Note 397 — ARTIFICIAL ICE. COOLING LIQUORS.

This curious work contains so much valuable information respecting the French manners in the sixteenth century, that some account of it may not prove unacceptable to my readers. The title is, Déscription de L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, nouvellement découverte ... pour servir de Supplement au Journal de Henri III. The preface, to which there is no signature, says that the book was printed for the first time in 1605. In the first editions neither date nor place is mentioned; but one edition is dated 1612. It appears to have been written in the reign of Henry IV., after the peace of Vervins, concluded in 1598, which the author mentions in the beginning. Henry IV. would not suffer any inquiry to be made respecting the author that he might be punished, because, he said, though he had taken great liberty in his writing, he had written truth. He is not therefore known. Some have conjectured that it was the production of cardinal Perron, and others of sieur d’Emery, Thomas Artus. But the former would not have chosen to lash vices such as those mentioned in this satire, with so much wit and severity; and the latter could not have done it. The one was too vicious, and the other too vehement. The cardinal must have delineated his own picture; and Artus have exceeded what he was capable of. The same opinion respecting Artus is entertained by Marchand, in his Dict. Historique. The frontispiece, which in many editions is wanting, represents an effeminate voluptuary with a womanish face, dressed half in men’s and half in women’s clothing. Marchand says the inscription is Les Hermaphrodites. In some editions however it is much more cutting: “Pars est una patris; cætera matris habet.” This pentameter is taken from Martial, lib. xiv. ep. 174. The whole work is inserted also in Journal de Henri III., par Pierre de l’Estoiles, à la Haye 1744, 8vo, iv. p. 1. For further information on this subject see Le Long, Bibliothèque Historique de la France, ii. p. 326, n. 19128.