Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 15

We owe the great discovery of Newton to a very trivial accident. When a student at Cambridge, he had retired during the time of the plague into the country. As he was reading under an apple-tree, one of the fruit fell, and struck him a smart blow on the head. When he observed the smallness of the apple, he was surprised at the force of the stroke.

This led him to consider the accelerating motion of falling bodies; from whence he deduced the principle of gravity, and laid the foundation of his philosophy.

Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish gentleman, who was dangerously wounded at the siege of Pampeluna. Having heated his imagination by reading the Lives of the Saints during his illness, instead of a romance, he conceived a strong ambition to be the founder of a religious order; whence originated the celebrated society of the Jesuits.

Rousseau found his eccentric powers first awakened by the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the singular annual subject which the Academy of Dijon proposed for that year, in which he wrote his celebrated declamation against the arts and sciences. A circ.u.mstance which decided his future literary efforts.

La Fontaine, at the age of twenty-two, had not taken any profession, or devoted himself to any pursuit. Having accidentally heard some verses of Malherbe, he felt a sudden impulse, which directed his future life. He immediately bought a Malherbe, and was so exquisitely delighted with this poet that, after pa.s.sing the nights in treasuring his verses in his memory, he would run in the day-time to the woods, where, concealing himself, he would recite his verses to the surrounding dryads.

Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident. He was taken from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book De Sphaera having been lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a course of astronomic studies. Pennant's first propensity to natural history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of Willoughby's work on birds. The same accident of finding, on the table of his professor, Reaumur's History of Insects, which he read more than he attended to the lecture, and, having been refused the loan, gave such an instant turn to the mind of Bonnet, that he hastened to obtain a copy; after many difficulties in procuring this costly work, its possession gave an unalterable direction to his future life. This naturalist indeed lost the use of his sight by his devotion to the microscope.

Dr. Franklin attributes the cast of his genius to a similar accident. "I found a work of De Foe's, ent.i.tled an 'Essay on Projects,' from which perhaps I derived impressions that have since influenced some of the princ.i.p.al events of my life."

I shall add the incident which occasioned Roger Ascham to write his _Schoolmaster_, one of the few works among our elder writers, which we still read with pleasure.

At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil, at his apartments at Windsor, a number of ingenious men were invited. Secretary Cecil communicated the news of the morning, that several scholars at Eton had run away on account of their master's severity, which he condemned as a great error in the education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the contrary; severe in his own temper, he pleaded warmly in defence of hard flogging.

Dr. Wootton, in softer tones, sided with the secretary. Sir John Mason, adopting no side, bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded the hard-hearted Sir William Petre, and adduced, as an evidence, that the best schoolmaster then in England was the hardest flogger. Then was it that Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed, that if such a master had an able scholar it was owing to the boy's genius, and not the preceptor's rod.

Secretary Cecil and others were pleased with Ascham's notions. Sir Richard Sackville was silent, but when Ascham after dinner went to the queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he took him aside, and frankly told him that, though he had taken no part in the debate, he would not have been absent from that conversation for a great deal; that he knew to his cost the truth that Ascham had supported; for it was the perpetual flogging of such a schoolmaster that had given him an unconquerable aversion to study. And as he wished to remedy this defect in his own children, he earnestly exhorted Ascham to write his observations on so interesting a topic. Such was the circ.u.mstance which produced the admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.

INEQUALITIES OF GENIUS.

Singular inequalities are observable in the labours of genius; and particularly in those which admit great enthusiasm, as in poetry, in painting, and in music. Faultless mediocrity industry can preserve in one continued degree; but excellence, the daring and the happy, can only be attained, by human faculties, by starts.

Our poets who possess the greatest genius, with perhaps the least industry, have at the same time the most splendid and the worst pa.s.sages of poetry. Shakspeare and Dryden are at once the greatest and the least of our poets. With some, their great fault consists in having none.

Carraccio sarcastically said of Tintoret--_Ho veduto il Tintoretto hora eguale a t.i.tiano, hora minore del Tintoretto_--"I have seen Tintoret now equal to t.i.tian, and now less than Tintoret."

Trublet justly observes--The more there are _beauties_ and _great beauties_ in a work, I am the less surprised to find _faults_ and _great faults_. When you say of a work that it has many faults, that decides nothing: and I do not know by this, whether it is execrable or excellent. You tell me of another, that it is without any faults: if your account be just, it is certain the work cannot be excellent.

It was observed of one pleader, that he _knew_ more than he _said_; and of another, that he _said_ more than he _knew_.

Lucian happily describes the works of those who abound with the most luxuriant language, void of ideas. He calls their unmeaning verbosity "anemone-words;" for anemonies are flowers, which, however brilliant, only please the eye, leaving no fragrance. Pratt, who was a writer of flowing but nugatory verses, was compared to the _daisy_; a flower indeed common enough, and without odour.

GEOGRAPHICAL STYLE.

There are many sciences, says Menage, on which we cannot indeed compose in a florid or elegant diction, such as geography, music, algebra, geometry, &c. When Atticus requested Cicero to write on geography, the latter excused himself, observing that its scenes were more adapted to please the eye, than susceptible of the embellishments of style.

However, in these kind of sciences, we may lend an ornament to their dryness by introducing occasionally some elegant allusion, or noticing some incident suggested by the object.

Thus when we notice some inconsiderable place, for instance _Woodstock_, we may recall attention to the residence of _Chaucer_, the parent of our poetry, or the romantic labyrinth of Rosamond; or as in "an Autumn on the Rhine," at Ingelheim, at the view of an old palace built by Charlemagne, the traveller adds, with "a hundred columns brought from Rome," and further it was "the scene of the romantic amours of that monarch's fair daughter, Ibertha, with Eginhard, his secretary:" and viewing the Gothic ruins on the banks of the Rhine, he noticed them as having been the haunts of those ill.u.s.trious _chevaliers voleurs_ whose chivalry consisted in pillaging the merchants and towns, till, in the thirteenth century, a citizen of Mayence persuaded the merchants of more than a hundred towns to form a league against these little princes and counts; the origin of the famous Rhenish league, which contributed so much to the commerce of Europe. This kind of erudition gives an interest to topography, by a.s.sociating in our memory great events and personages with the localities.

The same principle of composition may be carried with the happiest effect into some dry investigations, though the profound antiquary may not approve of these sports of wit or fancy. Dr. Arbuthnot, in his Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures, a topic extremely barren of amus.e.m.e.nt, takes every opportunity of enlivening the dulness of his task; even in these mathematical calculations he betrays his wit; and observes that "the polite Augustus, the emperor of the world, had neither any gla.s.s in his windows, nor a s.h.i.+rt to his back!" Those uses of gla.s.s and linen indeed were not known in his time. Our physician is not less curious and facetious in the account of the _fees_ which the Roman physicians received.

LEGENDS.

Those ecclesiastical histories ent.i.tled Legends are said to have originated in the following circ.u.mstance.

Before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, the professors in rhetoric frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at _amplification_. The students, at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents to be found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet, when James de Voragine, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought for their materials in the libraries of the monasteries; and, awakening from the dust these ma.n.u.scripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all imaginable simplicity, and as these are adorned by a number of cuts, the miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Tillemont, Fleury, Baillet, Launoi, and Bollandus, cleared away much of the rubbish; the enviable t.i.tle of _Golden Legend_, by which James de Voragine called his work, has been disputed; iron or lead might more aptly describe its character.

When the world began to be more critical in their reading, the monks gave a graver turn to their narratives; and became penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends, that the line of tradition has been preserved unbroken; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came down in a most imperfect state.

Baronius has given the lives of many apocryphal saints; for instance, of a Saint _Xinoris_, whom he calls a martyr of Antioch; but it appears that Baronius having read in Chrysostom this _word_, which signifies a _couple_ or _pair_, he mistook it for the name of a saint, and contrived to give the most authentic biography of a saint who never existed![39]

The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it is only fools who laugh! As a specimen of the happier inventions, one is given, embellished by the diction of Gibbon--

"Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of the _Seven Sleepers_; whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. When the Emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven n.o.ble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a s.p.a.cious cavern on the side of an adjacent mountain; where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years.

At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply materials for some rustic edifice. The light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber as they thought of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger; and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth, if we may still employ that appellation, could no longer recognise the once familiar aspect of his native country; and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the princ.i.p.al gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a Pagan tyrant.

The Bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the magistrates, the people, and, it is said, the Emperor Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the Seven Sleepers; who bestowed their benediction, related their story, and at the same instant peaceably expired.

"This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria; and he has introduced it, as a _divine revelation_, into the Koran."--The same story has been adopted and adorned by the nations, from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion.

The too curious reader may perhaps require other specimens of the more unlucky inventions of this "Golden Legend;" as characteristic of a certain cla.s.s of minds, the philosopher will contemn these grotesque fictions.

These monks imagined that holiness was often proportioned to a saint's filthiness. St. Ignatius, say they, delighted to appear abroad with old dirty shoes; he never used a comb, but let his hair clot; and religiously abstained from paring his nails. One saint attained to such piety as to have near three hundred patches on his breeches; which, after his death, were hung up in public as an _incentive to imitation_.

St. Francis discovered, by certain experience, that the devils were frightened away by such kinds of breeches, but were animated by clean clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers; and one of their heroes declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this they tell a story which may not be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy.

Brother Juniper was a gentleman perfectly pious, on this principle; indeed so great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a brother declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile of the monastery, provided the wind was at the due point. Once, when the blessed Juniper, for he was no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of the honour of entertaining so pious a personage, the intimate friend of St. Francis, provided an excellent bed, and the finest sheets. Brother Juniper abhorred such luxury. And this too evidently appeared after his sudden departure in the morning, unknown to his kind host. The great Juniper did this, says his biographer, having told us what he did, not so much from his habitual inclinations, for which he was so justly celebrated, as from his excessive piety, and as much as he could to mortify worldly pride, and to show how a true saint despised clean sheets.

In the life of St. Francis we find, among other grotesque miracles, that he preached a sermon in a desert, but he soon collected an immense audience. The birds shrilly warbled to every sentence, and stretched out their necks, opened their beaks, and when he finished, dispersed with a holy rapture into four companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in the universe. A gra.s.shopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to t.i.ttle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid a.s.sailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched his paws in the hands of the saint, followed him through towns, and became half a Christian.

This same St. Francis had such a detestation of the good things of this world, that he would never suffer his followers to touch money. A friar having placed in a window some money collected at the altar, he desired him to take it in his mouth, and throw it on the dung of an a.s.s! St.

Philip Nerius was such a _lover of poverty_, that he frequently prayed that G.o.d would bring him to that state as to stand in need of a penny, and find n.o.body that would give him one!

But St. Macaire was so shocked at having _killed a louse_, that he endured seven years of penitence among the thorns and briars of a forest. A circ.u.mstance which seems to have reached Moliere, who gives this stroke to the character of his Tartuffe:--

Il s'impute a peche la moindre bagatelle; Jusques-la qu'il se vint, l'autre jour, s'accuser D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa priere, Et de l'avoir tuee avec trop de colere!

I give a miraculous incident respecting two pious maidens. The night of the Nativity of Christ, after the first ma.s.s, they both retired into a solitary spot of their nunnery till the second ma.s.s was rung. One asked the other, "Why do you want two cus.h.i.+ons, when I have only one?" The other replied, "I would place it between us, for the child Jesus; as the Evangelist says, where there are two or three persons a.s.sembled I am in the midst of them."--This being done, they sat down, feeling a most lively pleasure at their fancy; and there they remained, from the Nativity of Christ to that of John the Baptist; but this great interval of time pa.s.sed with these saintly maidens as two hours would appear to others. The abbess and nuns were alarmed at their absence, for no one could give any account of them. In the eve of St. John, a cowherd, pa.s.sing by them, beheld a beautiful child seated on a cus.h.i.+on between this pair of runaway nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of these stray sheep; she came and beheld this lovely child playfully seated between these nymphs; they, with blus.h.i.+ng countenances, inquired if the second bell had already rung? Both parties were equally astonished to find our young devotees had been there from the Nativity of Jesus to that of St. John. The abbess inquired about the child who sat between them; they solemnly declared they saw no child between them! and persisted in their story!

Such is one of these miracles of "the Golden Legend," which a wicked wit might comment on, and see nothing extraordinary in the whole story. The two nuns might be missing between the Nativities, and be found at last with a child seated between them.--They might not choose to account either for their absence or their child--the only touch of miracle is that, they a.s.severated, they _saw no child_--that I confess is a _little (child) too much_.

The lives of the saints by Alban Butler is the most sensible history of these legends; Ribadeneira's lives of the saints exhibit more of the legendary spirit, for wanting judgment and not faith, he is more voluminous in his details. The antiquary may collect much curious philosophical information, concerning the manners of the times, from these singular narratives.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 39: See the article on "Literary Blunders," in this volume, for the history of similar inventions, particularly the legend of St.

Ursuala and the eleven thousand virgins, and the discovery of a certain St. Viar]