Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 23

Their sensibility, on the contrary, is more irritable than that of others. To observe the ridiculous att.i.tudes in which great men appear, when they employ the style of the fish-market, may be one great means of restraining that ferocious pride often breaking out in the republic of letters. Johnson at least appears to have entertained the same opinion; for he thought proper to republish the low invective of _Dryden_ against _Settle_; and since I have published my "Quarrels of Authors," it becomes me to say no more.

The celebrated controversy of _Salmasius_, continued by Morus with _Milton_--the first the pleader of King Charles, the latter the advocate of the people--was of that magnitude, that all Europe took a part in the paper-war of these two great men. The answer of Milton, who perfectly ma.s.sacred Salmasius, is now read but by the few. Whatever is addressed to the times, however great may be its merits, is doomed to perish with the times; yet on these pages the philosopher will not contemplate in vain.

It will form no uninteresting article to gather a few of the rhetorical _weeds_, for _flowers_ we cannot well call them, with which they mutually presented each other. Their rancour was at least equal to their erudition,--the two most learned antagonists of a learned age!

Salmasius was a man of vast erudition, but no taste. His writings are learned, but sometimes ridiculous. He called his work _Defensio Regia_, Defence of Kings. The opening of this work provokes a laugh:--"Englishmen! who toss the heads of kings as so many tennis-b.a.l.l.s; who play with crowns as if they were bowls; who look upon sceptres as so many crooks."

That the deformity of the body is an idea we attach to the deformity of the mind, the vulgar must acknowledge; but surely it is unpardonable in the enlightened philosopher thus to compare the crookedness of corporeal matter with the rect.i.tude of the intellect; yet Milbourne and Dennis, the last a formidable critic, have frequently considered, that comparing Dryden and Pope to whatever the eye turned from with displeasure, was very good argument to lower their literary abilities. Salmasius seems also to have entertained this idea, though his spies in England gave him wrong information; or, possibly, he only drew the figure of his own distempered imagination.

Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man; an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but skin and bone; a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his boys: and, rising into a poetic frenzy, applies to him the words of Virgil, "_Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_." Our great poet thought this senseless declamation merited a serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful; that his size rather approaches mediocrity than, the diminutive; that he still felt the same courage and the same strength which he possessed when young, when, with his sword, he felt no difficulty to combat with men more robust than himself; that his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and wrinkled, was sufficiently creditable to him: for though he had pa.s.sed his fortieth year, he was in all other respects ten years younger. And very pathetically he adds, "that even his eyes, blind as they are, are unblemished in their appearance; in this instance alone, and much against my inclination, I am a deceiver!"

Morus, in his Epistle dedicatory of his _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, compares Milton to a hangman; his disordered vision to the blindness of his soul, and so vomits forth his venom.

When Salmasius found that his strictures on the person of Milton were false, and that, on the contrary, it was uncommonly beautiful, he then turned his battery against those graces with which Nature had so liberally adorned his adversary: and it is now that he seems to have laid no restrictions on his pen; but, raging with the irritation of Milton's success, he throws out the blackest calumnies, and the most infamous aspersions.

It must be observed, when Milton first proposed to answer Salmasius, he had lost the use of one of his eyes; and his physicians declared that, if he applied himself to the controversy, the other would likewise close for ever! His patriotism was not to be baffled, but with life itself.

Unhappily, the prediction of his physicians took place! Thus a learned man in the occupations of study falls blind--a circ.u.mstance even now not read without sympathy. Salmasius considers it as one from which he may draw caustic ridicule and satiric severity.

Salmasius glories that Milton lost his health and his eyes in answering his apology for King Charles! He does not now reproach him with natural deformities; but he malignantly sympathises with him, that he now no more is in possession of that beauty which rendered him so amiable during his residence in _Italy_. He speaks more plainly in a following page; and, in a word, would blacken the austere virtue of Milton with a crime infamous to name.

Impartiality of criticism obliges us to confess that Milton was not dest.i.tute of rancour. When he was told that his adversary boasted he had occasioned the loss of his eyes, he answered, with ferocity--"_And I shall cost him his life!_" A prediction which was soon after verified; for Christina, Queen of Sweden, withdrew her patronage from Salmasius, and sided with Milton. The universal neglect the proud scholar felt hastened his death in the course of a twelve-month.

The greatness of Milton's mind was degraded! He actually condescended to enter into a correspondence in Holland, to obtain little scandalous anecdotes of his miserable adversary, Morus; and deigned to adulate the unworthy Christina of Sweden, because she had expressed herself favourably on his "Defence." Of late years, we have had too many instances of this worst of pa.s.sions, the antipathies of politics!

ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.

We are indebted to the Italians for the idea of newspapers. The t.i.tle of their _gazettas_ was, perhaps, derived from _gazzera_, a magpie or chatterer; or, more probably, from a farthing coin, peculiar to the city of Venice, called _gazetta_, which was the common price of the newspapers. Another etymologist is for deriving it from the Latin _gaza_, which would colloquially lengthen into _gazetta_, and signify a little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it from the Latin _gaza_, and likewise their _gazatero_, and our _gazetteer_, for a writer of the _gazette_ and, what is peculiar to themselves, _gazetista_, for a lover of the gazette.

Newspapers, then, took their birth in that princ.i.p.al land of modern politicians, Italy, and under the government of that aristocratical republic, Venice. The first paper was a Venetian one, and only monthly; but it was merely the newspaper of the government. Other governments afterwards adopted the Venetian plan of a newspaper, with the Venetian name:--from a solitary government gazette, an inundation of newspapers has burst upon us.

Mr. George Chalmers, in his Life of Ruddiman, gives a curious particular of these Venetian gazettes:--"A jealous government did not allow a _printed_ newspaper; and the Venetian _gazetta_ continued long after the invention of printing, to the close of the sixteenth century, and even to our own days, to be distributed in _ma.n.u.script_." In the Magliabechian library at Florence are thirty volumes of Venetian gazettas, all in ma.n.u.script.

Those who first wrote newspapers were called by the Italians _menanti_; because, says Vossius, they intended commonly by these loose papers to spread about defamatory reflections, and were therefore prohibited in Italy by Gregory XIII. by a particular bull, under the name of _menantes_, from the Latin _minantes_, threatening. Menage, however, derives it from the Italian _menare_, which signifies to lead at large, or spread afar.

We are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the prudence of Burleigh for the first newspaper. The epoch of the Spanish Armada is also the epoch of a genuine newspaper. In the British Museum are several newspapers which were printed while the Spanish fleet was in the English Channel during the year 1588. It was a wise policy to prevent, during a moment of general anxiety, the danger of false reports, by publis.h.i.+ng real information. The earliest newspaper is ent.i.tled "The English Mercurie," which by _authority_ was "imprinted at London by her highness's printer, 1588." These were, however, but extraordinary gazettes, not regularly published. In this obscure origin they were skilfully directed by the policy of that great statesman Burleigh, who, to inflame the national feeling, gives an extract of a letter from Madrid which speaks of putting the queen to death, and the instruments of torture on board the Spanish fleet.

George Chalmers first exultingly took down these patriarchal newspapers, covered with the dust of two centuries.

The first newspaper in the collection of the British Museum is marked No. 50, and is in Roman, not in black letter. It contains the usual articles of news, like the London Gazette of the present day. In that curious paper, there are news dated from Whitehall, on the 23rd July, 1588. Under the date of July 26, there is the following notice:--"Yesterday the Scots amba.s.sador, being introduced to Sir Francis Walsingham, had a private audience of her majesty, to whom he delivered a letter from the king his master; containing the most cordial a.s.surances of his resolution to adhere to her majesty's interests, and to those of the Protestant religion. And it may not here be improper to take notice of a wise and spiritual saying of this young prince (he was twenty-two) to the queen's minister at his court, viz.--That all the favour he did expect from the Spaniards was the courtesy of Polypheme to Ulysses, _to be the last devoured_." The gazetteer of the present day would hardly give a more decorous account of the introduction of a foreign minister. The aptness of King James's cla.s.sical saying carried it from the newspaper into history. I must add, that in respect to his _wit_ no man has been more injured than this monarch. More pointed sentences are recorded of James I. than perhaps of any prince; and yet, such is the delusion of that medium by which the popular eye sees things in this world, that he is usually considered as a mere royal pedant. I have entered more largely on this subject, in an "Inquiry of the Literary and Political Character of James I."[51]

Periodical papers seem first to have been more generally used by the English, during the civil wars of the usurper Cromwell, to disseminate amongst the people the sentiments of loyalty or rebellion, according as their authors were disposed. _Peter Heylin_, in the preface to his _Cosmography_, mentions, that "the affairs of each town, of war, were better presented to the reader in the _Weekly News-books_." Hence we find some papers, ent.i.tled "News from Hull," "Truths from York,"

"Warranted Tidings from Ireland," &c. We find also, "The Scots' Dove"

opposed to "The Parliament Kite," or "The Secret Owl."--Keener animosities produced keener t.i.tles: "Herac.l.i.tus ridens" found an antagonist in "Democritus ridens," and "The Weekly Discoverer" was shortly met by "The Discoverer stript naked." "Mercuriua Britannicus"

was grappled by "Mercurius Mastix, faithfully las.h.i.+ng all Scouts, Mercuries, Posts, Spies, and others." Under all these names papers had appeared, but a "Mercury" was the prevailing t.i.tle of these "News-books," and the principles of the writer were generally shown by the additional epithet. We find an alarming number of these Mercuries, which, were the story not too long to tell, might excite laughter; they present us with a very curious picture of those singular times.

Devoted to political purposes, they soon became a public nuisance by serving as receptacles of party malice, and echoing to the farthest ends of the kingdom the insolent voice of all factions. They set the minds of men more at variance, inflamed their tempers to a greater fierceness, and gave a keener edge to the sharpness of civil discord.

Such works will always find adventurers adapted to their scurrilous purposes, who neither want at times either talents, or boldness, or wit, or argument. A vast crowd issued from the press, and are now to be found in private collections. They form a race of authors unknown to most readers of these times: the names of some of their chiefs, however, have reached us, and in the minor chronicle of domestic literature I rank three notable heroes; Marchmont Needham, Sir John Birkenhead, and Sir Roger L'Estrange.

_Marchmont Needham_, the great patriarch of newspaper writers, was a man of versatile talents and more versatile politics; a bold adventurer, and most successful, because the most profligate of his tribe. From college he came to London; was an usher in Merchant Tailors' school; then an under clerk in Gray's Inn; at length studied physic, and practised chemistry; and finally, he was a captain, and in the words of our great literary antiquary, "siding with the rout and sc.u.m of the people, he made them weekly sport by railing at all that was n.o.ble, in his Intelligence, called Mercurius Britannicus, wherein his endeavours were to sacrifice the fame of some lord, or any person of quality, and of the king himself, to the beast with many heads." He soon became popular, and was known under the name of Captain Needham, of Gray's Inn; and whatever he now wrote was deemed oracular. But whether from a slight imprisonment for aspersing Charles I. or some pique with his own party, he requested an audience on his knees with the king, reconciled himself to his majesty, and showed himself a violent royalist in his "Mercurius Pragmaticus," and galled the Presbyterians with his wit and quips. Some time after, when the popular party prevailed, he was still further enlightened, and was got over by President Bradshaw, as easily as by Charles I. Our Mercurial writer became once more a virulent Presbyterian, and lashed the royalists outrageously in his "Mercurius Politicus;" at length on the return of Charles II. being now conscious, says our cynical friend Anthony, that he might be in danger of the halter, once more he is said to have fled into Holland, waiting for an act of oblivion. For money given to a hungry courtier, Needham obtained his pardon under the great seal. He latterly practised as a physician among his party, but lived detested by the royalists; and now only committed harmless treasons with the College of Physicians, on whom he poured all that gall and vinegar which the government had suppressed from flowing through its natural channel.

The royalists were not without their Needham in the prompt activity of _Sir John Birkenhead_. In buffoonery, keenness, and boldness, having been frequently imprisoned, he was not inferior, nor was he at times less an adventurer. His "Mercurius Aulicus" was devoted to the court, then at Oxford. But he was the fertile parent of numerous political pamphlets, which appear to abound in banter, wit, and satire. Prompt to seize on every temporary circ.u.mstance, he had equal facility in execution. His "Paul's Church-yard" is a bantering pamphlet, containing fict.i.tious t.i.tles of books and acts of parliament, reflecting on the mad reformers of those times. One of his poems is ent.i.tled "_The Jolt_,"

being written on the Protector having fallen off his own coach-box: Cromwell had received a present from the German Count Oldenburgh, of six German horses, and attempted to drive them himself in Hyde Park, when this great political Phaeton met the accident, of which Sir John Birkenhead was not slow to comprehend the benefit, and hints how unfortunately for the country it turned out! Sir John was during the dominion of Cromwell an author by profession. After various imprisonments for his majesty's cause, says the venerable historian of English literature already quoted, "he lived by his wits, in helping young gentlemen out at dead lifts in making poems, songs, and epistles on and to their mistresses; as also in translating, and other pet.i.te employments." He lived however after the Restoration to become one of the masters of requests, with a salary of 3000_l._ a year. But he showed the baseness of his spirit, says Anthony, by slighting those who had been his benefactors in his necessities.

Sir _Roger L'Estrange_ among his rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coa.r.s.e, yet they contain much idiomatic expression.

His aesop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him, after the Revolution, by this anagram:--

_Roger L'Estrange_, _Lye strange Roger_!

Such were the three patriarchs of newspapers. De Saint Foix gives the origin of newspapers to France. Renaudot, a physician at Paris, to amuse his patients was a great collector of news; and he found by these means that he was more sought after than his learned brethren. But as the seasons were not always sickly, and he had many hours not occupied by his patients, he reflected, after several years of a.s.siduity given up to this singular employment, that he might turn it to a better account, by giving every week to his patients, who in this case were the public at large, some fugitive sheets which should contain the news of various countries. He obtained a privilege for this purpose in 1632.

At the Restoration the proceedings of parliament were interdicted to be published, unless by authority; and the first daily paper after the Revolution took the popular t.i.tle of "The Orange Intelligencer."

In the reign of Queen _Anne_, there was but one daily paper; the others were weekly. Some attempted to introduce literary subjects, and others topics of a more general speculation. _Sir Richard Steele_ formed the plan of his _Tatler_. He designed it to embrace the three provinces, of manners and morals, of literature, and of politics. The public were to be conducted insensibly into so different a track from that to which they had been hitherto accustomed. Hence politics were admitted into his paper. But it remained for the chaster genius of _Addison_ to banish this painful topic from his elegant pages. The writer in polite letters felt himself degraded by sinking into the diurnal narrator of political events, which so frequently originate in rumours and party fictions.

From this time, newspapers and periodical literature became distinct works--at present, there seems to be an attempt to revive this union; it is a retrograde step for the independent dignity of literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: Since the appearance of the _eleventh_ edition of this work, the detection of a singular literary deception has occurred. The evidence respecting _The English Mercurie_ rests on the alleged discovery of the literary antiquary, George Chalmers. I witnessed, fifty years ago, that laborious researcher busied among the long dusty shelves of our periodical papers, which then reposed in the ante-chamber to the former reading-room of the British Museum. To the industry which I had witnessed, I confided, and such positive and precise evidence could not fail to be accepted by all. In the British Museum, indeed, George Chalmers found the printed _English Mercurie_; but there also, it now appears, he might have seen _the original_, with all its corrections, before it was sent to the press, written on paper of modern fabric. The detection of this literary imposture has been ingeniously and unquestionably demonstrated by Mr. Thomas Watts, in a letter to Mr.

Panizzi, the keeper of the printed books in the British Museum. The fact is, the whole is a modern forgery, for which Birch, preserving it among his papers, has not a.s.signed either the occasion or the motive. Mr.

Watts says--"The general impression left on the mind by the perusal of the _Mercurie_ is, that it must have been written after the _Spectator_"; that the ma.n.u.script was composed in modern spelling, afterwards _antiquated_ in the printed copy; while the type is similar to that used by Caslon in 1766. By this accidental reference to the originals, "the unaccountably successful imposition of fifty years was shattered to fragments in five minutes." I am inclined to suspect that it was a _jeu d'esprit_ of historical antiquarianism, concocted by Birch and his friends the Yorkes, with whom, as it is well known, he was concerned in a more elegant literary recreation, the composition of the Athenian Letters. The blunder of George Chalmers has been repeated in numerous publications throughout Europe and in America. I think it better to correct the text by this notice than by a silent suppression, that it may remain a memorable instance of the danger incurred by the historian from forged doc.u.ments; and a proof that multiplied authorities add no strength to evidence, when nil are to be traced to a single source.]

TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSt.i.tIOUS AGES.

The strange trials to which those suspected of guilt were put in the middle ages, conducted with many devout ceremonies by the ministers of religion, were p.r.o.nounced to be the _judgments of G.o.d_! The ordeal consisted of various kinds: walking blindfold amidst burning ploughshares; pa.s.sing through fires; holding in the hand a red-hot bar; and plunging the arm into boiling water: the popular affirmation--"I will put my hand in the fire to confirm this," was derived from this custom of our rude ancestors. Challenging the accuser to single combat, when frequently the stoutest champion was allowed to supply their place; swallowing a morsel of consecrated bread; sinking or swimming in a river for witchcraft; or weighing a witch; stretching out the arms before the cross, till the champion soonest wearied dropped his arms, and lost his estate, which was decided by this very short chancery suit, called the _judicium crucis_. The bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Denis disputed about the patronage of a monastery: Pepin the Short, not being able to decide on their confused claims, decreed one of these judgments of G.o.d, that of the Cross. The bishop and abbot each chose a man, and both the men appeared in the chapel, where they stretched out their arms in the form of a cross. The spectators, more devout than the mob of the present day, but still the mob, were piously attentive, but _betted_ however now for one man, now for the other, and critically watched the slightest motion of the arms. The bishop's man was first tired:--he let his arms fall, and ruined his patron's cause for ever. Though sometimes these trials might be eluded by the artifice of the priest, numerous were the innocent victims who unquestionably suffered in these superst.i.tious practices.

From the tenth to the twelfth century they were common. Hildebert, bishop of Mans, being accused of high treason by our William Rufus, was prepared to undergo one of these trials, when Ives, bishop of Chartres, convinced him that they were against the canons of the const.i.tutions of the church, and adds, that in this manner _Innocentiam defendere, set innocentiam perdere_.

An abbot of St. Aubin, of Angers, in 1066, having refused to present a horse to the Viscount of Tours, which the viscount claimed in right of his lords.h.i.+p, whenever an abbot first took possession of that abbey, the ecclesiastic offered to justify himself by the trial of the ordeal, or by duel, for which he proposed to furnish a man. The viscount at first agreed to the duel; but, reflecting that these combats, though sanctioned by the church, depended wholly on the skill or vigour of the adversary, and could therefore afford no substantial proof of the equity of his claim, he proposed to compromise the matter in a manner which strongly characterises the times: he waived his claim, on condition that the abbot should not forget to mention in his prayers himself, his wife, and his brothers! As the _orisons_ appeared to the abbot, in comparison with the _horse_, of little or no value, he accepted the proposal.

In the tenth century the right of representation was not fixed: it was a question whether the sons of a son ought to be reckoned among the children of the family, and succeed equally with their uncles, if their fathers happened to die while their grandfathers survived. This point was decided by one of these combats. The champion in behalf of the right of children to represent their deceased father proved victorious. It was then established by a perpetual decree that they should thenceforward share in the inheritance, together with their uncles. In the eleventh century the same mode was practised to decide respecting two rival _Liturgies_! A pair of knights, clad in complete armour, were the critics to decide which was the authentic.

"If two neighbours," say the capitularies of Dagobert, "dispute respecting the boundaries of their possessions, let a piece of turf of the contested land be dug up by the judge, and brought by him into the court; the two parties shall touch it with the points of their swords, calling on G.o.d as a witness of their claims;--after this let them _combat_, and let victory decide on their rights!"

In Germany, a solemn circ.u.mstance was practised in these judicial combats. In the midst of the lists they placed a _bier_.--By its side stood the accuser and the accused; one at the head and the other at the foot of the bier, and leaned there for some time in profound silence, before they began the combat.

The manners of the age are faithfully painted in the ancient Fabliaux.

The judicial combat is introduced by a writer of the fourteenth century, in a scene where Pilate challenges Jesus Christ to _single combat_.

Another describes the person who pierced the side of Christ as _a knight who jousted with Jesus_.[52]