland, the brother to the secretary, in order to palliate the crime of the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Regent Murray, was employed to draw up a pretended conference between him, Knox, and others, to stigmatise them by the odium of advising to dethrone the young monarch, and to subst.i.tute the regent for their sovereign, Maitland produced so dramatic a performance, by giving to each person his peculiar mode of expression, that this circ.u.mstance long baffled the incredulity of those who could not in consequence deny the truth of a narrative apparently so correct in its particulars! "The fiction of the warming-pan enclosing the young Pretender brought more adherents to the cause of the Whigs than the Bill of Rights," observes Lord John Russell.

Among such party narratives, the horrid tale of the b.l.o.o.d.y Colonel Kirk has been worked up by Hume with all his eloquence and pathos; and, from its interest, no suspicion has arisen of its truth. Yet, so far as it concerns Kirk, or the reign of James the Second, or even English history, it is, as Ritson too honestly expresses it, "an impudent and a bare-faced lie!" The simple fact is told by Kennet in a few words: he probably was aware of the nature of this political fiction. Hume was not, indeed, himself the fabricator of the tale; but he had not any historical authority. The origin of this fable was probably a pious fraud of the Whig party, to whom Kirk had rendered himself odious; at that moment stories still more terrifying were greedily swallowed, and which, Ritson insinuates, have become a part of the history of England.

The original story, related more circ.u.mstantially, though not more affectingly, nor perhaps more truly, may be found in Wanley's "Wonders of the Little World,"[86] which I give, relieving it from the tediousness of old Wanley.

A governor of Zealand, under the bold Duke of Burgundy, had in vain sought to seduce the affections of the beautiful wife of a citizen. The governor imprisons the husband on an accusation of treason; and when the wife appeared as the suppliant, the governor, after no brief eloquence, succeeded as a lover, on the plea that her husband's life could only be spared by her compliance. The woman, in tears and in aversion, and not without a hope of vengeance only delayed, lost her honour! Pointing to the prison, the governor told her, "If you seek your husband, enter there, and take him along with you!" The wife, in the bitterness of her thoughts, yet not without the consolation that she had s.n.a.t.c.hed her husband from the grave, pa.s.sed into the prison; there in a cell, to her astonishment and horror, she beheld the corpse of her husband laid out in a coffin, ready for burial! Mourning over it, she at length returned to the governor, fiercely exclaiming, "You have kept your word! you have restored to me my husband! and be a.s.sured the favour shall be repaid!"

The inhuman villain, terrified in the presence of his intrepid victim, attempted to appease her vengeance, and more, to win her to his wishes.

Returning home, she a.s.sembled her friends, revealed her whole story, and under their protection she appealed to Charles the Bold, a strict lover of justice, and who now awarded a singular but an exemplary catastrophe. The duke first commanded that the criminal governor should instantly marry the woman whom he had made a widow, and at the same time sign his will, with a clause importing that should he die before his lady he const.i.tuted her his heiress. All this was concealed from both sides, rather to satisfy the duke than the parties themselves. This done, the unhappy woman was dismissed alone! The governor was conducted to the prison to suffer the same death he had inflicted on the husband of his wife; and when this lady was desired once more to enter the prison, she beheld her second husband headless in his coffin as she had her first! Such extraordinary incidents in so short a period overpowered the feeble frame of the sufferer; she died--leaving a son, who inherited the rich accession of fortune so fatally obtained by his injured and suffering mother.

Such is the tale of which the party story of Kirk appeared to Ritson to have been a _rifacimento_; but it is rather the foundation than the superstructure. This critic was right in the general, but not in the particular. It was not necessary to point out the present source, when so many others of a parallel nature exist. This tale, universally told, Mr. Douce considers as the origin of _Measure for Measure_, and was probably some traditional event; for it appears sometimes with a change of names and places, without any of incident. It always turns on a soldier, a brother or a husband, executed; and a wife, a sister, a deceived victim, to save them from death. It was, therefore, easily transferred to Kirk, and Pomfret's poem of "Cruelty and l.u.s.t" long made the story popular. It could only have been in this form that it reached the historian, who, it must be observed, introduces it as a "story _commonly told_ of him;" but popular tragic romances should not enter into the dusty doc.u.ments of a history of England, and much less be particularly specified in the index! Belleforest, in his old version of the tale, has even the circ.u.mstance of the "captain, who having seduced the wife under the promise to save her husband's life, exhibited him soon afterwards _through the window of her apartment suspended on a gibbet_." This forms the horrid incident in the history of "the b.l.o.o.d.y Colonel," and served the purpose of a party, who wished to bury him in odium. Kirk was a soldier of fortune, and a loose liver, and a great bl.u.s.terer, who would sometimes threaten to decimate his own regiment, but is said to have forgotten the menace the next day. Hateful as such military men will always be, in the present instance Colonel Kirk has been shamefully calumniated by poets and historians, who suffer themselves to be duped by the forgeries of political parties![87]

While we are detecting a source of error into which the party feelings of modern historians may lead them, let us confess that they are far more valuable than the ancient; for to us at least the ancients have written history without producing authorities! Modern historians must furnish their readers with the truest means to become their critics, by providing them with their authorities; and it is only by judiciously appreciating these that we may confidently accept their discoveries. Unquestionably the ancients have often introduced into their histories many tales similar to the story of Kirk--popular or party forgeries! The mellifluous copiousness of Livy conceals many a tale of wonder; the graver of Tacitus etches many a fatal stroke; and the secret history of Suetonius too often raises a suspicion of those whispers, _Quid rex in aurem reginae dixerit, quid Juno fabulata sit c.u.m Jove_. It is certain that Plutarch has often told, and varied too in the telling, the same story, which he has applied to different persons. A critic in the Ritsonian style has said of the grave Plutarch, _Mendax ille Plutarchus qui vitas oratorum, dolis et erroribus consutas, olim conscribillavit_.[88] "That lying Plutarch, who formerly scribbled the lives of the orators, made up of falsities and blunders!" There is in Italian a scarce book, of a better design than execution, of the Abbate Lancellotti, _Farfalloni degli Antichi Historici_.--"Flim-flams of the Ancients." Modern historians have to dispute their pa.s.sage to immortality step by step; and however fervid be their eloquence, their real test as to value must be brought to the humble references in their margin. Yet these must not terminate our inquiries; for in tracing a story to its original source we shall find that fictions have been sometimes grafted on truths or hearsays, and to separate them as they appeared in their first stage is the pride and glory of learned criticism.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Absurdly reported to have taken place at a meeting in the Nag's-head Tavern, Cheapside.

[85] M. Michel published in Paris, in 1834, a collection of poems and ballads concerning Hugh of Lincoln, which were all very popular at home and abroad in the Middle Ages. One of these, preserved in an Anglo-Norman MS. in the Bibliotheque Royale at Paris, was evidently constructed to be sung by the people soon after the event, which is stated to have happened in the reign of our Henry III.; but there are many ballads comparatively modern which show how carefully the story was kept before the populace; and may be seen in the collections of Bishop Percy, Jameson, Motherwell, &c.

[86] Book iii. ch. 29, sec. 18.

[87] A story still more absurd was connected with the name of Colonel Lunsford, a soldier who consistently defended Charles I., and was killed in 1643. It is related by Echard as reported of him, that he would kill and eat the children of the opposite party. This horridly grotesque imputation has been preserved in the political ballads and poetry of the day. Cleveland ridicules it in one of his poems, where he makes a Roundhead declare--