Prototypes.

THE OLDEST PROVERB.

It appears from I Samuel xxiv. 13, that the oldest proverb on record, is, “Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked;” since David, in his time, declared it to be “a proverb of the ancients;” consequently older than any proverb of his son Solomon.

SHAKSPEARE SAID IT FIRST.

In one of Clough’s letters he tells an amusing story of a Calvinistic old lady, who, on being asked about the Universalists, observed,—“Yes, they expect that everybody will be saved, but we look for better things.” How like this is to the admirable confusion of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who, in his letter of challenge, (Twelfth Night, iii. 4,) concludes thus:—

“Fare thee well, and God have mercy upon one of our souls!

He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better!”

CINDERELLA’S SLIPPER.

A story somewhat similar to that of Cinderella has been handed down from the Greek. It is reported of Rhodopis,—a Thracian slave, who was purchased and manumitted by Charaxus of Mytilene, and afterward settled in Egypt,—that one day, while she was in the bath, an eagle, having flown down, snatched one of her slippers from an attendant, and carried it to Memphis. Psammitichus, the king, at the time, was sitting on his tribunal, and while engaged in dispensing justice, the eagle, settling above his head, dropped the sandal into his bosom. Astonished by the singularity of the event, and struck by the diminutive size and elegant shape of the sandal, the king ordered search to be made for the owner throughout the land of Egypt. Having found her at Naucratis, she was presented to the king, who made her his queen.

700

CURTAIN LECTURES.

Jerrold, in his preface to the later editions of Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, makes this curious statement:—

It has happened to the writer that two, or three, or ten, or twenty gentlewomen have asked him ... What could have made you think of Mrs. Caudle? How could such a thing have entered any man’s mind? There are subjects that seem like rain-drops to fall upon a man’s head, the head itself having nothing to do with the matter.... And this was, no doubt, the accidental cause of the literary sowing and expansion—unfolding like a night-flower—of Mrs. Caudle.... The writer, still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these words—Curtain Lectures.

Nevertheless, this phrase may be traced back more than two centuries, while the idea will be found in the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, who says:—

Semper habet lites, alternaque jurgia lectus,

In quo nupta jacet: minimum dormitur in illo, &c.

Stapylton’s translation of this passage was published in 1647:—

Debates, alternate brawlings, ever were

I’ th’ marriage bed: there is no sleeping there.

In the margin of the translation are the words Curtain-Lectures.

Dryden in his translation of the same passage (published 1693) introduces the phrase into the text:—

Besides, what endless brawls by wives are bred;

The Curtain-Lecture makes a mournful bed.

And Addison, in the Tatler, describing a luckless wight undergoing the penalty of a nocturnal oration, says:—

I could not but admire his exemplary patience, and discovered, by his whole behavior, that he was then lying under the discipline of a curtain lecture.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

The metre, movement, and idea of Tennyson’s Charge of the Six Hundred at Balaklava, are evidently derived from Michael Drayton’s Battle of Agincourt, published in 1627. The first, middle and last stanzas of Drayton’s poem run thus:—

7011.

Faire stood the Wind for France

When we our Sayles advance,

Nor now to prove our chance

Longer will tarry;

But putting to the Mayne,

At Kaux, the Mouth of Seyne,

With all his Martiall Trayne,

Landed King Harry.

8.

They now to fight are gone,

Armour on armour shone,

Drumme now to Drumme did grone,

To heare was wonder:

That with the Cryes they make,

The very earth did shake,

Trumpet to Trumpet spake,

Thunder to Thunder.

15.

Upon Saint Crispin’s day

Fought was this Noble Fray,

Which Fame did not delay

To England to carry;

O when shall English Men

With such Acts fill a Pen,

Or England breed againe

Such a King Harry!

THE FAUST LEGENDS.

About the middle of the thirteenth century began to spread the notion of formal written agreements between the Fiend and men who were to be his exclusive property after a certain time, during which he was to help them to all earthly good. This, curious to say, came with Christianity from the East. The first instance was that of Theophilus, vicedominus of the Bishop of Adana, a city of Cilicia, in the sixth century, whose fall and conversion form the original of all the Faust legends. The story of Theophilus may be found in various works, among them Ennemoser’s Universal History of Magic, which was translated by William Howitt.

702

AIR CUSHIONS.

Ben Jonson, in the Alchemist, makes Sir Epicure Mammon, in his expectation of acquiring the secret of the philosopher’s stone, enumerate to Surly a list of anticipated luxuries. Among these indulgences is this prophetic forecast of modern inflated India-rubber beds and cushions:—

“I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed;

Down is too hard.”

THE CAT IN THE ADAGE.

Lady Macbeth thus taunts her husband:—

Wouldst thou have that

Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

And live a coward in thine own esteem;

Letting I dare not wait upon I would,

Like the poor cat i’ the adage?

The adage is thus given in Heywood’s Proverbs, 1566:—

“The cat would eate fishe, and would not wet her feete.”

The proverb is found among all nations. The Latin form of mediæval times was as follows:—

“Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas.”

The Germans say:—

“Die Katze hätt’ die Fische gern; aber sie will die Füsse nit nass machen.”

And the Scotch have it:—

“The cat would fain fish eat,

But she has no will to wet her feet.”

CORK LEGS.

A gentleman in Charleston conceived a very decided liking to a young lady from Ireland, and was on the eve of popping the question, when he was told by a friend that his dulcinea had a cork leg. It is difficult to imagine the distress of the young Carolinian. He went to her father’s house, knocked 703impatiently at the door, and when admitted to the fair one’s presence, asked her if what he had heard respecting her were true. “Yes, indeed, my dear Sir, it is true enough, but you have heard only half of my misfortune. I have got two cork legs, having had the ill-luck to be born in Cork.” This is the incident on which is founded Hart’s afterpiece called Perfection.

THE POPE’S BULL AGAINST THE COMET.

When President Lincoln was first asked to issue a proclamation abolishing slavery in the Southern States, he replied that such an act would be as absurd as the Pope’s bull against the comet.

The comet referred to is Halley’s. Concerning its first authenticated appearance, Admiral Smyth, in his Cycle of Celestial Objects, says:—

In 1456 it came with a tail 60° in length, and of a vivid brightness; which splendid train affrighted all Europe, and spread consternation in every quarter. To its malign influences were imputed the rapid successes of Mahomet II., which then threatened all Christendom. The general alarm was greatly aggravated by the conduct of Pope Calixtus III., who, though otherwise a man of abilities, was but a poor astronomer; for that pontiff daily ordered the church bells to be rung at noontide, extra Ave Marias to be repeated, and a special protest and excommunication was composed, exorcising equally the devil, the Turks, and the comet.

SWAPPING HORSES.

The celebrated maxim of President Lincoln, “not to swap horses while fording the stream,” was anticipated centuries ago by Cyrus the Elder, King of Persia, in directing his troops to take up their several stations, when he said, “When the contest is about to begin, there is no longer time for any chariot to unyoke the horses for a change.”

WOODEN NUTMEGS.

Judge Haliburton, in that amusing book The Clockmaker, puts the following in the mouth of Sam Slick:—

704That remark seemed to grig him a little; he felt oneasy like, and walked twice across the room, fifty fathoms deep in thought; at last he said, “Which way are you from, Mr. Slick, this hitch?” “Why,” says I, “I’ve been away up South a speculating in nutmegs.” “I hope,” says the Professor, “they were a good article,—the real right down genuine thing?” “No, mistake,” says I, “no mistake, Professor; they were all prime, first chop; but why did you ax that ’ere question?” “Why,” says he, “that eternal scoundrel, that Captain John Allspice of Nahant, he used to trade to Charleston, and he carried a cargo once there of fifty barrels of nutmegs. Well, he put half a bushel of good ones into each end of the barrel, and the rest he filled up with wooden ones, so like the real thing, no soul could tell the difference until he bit one with his teeth, and that he never thought of doing until he was first bit himself. Well, it’s been a standing joke with them Southerners agin us ever since.”

TRADE UNIONS.

Trade unions are not of such recent origin as many people suppose. “I am credibly informed,” wrote Mandeville, the philosophic author of the Fables of the Bees, one hundred and fifty years ago, in his Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, “that a parcel of footmen are arrived to that height of insolence as to have entered into a society together, and made laws by which they oblige themselves not to serve for less than such a sum, nor carry burdens, or any bundle or parcel above a certain weight not exceeding two or three pounds, with other regulations directly opposite to the interest of those they serve, and altogether destructive to the use they were designed for. If any of them be turned away for strictly adhering to the orders of this honorable corporation, he is taken care of till another service is provided for him; but there is no money wanting at any time to commence and maintain a lawsuit against any that shall pretend to strike or offer any other injury to his gentleman footman, contrary to the statutes of their society. If this be true, as I believe it is, and they are suffered to go on in consulting and providing for their own ease and conveniency any further, we may expect quickly to see the French comedy ‘Le Maitre le Valet’ acted in good earnest in most families; while, if not redressed in a little time, and these footmen 705increase their company to the number it is possible they may, as well as assemble when they please with impunity, it will be in their power to make a tragedy of it whenever they have a mind to.”

CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.

On page 454 of Senator Wilson’s Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, he says (of a speech of the late Mr. Giddings): “He referred to the Treaty of Indian Springs, by which, after paying the slaveholders of Georgia the sum of $109,000 for slaves who had escaped to Florida, it added the sum of $141,000 as compensation demanded for the offspring which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage; and Congress actually paid that sum for children who were never born, but who might have been if their parents had remained faithful slaves.”

There is no clearer case of the payment of “consequential damages” in English or American history than this.

THE ORIGINAL SHYLOCK.

Gregory Leti, in his biography of Sextus V., tells us that Paul Secchi, a Venetian merchant, having learned by private advices that Admiral Francis Blake had conquered St. Domingo, communicated the news to a Jewish merchant named Sampson Ceneda. The latter was so confident that the information was false, that, after repeated protestations, he said, “I bet a pound of my flesh that the report is untrue.” “And I lay a thousand scudi against it,” rejoined the Christian, who caused a bond to be drawn to the effect that in case the report should prove untrue, then the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is bound to pay the Jewish merchant the sum of 1000 scudi, and on the other hand, if the truth of the news be confirmed, the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is justified and empowered to cut with his own hand, with a well-sharpened knife, 706a pound of the Jew’s fair flesh, of that part of the body it might please him. When the news proved true, the Christian insisted on his bond, but the governor, having got wind of the affair, reported it to the Pope, who condemned both Jew and Christian to the galleys, from which they could only be ransomed by paying a fine of double the amount of the wager.

Shakspeare reverses the order, and makes the Jew usurer demand the pound of flesh from the Christian merchant.

EXCOMMUNICATION.

The excommunication of the Roman Catholic Church, exactly described by anticipation in Cæsar’s account of their predecessors, the Heathen Druids, will be found in Cæsar, de Bello Gallico, Book VI. Chap, iii., the passage beginning “Si quis aut privatus aut publicus,” and ending “Neque honos ullus communicatur.”

They decree rewards and punishments, and if any one refuses to submit to their sentence, whether magistrate or private man, they interdict him the sacrifices. This is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted among the Gauls; because such as are under this prohibition are considered as impious and wicked; all men shun them, and decline their conversation and fellowship, lest they should suffer from the contagion of their misfortunes. They can neither have recourse to the law for justice, nor are capable of any public office.

NAPOLEON I.

Compare the character and fall of Bonaparte with that of the king of Babylon as described in the remarkable language of the prophet Isaiah, chapter xiv., verses 4–22.

THE FALLS OF LANARK.

The following lines in an album formerly kept at the inn at Lanark evidently suggested to Southey his playful verses on The Cataract of Lodore:—

What fools are mankind,

And how strangely inclined

707To come from all places

With horses and chaises,

By day and by dark,

To the Falls of Lanark!

For, good people, after all,

What is a waterfall?

It comes roaring and grumbling,

And leaping and tumbling,

And hopping and skipping,

And foaming and dripping,

And struggling and toiling,

And bubbling and boiling,

And beating and jumping,

And bellowing and thumping.

I have much more to say upon

Both Linn and Bonniton;

But the trunks are tied on,

And I must be gone.

In the varied music of Schiller’s Song of the Bell may be found the same style:—

Der Mann muß hinaus The man must be out

Ins feindliche Leben, In hostile life toiling,

Muß wirken und streben Be struggling and moiling,

Und pflanzen und schaffen, And planting, obtaining,

Erlisten, erraffen, Devising and gaining,

Muß wetten und wagen, And daring, enduring,

Das Glück zu erjagen. So fortune securing.

TURGOT’S EPIGRAPH ON FRANKLIN.

Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.

This inscription, the highest compliment ever paid to the American philosopher and statesman, and originally ascribed to Condorcet and Mirabeau, was written by Turgot, Louis XVI.’s minister and controller-general of finance, and first appeared in the correspondence of Grimm and Diderot, April, 1778. It is, however, merely a modification of a line in the Anti-Lucretius of Cardinal de Polignac, lib. i., v. 37:—

Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque sagittas,

which is in turn traced to the Astronomicon of Marcus Manilius, a poet of the Augustan age, who says of Epicurus, lib. i. v. 104,—

708Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque Tonanti.

Taking the laurel from the brow of Epicurus to place it upon the head of Franklin is not so inappropriate, when we recall the sketch of the former by Lucretius illustrans commoda vitæ.

THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Among those who sympathized most deeply with the oppressed inhabitants of New England, and who were earliest to express indignation at the outrages of British tyranny, were the militia-officers of North Carolina, most of whom were Presbyterians of Scotch-Irish nativity. On the 20th of May, 1775, the delegates of the Mecklenburg convention, “after sitting in the court-house all night, neither sleepy, hungry, nor fatigued, and after discussing every paragraph,” unanimously passed the following resolutions. It will be observed that this memorable Declaration of Independence contains many of the ideas, and some of the very phrases and forms of expression, afterwards employed by Mr. Jefferson, and incorporated in his draft of that great national document whose adoption, on the 4th of July, 1776, gave birth to a nation of freemen. The more striking similarities are here shown in Italics:—

Resolved, That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way, form, or manner countenanced, the unchartered and dangerous invasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an enemy to this country, to America, and to the inherent and inalienable rights^[36] of Man.

Resolved, That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg county, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the mother country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association with that Nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties, and inhumanly shed the blood of American patriots at Lexington.

709Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no power other than that of our God, and the general Government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which independence we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.

Resolved, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this country, we do hereby ordain and adopt as a rule of life all, each, and every of our former laws; wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authorities therein.

Resolved, That it is further decreed that all, each, and every military officer in this county is hereby reinstated in his former command and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations; and that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz.: a Justice of the Peace in the character of a “Committee-man,” to issue process, hear and determine all matters of controversy, according to said adopted laws, and to preserve peace, union, and harmony in said county; and to use every exertion to spread the love of country and fire of freedom throughout America, until a more general and organized government be established in the Province.

After discussing the foregoing resolves, and arranging by-laws and regulations for the government of a Standing Committee of Public Safety, who were selected from their delegates, the whole proceedings were unanimously adopted and signed. A select committee was then appointed to draw up a more full and definite statement of grievances, and a more formal Declaration of Independence. The delegation then adjourned about two o’clock A.M.

THE KNOW-NOTHINGS.

The recent political organization under this odd title, which presented one of the most singular features that has yet diversified 710American history, has its archetype in the Church whose progress in this country it was designed to oppose. In Italy there was formerly a strange order of monks calling themselves Fratres Ignorantiæ, “Brothers of Ignorance.” They used to bind themselves by oath not to understand nor to learn any thing, and answered all questions by saying, Nescio, “I do not know.” Their first proposition was, “Though you do not understand the words you speak, yet the Holy Ghost understands them, and the devil flees.” In opposing mental acquirements, they argued thus:—“Suppose this friar studies and becomes a learned man, the consequence will be that he will want to become our superior: therefore, put the sack around his neck, and let him go begging from house to house, in town and country.”

THE ORIGINAL OF BUNYAN’S PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.

The Isle of Man, or the Legal Proceedings in Manshire against Sin, wherein, by way of a continual Allegory, the chief malefactors disturbing both Church and Commonwealth are detected and attached, with their arraignment and judicial trial, according to the laws of England; the spiritual use thereof, with an apology for the manner of handling most necessary to be first read, for direction in the right use of the allegory. By the Rev. Richard Bernard.

An allegory with the above title, originally published more than two hundred years ago, was reprinted in Bristol, England, in 1803. In a note to this edition, addressed to the reader, the editor states that the work is prized as well on account of the ingenuity of the performance as the probability of its having suggested to Mr. John Bunyan the first idea of his Pilgrim’s Progress, and of his Holy War, which was intimated on a leaf facing the title-page, by the late Rev. Mr. Toplady.

The editor says, “That Bunyan had seen the book may be inferred from its extensive circulation, for in one year only after its first publication it ran through seven editions.” He then proceeds to the internal evidence, and points out a supposed 711similarity between the characters in the two works, as between Wilful Will of the one and Will-be-Will of the other; Mr. Worldly Wiseman of Bunyan and Sir Worldly Wise of Bernard; Soul’s Town of Bernard and Bunyan’s Town of Man’s Soul, &c.

That the book has no very high order of genius to commend it is evident from the fact that it has passed into comparative obscurity. The world does not suffer the works of true prophets to die. Still, there is enough in it to render it worthy of being held in remembrance; and, antedating Bunyan as it does, passing through seven editions immediately after its first publication, presenting some striking analogies with the great master of allegory, and sinking into obscurity before the brighter and more enduring light of the Bedford tinker, its author deserves honorable mention for his attempt to present religious truth in a striking and impressive form at a period when such attempts were rare.

Southey, in his Commonplace Book, gives a long quotation from Lucian’s Hermotimus, to show how Bunyan was anticipated, in the main idea of his allegory, by a Greek writer, as far back as the second century.

Another claimant for this Telemachus of Protestant religious literature has recently been brought to light by Catherine Isabella Curt, who has just published in London a translation of an old French manuscript in the British Museum, which is almost word for word the Pilgrim’s Progress. The manuscript is the work of a clergyman, G de Grideville, who lived in the fifteenth century. Its title, in Norman English, is Pylgremage of the Sowle. The printer, Caxton, who occupied the same position in London as the Etiennes of Paris, published in 1483 a translation of this manuscript, of which the authenticity appears incontestable. It would seem, therefore, that the credit of this celebrated book belongs to France, although France hitherto has shown less appreciation of the original than England has bestowed on the copy.

712

ROBINSON CRUSOE: WHO WROTE IT?

Disraeli, in his ever-charming Curiosities of Literature, expresses boldly the opinion that “no one had, or perhaps could have, converted the history of Selkirk into the wonderful story we possess but De Foe himself.” So have we all been accustomed to believe, from those careless, happy days of boyhood when we pored intently over the entrancing pages of “Robinson Crusoe” and wished that we also could have a desert island, a summer bower, and a winter-cave retreat, as well as he. But there is, alas! some slight ground at least for believing that De Foe did not write that immortal tale, or, at all events, the better portion of it, viz., the first part or volume of the work. In Sir H. Ellis’s Letters of Eminent Literary Men (Camden Soc. Pub. 1843, vol. 23), p. 420, Letter 137 is from “Daniel De Foe to the Earl of Halifax, engaging himself to his lordship as a political writer.” In a note by the editor a curious anecdote is given, quoted from “a volume of Memoranda in the handwriting of Thomas Warton, poet-laureate, preserved in the British Museum,” in relation to the actual authorship of the “Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” The extract is as follows:—

“Mem. July 10, 1774.—In the year 1759, I was told by the Rev. Mr. Hollaway, rector of Middleton Stoney, in Oxfordshire, then about seventy years old, and in the early part of his life chaplain to Lord Sunderland, that he had often heard Lord Sunderland say that Lord Oxford, while prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote the first volume of the History of Robinson Crusoe, merely as an amusement under confinement, and gave it to Daniel De Foe, who frequently visited Lord Oxford in the Tower and was one of his pamphlet-writers; that De Foe, by Lord Oxford’s permission, printed it as his own, and, encouraged by its extraordinary success, added himself the second volume, the inferiority of which is generally acknowledged. Mr. Holloway also told me, from Lord Sunderland, that Lord Oxford dictated some parts of the manuscript to De Foe. Mr Hollaway,”—Warton adds,—“was a grave, conscientious clergyman, 713not vain of telling anecdotes, very learned, particularly a good Orientalist, author of some theological tracts, bred at Eton School, and a Master of Arts of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He used to say that ‘Robinson Crusoe at its first publication, and for some time afterward, was universally received and credited as a genuine history. A fictitious narrative of this sort was then a new thing.’”

Besides, it may be added, the real and somewhat similar circumstances of Alexander Selkirk’s solitary abode of four years and four months on the island of Juan Fernandez, had, only a few years previously, been the subject of general conversation, and had therefore prepared the public mind for the possibility, if not the probability, of such adventures.

PROVERB MISASCRIBED TO DEFOE.

In an article on the writings of Daniel Defoe, in a late number of the Edinburgh Review, the critic refers to the True-Born Englishman, the opening quatrain of which is quoted as being “all that will ever be remembered of the poem.”

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,

The devil is sure to build a chapel there;

And ’twill be found, upon examination,

The latter has the largest congregation.

A recent number of Chambers’s Papers for the People also contains an article on Defoe, in which the same lines are quoted as having since grown into a proverb. It is evident that the two critics believed the idea to be original with Defoe. But they were both in error; for in an old tract, entitled The Vineyarde of Vertue, printed in 1591, seventy-seven years before Defoe was born, may be found the following sentence:—

It is oftentimes seene, that as God hath his Churche, so will the Deuill have a Chappell.

It was also used before Defoe’s time by George Herbert and Robert Burton. The former says, in his Jacula Prudentum, “No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil builds a 714chapel hard by;” and the latter, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, thus expresses it: “Where God hath a Temple the Devil will have a Chapel.” It is evident that Defoe only versified a well-known proverb of his day.

THE USE OF LANGUAGE.

To Talleyrand has generally been attributed the authorship of the maxim that “the use of language is to conceal our thoughts.” (La parole a été donnée à l’homme pour aider à cacher sa pensée.)

In Pycroft’s Ways and Words of Men of Letters, a quotation is made from an article on The Use of Language, published in a periodical called the Bee, under date of October 20, 1759, which reads as follows: “He who best knows how to conceal his necessity and desires is the most likely person to find redress; and the true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.”

Nearly a century before this, Dr. South preached a sermon in Westminster Abbey, on The Wisdom of the World, in which he said, “Men speak with designs of mischief, and therefore they speak in the dark. In short, this seems to be the true inward judgment of all our politic sages, that speech was given to the ordinary sort of men whereby to communicate their mind, but to wise men whereby to conceal it.”

SCANDINAVIAN SKULL CUPS.

What a pretty tale was slaughtered when Grenville Piggot pointed out, in his Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, the blundering translation of the passage in an old Scandinavian poem relating to the occupation of the blest in the halls of Valhalla, the Northern paradise! “Soon shall we drink out of the curved horns of the head,” are the words in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog; meaning by this violent figure to say that they would imbibe their liquor out of cups formed from the crooked horns of animals. The first translators, however, not seeing their way clearly, rendered the passage, 715“Soon shall we drink out of the skulls of our enemies;” and to this strange banqueting there are allusions without end to be met with in our literature. Peter Pindar, for example, once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors.

GREAT LITERARY PLAGIARISM.

The London Athenæum asserts that Paley’s Natural Theology is copied from a series of papers which appeared about the end of the seventeenth century, in the Leipsic Transactions, written by a Dutch philosopher named Nieuwentyt. It is extraordinary that this discovery was not made before, inasmuch as the papers, after having been published at Amsterdam about the year 1700, were afterwards translated into English by Mr. Chamberlayne, and published by Longman & Co., in 1818, about fifteen years after Paley’s Natural Theology appeared. As Paley quotes Dr. Nieuwentyt from the Leipsic Transactions, he, of course, must have known and perused them. Parallel passages are printed side by side in the Athenæum, for the purpose of proving the assertion.

OLD BALLADS.

It was not the more polished author of Ivanhoe who gave us the unfading picture of the Black Knight, but he who sang of

—a stranger knight whom no man knewe,

He wan the prize eche daye.

His acton it was all of blacke,

His hewberke, and his sheelde,

Ne no man wist whence he did come,

Ne no man knewe where he did gone,

When they came from the feelde.

It was not the “thousand-souled Shakspeare” who gave birth to the story of the pound of flesh; for Shylock is no other than Gernutus the Jew of Venice. We subjoin two stanzas from Percy’s Reliques:—

But we will have a merry jest

For to be talkéd long:

You shall make me a bond (quoth he)

That shall be large and strong.

* * * * *

716The bloody Jew now ready is,

With whetted blade in hand;

To spoil the blood of innocent

By forfeit of his bond.

Even the tragedy of Lear was set to the tune of “When flying Fame” before it was known to the stage. Nor will it be unjust to the memory of the good and gifted Goldsmith to say that the Old Harper sang:—

Thus every day I fast and pray,

And ever will doe till I dye;

And gett me to some secrett place,

For soe did hee, and soe will I,—

before the gentle Angelina thought of saying:—

And there forlorn, despairing hid,

I’ll lay me down and die:

’Twas so for me that Edwin did,

And so for him will I.

THE WANDERING JEW.

The success of Le Juif Errant of M. Sue, when first published, arose doubtless from two causes: the deep hold upon the popular heart which the legend of the lonely wanderer naturally acquired, and the reaction against papacy at that period. The efforts of the church, and particularly of the Society of Jesus, against which it was specially directed, to either suppress it or neutralize its effects, tended the more to extend its influence. The legend of a wanderer, pursued by some fate or power above, suffering, solitary and deathless, is as old as the human race. It takes a new form with every step in human progress, adapting itself to the character of the period and place where it reappears. It belongs to the early East, notably the Hindoo legendary literature, to Greece and Rome, and to Christendom, taking shape rather from the religious than the ethical elements of character. The Wandering Jew of Christendom varies with times and places, as his name also varies. He is Salathiel, Ahasuerus, Cartaphilus, Theudas, Zerib Bar Elia, Isbal, Michob-Ader, Bultadœus, Isaac Laquedon or something else, as circumstances 717determine. The German designation—the Everlasting Jew, der ewige Jude—is more specifically significant really than that of other languages, in most of which it is “wandering.”

The weird figure, wandering in fulfillment of his doom in the Carpathians, or halting at Nürnberg or Bamberg, or going in and out among the peasantry of Brittany or Wales, is an attractive subject: a vague, shadowy form; mortal and yet immortal; typical at once of man’s liability to death, and of his everlasting existence. He has the passions and anxieties and sorrows of manhood, and is endowed with a function which places him beyond the operations of Providence. From the earliest notice of this hero, which occurs in the Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans, he appears in numerous and manifold literary forms—drama, lyric, ballad, historical poem, legend, novel, study, essay, chronicle, biography, myth and paragraph, to the extent of perhaps a hundred volumes. The legends of most of these agree in representing the Jew as a wanderer since the day of the crucifixion, sometimes repentant and sometimes defiant, but always going. From this general voice Dr. Croly, in his Salathiel, upon a true artistic principle, departs, and makes his doomed one live only the usual period of man’s life. His Jew is repentant and anxious to die, and dies in due season. The Jew of M. Eubule-Evans, in the Curse of Immortality, also is repentant, but, pursued by implacable vengeance of the Almighty, he refuses, in his morbid pride, to purchase the repose of death at the price of self-abasement; but at last reaches contrition through the softening influence of human love, repents and dies.

With similar general characteristics the wanderer of M. Sue’s powerful melodramatic story seeks death in every clime and form: but lives on, wanders on, and toils to achieve human ends, until the close of the romance, when the hero sets out anew. Our readers are doubtless familiar with the story—the scattered heirs of a fortune of two million francs to be divided among them upon condition of their assembling at a given hour in a 718given room in Paris; and the machinations of the wily Jesuit Rodin, whose end was to secure the money for his own society.

The Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans, already referred to, report the following circumstantial details:—

In the year 1228, a certain archbishop of Armenia came on a pilgrimage to England to see the relics of the saints, and visit the sacred places in this kingdom, as he had done in others; he also produced letters of recommendation from his Holiness the Pope to the religious men and prelates of the churches, in which they were enjoined to receive and entertain him with due reverence and honor. On his arrival, he came to St. Albans, where he was received with all respect by the abbot and monks; and at this place, being fatigued with his journey, he remained some days to rest himself and his followers. In the course of conversation by means of their interpreters, he made many inquiries relating to the religion and religious observances of this country, and told many strange things concerning the countries of the East. In the course of conversation he was asked whether he had ever seen or heard anything of Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when our Lord suffered, was present and spoke to him, and who is still alive, in evidence to the Christian faith; in reply to which a knight in his retinue, who was his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, “My Lord well knows that man, and a little before he took his way to the western countries, the said Joseph ate at the table of my lord the archbishop in Armenia, and he has often seen and held converse with him.” He was then asked about what had passed between Christ and the said Joseph, to which he replied, “At the time of the suffering of Jesus Christ, he was seized by the Jews and led into the hall of judgment, before Pilate, the governor, that he might be judged by him on the accusation of the Jews; and Pilate finding no cause for adjudging him to death, said to them, ‘Take him and judge him according to your law;’ the shouts of the Jews, however, increasing, he, at their request, released unto them Barabbas, and 719delivered Jesus to them to be crucified. When, therefore, the Jews were dragging Jesus forth, and had reached the door, Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall, in Pilate’s service, as Jesus was going out of the door, impiously struck him on the back with his hand, and said in mockery, ‘Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker; why do you loiter?’ and Jesus looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to him, ‘I am going and you will wait till I return.’ And according as our Lord said, this Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time of our Lord’s suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of a hundred years, he always returns to the same age as he was when our Lord suffered. After Christ’s death, when the Catholic faith gained ground, this Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias (who also baptized the apostle Paul), and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other division of Armenia, and in divers Eastern countries, passing his time amongst the bishops and other prelates of the church; he is a man of holy conversation, and religious; a man of few words, and circumspect in his behavior, for he does not speak at all unless when questioned by the bishops and religious men, and then he tells of the events of old times, and of those which occurred at the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the witnesses of the resurrection, namely, those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the apostles, and of their separation and preaching. And all this he relates without smiling or levity of conversation, as one who is well practised in sorrow and the fear of God; always looking forward with fear to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the last judgment he should find him in anger, whom, when on his way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance. Numbers come to him from different parts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation; and to them, if they are men of authority, he explains all doubts on the matters on which he is questioned. He refuses all gifts that are offered to him, being content with slight food and clothing.”

720Of the myths of the Middle Ages, none is more striking than that of the Wandering Jew; indeed it is so well calculated to arrest the attention and to excite the imagination, that it is remarkable that we should find an interval of three centuries between its first introduction into Europe by Matthew Paris and Philip Mouskes, and its general acceptance in the sixteenth century. Of the romances of Eugéne Sue and Dr. Croly, founded upon the legend, the less said the better. The original legend is so noble in its severe simplicity that none but a master mind could develop it with any chance of success. Nor have the poetical attempts upon the story fared better. It was reserved for the pencil of Gustave Doré to treat it with the originality it merited, and in a series of wood-cuts to produce at once a poem, a romance, and a chef-d’œuvre of art.