Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 28

THE ARABIC CHRONICLE.

An Arabic chronicle is only valuable from the time of Mahomet. For such is the stupid superst.i.tion of the Arabs, that they pride themselves on being ignorant of whatever has pa.s.sed before the mission of their Prophet. The Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem contains the most curious information concerning the crusades: Longuerue translated several portions of this chronicle, which appears to be written with impartiality. It renders justice to the Christian heroes, and particularly dwells on the gallant actions of the Count de St. Gilles.

Our historians chiefly write concerning _G.o.dfrey de Bouillon_; only the learned know that the Count _de St. Gilles_ acted there so important a character. The stories of the _Saracens_ are just the reverse; they speak little concerning G.o.dfrey, and eminently distinguish Saint Gilles.

Ta.s.so has given in to the more vulgar accounts, by making the former so eminent, at the cost of the other heroes, in his Jerusalem Delivered.

Thus Virgil transformed by his magical power the chaste Dido into a distracted lover; and Homer the meretricious Penelope into a moaning matron. It is not requisite for poets to be historians, but historians should not be so frequently poets. The same charge, I have been told, must be made against the Grecian historians. The Persians are viewed to great disadvantage in Grecian history. It would form a curious inquiry, and the result might be unexpected to some, were the Oriental student to comment on the Grecian historians. The Grecians were not the demi-G.o.ds they paint themselves to have been, nor those they attacked the contemptible mult.i.tudes they describe. These boasted victories might be diminished. The same observation attaches to Caesar's account of his British expedition. He never records the defeats he frequently experienced. The national prejudices of the Roman historians have undoubtedly occasioned us to have a very erroneous conception of the Carthaginians, whose discoveries in navigation and commercial enterprises were the most considerable among the ancients. We must indeed think highly of that people, whose works on agriculture, which they had raised into a science, the senate of Rome ordered to be translated into Latin. They must indeed have been a wise and grave people.--Yet they are stigmatised by the Romans for faction, cruelty, and cowardice; and the "Punic" faith has come down to us in a proverb: but Livy was a Roman! and there is such a thing as a patriotic malignity!

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

If we except the belief of a future remuneration beyond this life for suffering virtue, and retribution for successful crimes, there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to our understanding, as that of the metempsychosis. The pains and the pleasures of this life are by this system considered as the recompense or the punishment of our actions in an anterior state: so that, says St. Foix, we cease to wonder that, among men and animals, some enjoy an easy and agreeable life, while others seem born only to suffer all kinds of miseries.

Preposterous as this system may appear, it has not wanted for advocates in the present age, which indeed has revived every kind of fanciful theory. Mercier, in _L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante_, seriously maintains the present one.

If we seek for the origin of the opinion of the metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls into other bodies, we must plunge into the remotest antiquity; and even then we shall find it impossible to fix the epoch of its first author. The notion was long extant in Greece before the time of Pythagoras. Herodotus a.s.sures us that the Egyptian priests taught it; but he does not inform us of the time it began to spread. It probably followed the opinion of the immortality of the soul. As soon as the first philosophers had established this dogma, they thought they could not maintain this immortality without a transmigration of souls.

The opinion of the metempsychosis spread in almost every region of the earth; and it continues, even to the present time, in all its force amongst those nations who have not yet embraced Christianity. The people of Arracan, Peru, Siam, Camboya, Tonquin, Cochin-China, j.a.pan, Java, and Ceylon still entertain that fancy, which also forms the chief article of the Chinese religion. The Druids believed in transmigration. The bardic triads of the Welsh are full of this belief; and a Welsh antiquary insists, that by an emigration which formerly took place, it was conveyed to the Bramins of India from Wales! The Welsh bards tell us that the souls of men transmigrate into the bodies of those animals whose habits and characters they most resemble, till after a circuit of such penitential miseries, they are purified for the celestial presence; for man may be converted into a pig or a wolf, till at length he a.s.sumes the inoffensiveness of the dove.

My learned friend Sharon Turner has explained, in his "Vindication of the ancient British Poems," p. 231, the Welsh system of the metempsychosis. Their bards mention three circles of existence. The circle of the all-enclosing circle holds nothing alive or dead, but G.o.d.

The second circle, that of felicity, is that which men are to pervade after they have pa.s.sed through their terrestrial changes. The circle of evil is that in which human nature pa.s.ses through those varying stages of existence which it must undergo before it is qualified to inhabit the circle of felicity.

The progression of man through the circle of evil is marked by three infelicities: Necessity, oblivion, and deaths. The deaths which follow our changes are so many escapes from their power. Man is a free agent, and has the liberty of choosing; his sufferings and changes cannot be foreseen. By his misconduct he may happen to fall retrograde into the lowest state from which he had emerged. If his conduct in any one state, instead of improving his being, had made it worse, he fell back into a worse condition, to commence again his purifying revolutions. Humanity was the limit of the degraded transmigrations. All the changes above humanity produced felicity. Humanity is the scene of the contest; and after man has traversed every state of animated existence, and can remember all that he has pa.s.sed through, that consummation follows which he attains in the circle of felicity. It is on this system of transmigration that Taliessin, the Welsh bard, who wrote in the sixth century, gives a recital of his pretended transmigrations. He tells how he had been a serpent, a wild a.s.s, a buck, or a crane, &c.; and this kind of reminiscence of his former state, this recovery of memory, was a proof of the mortal's advances to the happier circle. For to forget what we have been was one of the curses of the circle of evil. Taliessin, therefore, adds Mr. Turner, as profusely boasts of his recovered reminiscence as any modern sectary can do of his state of grace and election.

In all these wild reveries there seems to be a moral fable in the notion, that the clearer a man recollects what a _brute_ he has been, it is a certain proof that he is in an improved state!

According to the authentic Clavigero, in his history of Mexico, we find the Pythagorean transmigration carried on in the West, and not less fancifully than in the countries of the East. The people of Tlascala believe that the souls of persons of rank went after their death to inhabit the bodies of _beautiful and sweet singing birds_, and those of the _n.o.bler quadrupeds_; while the souls of inferior persons were supposed to pa.s.s into _weasels_, _beetles_, and such other _meaner animals_.

There is something not a little ludicrous in the description Plutarch gives at the close of his treatise on "the delay of heavenly justice."

Thespesius saw at length the souls of those who were condemned to return to life, and whom they violently forced to take the forms of all kinds of animals. The labourers charged with this transformation forged with their instruments certain parts; others, a new form; and made some totally disappear; that these souls might be rendered proper for another kind of life and other habits. Among these he perceived the soul of Nero, which had already suffered long torments, and which stuck to the body by nails red from the fire. The workmen seized on him to make a viper of, under which form he was now to live, after having devoured the breast that had carried him.--But in this Plutarch only copies the fine reveries of Plato.

SPANISH ETIQUETTE.

The etiquette, or rules to be observed in royal palaces, is necessary for keeping order at court. In Spain it was carried to such lengths as to make martyrs of their kings. Here is an instance, at which, in spite of the fatal consequences it produced, one cannot refrain from smiling.

Philip the Third was gravely seated by the fire-side: the fire-maker of the court had kindled so great a quant.i.ty of wood, that the monarch was nearly suffocated with heat, and his _grandeur_ would not suffer him to rise from the chair; the domestics could not _presume_ to enter the apartment, because it was against the _etiquette_. At length the Marquis de Potat appeared, and the king ordered him to damp the fire; but _he_ excused himself; alleging that he was forbidden by the _etiquette_ to perform such a function, for which the Duke d'Ussada ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The duke was gone out: the _fire_ burnt fiercer; and the _king_ endured it, rather than derogate from his _dignity_. But his blood was heated to such a degree, that an erysipelas of the head appeared the next day, which, succeeded by a violent fever, carried him off in 1621, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign.

The palace was once on fire; a soldier, who knew the king's sister was in her apartment, and must inevitably have been consumed in a few moments by the flames, at the risk of his life rushed in, and brought her highness safe out in his arms: but the Spanish _etiquette_ was here wofully broken into! The loyal soldier was brought to trial; and as it was impossible to deny that he had entered her apartment, the judges condemned him to die! The Spanish Princess however condescended, in consideration of the circ.u.mstance, to _pardon_ the soldier, and very benevolently saved his life.

When Isabella, mother of Philip II., was ready to be delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished: that if the violence of her pain should occasion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. And when the midwife said, "Madam, cry out, that will give you ease," she answered in _good Spanish_, "How dare you give me such advice? I would rather die than cry out."

"Spain gives us _pride_--which Spain to all the earth May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth!"--_Churchill._

Philip the Third was a weak bigot, who suffered himself to be governed by his ministers. A patriot wished to open his eyes, but he could not pierce through the crowds of his flatterers; besides that the voice of patriotism heard in a corrupted court would have become a crime never pardoned. He found, however, an ingenious manner of conveying to him his censure. He caused to be laid on his table, one day, a letter sealed, which bore this address--"To the King of Spain, Philip the Third, at present in the service of the Duke of Lerma."

In a similar manner, Don Carlos, son to Philip the Second, made a book with empty pages, to contain the voyages of his father, which bore this t.i.tle--"The great and admirable Voyages of the King Mr. Philip." All these voyages consisted in going to the Escurial from Madrid, and returning to Madrid from the Escurial. Jests of this kind at length cost him his life.

THE GOTHS AND HUNS.

The terrific honours which these ferocious nations paid to their deceased monarchs are recorded in history, by the interment of Attila, king of the Huns, and Alaric, king of the Goths.

Attila died in 453, and was buried in the midst of a vast champaign in a coffin which was inclosed in one of gold, another of silver, and a third of iron. With the body were interred all the spoils of the enemy, harnesses embroidered with gold and studded with jewels, rich silks, and whatever they had taken most precious in the palaces of the kings they had pillaged; and that the place of his interment might for ever remain concealed, the Huns deprived of life all who a.s.sisted at his burial!

The Goths had done nearly the same for Alaric in 410, at Cosenca, a town in Calabria. They turned aside the river Vasento; and having formed a grave in the midst of its bed where its course was most rapid, they interred this king with prodigious acc.u.mulations of riches. After having caused the river to rea.s.sume its usual course, they murdered, without exception, all those who had been concerned in digging this singular grave.

VICARS OF BRAY.

The vicar of Bray, in Berks.h.i.+re, was a papist under the reign of Henry the Eighth, and a Protestant under Edward the Sixth; he was a papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth.[59] When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, "Not so neither; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the vicar of Bray!"

This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to this county, "The vicar of Bray will be vicar of Bray still." But how has it happened that this _vicar_ should be so notorious, and one in much higher rank, acting the same part, should have escaped notice? Dr.

_Kitchen_, bishop of Llandaff, from an idle abbot under Henry VIII. was made a busy bishop; Protestant under Edward, he returned to his old master under Mary; and at last took the oath of supremacy under Elizabeth, and finished as a parliament Protestant. A pun spread the odium of his name; for they said that he had always loved the _Kitchen_ better than the _Church_!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 59: His name was Simon Symonds. The popular ballad absurdly exaggerates his deeds, and gives them untrue amplitude. It is not older than the last century, and is printed in Ritson's _English Songs_.]

DOUGLAS.

It may be recorded as a species of Puritanic barbarism, that no later than the year 1757, a man of genius was persecuted because he had written a tragedy which tended by no means to hurt the morals; but, on the contrary, by awakening the piety of domestic affections with the n.o.bler pa.s.sions, would rather elevate and purify the mind.

When Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas, had it performed at Edinburgh, some of the divines, his acquaintance, attending the representation, the clergy, with the monastic spirit of the darkest ages, published a paper, which I abridge for the contemplation of the reader, who may wonder to see such a composition written in the eighteenth century."

"On Wednesday, February the 2nd, 1757, the Presbytery of Glasgow came to the following resolution. They having seen a printed paper, int.i.tuled, 'An admonition and exhortation of the reverend Presbytery of Edinburgh;'

which, among other _evils_ prevailing, observing the following _melancholy_ but _notorious_ facts: that one who is a minister of the church of Scotland did _himself_ write and compose _a stage-play_, int.i.tuled, 'The tragedy of Douglas,' and got it to be acted at the theatre of Edinburgh; and that he with several other ministers of the church were present; and _some_ of them _oftener than once_, at the acting of the said play before a numerous audience. The presbytery being _deeply affected_ with this new and strange appearance, do publish these sentiments," &c Sentiments with which I will not disgust the reader; but which they appear not yet to have purified and corrected, as they have shown in the case of Logan and other Scotchmen, who have committed the crying sin of composing dramas!

CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY.