Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 42

OF SUPPRESSORS AND DILAPIDATORS OF Ma.n.u.sCRIPTS.

Ma.n.u.scripts are suppressed or destroyed from motives which require to be noticed. Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation: they may blush at their artifices, and deserve the pillory, but their practices do not incur the capital crime of felony. Sera.s.si, the writer of the curious Life of Ta.s.so, was guilty of an extraordinary suppression in his zeal for the poet's memory. The story remains to be told, for it is but little known.

Galileo, in early life, was a lecturer at the university of Pisa: delighting in poetical studies, he was then more of a critic than a philosopher, and had Arios...o...b.. heart. This great man caught the literary mania which broke out about his time, when the Cruscans so absurdly began their "Controversie Ta.s.sesche," and raised up two poetical factions, which infected the Italians with a national fever.

Ta.s.so and Ariosto were perpetually weighed and outweighed against each other; Galileo wrote annotations on Ta.s.so, stanza after stanza, and without reserve, treating the majestic bard with a severity which must have thrown the Ta.s.soists into an agony. Our critic lent his ma.n.u.script to Jacopo Mazzoni, who, probably being a disguised Ta.s.soist, by some accountable means contrived that the ma.n.u.script should be absolutely lost!--to the deep regret of the author and all the Ariostoists. The philosopher descended to his grave--not without occasional groans--nor without exulting reminiscences of the blows he had in his youth inflicted on the great rival of Ariosto--and the rumour of such a work long floated on tradition! Two centuries had nearly elapsed, when Sera.s.si, employed on his elaborate Life of Ta.s.so, among his uninterrupted researches in the public libraries of Rome, discovered a miscellaneous volume, in which, on a cursory examination, he found deposited the lost ma.n.u.script of Galileo! It was a shock from which, perhaps, the zealous biographer of Ta.s.so never fairly recovered; the awful name of Galileo sanctioned the asperity of critical decision, and more particularly the severe remarks on the language, a subject on which the Italians are so morbidly delicate, and so trivially grave. Sera.s.si's conduct on this occasion was at once political, timorous, and cunning.

Gladly would he have annihilated the original, but this was impossible!

It was some consolation that the ma.n.u.script was totally unknown--for having got mixed with others, it had accidentally been pa.s.sed over, and not entered into the catalogue; his own diligent eye only had detected its existence. "_Nessuno fin ora sa, fuori di me, se vi sia, ne dove sia, e cosi non potra darsi alia luce_," &c. But in the true spirit of a collector, avaricious of all things connected with his pursuits, Sera.s.si cautiously, but completely, transcribed the precious ma.n.u.script, with an intention, according to his memorandum, to unravel all its sophistry.

However, although the Abbate never wanted leisure, he persevered in his silence; yet he often trembled lest some future explorer of ma.n.u.scripts might be found as sharpsighted as himself. He was so cautious as not even to venture to note down the library where the ma.n.u.script was to be found, and to this day no one appears to have fallen on the volume! On the death of Sera.s.si, his papers came to the hands of the Duke of Ceri, a lover of literature; the transcript of the yet undiscovered original was then revealed! and this secret history of the ma.n.u.script was drawn from a note on the t.i.tle-page written by Sera.s.si himself. To satisfy the urgent curiosity of the literati, these annotations on Ta.s.so by Galileo were published in 1793. Here is a work, which, from its earliest stage, much pains had been taken to suppress; but Sera.s.si's collecting pa.s.sion inducing him to preserve what he himself so much wished should never appear, finally occasioned its publication! It adds one evidence to the many which prove that such sinister practices have been frequently used by the historians of a party, poetic or politic.

Unquestionably this entire suppression of ma.n.u.scripts has been too frequently practised. It is suspected that our historical antiquary, Speed, owed many obligations to the learned Hugh Broughton, for he possessed a vast number of his MSS. which he burnt. Why did he burn? If persons place themselves in suspicions situations, they must not complain if they be suspected. We have had historians who, whenever they met with information which has not suited their historical system, or their inveterate prejudices, have employed interpolations, castrations, and forgeries, and in some cases have annihilated the entire doc.u.ment.

Leland's invaluable ma.n.u.scripts were left at his death in the confused state in which the mind of the writer had sunk, overcome by his incessant labours, when this royal antiquary was employed by Henry the Eighth to write our national antiquities. His scattered ma.n.u.scripts were long a common prey to many who never acknowledged their fountain head; among these suppressors and dilapidators pre-eminently stands the crafty Italian Polydore Vergil, who not only drew largely from this source, but, to cover the robbery, did not omit to depreciate the father of our antiquities--an act of a piece with the character of the man, who is said to have collected and burnt a greater number of historical MSS.

than would have loaded a wagon, to prevent the detection of the numerous fabrications in his history of England, which was composed to gratify Mary and the Catholic cause.

The Harleian ma.n.u.script, 7379, is a collection of state-letters. This MS. has four leaves entirely torn out, and is accompanied by this extraordinary memorandum, signed by the princ.i.p.al librarian.

"Upon examination of this book, Nov. 12, 1764, these four last leaves were torn out.

"C. MORTON.

"Mem. Nov. 12, sent down to Mrs. Macaulay."

As no memorandum of the name of any student to whom a ma.n.u.script is delivered for his researches was ever made, before or since, or in the nature of things will ever be, this memorandum must involve our female historian in the obloquy of this dilapidation.[288] Such dishonest practices of party feeling, indeed, are not peculiar to any party. In Roscoe's "Ill.u.s.trations" of his Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, we discover that Fabroni, whose character scarcely admits of suspicion, appears to have known of the existence of an unpublished letter of Sixtus IV., which involves that pontiff deeply in the a.s.sa.s.sination projected by the Pazzi; but he carefully suppressed its notice: yet, in his conscience, he could not avoid alluding to such doc.u.ments, which he concealed by his silence. Roscoe has apologised for Fabroni overlooking this decisive evidence of the guilt of the hypocritical pontiff in the ma.s.s of ma.n.u.scripts; a circ.u.mstance not likely to have occurred, however, to this laborious historical inquirer. All party feeling is the same active spirit with an opposite direction. We have a remarkable case, where a most interesting historical production has been silently annihilated by the consent of _both parties_. There once existed an important diary of a very extraordinary character, Sir George Saville, afterwards Marquis of Halifax. This master-spirit, for such I am inclined to consider the author of the little book of "Maxims and Reflections," with a philosophical indifference, appears to have held in equal contempt all the factions of his times, and consequently has often incurred their severe censures. Among other things, the Marquis of Halifax had noted down the conversation he had had with Charles the Second, and the great and busy characters of the age. Of this curious secret history there existed two copies, and the n.o.ble writer imagined that by this means he had carefully secured their existence; yet both copies were destroyed from opposite motives; the one at the instigation of Pope, who was alarmed at finding some of the catholic intrigues of the court developed; and the other at the suggestion of a n.o.ble friend, who was equally shocked at discovering that his party, the Revolutionists, had sometimes practised mean and dishonourable deceptions. It is in these legacies of honourable men, of whatever party they may be, that we expect to find truth and sincerity; but thus it happens that the last hope of posterity is frustrated by the artifices, or the malignity, of these party-pa.s.sions. Pulteney, afterwards the Earl of Bath, had also prepared memoirs of his times, which he proposed to confide to Dr.

Douglas, bishop of Salisbury, to be composed by the bishop; but his lords.h.i.+p's heir, the General, insisted on destroying these authentic doc.u.ments, of the value of which we have a notion by one of those conversations which the earl was in the habit of indulging with Hooke, whom he at that time appears to have intended for his historian. The Earl of Anglesea's MS. History of the Troubles of Ireland, and also a Diary of his own Times, have been suppressed; a busy observer of his contemporaries, his tale would materially have a.s.sisted a later historian.

The same hostility to ma.n.u.scripts, as may be easily imagined, has occurred, perhaps more frequently, on the continent. I shall furnish one considerable fact. A French canon, Claude Joly, a bold and learned writer, had finished an ample life of Erasmus, which included a history of the restoration of literature at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. Colomies tells us, that the author had read over the works of Erasmus seven times; we have positive evidence that the MS. was finished for the press: the Cardinal do Noailles would examine the work himself; this important history was not only suppressed, but the hope entertained, of finding it among the cardinal's papers, was never realised.

These are instances of the annihilation of history; but there is a partial suppression, or castration of pa.s.sages, equally fatal to the cause of truth; a practice too prevalent among the first editors of memoirs. By such deprivations of the text we have lost important truths, while, in some cases, by interpolations, we have been loaded with the fictions of a party. Original memoirs, when published, should now be deposited at that great inst.i.tution, consecrated to our national history--the British Museum, to be verified at all times. In Lord Herbert's history of Henry the Eighth, I find, by a ma.n.u.script note, that several things were not permitted to be printed, and that the original MS. was supposed to be in Mr. Sheldon's custody, in 1687.

Camden told Sir Robert Filmore that he was not suffered to print all his annals of Elizabeth; but he providently sent these expurgated pa.s.sages to De Thou, who printed them faithfully; and it is remarkable that De Thou himself used the same precaution in the continuation of his own history. We like remote truths, but truths too near us never fail to alarm ourselves, our connexions, and our party. Milton, in composing his History of England, introduced, in the third book, a very remarkable digression, on the characters of the Long Parliament; a most animated description of a cla.s.s of political adventurers with whom modern history has presented many parallels. From tenderness to a party then imagined to be subdued, it was struck out by command, nor do I find it rest.i.tuted in Kennett's Collection of English Histories. This admirable and exquisite delineation has been preserved in a pamphlet printed in 1681, which has fortunately exhibited one of the warmest pictures in design and colouring by a master's hand. One of our most important volumes of secret history, "Whitelocke's Memorials," was published by Arthur, Earl of Anglesea, in 1682, who took considerable liberties with the ma.n.u.script; another edition appeared in 1732, which restored the many important pa.s.sages through which the earl appears to have struck his castrating pen. The rest.i.tution of the castrated pa.s.sages has not much increased the magnitude of this folio volume; for the omissions usually consisted of a characteristic stroke, or short critical opinion, which did not harmonise with the private feelings of the Earl of Anglesea. In consequence of the volume not being much enlarged to the eye, and being unaccompanied by a single line of preface to inform us of the value of this more complete edition, the booksellers imagine that there can be no material difference between the two editions, and wonder at the bibliopolical mystery that they can afford to sell the edition of 1682 at ten s.h.i.+llings, and have five guineas for the edition of 1732! Hume who, I have been told, wrote his history usually on a sofa, with the epicurean indolence of his fine genius, always refers to the old truncated and faithless edition of Whitelocke--so little in his day did the critical history of books enter into the studies of authors, or such was the carelessness of our historian! There is more philosophy in _editions_ than some philosophers are aware of. Perhaps most "Memoirs"

have been unfaithfully published, "curtailed of their fair proportions;"

and not a few might be noticed which subsequent editors have restored to their original state, by uniting their dislocated limbs. Unquestionably Pa.s.sion has sometimes annihilated ma.n.u.scripts, and tamely revenged itself on the papers of hated writers! Louis the Fourteenth, with his own hands, after the death of Fenelon, burnt all the ma.n.u.scripts which the Duke of Burgundy had preserved of his preceptor.

As an example of the suppressors and dilapidators of ma.n.u.scripts, I shall give an extraordinary fact concerning Louis the Fourteenth, more in his favour. His character appears, like some other historical personages, equally disguised by adulation and calumny. That monarch was not the Nero which his revocation of the edict of Nantes made him seem to the French protestants. He was far from approving of the violent measures of his catholic clergy. This opinion of that sovereign was, however, carefully suppressed, when his "Instructions to the Dauphin"

were first published. It is now ascertained that Louis the Fourteenth was for many years equally zealous and industrious; and, among other useful attempts, composed an elaborate "Discours" for the dauphin for his future conduct. The king gave his ma.n.u.script to Pelisson to revise; but after the revision our royal writer frequently inserted additional paragraphs. The work first appeared in an anonymous "Recueil d'Opuscules Litteraires, Amsterdam, 1767," which Barbier, in his "Anonymes," tells us was "redige par Pelisson; le tout publie par l'Abbe Olivet." When at length the printed work was collated with the ma.n.u.script original, several suppressions of the royal sentiments appeared; and the editors, too catholic, had, with more particular caution, thrown aside what clearly showed Louis the Fourteenth was far from approving of the violences used against the protestants. The following pa.s.sage was entirely omitted: "It seems to me, my son, that those who employ extreme and violent remedies do not know the nature of the evil, occasioned in part by heated minds, which, left to themselves, would insensibly be extinguished, rather than rekindle them afresh by the force of contradiction; above all, when the corruption is not confined to a small number, but diffused through all parts of the state; besides, the Reformers said many true things! The best method to have reduced little by little the Huguenots of my kingdom, was not to have pursued them by any direct severity pointed at them."

Lady Mary Wortley Montague is a remarkable instance of an author nearly lost to the nation; she is only known to posterity by a chance publication; for such were her famous Turkish letters, the ma.n.u.script of which her family once purchased with an intention to suppress, but they were frustrated by a transcript. The more recent letters were reluctantly extracted out of the family trunks, and surrendered in exchange for certain family doc.u.ments, which had fallen into the hands of a bookseller. Had it depended on her relatives, the name of Lady Mary had only reached us in the satires of Pope. The greater part of her epistolary correspondence was destroyed by her mother; and what that good and Gothic lady spared, was suppressed by the hereditary austerity of rank, of which her family was too susceptible. The entire correspondence of this admirable writer and studious woman (for once, in perusing some unpublished letters of Lady Mary's, I discovered that "she had been in the habit of reading seven hours a day for many years") would undoubtedly have exhibited a fine statue, instead of the torso we now possess; and we might have lived with her ladys.h.i.+p, as we do with Madame de Sevigne. This I have mentioned elsewhere; but I have since discovered that a considerable correspondence of Lady Mary's, for more than twenty years, with the widow of Colonel Forrester, who had retired to Rome, has been stifled in the birth. These letters, with other MSS.

of Lady Mary's, were given by Mrs. Forrester to Philip Thicknesse, with a discretionary power to publish. They were held as a great acquisition by Thicknesse, and his bookseller; but when they had printed off the first thousand sheets, there were parts which they considered might give pain to some of the family. Thicknesse says, "Lady Mary had in many places been uncommonly severe upon her husband, for all her letters were loaded with a sc.r.a.p or two of poetry at him."[289] A negotiation took place with an agent of Lord Bute's; after some time Miss Forrester put in her claims for the MSS.; and the whole terminated, as Thicknesse tells us, in her obtaining a pension, and Lord Bute all the MSS.

The late Duke of Bridgewater, I am informed, burnt many of the numerous family papers, and bricked up a quant.i.ty, which, when opened after his death, were found to have perished. It is said he declared that he did not choose that his ancestors should be traced back to a person of a mean trade, which it seems might possibly have been the case. The loss now cannot be appreciated; but unquestionably stores of history, and perhaps of literature, were sacrificed. Milton's ma.n.u.script of Comus was published from the Bridgewater collection, for it had escaped the bricking up!

Ma.n.u.scripts of great interest are frequently suppressed from the shameful indifference of the possessors.

Mr. Mathias, in his Essay on Gray, tells us, that "in addition to the valuable ma.n.u.scripts of Mr. Gray, there is reason to think that there were some other papers, _folia Sibyllae_, in the possession of Mr. Mason; but though a very diligent and anxious inquiry has been made after them, they cannot be discovered since his death. There was, however, one fragment, by Mr. Mason's own description of it, of very great value, namely, "The Plan of an intended Speech in Latin on his appointment as Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge." Mr. Mason says, "Immediately on his appointment, Mr. Gray sketched out an admirable plan for his inauguration speech; in which, after enumerating the preparatory and auxiliary studies requisite, such as ancient history, geography, chronology, &c., he descended to the authentic sources of the science, such as public treaties, state records, private correspondence of amba.s.sadors, &c. He also wrote the exordium of this thesis, not, indeed, so correct as to be given by way of fragment, but so spirited in point of sentiment, as leaves it much to be regretted that he did not proceed to its conclusion." This fragment cannot now be found; and after so very interesting a description of its value and of its importance, it is difficult to conceive how Mr. Mason could prevail upon himself to withhold it. If there be a subject on which more, perhaps, than on any other, it would have been peculiarly desirable to know and to follow the train of the ideas of Gray, it is that of modern history, in which no man was more intimately, more accurately, or more extensively conversant than our poet. A sketch or plan from his hand, on the subjects of history, and on those which belonged to it, might have taught succeeding ages how to conduct these important researches with national advantage; and, like some wand of divination, it might have

Pointed to beds where sovereign gold doth grow.[290]

DRYDEN.

I suspect that I could point out the place in which these precious "folia Sibyllae" of Gray's lie interred; they would no doubt be found among other Sibylline leaves of Mason, in two large boxes, which he left to the care of his executors. These gentlemen, as I am informed, are so extremely careful of them, as to have intrepidly resisted the importunity of some lovers of literature, whose curiosity has been aroused by the secreted treasures. It is a misfortune which has frequently attended this sort of bequests of literary men, that they have left their ma.n.u.scripts, like their household furniture; and in several cases we find that many legatees conceive that all ma.n.u.scripts are either to be burnt, like obsolete receipts, or to be nailed down in a box, that they may not stir a lawsuit!

In a ma.n.u.script note of the times, I find that Sir Richard Baker, the author of a chronicle, formerly the most popular one, died in the Fleet; and that his son-in-law, who had all his papers, burnt them for waste-paper; and he said that "he thought Sir Richard's life was among them!" An autobiography of those days which we should now highly prize.

Among these mutilators of ma.n.u.scripts we cannot too strongly remonstrate with those who have the care of the works of others, and convert them into a vehicle for their own particular purposes, even when they run directly counter to the knowledge and opinions of the original writer. Hard was the fate of honest Anthony Wood, when Dr. Fell undertook to have his history of Oxford translated into Latin; the translator, a sullen, dogged fellow, when he observed that Wood was enraged at seeing the perpetual alterations of his copy made to please Dr. Fell, delighted to alter it the more; while the greater executioner supervising the printed sheets, by "correcting, altering, or das.h.i.+ng out what he pleased," compelled the writer publicly to disavow his own work!

Such I have heard was the case of Bryan Edwards, who composed the first accounts of Mungo Park. Bryan Edwards, whose personal interests were opposed to the abolishment of the slave-trade, would not suffer any pa.s.sage to stand in which the African traveller had expressed his conviction of its inhumanity. Park, among confidential friends, frequently complained that his work did not only not contain his opinions, but was even interpolated with many which he utterly disclaimed!

Suppressed books become as rare as ma.n.u.scripts. In some researches relating to the history of the Mar-prelate faction, that ardent conspiracy against the established hierarchy, and of which the very name is but imperfectly to be traced in our history, I discovered that the books and ma.n.u.scripts of the Mar-prelates have been too cautiously suppressed, or too completely destroyed; while those on the other side have been as carefully preserved. In our national collection, the British Museum, we find a great deal against Mar-prelate, but not Mar-prelate himself.

I have written the history of this conspiracy in the third, volume of "Quarrels of Authors."

PARODIES.

A Lady of _bas bleu_ celebrity (the term is getting odious, particularly to our _scavantes_) had two friends, whom she equally admired--an elegant poet and his parodist. She had contrived to prevent their meeting as long as her stratagems lasted, till at length she apologised to the serious bard for inviting him when his mock _umbra_ was to be present. Astonished, she perceived that both men of genius felt a mutual esteem for each other's opposite talent; the ridiculed had perceived no malignity in the playfulness of the parody, and even seemed to consider it as a compliment, aware that parodists do not waste their talent on obscure productions; while the ridiculer himself was very sensible that he was the inferior poet. The lady-critic had imagined that PARODY must necessarily be malicious; and in some cases it is said those on whom the parody has been performed have been of the same opinion.

Parody strongly resembles mimicry, a principle in human nature not so artificial as it appears: Man may be well defined a mimetic animal. The African boy, who amused the whole kafle he journeyed with, by mimicking the gestures and the voice of the auctioneer who had sold him at the slave-market a few days before, could have had no sense of scorn, of superiority, or of malignity; the boy experienced merely the pleasure of repeating att.i.tudes and intonations which had so forcibly excited his interest. The numerous parodies of Hamlet's soliloquy were never made in derision of that solemn monologue, any more than the travesties of Virgil by Scarron and Cotton; their authors were never so gaily mad as that. We have parodies on the Psalms by Luther; Dodsley parodied the book of Chronicles, and the scripture style was parodied by Franklin in his beautiful story of Abraham; a story he found in Jeremy Taylor, and which Taylor borrowed from the East, for it is preserved in the Persian Sadi. Not one of these writers, however, proposed to ridicule their originals; some ingenuity in the application was all they intended. The lady-critic alluded to had suffered by a panic, in imagining that a parody was necessarily a corrosive satire. Had she indeed proceeded one step farther, and a.s.serted that parodies might be cla.s.sed among the most malicious inventions in literature, when they are such as Colman and Lloyd made on Gray, in their odes to "Oblivion and Obscurity," her reading possibly might have supplied the materials of the present research.

Parodies were frequently practised by the ancients, and with them, like ourselves, consisted of a work grafted on another work, but which turned on a different subject by a slight change of the expressions. It might be a sport of fancy, the innocent child of mirth; or a satirical arrow drawn from the quiver of caustic criticism; or it was that malignant art which only studies to make the original of the parody, however beautiful, contemptible and ridiculous. Human nature thus enters into the composition of parodies, and their variable character originates in the purpose of their application.

There is in "the million" a natural taste for farce after tragedy, and they gladly relieve themselves by mitigating the solemn seriousness of the tragic drama; for they find, that it is but "a step from the sublime to the ridiculous." The taste for parody will, I fear, always prevail: for whatever tends to ridicule a work of genius, is usually very agreeable to a great number of contemporaries. In the history of parodies, some of the learned have noticed a supposit.i.tious circ.u.mstance, which, however, may have happened, for it is a very natural one. When the rhapsodists, who strolled from town to town to chant different fragments of the poems of Homer, had recited, they were immediately followed by another set of strollers--buffoons, who made the same audience merry by the burlesque turn which they gave to the solemn strains which had just so deeply engaged their attention. It is supposed that we have one of these travestiers of the Iliad in one Sotades, who succeeded by only changing the measure of the verses without altering the words, which entirely disguised the Homeric character; fragments of which, scattered in Dionysius Halicarna.s.sensis, I leave to the curiosity of the learned Grecian.[291] Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice, a learned critic, the elder Heinsius, a.s.serts, was not written by the poet, but is a parody on the poem. It is evidently as good-humoured an one as any in the "Rejected Addresses." And it was because Homer was the most popular poet that he was most susceptible of the playful honours of the parodist; unless the prototype is familiar to us a parody is nothing! Of these parodists of Homer we may regret the loss of one, Timon of Philius, whose parodies were termed Silli, from Silenus being their chief personage; he levelled them at the sophistical philosophers of his age; his invocation is grafted on the opening of the Iliad, to recount the evil-doings of those babblers, whom he compares to the bags in which aeolus deposited all his winds; balloons inflated with empty ideas! We should like to have appropriated some of these _silli_, or parodies of Timon the Sillograph, which, however, seem to have been at times calumnious.[292] Shenstone's "School Mistress," and some few other ludicrous poems, derive much of their merit from parody.

This taste for parodies was very prevalent with the Grecians, and is a species of humour which perhaps has been too rarely practised by the moderns: Cervantes has some pa.s.sages of this nature in his parodies of the old chivalric romances; Fielding, in some parts of his "Tom Jones"

and "Joseph Andrews," in his burlesque poetical descriptions; and Swift, in his "Battle of Books," and "Tale of a Tub;" but few writers have equalled the delicacy and felicity of Pope's parodies in the "Rape of the Lock." Such parodies give refinement to burlesque.

The ancients made a liberal use of it in their satirical comedy, and sometimes carried it on through an entire work, as in the Menippean satire, Seneca's mock _Eloge_ of Claudius, and Lucian in his Dialogues.

There are parodies even in Plato; and an anecdotical one, recorded of this philosopher, shows them in their most simple state. Dissatisfied with his own poetical essays, he threw them into the flames; that is, the sage resolved to sacrifice his verses to the G.o.d of fire; and in repeating that line in Homer where Thetis addresses Vulcan to implore his aid, the application became a parody, although it required no other change than the insertion of the philosopher's name instead of the G.o.ddess's;--[293]

Vulcan, arise! 'tis _Plato_ claims thy aid!

Boileau affords a happy instance of this simple parody. Corneille, in his Cid, makes one of his personages remark,

Pour grands que soient les rois ils sont ce que nous sommes, Ils peuvent se tromper comme les autres hommes.

A slight alteration became a fine parody in Boileau's Chapelain Decoiffe,

Pour grands que soient les rois ils sont ce que nous sommes, Us fee trompent _en vers_ comme les autres hommes.

We find in Athenaeus the name of the inventor of a species of parody which more immediately engages our notice--DRAMATIC PARODIES. It appears this inventor was a satirist, so that the lady-critic, whose opinion we had the honour of noticing, would be warranted by appealing to its origin to determine the nature of the thing. A dramatic parody, which produced the greatest effect, was "the Gigantomachia," as appears by the only circ.u.mstance known of it. Never laughed the Athenians so heartily as at its representation, for the fatal news of the deplorable state to which the affairs of the republic were reduced in Sicily arrived at its first representation--and the Athenians continued laughing to the end!

as the modern Athenians, the volatile Parisians, might in their national concern of an OPERA COMIQUE. It was the business of the dramatic parody to turn the solemn tragedy, which the audience had just seen exhibited, into a farcical comedy; the same actors who had appeared in magnificent dresses, now returned on the stage in grotesque habiliments, with odd postures and gestures, while the story, though the same, was incongruous and ludicrous. The Cyclops of Euripides is probably the only remaining specimen; for this may be considered as a parody on the ninth book of the Odyssey--the adventures of Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, where Silenus and a chorus of satyrs are farcically introduced, to contrast with the grave narrative of Homer, of the s.h.i.+fts and escape of the cunning man "from the one-eyed ogre." The jokes are too coa.r.s.e for the French taste of Brumoy, who, in his translation, goes on with a critical growl and foolish apology for Euripides having written a farce; Brumoy, like Pistol, is forced to eat his onion, but with a worse grace, swallowing and execrating to the end.

In dramatic composition, Aristophanes is perpetually hooking in parodies of Euripides, whom of all poets he hated, as well as of aeschylus, Sophocles, and other tragic bards. Since, at length, that Grecian wit has found a translator saturated with his genius, and an interpreter as philosophical, the subject of Grecian parody will probably be reflected in a clearer light from his researches.

Dramatic parodies in modern literature were introduced by our vivacious neighbours, and may be said to const.i.tute a cla.s.s of literary satires peculiar to the French nation. What had occurred in Greece a similar gaiety of national genius unconsciously reproduced. The dramatic parodies in our own literature, as in _The Rehearsal_, _Tom Thumb_,[294]

and _The Critic_, however exquisite, are confined to particular pa.s.sages, and are not grafted on a whole original; we have neither naturalised the dramatic parody into a species, nor dedicated to it the honours of a separate theatre.

This peculiar dramatic satire, a burlesque of an entire tragedy, the volatile genius of the Parisians accomplished. Whenever a new tragedy, which still continues the favourite species of drama with the French, attracted the notice of the town, shortly after uprose its parody at the Italian theatre, so that both pieces may have been performed in immediate succession in the same evening. A French tragedy is most susceptible of this sort of ridicule, by applying its declamatory style, its exaggerated sentiments, and its romantic out-of-the-way nature to the commonplace incidents and persons of domestic life; out of the stuff of which they made their emperors, their heroes, and their princesses, they cut out a pompous country justice, a hectoring tailor, or an impudent mantua-maker; but it was not merely this travesty of great personages, nor the lofty effusions of one in a lowly station, which terminated the object of parody. It was designed for a higher object, that of more obviously exposing the original for any absurdity in its scenes, or in its catastrophe, and dissecting its faulty characters; in a word, weighing in the critical scales the nonsense of the poet. Parody sometimes became a refined instructor for the public, whose discernment is often blinded by party or prejudice. But it was, too, a severe touchstone for genius: Racine, some say, smiled, others say he did not, when he witnessed Harlequin, in the language of t.i.tus to Berenice, declaiming on some ludicrous affair to Columbine; La Motte was very sore, and Voltaire, and others, shrunk away with a cry--from a parody!