Curiosities of Literature Volume Iii Part 36

The great French antiquary, Peiresc, exhibited a singular combination of learning, patient thought, and luminous sagacity, which could restore an "airy nothing" to "a local habitation and a name." There was found on an amethyst, and the same afterwards occurred on the front of an ancient temple, a number of _marks_, or indents, which had long perplexed inquirers, more particularly as similar marks or indents were frequently observed in ancient monuments. It was agreed on, as no one could understand them, and all would be satisfied, that they were secret hieroglyphics. It occurred to Peiresc that these marks were nothing more than holes for small nails, which had formerly fastened little _laminae_, which represented so many Greek letters. This hint of his own suggested to him to draw lines from one hole to another; and he beheld the amethyst reveal the name of the sculptor, and the frieze of the temple the name of the G.o.d! This curious discovery has been since frequently applied; but it appears to have originated with this great antiquary, who by his learning and sagacity explained a supposed hieroglyphic, which had been locked up in the silence of seventeen centuries.[264]

Learned men, confined to their study, have often rectified the errors of travellers; they have done more, they have found out paths for them to explore, or opened seas for them to navigate. The situation of the vale of Tempe had been mistaken by modern travellers; and it is singular, observes the Quarterly Reviewer, yet not so singular as it appears to that elegant critic, that the only good directions for finding it had been given by a person who was never in Greece. Arthur Browne, a man of letters of Trinity College, Dublin--it is gratifying to quote an Irish philosopher and man of letters, from the extreme rarity of the character--was the first to detect the inconsistencies of Poc.o.c.ke and Busching, and to send future travellers to look for Tempe in its real situation, the defiles between Ossa and Olympus; a discovery subsequently realised. When Dr. Clarke discovered an inscription purporting that the pa.s.s of Tempe had been fortified by Ca.s.sius Longinus, Mr. Walpole, with equal felicity, detected, in Caesar's "History of the Civil War," the name and the mission of this very person.

A living geographer, to whom the world stands deeply indebted, does not read Herodotus in the original; yet, by the exercise of his extraordinary apt.i.tude, it is well known that he has often corrected the Greek historian, explained obscurities in a text which he never read, by his own happy conjectures, and confirmed his own discoveries by the subsequent knowledge which modern travellers have afforded.

Gray's perseverance in studying the geography of India and of Persia, at a time when our country had no immediate interests with those ancient empires, would have been placed by a cynical observer among the curious idleness of a mere man of letters. These studies were indeed prosecuted, as Mr. Mathias observes, "on the disinterested principles of liberal investigation, not on those of policy, nor of the regulation of trade, nor of the extension of empire, nor of permanent establishments, but simply and solely on the grand view of what is, and of what is past.

They were the researches of a solitary scholar in academical retirement." Since the time of Gray, these very pursuits have been carried on by two consummate geographers, Major Rennel and Dr. Vincent, who have opened to the cla.s.sical and the political reader all he wished to learn, at a time when India and Persia had become objects interesting and important to us. The fruits of Gray's learning, long after their author was no more, became valuable!

The studies of the "solitary scholar" are always useful to the world, although they may not always be timed to its present wants; with him, indeed, they are not merely designed for this purpose. Gray discovered India for himself; but the solitary pursuits of a great student, shaped to a particular end, will never fail being useful to the world; though it may happen that a century may elapse between the periods of the discovery and its practical utility.

Halley's version of an Arabic MS. on a mathematical subject offers an instance of the extraordinary sagacity I am alluding to; it may also serve as a demonstration of the peculiar and supereminent advantages possessed by mathematicians, observes Mr. Dugald Stewart, in their fixed relations, which form the objects of their science, and the correspondent precision in their language and reasoning:--as matter of literary history it is highly curious. Dr. Bernard accidentally discovered in the Bodleian Library an Arabic version of Apollonius _de Sectione Rationis_, which he determined to translate in Latin, but only finished about a tenth part. Halley, extremely interested by the subject, but with an entire ignorance of the Arabic language, resolved to complete the imperfect version! a.s.sisted only by the ma.n.u.script which Bernard had left, it served him as a key for investigating the sense of the original; he first made _a list of those words_ wherever they occurred, with the _train of reasoning_ in which they were involved, to decipher, by these very slow degrees, the import of the context; till at last Halley succeeded in mastering the whole work, and in bringing the translation, without the aid of any one, to the form in which he gave it to the public; so that we have here a difficult work translated from the Arabic, by one who was in no manner conversant with the language, merely by the exertion of his sagacity!

I give the memorable account, as Boyle has delivered it, of the circ.u.mstances which led Harvey to the discovery of the circulation of the blood.

"I remember that when I asked our famous Harvey, in the only discourse I had with him, which was but a little while before he died, what were the things which induced him to think of a circulation of the blood, he answered me, that when he took notice that the valves in the veins of so many parts of the body were so placed that they gave free pa.s.sage to the blood towards the heart, but opposed the pa.s.sage of the venal blood the contrary way, he was invited to think that so provident a cause as nature had not placed so many valves without design; and no design seemed more probable than that, since the blood could not well, because of the interposing valves, be sent by the veins to the limbs, it should be sent through the arteries and return through the veins, whose valves did not oppose its course that way."

The reason here ascribed to Harvey seems now so very natural and obvious, that some have been disposed to question his claim to the high rank commonly a.s.signed to him among the improvers of science! Dr.

William Hunter has said that after the discovery of the valves in the veins, which Harvey learned while in Italy from his master, Fabricius ab Aquapendente, the remaining step might easily have been made by any person of common abilities. "This discovery," he observes, "set Harvey to work upon the _use_ of the heart and vascular system in animals; and in the _course of some years_, he was so happy as to discover, and to prove beyond all possibility of doubt, the circulation of the blood." He afterwards expresses his astonishment that this discovery should have been left for Harvey, though he acknowledges it occupied "a course of years;" adding that "Providence meant to reserve it for _him_, and would not let men _see what was before them, nor understand what they read_."

It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!

It is said that a recent discovery, which ascertains that the Niger empties itself into the Atlantic Ocean, was really antic.i.p.ated by the geographical ac.u.men of a student at Glasgow, who arrived at the same conclusion by a most persevering investigation of the works of travellers and geographers, ancient and modern, and by an examination of African captives; and had actually constructed, for the inspection of government, a map of Africa, on which he had traced the entire course of the Niger from the interior.

Franklin _conjectured_ the ident.i.ty of lightning and of electricity, before he had _realised_ it by decisive experiment. The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of its being electrified. One very promising cloud had pa.s.sed over it without any effect. Just as he was beginning to despair of his contrivance, he observed some loose threads of the hempen string to stand erect, and to avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance, he immediately presented his knuckle to the key! And let the reader judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have felt at that moment when _the discovery was complete_! We owe to Priestley this admirable narrative; the strong sensation of delight which Franklin experienced as his knuckle touched the key, and at the moment when he felt that a new world was opening, might have been equalled, but it was probably not surpa.s.sed, when the same hand signed the long-disputed independence of his country!

When Leibnitz was occupied in his philosophical reasonings on his _Law of Continuity_, his singular sagacity enabled him to predict a discovery which afterwards was realised--he _imagined_ the necessary existence of the polypus!

It has been remarked of Newton, that several of his slight hints, some in the modest form of queries, have been ascertained to be predictions, and among others that of the inflammability of the diamond; and many have been eagerly seized upon as indisputable axioms. A hint at the close of his Optics, that "If natural philosophy should be continued to be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would be enlarged also," is perhaps among the most important of human discoveries--it gave rise to Hartley's _Physiological Theory of the Mind_. The queries, the hints, the conjectures of Newton, display the most creative sagacity; and demonstrate in what manner the discoveries of retired men, while they bequeath their legacies to the world, afford to themselves a frequent source of secret and silent triumphs.

FOOTNOTES:

[263] The remarkable clue to the reading of the hieroglyphic language of ancient Egypt perfected in our own times is a striking instance of this; as well as the investigations now proceeding in Babylonian inscriptions, which promise to enable us to comprehend a language that was once considered as hopelessly lost.

[264] The curious reader may view the marks, and the manner in which the Greek characters were made out, in the preface to Hearne's "Curious Discourses." The amethyst proved more difficult than the frieze, from the circ.u.mstance, that in engraving on the stone the letters must be reversed.

SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY.

A periodical critic, probably one of the juniors, has thrown out a startling observation. "There is," says this literary senator, "something melancholy in the study of biography, because it is--a history of the dead!" A truism and a falsity mixed up together is the temptation with some modern critics to commit that darling sin of theirs--novelty and originality! But we really cannot condole with the readers of Plutarch for their deep melancholy; we who feel our spirits refreshed, amidst the mediocrity of society, when we are recalled back to the men and the women who WERE! ill.u.s.trious in every glory! Biography with us is a re-union with human existence in its most excellent state!

and we find nothing dead in the past, while we retain the sympathies which only require to be awakened.

It would have been more reasonable had the critic discovered that our country has not yet had her Plutarch, and that our biography remains still little more than a ma.s.s of compilation.

In this study of biography there is a species which has not yet been distinguished--biographies composed by some domestic friend, or by some enthusiast who works with love. A term is unquestionably wanted for this distinct cla.s.s. The Germans seem to have invented a Platonic one, drawn from the Greek, _psyche_, or the soul; for they call this the _psychological life_. Another attempt has been made, by giving it the scientific term of _idiosyncrasy_, to denote a peculiarity of disposition. I would call it _sentimental biography_!

It is distinct from a _chronological_ biography, for it searches for the individual's feelings amidst the ascertained facts of his life; so that facts, which occurred remotely from each other, are here brought at once together. The detail of events which completes the chronological biography, contains many which are not connected with the peculiarity of the character itself. The _sentimental_ is also distinct from the _autobiography_, however it may seem a part of it. Whether a man be ent.i.tled to lavish his panegyric on himself, I will not decide; but it is certain that he risks everything by appealing to a solitary and suspected witness.

We have two Lives of Dante, one by Boccaccio and the other by Leonardo Aretino, both interesting: but Boccaccio's is the _sentimental life_!

Aretino, indeed, finds fault, but with all the tenderness possible, with Boccaccio's affectionate sketch, _Origine, Vita, Studi e Costumi del clarissimo Dante_, &c. "Origin, Life, Studies and Manners, of the ill.u.s.trious Dante," &c. "It seems to me," he says, "that our Boccaccio, _dolcissimo e suavissimo uomo_, sweet and delightful man! has written the life and manners of this sublime poet as if he had been composing the _Filocolo_, the _Filostrato_, or the _Fiametta_," the romances of Boccaccio--"for all breathes of love and sighs, and is covered with warm tears, as if a man were born in this world only to live among the enamoured ladies and the gallant youths of the ten amorous days of his hundred novels."

Aretino, who wanted not all the feeling requisite for the delightful "costumi e studi" of Boccaccio's Dante, modestly requires that his own life of Dante should be considered as a supplement to, not as a subst.i.tute for, Boccaccio's. Pathetic with all the sorrows, and eloquent with all the remonstrances of a fellow-citizen, Boccaccio, while he wept, hung with anger over his country's shame in its apathy for the honour of its long-injured exile. Catching inspiration from the breathing pages of Boccaccio, it inclines one to wish that we possessed two biographies of an ill.u.s.trious favourite character; the one strictly and fully historical, the other fraught with those very feelings of the departed, which we may have to seek in vain for in the circ.u.mstantial and chronological biographer. Boccaccio, indeed, was overcome by his feelings. He either knew not, or he omits the substantial incidents of Dante's life; while his imagination throws a romantic tinge on occurrences raised on slight, perhaps on no foundation. Boccaccio narrates a dream of the mother of Dante so fancifully poetical, that probably Boccaccio forgot that none but a dreamer could have told it.

Seated under a high laurel-tree, by the side of a vast fountain, the mother dreamt that she gave birth to her son; she saw him nourished by its fruit, and refreshed by the clear waters; she soon beheld him a shepherd; approaching to pluck the boughs, she saw him fall! When he rose he had ceased to be a man, and was transformed into a peac.o.c.k!

Disturbed by her admiration, she suddenly awoke; but when the father found that he really had a son, in allusion to the dream he called him Dante--or _given! e meritamente_; _perocche ottimamente, siccome si vedra procedendo, segui al nome l'effetto_: "and deservedly! for greatly, as we shall see, the effect followed the name!" At nine years of age, on a May-day, whose joyous festival Boccaccio beautifully describes, when the softness of the heavens, re-adorning the earth with its mingled flowers, waved the green boughs, and made all things smile, Dante mixed with the boys and girls in the house of the good citizen who on that day gave the feast, beheld little Brice, as she was familiarly called, but named Beatrice. The little Dante might have seen her before, but he loved her then, and from that day never ceased to love; and thus Dante _nella pargoletta eta fatto d'amore ferventissimo servidore_; so fervent a servant to love in an age of childhood! Boccaccio appeals to Dante's own account of his long pa.s.sion, and his constant sighs, in the _Vita Nuova_. No look, no word, no sign, sullied the purity of his pa.s.sion; but in her twenty-fourth year died "la bellissima Beatrice."

Dante is then described as more than inconsolable; his eyes were long two abundant fountains of tears; careless of life, he let his beard grow wildly, and to others appeared a savage meagre man, whose aspect was so changed, that while this weeping life lasted, he was hardly recognised by his friends; all looked on a man so entirely transformed with deep compa.s.sion. Dante, won over by those who could console the inconsolable, was at length solicited by his relations to marry a lady of his own condition in life; and it was suggested that as the departed lady had occasioned him such heavy griefs, the new one might open a source of delight. The relations and friends of Dante gave him a wife that his tears for Beatrice might cease.

It is supposed that this marriage proved unhappy. Boccaccio, like a pathetic lover rather than biographer, exclaims, _Oh menti cicche! Oh tenebrosi intelletti! Oh argomenti vani di molti mortali, quante sono le ruiscite in a.s.sai cose contrarie a' nostri avvisi!_ &c. "Oh blind men!

Oh dark minds! Oh vain arguments of most mortals, how often are the results contrary to our advice! Frequently it is like leading one who breathes the soft air of Italy to refresh himself in the eternal shades of the Rhodopean mountains. What physician would expel a burning fever with fire, or put in the s.h.i.+vering marrow of the bones snow and ice? So certainly shall it fare with him who, with a new love, thinks to mitigate the old. Those who believe this know not the nature of love, nor how much a second pa.s.sion adds to the first. In vain would we a.s.sist or advise this forceful pa.s.sion, if it has struck its root near the heart of him who long has loved."

Boccaccio has beguiled my pen for half-an-hour with all the loves and fancies which sprung out of his own affectionate and romantic heart.

What airy stuff has he woven into the "Vita" of Dante! this _sentimental biography_! Whether he knew but little of the personal history of the great man whom he idolised, or whether the dream of the mother--the May-day interview with the little Brice, and the rest of the children--and the effusion on Dante's marriage, were grounded on tradition, one would not harshly reject such tender incidents.[265] But let it not be imagined that the heart of Boccaccio was only susceptible to amorous impressions--bursts of enthusiasm and eloquence, which only a man of genius is worthy of receiving, and only a man of genius is capable of bestowing--kindle the masculine patriotism of his bold, indignant spirit!

Half a century had elapsed since the death of Dante, and still the Florentines showed no sign of repentance for their ancient hatred of their persecuted patriot, nor any sense of the memory of the creator of their language, whose immortality had become a portion of their own glory. Boccaccio, impa.s.sioned by all his generous nature, though he regrets he could not raise a statue to Dante, has sent down to posterity more than marble, in the "Life." I venture to give the lofty and bold apostrophe to his fellow-citizens; but I feel that even the genius of our language is tame by the side of the harmonised eloquence of the great votary of Dante!

"Ungrateful country! what madness urged thee, when thy dearest citizen, thy chief benefactor, thy only poet, with unaccustomed cruelty was driven to flight! If this had happened in the general terror of that time, coming from evil counsels, thou mightest stand excused; but when the pa.s.sion ceased, didst thou repent? didst thou recall him? Bear with me, nor deem it irksome from me, who am thy son, that thus I collect what just indignation prompts me to speak, as a man more desirous of witnessing your amendment, than of beholding you punished! Seems it to you glorious, proud of so many t.i.tles and of such men, that the one whose like no neighbouring city can show, you have chosen to chase from among you? With what triumphs, with what valorous citizens, are you splendid? Your wealth is a removable and uncertain thing; your fragile beauty will grow old; your delicacy is shameful and feminine; but these make you noticed by the false judgments of the populace! Do you glory in your merchants and your artists? I speak imprudently; but the one are tenaciously avaricious in their servile trade; and Art, which once was so n.o.ble, and became a second nature, struck by the same avarice, is now as corrupted, and nothing worth! Do you glory in the baseness and the listlessness of those idlers, who, because their ancestors are remembered, attempt to raise up among you a n.o.bility to govern you, ever by robbery, by treachery, by falsehood! Ah! miserable mother! open thine eyes; cast them with some remorse on what thou hast done, and blush, at least, reputed wise as thou art, to have had in your errors so fatal a choice! Why not rather imitate the acts of those cities who so keenly disputed merely for the honour of the birth-place of the divine Homer?

Mantua, our neighbour, counts as the greatest fame which remains for her, that Virgil was a Mantuan! and holds his very name in such reverence, that not only in public places, but in the most private, we see his sculptured image! You only, while you were made famous by ill.u.s.trious men, you only have shown no care for your great poet. Your Dante Alighieri died in exile, to which you unjustly, envious of his greatness, destined him! A crime not to be remembered, that the mother should bear an envious malignity to the virtues of a son! Now cease to be unjust! He cannot do you that, now dead, which living he never did do to you! He lies under another sky than yours, and you never can see him again, but on that day, when all your citizens shall view him, and the great Remunerator shall examine, and shall punis.h.!.+ If anger, hatred, and enmity are buried with a man, as it is believed, begin then to return to yourself; begin to be ashamed to have acted against your ancient humanity; begin, then, to wish to appear a mother, and not a cold negligent step-dame. Yield your tears to your son; yield your maternal piety to him whom once you repulsed, and, living, cast away from you!

At least think of possessing him dead, and restore your citizens.h.i.+p, your award, and your grace, to his memory. He was a son who held you in reverence, and though long an exile, he always called himself, and would be called a Florentine! He held you ever above all others; ever he loved you! What will you then do? Will you remain obstinate in iniquity? Will you practise less humanity than the barbarians? You wish that the world should believe that you are the sister of famous Troy, and the daughter of Rome; a.s.suredly the children should resemble their fathers and their ancestors. Priam, in his misery, bought the corpse of Hector with gold; and Rome would possess the bones of the first Scipio, and removed them from Linternum, those bones, which, dying, so justly he had denied her.

Seek then to be the true guardian of your Dante, claim him! show this humane feeling, claim him! you may securely do this: I am certain he will not be returned to you; but thus at once you may betray some mark of compa.s.sion, and, not having him again, still enjoy your ancient cruelty! Alas! what comfort am I bringing you! I almost believe, that if the dead could feel, the body of Dante would not rise to return to you, for he is lying in Ravenna, whose hallowed soil is everywhere covered with the ashes of saints. Would Dante quit this blessed company to mingle with the remains of those hatreds and iniquities which gave him no rest in life? The relics of Dante, even among the bodies of emperors and of martyrs, and of their ill.u.s.trious ancestors, is prized as a treasure, for there his works are looked on with admiration; those works of which you have not yet known to make yourselves worthy. His birthplace, his origin remains for you, spite of your ingrat.i.tude! and this Ravenna envies you, while she glories in your honours which she has s.n.a.t.c.hed from you through ages yet to come!"

Such was the deep emotion which opened Boccaccio's heart in this sentimental biography, and which awoke even shame and confusion in the minds of the Florentines; they blushed for their old hatreds, and, with awakened sympathies, they hastened to honour the memory of their great bard. By order of the city, the _Divina Commedia_ was publicly read and explained to the people. Boccaccio, then sinking under the infirmities of age, roused his departing genius: still was there marrow in the bones of the aged lion, and he engaged in the task of composing his celebrated Commentaries on the _Divina Commedia_.

In this cla.s.s of _sentimental biography_ I would place a species which the historian Carte noticed in his literary travels on the Continent, in pursuit of his historical design. He found, preserved among several ancient families of France, their domestic annals. "With a warm, patriotic spirit, worthy of imitation, they have often carefully preserved in their families the acts of their ancestors." This delight and pride of the modern Gauls in the great and good deeds of their ancestors, preserved in domestic archives, will be ascribed to their folly or their vanity; yet in that folly there may be so much wisdom, and in that vanity there may be so much greatness, that the one will amply redeem the other.

This custom has been rarely adopted among ourselves; we have, however, a few separate histories of some ancient families, as those of Mordaunt, and of Warren. One of the most remarkable is "A Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, in its different branches of Yvery, Luvel, Perceval, and Gournay." Two large volumes, closely printed,[266] expatiating on the characters and events of a single family with the grave pomp of a herald, but more particularly the idolatry of the writer for ancient n.o.bility, and his contempt for that growing rank in society whom he designates as "New Men," provoked the ridicule at least of the aspersed.[267] This extraordinary work, notwithstanding its absurdities in its general result, has left behind a deep impression. Drawn from the authentic family records, it is not without interest that we toil through its copious pages; we trace with a romantic sympathy the fortunes of the descendants of the House of Yvery, from that not-forgotten hero _le vaillant Perceval chevalier de la Table Ronde_, to the Norman Baron a.s.selin, surnamed the Wolf, for his bravery or his ferocity; thence to the Cavalier of Charles the First, Sir Philip Perceval, who, having gloriously defended his castle, was at length deprived of his lordly possessions, but never of his loyalty, and died obscurely in the metropolis of a broken heart, till we reach the polished n.o.bleman, the Lord Egmont of the Georges.

The nation has lost many a n.o.ble example of men and women acting a great part on great occasions, and then retreating to the shade of privacy; and we may be confident that many a name has not been inscribed on the roll of national glory only from wanting a few drops of ink! Such domestic annals may yet be viewed in the family records at Appleby Castle! Anne, Countess of Pembroke, was a glorious woman, the descendant of two potent northern families, the Veteriponts and the Cliffords.--She lived in a state of regal magnificence and independence, inhabiting five or seven castles; yet though her magnificent spirit poured itself out in her extended charities, and though her independence mated that of monarchs, yet she herself, in her domestic habits, lived as a hermit in her own castles; and though only acquainted with her native language, she had cultivated her mind in many parts of learning; and as Donne, in his way, observes, "she knew how to converse of everything, from predestination to slea-silk." Her favourite design was to have materials collected for the history of those two potent northern families to whom she was allied; and at a considerable expense she employed learned persons to make collections for this purpose from the records in the Tower, the Rolls, and other depositories of ma.n.u.scripts: Gilpin had seen three large volumes fairly transcribed. Anecdotes of a great variety of characters, who had exerted themselves on very important occasions, compose these family records--and induce one to wish that the public were in possession of such annals of the domestic life of heroes and of sages, who have only failed in obtaining an historian![268]

A biographical monument of this nature, which has pa.s.sed through the press, will sufficiently prove the utility of this cla.s.s of _sentimental biography_. It is the Life of Robert Price, a Welsh lawyer, and an ancestor of the gentleman whose ingenuity, in our days, has refined the principles of the Picturesque in Art. This Life is announced as "printed by the appointment of the family;" but it must not be considered merely as a tribute of private affection; and how we are at this day interested in the actions of a Welsh lawyer in the reign of William the Third, whose name has probably never been consigned to the page of history, remains to be told.

Robert Price, after having served Charles the Second, lived latterly in the eventful times of William the Third--he was probably of Tory principles, for on the arrival of the Dutch prince he was removed from the attorney-generals.h.i.+p of Glamorgan. The new monarch has been accused of favouritism, and of an eagerness in showering exorbitant grants on some of his foreigners, which soon raised a formidable opposition in the jealous spirit of Englishmen. The grand favourite, William Bentinck, after being raised to the Earldom of Portland, had a grant bestowed on him of three lords.h.i.+ps in the county of Denbigh. The patriot of his native country--a t.i.tle which the Welsh had already conferred on Robert Price--then rose to a.s.sert the rights of his fatherland, and his speeches are as admirable for their knowledge as their spirit. "The submitting of 1500 freeholders to the will of a Dutch lord was," as he sarcastically declared, "putting them in a worse posture than their former estate, when under William the Conqueror and his Norman lords.

England must not be tributary to strangers--we must, like patriots, stand by our country--otherwise, when G.o.d shall send us a Prince of Wales, he may have such a present of a crown made him as a Pope did to King John, who was surnamed _Sans-terre_, and was by his father made Lord of Ireland, which grant was confirmed by the Pope, who sent him a crown of peac.o.c.ks' feathers, in derogation of his power, and the poverty of his country." Robert Price a.s.serted that the king could not, by the Bill of Rights, alien or give away the inheritance of a Prince of Wales without the consent of parliament. He concluded a copious and patriotic speech, by proposing that an address be presented to the king, to put an immediate stop to the grant now pa.s.sing to the Earl of Portland for the lords.h.i.+ps, &c.

This speech produced such an effect, that the address was carried unanimously; and the king, though he highly resented the speech of Robert Price, sent a civil message to the commons, declaring that he should not have given Lord Portland those lands, had he imagined the House of Commons could have been concerned; "I will therefore recall the grant!" On receiving the royal message, Robert Price drew up a resolution to which the house a.s.sented, that "to procure or pa.s.s exorbitant grants by any member of the privy council, &c. was a high crime and misdemeanour." The speech of Robert Price contained truths too numerous and too bold to suffer the light during that reign; but this speech against foreigners was printed the year after King William's death, with this t.i.tle, "_Gloria Cambriae_, or the speech of a bold Briton in parliament, against a Dutch Prince of Wales," with this motto, _Opposuit et Vicit_. Such was the great character of Robert Price, that he was made a Welsh judge by the very sovereign whose favourite plans he had so patriotically thwarted.

Another marked event in the life of this English patriot was a second n.o.ble stand he made against the royal authority, when in opposition to the public good. The secret history of a quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, on the birth of a son, appears in this life; and when the prince in disgrace left the palace, his royal highness proposed taking his children and the princess with him; but the king detained the children, claiming the care of the royal offspring as a royal prerogative. It now became a legal point to ascertain "whether the education of his majesty's grandchildren, and the care of their marriages, &c., belonged of right to his majesty as king of this realm, or not?" Ten of the judges obsequiously allowed of the prerogative to the full. Robert Price and another judge decided that the education, &c., was the right of the father, although the marriages was that of his majesty as king of this realm, yet not exclusive of the prince, their father. He a.s.sured the king, that the ten obsequious judges had no authority to support their precipitate opinion; all the books and precedents cannot form a prerogative for the king of this realm to have the care and education of his grandchildren during the life and without the consent of their father--a prerogative unknown to the laws of England! He pleads for the rights of a father, with the spirit of one who feels them, as well as with legal science and historical knowledge.

Such were the two great incidents in the life of this Welsh judge! Yet, had the family not found one to commemorate these memorable events in the life of their ancestor, we had lost the n.o.ble picture of a const.i.tutional interpreter of the laws, an independent country gentleman, and an Englishman jealous of the excessive predominance of ministerial or royal influence.

Cicero, and others, have informed us that the ancient history of Rome itself was composed out of such accounts of private families, to which, indeed, we must add those annals or registers of public events which unquestionably were preserved in the archives of the temples by the priests. But the history of the individual may involve public interest, whenever the skill of the writer combines with the importance of the event. Messala, the orator, gloried in having composed many volumes of the genealogies of the n.o.bility of Rome; and Atticus wrote the genealogy of Brutus, to prove him descended from Junius Brutus, the expulser of the Tarquins, and founder of the Republic, near five hundred years before.

Another cla.s.s of this _sentimental biography_ was projected by the late Elizabeth Hamilton. This was to have consisted of a series of what she called _comparative biography_, and an ancient character was to have been paralleled by a modern one. Occupied by her historical romance with the character of _Agrippina_, she sought in modern history for a partner of her own s.e.x, and "one who, like her, had experienced vicissitudes of fortune;" and she found no one better qualified than the princess palatine, _Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First_. Her next life was to have been that of _Seneca_, with "the scenes and persons of which her Life of Agrippina had familiarised her;" and the contrast or the parallel was to have been _Locke_; which, well managed, she thought would have been sufficiently striking. It seems to me that it would rather have afforded an evidence of her invention! Such a biographical project reminds one of Plutarch's Parallels, and might incur the danger of displaying more ingenuity than truth. The sage of Cheronea must often have racked his invention to help out his parallels, bending together, to make them similar, the most unconnected events and the most distinct feelings; and, to keep his parallels in two straight lines, he probably made a free use of augmentatives and diminutives to help out his pair, who might have been equal, and yet not alike!

Our fatherland is prodigal of immortal names, or names which might be made immortal; Gibbon once contemplated with complacency, the very ideal of SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY, and we may regret that he has only left the project! "I have long revolved in my mind a volume of biographical writing; the lives or rather the characters of the most eminent persons in arts and arms, in church and state, who have flourished in Britain from the reign of Henry the Eighth to the present age. The subject would afford a rich display of human nature and domestic history, and powerfully address itself to the feelings of every Englishman."