Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 29

M. Morin, in the Memoirs of the French Academy, has formed a little history of Poverty, which I abridge.

The writers on the genealogies of the G.o.ds have not noticed the deity of Poverty, though admitted as such in the pagan heaven, while she has had temples and altars on earth. The allegorical Plato has pleasingly narrated, that at the feast which Jupiter gave on the birth of Venus, Poverty modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the fragments of the celestial banquet; when she observed the G.o.d of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and pa.s.sing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the G.o.d. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the G.o.d of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is ingenious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably produce the most delightful of pleasures.

The golden age, however, had but the duration of a flower; when it finished, Poverty began to appear. The ancestors of the human race, if they did not meet her face to face, knew her in a partial degree; the vagrant Cain encountered her. She was firmly established in the patriarchal age. We hear of merchants who publicly practised the commerce of vending slaves, which indicates the utmost degree of poverty. She is distinctly marked by Job: this holy man protests, that he had nothing to reproach himself with respecting the poor, for he had a.s.sisted them in their necessities.

In the scriptures, legislators paid great attention to their relief.

Moses, by his wise precautions, endeavoured to soften the rigours of this unhappy state. The division of lands, by tribes and families; the septennial jubilees; the regulation to bestow at the harvest-time a certain portion of all the fruits of the earth for those families who were in want; and the obligation of his moral law to love one's neighbour as one's self; were so many mounds erected against the inundations of poverty. The Jews under their Theocracy had few or no mendicants. Their kings were unjust; and rapaciously seizing on inheritances which were not their right, increased the numbers of the poor. From the reign of David there were oppressive governors, who devoured the people as their bread. It was still worse under the foreign powers of Babylon, of Persia, and the Roman emperors. Such were the extortions of their publicans, and the avarice of their governors, that the number of mendicants dreadfully augmented; and it was probably for that reason that the opulent families consecrated a tenth part of their property for their succour, as appears in the time of the evangelists.

In the preceding ages no more was given, as their casuists a.s.sure us, than the fortieth or thirtieth part; a custom which this singular nation still practise. If there are no poor of their nation where they reside, they send it to the most distant parts. The Jewish merchants make this charity a regular charge in their transactions with each other; and at the close of the year render an account to the poor of their nation.

By the example of Moses, the ancient legislators were taught to pay a similar attention to the poor. Like him, they published laws respecting the division of lands; and many ordinances were made for the benefit of those whom fires, inundations, wars, or bad harvests had reduced to want. Convinced that _idleness_ more inevitably introduced poverty than any other cause, it was rigorously punished; the Egyptians made it criminal, and no vagabonds or mendicants were suffered under any pretence whatever. Those who were convicted of slothfulness, and still refused to labour for the public when labour was offered to them, were punished with death. The famous Pyramids are the works of men who otherwise had remained vagabonds and mendicants.

The same spirit inspired Greece. Lycurgus would not have in his republic either _poor_ or _rich_: they lived and laboured in common. As in the present times, every family has its stores and cellars, so they had public ones, and distributed the provisions according to the ages and const.i.tutions of the people. If the same regulation was not precisely observed by the Athenians, the Corinthians, and the other people of Greece, the same maxim existed in full force against idleness.

According to the laws of Draco, Solon, &c., a conviction of wilful poverty was punished with the loss of life. Plato, more gentle in his manners, would have them only banished. He calls them enemies of the state; and p.r.o.nounces as a maxim, that where there are great numbers of mendicants, fatal revolutions will happen; for as these people have nothing to lose, they plan opportunities to disturb the public repose.

The ancient Romans, whose universal object was the public prosperity, were not indebted to Greece on this head. One of the princ.i.p.al occupations of their censors was to keep a watch on the vagabonds. Those who were condemned as incorrigible sluggards were sent to the mines, or made to labour on the public edifices. The Romans of those times, unlike the present race, did not consider the _far niente_ as an occupation; they were convinced that their liberalities were ill-placed in bestowing them on such men. The little republics of the _bees_ and the _ants_ were often held out as an example; and the last particularly, where Virgil says, that they have elected overseers who correct the sluggards:

"---- Pars agmina cogunt, Castigantque moras."

And if we may trust the narratives of our travellers, the _beavers_ pursue this regulation more rigorously and exactly than even these industrious societies. But their rigour, although but animals, is not so barbarous as that of the ancient Germans; who, Tacitus informs us, plunged the idlers and vagabonds in the thickest mire of their marshes, and left them to perish by a kind of death which resembled their inactive dispositions.

Yet, after all, it was not inhumanity that prompted the ancients thus severely to chastise idleness; they were induced to it by a strict equity, and it would be doing them injustice to suppose, that it was thus they treated those _unfortunate poor_, whose indigence was occasioned by infirmities, by age, or unforeseen calamities. Every family constantly a.s.sisted its branches to save them from being reduced to beggary; which to them appeared worse than death. The magistrates protected those who were dest.i.tute of friends, or incapable of labour.

When Ulysses was disguised as a mendicant, and presented himself to Eurymachus, this prince observing him, to be robust and healthy, offered to give him employment, or otherwise to leave him to his ill fortune.

When the Roman Emperors, even in the reigns of Nero and Tiberius, bestowed their largesses, the distributors were ordered to exempt those from receiving a share whose bad conduct kept them in misery; for that it was better the lazy should die with hunger than be fed in idleness.

Whether the police of the ancients was more exact, or whether they were more attentive to practise the duties of humanity, or that slavery served as an efficacious corrective of idleness; it clearly appears how small was the misery, and how few the numbers of their poor. This they did, too, without having recourse to hospitals.

At the establishment of Christianity, when the apostles commanded a community of wealth among their disciples, the miseries of the poor became alleviated in a greater degree. If they did not absolutely live together, as we have seen religious orders, yet the wealthy continually supplied their distressed brethren: but matters greatly changed under Constantine. This prince published edicts in favour of those Christians who had been condemned in the preceding reigns to slavery, to the mines, to the galleys, or prisons. The church felt an inundation of prodigious crowds of these miserable men, who brought with them urgent wants and corporeal infirmities. The Christian families were then not numerous; they could not satisfy these claimants. The magistrates protected them: they built s.p.a.cious hospitals, under different t.i.tles, for the sick, the aged, the invalids, the widows, and orphans. The emperors, and the most eminent personages, were seen in these hospitals, examining the patients; they a.s.sisted the helpless; they dressed the wounded. This did so much honour to the new religion, that Julian the Apostate introduced this custom among the pagans. But the best things are continually perverted.

These retreats were found insufficient. Many slaves, proud of the liberty they had just recovered, looked on them as prisons; and, under various pretexts, wandered about the country. They displayed with art the scars of their former wounds, and exposed the imprinted marks of their chains. They found thus a lucrative profession in begging, which had been interdicted by the laws. The profession did not finish with them: men of an untoward, turbulent, and licentious disposition, gladly embraced it. It spread so wide that the succeeding emperors were obliged to inst.i.tute new laws; and individuals were allowed to seize on these mendicants for their slaves and perpetual va.s.sals: a powerful preservative against this disorder. It is observed in almost every part of the world but ours; and prevents that populace of beggary which disgraces Europe. China presents us with a n.o.ble example. No beggars are seen loitering in that country. All the world are occupied, even to the blind and the lame; and only those who are incapable of labour live at the public expense. What is done _there_ may also be performed _here_.

Instead of that hideous, importunate, idle, licentious poverty, as pernicious to the police as to morality, we should see the poverty of the earlier ages, humble, modest, frugal, robust, industrious, and laborious. Then, indeed, the fable of Plato might be realised: Poverty might be embraced by the G.o.d of Riches; and if she did not produce the voluptuous offspring of Love, she would become the fertile mother of Agriculture, and the ingenious parent of the Arts and Manufactures.

SOLOMON AND SHEBA.

A Rabbin once told me an ingenious invention, which in the Talmud is attributed to Solomon.

The power of the monarch had spread his wisdom to the remotest parts of the known world. Queen Sheba, attracted by the splendour of his reputation, visited this poetical king at his own court; there, one day to exercise the sagacity of the monarch, Sheba presented herself at the foot of the throne: in each hand she held a wreath; the one was composed of natural, and the other of artificial, flowers. Art, in the labour of the mimetic wreath, had exquisitely emulated the lively hues of nature; so that, at the distance it was held by the queen for the inspection of the king, it was deemed impossible for him to decide, as her question imported, which wreath was the production of nature, and which the work of art. The sagacious Solomon seemed perplexed; yet to be vanquished, though in a trifle, by a trifling woman, irritated his pride. The son of David, he who had written treatises on the vegetable productions "from the cedar to the hyssop," to acknowledge himself outwitted by a woman, with shreds of paper and glazed paintings! The honour of the monarch's reputation for divine sagacity seemed diminished, and the whole Jewish court looked solemn and melancholy. At length an expedient presented itself to the king; and one it must be confessed worthy of the naturalist. Observing a cl.u.s.ter of bees hovering about a window, he commanded that it should be opened: it was opened; the bees rushed into the court, and alighted immediately on one of the wreaths, while not a single one fixed on the other. The baffled Sheba had one more reason to be astonished at the wisdom of Solomon.

This would make a pretty poetical tale. It would yield an elegant description, and a pleasing moral; that _the bee_ only _rests_ on the natural beauties, and never _fixes_ on the _painted flowers_, however inimitably the colours may be laid on. Applied to the _ladies_, this would give it pungency. In the "Practical Education" of the Edgeworths, the reader will find a very ingenious conversation founded on this story.

h.e.l.l.

Oldham, in his "Satires upon the Jesuits," a work which would admit of a curious commentary, alludes to their "lying legends," and the innumerable impositions they practised on the credulous. I quote a few lines in which he has collected some of those legendary miracles, which I have noticed in the article LEGENDS, and the amours of the Virgin Mary are detailed in that on RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES.

Tell, how _blessed Virgin_ to come down was seen, Like play-house punk descending in machine, How she writ _billet-doux_ and _love-discourse_, Made _a.s.signations_, _visits_, and _amours_; How hosts distrest, her _smock_ for _banner_ wore, Which vanquished foes!

---- how _fish_ in conventicles met, And _mackerel_ were with _bait of doctrine_ caught: How cattle have judicious hearers been!-- How _consecrated hives_ with bells were hung, And _bees_ kept ma.s.s, and holy _anthems sung_!

How _pigs_ to th' _rosary_ kneel'd, and _sheep_ were taught To bleat _Te Deum_ and _Magnificat_; How _fly-flap_, of church-censure houses rid Of insects, which at _curse of fryar_ died.

How _ferrying cowls_ religious pilgrims bore O'er waves, without the help of sail or oar; How _zealous crab_ the _sacred image_ bore, And swam a catholic to the distant sh.o.r.e.

With shams like these the giddy rout mislead, Their folly and their superst.i.tion feed.

All these are allusions to the extravagant fictions in the "Golden Legend." Among other gross impositions to deceive the mob, Oldham likewise attacks them for certain publications on topics not less singular. The tales he has recounted, Oldham says, are only baits for children, like toys at a fair; but they have their profounder and higher matters for the learned and inquisitive. He goes on:--

One undertakes by scales of miles to tell The bounds, dimensions, and extent of h.e.l.l; How many German leagues that realm contains!

How many chaldrons h.e.l.l each year expends In coals for roasting Hugonots and friends!

Another frights the rout with useful stories Of wild chimeras, limbos--PURGATORIES-- Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung, Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue, To be redeem'd with ma.s.ses and a song.--SATIRE IV.

The readers of Oldham, for Oldham must ever have readers among the curious in our poetry, have been greatly disappointed in the pompous edition of a Captain Thompson, which ill.u.s.trates none of his allusions.

In the above lines Oldham alludes to some singular works.

Treatises and topographical descriptions of h.e.l.l, PURGATORY, and even HEAVEN, were once the favourite researches among certain zealous defenders of the Romish Church, who exhausted their ink-horns in building up a h.e.l.l to their own taste, or for their particular purpose.[60] We have a treatise of Cardinal Bellarmin, a Jesuit, on _Purgatory_; he seems to have the science of a surveyor among all the secret tracks and the formidable divisions of "the bottomless pit."

Bellarmin informs us that there are beneath the earth four different places, or a profound place divided into four parts. The deepest of these places is _h.e.l.l_; it contains all the souls of the d.a.m.ned, where will be also their bodies after the resurrection, and likewise all the demons. The place nearest _h.e.l.l_ is _Purgatory_, where souls are purged, or rather where they appease the anger of G.o.d by their sufferings. He says that the same fires and the same torments are alike in both these places, the only difference between _h.e.l.l_ and _Purgatory_ consisting in their duration. Next to _Purgatory_ is the _limbo_ of those _infants_ who die without having received the sacrament; and the fourth place is the _limbo_ of the _Fathers_; that is to say, of those _just men_ who died before the death of Christ. But since the days of the Redeemer, this last division is empty, like an apartment to be let. A later catholic theologist, the famous Tillemont, condemns _all the ill.u.s.trious pagans_ to the _eternal torments of h.e.l.l_? because they lived before the time of Jesus, and therefore could not be benefited by the redemption!

Speaking of young Tiberius, who was compelled to fall on his own sword, Tillemont adds, "Thus by his own hand he ended his miserable life, _to begin another, the misery of which will never end_!" Yet history records nothing bad of this prince. Jortin observes that he added this _reflection_ in his later edition, so that the good man as he grew older grew more uncharitable in his religious notions. It is in this manner too that the Benedictine editor of Justin Martyr speaks of the ill.u.s.trious pagans. This father, after highly applauding Socrates, and a few more who resembled him, inclines to think that they are not fixed in _h.e.l.l_. But the Benedictine editor takes great pains to clear the good father from the shameful imputation of supposing that a _virtuous pagan might be saved_ as well as a Benedictine monk! For a curious specimen of this _odium theologic.u.m_, see the "Censure" of the Sorbonne on Marmontel's Belisarius.

The adverse party, who were either philosophers or reformers, received all such information with great suspicion. Anthony Cornelius, a lawyer in the sixteenth century, wrote a small tract, which was so effectually suppressed, as a monster of atheism, that a copy is now only to be found in the hands of the curious. This author ridiculed the absurd and horrid doctrine of _infant d.a.m.nation_, and was instantly decried as an atheist, and the printer prosecuted to his ruin! Caelius Secundus Curio, a n.o.ble Italian, published a treatise _De Amplitudine beati Regni Dei_, to prove that _Heaven_ has more inhabitants than _h.e.l.l_,--or, in his own phrase, that the _elect_ are more numerous than the _reprobate_. However we may incline to smile at these works, their design was benevolent. They were the first streaks of the morning light of the Reformation. Even such works a.s.sisted mankind to examine more closely, and hold in greater contempt, the extravagant and pernicious doctrines of the domineering papistical church.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: One of the most horrible of these books was the work of the Jesuit Pinamonti; it details with frightful minuteness the nature of h.e.l.l-torments, accompanied by the most revolting pictures of the condemned under various refined torments. It was translated in an abbreviated form, and sold for a few pence as a popular religious book in Ireland, and may be so still. It is divided into a series of meditations for each day in the week, on h.e.l.l and its torments.]

THE ABSENT MAN.

The character of Bruyere's "Absent Man" has been translated in the Spectator, and exhibited on the theatre. It is supposed to be a fict.i.tious character, or one highly coloured. It was well known, however, to his contemporaries, to be the Count de Brancas. The present anecdotes concerning the same person were unknown to, or forgotten by, Bruyere; and are to the full as extraordinary as those which characterise _Menalcas_, or the Absent Man.

The count was reading by the fireside, but Heaven knows with what degree of attention, when the nurse brought him his infant child. He throws down the book; he takes the child in his arms. He was playing with her, when an important visitor was announced. Having forgot he had quitted his book, and that it was his child he held in his hands, he hastily flung the squalling innocent on the table.

The count was walking in the street, and the Duke de la Rochefoucault crossed the way to speak to him.--"G.o.d bless thee, poor man!" exclaimed the count. Rochefoucault smiled, and was beginning to address him:--"Is it not enough," cried the count, interrupting him, and somewhat in a pa.s.sion; "is it not enough that I have said, at first, I have nothing for you? Such lazy vagrants as you hinder a gentleman from walking the streets." Rochefoucault burst into a loud laugh, and awakening the absent man from his lethargy, he was not a little surprised, himself, that he should have taken his friend for an importunate mendicant! La Fontaine is recorded to have been one of the most absent men; and Furetiere relates a most singular instance of this absence of mind. La Fontaine attended the burial of one of his friends, and some time afterwards he called to visit him. At first he was shocked at the information of his death; but recovering from his surprise, observed--"True! true! I recollect I went to his funeral."

WAX-WORK.

We have heard of many curious deceptions occasioned by the imitative powers of wax-work. A series of anatomical sculptures in coloured wax was projected by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, under the direction of Fontana. Twenty apartments have been filled with those curious imitations. They represent in every possible detail, and in each successive stage of denudation, the organs of sense and reproduction; the muscular, the vascular, the nervous, and the bony system. They imitate equally well the form, and more exactly the colouring, of nature than injected preparations; and they have been employed to perpetuate many transient phenomena of disease, of which no other art could have made so lively a record.[61]