Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 56

Metastasio, after receiving the sacrament, a very short time before his last moments, broke out with all the enthusiasm of poetry and religion in these stanzas:--

T' offro il tuo proprio Figlio, Che gia d'amore in pegno, Racchiuso in picciol segno Si volle a noi donar.

A lui rivolgi il ciglio.

Guardo chi t' offro, e poi Lasci, Signor, se vuoi, Lascia di perdonar.

"I offer to thee, O Lord, thine own Son, who already has given the pledge of love, enclosed in this thin emblem. Turn on him thine eyes: ah! behold whom I offer to thee, and then desist, O Lord! if thou canst desist from mercy."

"The muse that has attended my course," says the dying Gleim in a letter to Klopstock, "still hovers round my steps to the very verge of the grave." A collection of lyrical poems, ent.i.tled "Last Hours," composed by old Gleim on his death-bed, was intended to be published. The death of Klopstock was one of the most poetical: in this poet's "Messiah," he had made the death of Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, a picture of the death of the Just; and on his own death-bed he was heard repeating, with an expiring voice, his own verses on Mary; he was exhorting himself to die by the accents of his own harp, the sublimities of his own muse! The same song of Mary was read at the public funeral of Klopstock.

Chatelar, a French gentleman, beheaded in Scotland for having loved the queen, and even for having attempted her honour, Brantome says, would not have any other viatic.u.m than a poem of Ronsard. When he ascended the scaffold he took the hymns of this poet, and for his consolation read that on death, which our old critic says is well adapted to conquer its fear.

When the Marquis of Montrose was condemned by his judges to have his limbs nailed to the gates of four cities, the brave soldier said that "he was sorry he had not limbs sufficient to be nailed to all the gates of the cities in Europe, as monuments of his loyalty." As he proceeded to his execution, he put this thought into verse.

Philip Strozzi, imprisoned by Cosmo the First, Great Duke of Tuscany, was apprehensive of the danger to which he might expose his friends who had joined in his conspiracy against the duke, from the confessions which the rack might extort from him. Having attempted every exertion for the liberty of his country, he considered it as no crime therefore to die. He resolved on suicide. With the point of the sword, with which he killed himself, he cut out on the mantel-piece of the chimney this verse of Virgil:--

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.

Rise some avenger from our blood!

I can never repeat without a strong emotion the following stanzas, begun by Andre Chenier, in the dreadful period of the French revolution. He was waiting for his turn to be dragged to the guillotine, when he commenced this poem:--

Comme un dernier rayon, comme un dernier zephyre Anime la fin d'un beau jour; Au pied de l'echafaud j'essaie encore ma lyre, Peut-etre est ce bientot mon tour;

Peut-etre avant que l'heure en cercle promenee Ait pose sur l'email brillant, Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornee Son pied sonore et vigilant,

Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere--

Here, at this pathetic line, was Andre Chenier summoned to the guillotine! Never was a more beautiful effusion of grief interrupted by a more affecting incident!

Several men of science have died in a scientific manner. Haller, the poet, philosopher, and physician, beheld his end approach with the utmost composure. He kept feeling his pulse to the last moment, and when he found that life was almost gone, he turned to his brother physician, observing, "My friend, the artery ceases to beat," and almost instantly expired. The same remarkable circ.u.mstance had occurred to the great Harvey: he kept making observations on the state of his pulse, when life was drawing to its close, "as if," says Dr. Wilson, in the oration spoken a few days after the event, "that he who had taught us the beginning of life might himself, at his departing from it, become acquainted with those of death."

De Lagny, who was intended by his friends for the study of the law, having fallen on an Euclid, found it so congenial to his dispositions, that he devoted himself to mathematics. In his last moments, when he retained no further recollection of the friends who surrounded his bed, one of them, perhaps to make a philosophical experiment, thought proper to ask him the square of twelve: our dying mathematician instantly, and perhaps without knowing that he answered, replied, "One hundred and forty-four."

The following anecdotes are of a different complexion, and may excite a smile.

Pere Bohours was a French grammarian, who had been justly accused of paying too scrupulous an attention to the minutiae of letters. He was more solicitous of his _words_ than his _thoughts_. It is said, that when he was dying, he called out to his friends (a correct grammarian to the last), "_Je_ VAS _ou je_ VAIS _mourir; l'un ou l'autre se dit_!"

When Malherbe was dying, he reprimanded his nurse for making use of a solecism in her language; and when his confessor represented to him the felicities of a future state in low and trite expressions, the dying critic interrupted him:--"Hold your tongue," he said; "your wretched style only makes me out of conceit with them!"

The favourite studies and amus.e.m.e.nts of the learned La Mothe le Vayer consisted in accounts of the most distant countries. He gave a striking proof of the influence of this master-pa.s.sion, when death hung upon his lips. Bernier, the celebrated traveller, entering and drawing the curtains of his bed to take his eternal farewell, the dying man turning to him, with a faint voice inquired, "Well, my friend, what news from the Great Mogul?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 116: Barham, the author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, wrote a similar death-bed lay in imitation of the older poets. It is termed "As I laye a-thinkynge." Bewick, the wood-engraver, was last employed upon, and left unfinished at his death, a cut, the subject of which was "The old Horse waiting for Death."]

SCARRON.

Scarron, as a burlesque poet, but no other comparison exists, had his merit, but is now little read; for the uniformity of the burlesque style is as intolerable as the uniformity of the serious. From various sources we may collect some uncommon anecdotes, although he was a mere author.

His father, a counsellor, having married a second wife, the lively Scarron became the object of her hatred.

He studied, and travelled, and took the clerical tonsure; but discovered dispositions more suitable to the pleasures of his age than to the gravity of his profession. He formed an acquaintance with the wits of the times; and in the carnival of 1638 committed a youthful extravagance, for which his remaining days formed a continual punishment. He disguised himself as a savage; the singularity of a naked man attracted crowds. After having been hunted by the mob, he was forced to escape from his pursuers; and concealed himself in a marsh. A freezing cold seized him, and threw him, at the age of twenty-seven years, into a kind of palsy; a cruel disorder which tormented him all his life. "It was thus," he says, "that pleasure deprived me suddenly of legs which had danced with elegance, and of hands, which could manage the pencil and the lute."

Goujet, without stating this anecdote, describes his disorder as an acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baffling the skill of his physicians; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a word, a complication of maladies attacked him, sometimes successively, sometimes together, and made of our poor Abbe a sad spectacle. He thus describes himself in one of his letters; and who could be in better humour?

"I have lived to thirty: if I reach forty, I shall only add many miseries to those which I have endured these last eight or nine years.

My person was well made, though short; my disorder has shortened it still more by a foot. My head is a little broad for my shape; my face is full enough for my body to appear very meagre; I have hair enough to render a wig unnecessary; I have got many white hairs, in spite of the proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now of the colour of wood, and will soon be of slate. My legs and thighs first formed an obtuse angle, afterwards an equilateral angle, and at length, an acute one. My thighs and body form another; and my head, always dropping on my breast, makes me not ill represent a Z. I have got my arms shortened as well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In a word, I am an abridgment of human miseries."

He had the free use of nothing but his tongue and his hands; and he wrote on a portfolio placed on his knees.

Balzac said of Scarron, that he had gone further in insensibility than the Stoics, who were satisfied in appearing insensible to pain; but Scarron was gay, and amused all the world with his sufferings.

He pourtrays himself thus humorously in his address to the queen:--

Je ne regard plus qu'en bas, Je suis torticolis, j'ai la tete penchante; Ma mine devient si plaisante Que quand on en riroit, je ne m'en plaindrois pas.

"I can only see under me; I am wry-necked; my head hangs down; my appearance is so droll, that if people laugh, I shall not complain."

He says elsewhere,

Parmi les torticolis Je pa.s.se pour un des plus jolis.

"Among your wry-necked people I pa.s.s for one of the handsomest."

After having suffered this distortion of shape, and these acute pains for four years, he quitted his usual residence, the quarter du Marais, for the baths of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain. He took leave of his friends, by addressing some verses to them, ent.i.tled, _Adieu aux Marais_; in which he describes several celebrated persons. When he was brought into the street in a chair, the pleasure of seeing himself there once more overcame the pains which the motion occasioned, and he has celebrated the transport by an ode, which has for t.i.tle, "The Way from le Marais to the Fauxbourg Saint Germain."

The baths he tried had no effect on his miserable disorder. But a new affliction was added to the catalogue of his griefs.

His father, who had hitherto contributed to his necessities, having joined a party against Cardinal Richelieu, was exiled. This affair was rendered still more unfortunate by his mother-in-law with her children at Paris, in the absence of her husband, appropriating the property of the family to her own use.

Hitherto Scarron had had no connexion with Cardinal Richelieu. The conduct of his father had even rendered his name disagreeable to the minister, who was by no means p.r.o.ne to forgiveness. Scarron, however, when he thought his pa.s.sion moderated, ventured to present a pet.i.tion, which is considered by the critics as one of his happiest productions.

Richelieu permitted it to be read to him, and acknowledged that it afforded him much pleasure, and that it was _pleasantly dated_. This _pleasant date_ is thus given by Scarron:--

Fait a Paris dernier jour d'Octobre, Par moi, Scarron, qui malgre moi suis sobre, L'an que l'on prit le fameux Perpignan, Et, sans canon, la ville de Sedan.

At Paris done, the last day of October, By me, Scarron, who wanting wine am sober, The year they took fam'd Perpignan, And, without cannon-ball, Sedan.

This was flattering the minister adroitly in two points very agreeable to him. The poet augured well of the dispositions of the cardinal, and lost no time to return to the charge, by addressing an ode to him, to which he gave the t.i.tle of THANKS, as if he had already received the favours which he hoped he should receive! Thus Ronsard dedicated to Catherine of Medicis, who was prodigal of promises, his hymn to PROMISE. But all was lost for Scarron by the death of the Cardinal.

When Scarron's father died, he brought his mother-in-law into court; and, to complete his misfortunes, lost his suit. The cases which he drew up for the occasion were so extremely burlesque, that the world could not easily conceive how a man could amuse himself so pleasantly on a subject on which his existence depended.

The successor of Richelieu, the Cardinal Mazarin, was insensible to his applications. He did nothing for him, although the poet dedicated to him his _Typhon_, a burlesque poem, in which the author describes the wars of the giants with the G.o.ds. Our bard was so irritated at this neglect, that he suppressed a sonnet he had written in his favour, and aimed at him several satirical bullets. Scarron, however, consoled himself for this kind of disgrace with those select friends who were not inconstant in their visits to him. The Bishop of Mans also, solicited by a friend, gave him a living in his diocese. When Scarron had taken possession of it, he began his _Roman Comique_, ill translated into English by _Comical Romance_. He made friends by his dedications. Such resources were indeed necessary, for he not only lived well, but had made his house an asylum for his two sisters, who there found refuge from an unfeeling step-mother.

It was about this time that the beautiful and accomplished Mademoiselle d'Aubigne, afterwards so well known by the name of Madame de Maintenon, she who was to be one day the mistress, if not the queen of France, formed with Scarron the most romantic connexion. She united herself in marriage with one whom she well knew could only be a lover. It was indeed amidst that literary society she formed her taste and embellished with her presence his little residence, where a.s.sembled the most polished courtiers and some of the finest geniuses of Paris of that famous party, called _La Fronde_, formed against Mazarin. Such was the influence this marriage had over Scarron, that after this period his writings became more correct and more agreeable than those which he had previously composed. Scarron, on his side, gave a proof of his attachment to Madame de Maintenon; for by marrying her he lost his living of Mans. But though without wealth, he was accustomed to say that "his wife and he would not live uncomfortable by the produce of his estate and the _Marquisate of Quinet_." Thus he called the revenue which his compositions produced, and _Quinet_ was his bookseller.