Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 37

Hume has furnished us with ample proofs of the _pa.s.sion_ which her courtiers feigned for her, and it remains a question whether it ever went further than boisterous or romantic gallantry. The secrecy of her amours is not so wonderful as it seems, if there were impediments to any but exterior gallantries. Hume has preserved in his notes a letter written by Raleigh. It is a perfect amorous composition. After having exerted his poetic talents to exalt _her charms_ and _his affection_, he concludes, by comparing her majesty, who was then _sixty_, to Venus and Diana. Sir Walter was not her only courtier who wrote in this style.

Even in her old age she affected a strange fondness for music and dancing, with a kind of childish simplicity; her court seemed a court of love, and she the sovereign. Secretary Cecil, the youngest son of Lord Burleigh, seems to have perfectly entered into her character. Lady Derby wore about her neck and in her bosom a portrait; the queen inquired about it, but her ladys.h.i.+p was anxious to conceal it. The queen insisted on having it; and discovering it to be the portrait of young Cecil, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, tying it upon her shoe, and walked with it; afterwards she pinned it on her elbow, and wore it some time there. Secretary Cecil hearing of this, composed some verses and got them set to music; this music the queen insisted on hearing. In his verses Cecil said that he repined not, though her majesty was pleased to grace others; he contented himself with the favour she had given him by wearing his portrait on her feet and on her arms! The writer of the letter who relates this anecdote, adds, "All these things are very secret." In this manner she contrived to lay the fastest hold on her able servants, and her servants on her.

Those who are intimately acquainted with the private anecdotes of those times, know what encouragement this royal coquette gave to most who were near her person. Dodd, in his Church History, says, that the Earls of Arran and Arundel, and Sir William Pickering, "were not out of hopes of gaining Queen Elizabeth's affections in a matrimonial way."

She encouraged every person of eminence: she even went so far, on the anniversary of her coronation, as publicly to take a ring from her finger, and put it on the Duke of Alecnon's hand. She also ranked amongst her suitors Henry the Third of France, and Henry the Great.

She never forgave Buzenval for ridiculing her bad p.r.o.nunciation of the French language; and when Henry IV. sent him over on an emba.s.sy, she would not receive him. So nice was the irritable pride of this great queen, that she made her private injuries matters of state.

"This queen," writes Du Maurier, in his _Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire de la Hollande_, "who displayed so many heroic accomplishments, had this foible, of wis.h.i.+ng to be thought beautiful by all the world. I heard from my father, that at every audience he had with her majesty, she pulled off her gloves more than a hundred times to display her hands, which indeed were very beautiful and very white."

A not less curious anecdote relates to the affair of the Duke of Anjou and our Elizabeth; it is one more proof of her partiality for handsome men. The writer was Lewis Guyon, a contemporary.

"Francis Duke of Anjou, being desirous of marrying a crowned head, caused proposals of marriage to be made to Elizabeth, queen of England.

Letters pa.s.sed betwixt them, and their portraits were exchanged. At length her majesty informed him, that she would never contract a marriage with any one who sought her, if she did not first _see his person_. If he would not come, nothing more should be said on the subject. This prince, over-pressed by his young friends (who were as little able of judging as himself), paid no attention to the counsels of men of maturer judgment. He pa.s.sed over to England without a splendid train. The said lady contemplated his _person_: she found him _ugly_, disfigured by deep sears of the _small-pox_, and that he also had an _ill-shaped nose_, with _swellings in the neck_! All these were so many reasons with her, that he could never be admitted into her good graces."

Puttenham, in his very rare book of the "Art of Poesie," p. 248, notices the grace and majesty of Elizabeth's demeanour: "Her stately manner of walk, with a certaine granditie rather than gravietie, marching with leysure, which our sovereign ladye and mistresse is accustomed to doe generally, unless it be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a heate in the cold mornings."

By the following extract from a letter from one of her gentlemen, we discover that her usual habits, though studious, were not of the gentlest kind, and that the service she exacted from her attendants was not borne without concealed murmurs. The writer groans in secrecy to his friend. Sir John Stanhope writes to Sir Robert Cecil in 1598: "I was all the afternowne with her majestie, _at my booke_; and then thinking to rest me, went in agayne with your letter. She was pleased with the Filosofer's stone, and hath ben _all this daye reasonably quyett_. Mr.

Grevell is absent, and I am tyed so as I cannot styrr, but shall be _at the wourse_ for yt, these two dayes!"[76]

Puttenham, p. 249, has also recorded an honourable anecdote of Elizabeth, and characteristic of that high majesty which was in her thoughts, as well as in her actions. When she came to the crown, a knight of the realm, who had insolently behaved to her when Lady Elizabeth, fell upon his knees and besought her pardon, expecting to be sent to the Tower: she replied mildly, "Do you not know that we are descended of the _lion_, whose nature is not to harme or prey upon the mouse, or any other such small vermin?"

Queen Elizabeth was taught to write by the celebrated _Roger Ascham_.

Her writing is extremely beautiful and correct, as may be seen by examining a little ma.n.u.script book of prayers, preserved in the British Museum. I have seen her first writing book, preserved at Oxford in the Bodleian Library: the gradual improvement in her majesty's handwriting is very honourable to her diligence; but the most curious thing is the paper on which she tried her pens; this she usually did by writing the name of her beloved brother Edward; a proof of the early and ardent attachment she formed to that amiable prince.

The education of Elizabeth had been severely cla.s.sical; she thought and she wrote in all the spirit of the characters of antiquity; and her speeches and her letters are studded with apophthegms, and a terseness of ideas and language, that give an exalted idea of her mind. In her evasive answers to the Commons, in reply to their pet.i.tions to her majesty to marry, she has employed an energetic word: "Were I to tell you that I do not mean to marry, I might say less than I did intend; and were I to tell you that I do mean to marry, I might say more than it is proper for you to know; therefore I give you an _answer_, ANSWERLESS!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 76: Sir Robert Cecil, in a letter to Sir John Harrington, happily characterized her Majesty as occasionally "being more than a man, and, in truth, sometimes less than a woman."]

THE CHINESE LANGUAGE.

The Chinese language is like no other on the globe; it is said to contain not more than about three hundred and thirty words, but it is by no means monotonous, for it has four accents; the even, the raised, the lessened, and the returning, which multiply every word into four; as difficult, says Mr. Astle, for an European to understand, as it is for a Chinese to comprehend the six p.r.o.nunciations of the French E. In fact, they can so diversify their monosyllabic words by the different _tones_ which they give them, that the same character differently accented signifies sometimes ten or more different things.

P. Bourgeois, one of the missionaries, attempted, after ten months'

residence at Pekin, to preach in the Chinese language. These are the words of the good father: "G.o.d knows how much this first Chinese sermon cost me! I can a.s.sure you this language resembles no other. The same word has never but one termination; and then adieu to all that in our declensions distinguishes the gender, and the number of things we would speak: adieu, in the verbs, to all which might explain the active person, how and in what time it acts, if it acts alone or with others: in a word, with the Chinese, the same word is substantive, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who hears who must arrange the circ.u.mstances, and guess them. Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced to three hundred and a few more; that they are p.r.o.nounced in so many different ways, that they signify eighty thousand different things, which are expressed by as many different characters. This is not all: the arrangement of all these monosyllables appears to be under no general rule; so that to know the language after having learnt the words, we must learn every particular phrase: the least inversion would make you unintelligible to three parts of the Chinese.

"I will give you an example of their words. They told me _chou_ signifies a _book_: so that I thought whenever the word _chou_ was p.r.o.nounced, a _book_ was the subject. Not at all! _Chou_, the next time I heard it, I found signified a _tree_. Now I was to recollect; _chou_ was a _book_ or a _tree_. But this amounted to nothing; _chou_, I found, expressed also _great heats_; _chou_ is to _relate_; _chou_ is the _Aurora_; _chou_ means to be _accustomed_; _chou_ expresses the _loss of a wager_, &c. I should not finish, were I to attempt to give you all its significations.

"Notwithstanding these singular difficulties, could one but find a help in the perusal of their books, I should not complain. But this is impossible! Their language is quite different from that of simple conversation. What will ever be an insurmountable difficulty to every European is the p.r.o.nunciation; every word may be p.r.o.nounced in five different tones, yet every tone is not so distinct that an unpractised ear can easily distinguish it. These monosyllables fly with amazing rapidity; then they are continually disguised by elisions, which sometimes hardly leave anything of two monosyllables. From an aspirated tone you must pa.s.s immediately to an even one; from a whistling note to an inward one: sometimes your voice must proceed from the palate; sometimes it must be guttural, and almost always nasal. I recited my sermon at least fifty times to my servant before I spoke it in public; and yet I am told, though he continually corrected me, that of the ten parts of the sermon (as the Chinese express themselves), they hardly understood three. Fortunately the Chinese are wonderfully patient; and they are astonished that any ignorant stranger should be able to learn two words of their language."

It has been said that "Satires are often composed in China, which, if you attend to the _characters_, their import is pure and sublime; but if you regard the _tone_ only, they contain a meaning ludicrous or obscene.

In the Chinese _one word_ sometimes corresponds to three or four thousand characters; a property quite opposite to that of our language, in which _myriads_ of different _words_ are expressed by the _same letters_."

MEDICAL MUSIC.

In the Philosophical Magazine for May, 1806, we find that "several of the medical literati on the continent are at present engaged in making inquiries and experiments upon the _influence of music in the cure of diseases_." The learned Dusaux is said to lead the band of this new tribe of _amateurs_ and _cognoscenti_.

The subject excited my curiosity, though I since have found that it is no new discovery.

There is a curious article in Dr. Burney's History of Music, "On the Medicinal Powers attributed to Music by the Ancients," which he derived from the learned labours of a modern physician, M. Burette, who doubtless could play a tune to, as well as prescribe one to, his patient. He conceives that music can relieve the pains of the sciatica; and that, independent of the greater or less skill of the musician, by flattering the ear, and diverting the attention, and occasioning certain vibrations of the nerves, it can remove those obstructions which occasion this disorder. M. Burette, and many modern physicians and philosophers, have believed that music has the power of affecting the mind, and the whole nervous system, so as to give a temporary relief in certain diseases, and even a radical cure. De Mairan, Bianchini, and other respectable names, have pursued the same career. But the ancients recorded miracles!

The Rev. Dr. Mitch.e.l.l, of Brighthelmstone, wrote a dissertation, "_De Arte Medendi apud Priscos, Musices ope atque Carminum_," printed for J.

Nichols, 1783. He writes under the a.s.sumed name of Michael Gaspar; but whether this learned dissertator be grave or jocular, more than one critic has not been able to resolve me. I suspect it to be a satire on the parade of Germanic erudition, by which they often prove a point by the weakest a.n.a.logies and most fanciful conceits.

Amongst half-civilized nations, diseases have been generally attributed to the influence of evil spirits. The depression of mind which is generally attendant on sickness, and the delirium accompanying certain stages of disease, seem to have been considered as especially denoting the immediate influence of a demon. The effect of music in raising the energies of the mind, or what we commonly call animal spirits, was obvious to early observation. Its power of attracting strong attention may in some cases have appeared to affect even those who laboured under a considerable degree of mental disorder. The accompanying depression of mind was considered as a part of the disease, perhaps rightly enough, and music was prescribed as a remedy to remove the symptom, when experience had not ascertained the probable cause. Homer, whose heroes exhibit high pa.s.sions, but not refined manners, represents the Grecian army as employing music to stay the raging of the plague. The Jewish nation, in the time of King David, appear not to have been much further advanced in civilization; accordingly we find David employed in his youth to remove the mental derangement of Saul by his harp. The method of cure was suggested as a common one in those days, by Saul's servants; and the success is not mentioned as a miracle. Pindar, with poetic licence, speaks of aesculapius healing acute disorders with soothing songs; but aesculapius, whether man or deity, or between both, is a physician of the days of barbarism and fable. Pliny scouts the idea that music could affect real bodily injury, but quotes Homer on the subject; mentions Theophrastus as suggesting a tune for the cure of the hip gout, and Cato as entertaining a fancy that it had a good effect when limbs were out of joint, and likewise that Varro thought it good for the gout.

Aulus Gellius cites a work of Theophrastus, which recommends music as a specific for the bite of a viper. Boyle and Shakspeare mention the effects of music _super vesicam_. Kircher's "Musurgia," and Swinburne's Travels, relate the effects of music on those who are bitten by the tarantula. Sir W. Temple seems to have given credit to the stories of the power of music over diseases.

The ancients, indeed, record miracles in the tales they relate of the medicinal powers of music. A fever is removed by a song, and deafness is cured by a trumpet, and the pestilence is chased away by the sweetness of an harmonious lyre. That deaf people can hear best in a great noise, is a fact alleged by some moderns, in favour of the ancient story of curing deafness by a trumpet. Dr. Willis tells us, says Dr. Burney, of a lady who could _hear_ only while _a drum was beating_, insomuch, that her husband, the account says, hired a drummer as her servant, in order to enjoy the pleasure of her conversation.

Music and the sounds of instruments, says the lively Vigneul de Marville, contribute to the health of the body and the mind; they quicken the circulation of the blood, they dissipate vapours, and open the vessels, so that the action of perspiration is freer. He tells a story of a person of distinction, who a.s.sured him, that once being suddenly seized by violent illness, instead of a consultation of physicians, he immediately called a band of musicians; and their violins-played so well in his inside, that his bowels became perfectly in tune, and in a few hours were harmoniously becalmed. I once heard a story of Farinelli, the famous singer, who was sent for to Madrid, to try the effect of his magical voice on the king of Spain. His majesty was buried in the profoundest melancholy; nothing could raise an emotion in him; he lived in a total oblivion of life; he sate in a darkened chamber, entirely given up to the most distressing kind of madness. The physicians ordered Farinelli at first to sing in an outer room; and for the first day or two this was done, without any effect, on the royal patient. At length, it was observed, that the king, awakening from his stupor, seemed to listen; on the next day tears were seen starting in his eyes; the day after he ordered the door of his chamber to be left open--and at length the perturbed spirit entirely left our modern Saul, and the _medicinal voice_ of Farinelli effected what no other medicine could.

I now prepare to give the reader some _facts_, which he may consider as a trial of credulity.--Their authorities are, however, not contemptible.--Naturalists a.s.sert that animals and birds, as well as "knotted oaks," as Congreve informs us, are sensible to the charms of music. This may serve as an instance:--An officer was confined in the Bastile; he begged the governor to permit him the use of his lute, to soften, by the harmonies of his instrument, the rigours of his prison.

At the end of a few days, this modern Orpheus, playing on his lute, was greatly astonished to see frisking out of their holes great numbers of mice, and descending from their woven habitations crowds of spiders, who formed a circle about him, while he continued breathing his soul-subduing instrument. He was petrified with astonishment. Having ceased to play, the a.s.sembly, who did not come to see his person, but to hear his instrument, immediately broke up. As he had a great dislike to spiders, it was two days before he ventured again to touch his instrument. At length, having overcome, for the novelty of his company, his dislike of them, he recommenced his concert, when the a.s.sembly was by far more numerous than at first; and in the course of farther time, he found himself surrounded by a hundred _musical amateurs_. Having thus succeeded in attracting this company, he treacherously contrived to get rid of them at his will. For this purpose he begged the keeper to give him a cat, which he put in a cage, and let loose at the very instant when the little hairy people were most entranced by the Orphean skill he displayed.

The Abbe Olivet has described an amus.e.m.e.nt of Pelisson during his confinement in the Bastile, which consisted in feeding a spider, which he had discovered forming its web in the corner of a small window. For some time he placed his flies at the edge, while his valet, who was with him, played on a bagpipe: little by little, the spider used itself to distinguish the sound of the instrument, and issued from its hole to run and catch its prey. Thus calling it always by the same sound, and placing the flies at a still greater distance, he succeeded, after several months, to drill the spider by regular exercise, so that at length it never failed appearing at the first sound to seize on the fly provided for it, even on the knees of the prisoner.

Marville has given us the following curious anecdote on this subject. He says, that doubting the truth of those who say that the love of music is a natural taste, especially the sound of instruments, and that beasts themselves are touched by it, being one day in the country I tried an experiment. While a man was playing on the trump marine, I made my observations on a cat, a dog, a horse, an a.s.s, a hind, cows, small birds, and a c.o.c.k and hens, who were in a yard, under a window on which I was leaning. I did not perceive that the cat was the least affected, and I even judged, by her air, that she would have given all the instruments in the world for a mouse, sleeping in the sun all the time; the horse stopped short from time to time before the window, raising his head up now and then, as he was feeding on the gra.s.s; the dog continued for above an hour seated on his hind legs, looking steadfastly at the player; the a.s.s did not discover the least indication of his being touched, eating his thistles peaceably; the hind lifted up her large wide ears, and seemed very attentive; the cows slept a little, and after gazing, as though they had been acquainted with us, went forward; some little birds who were in an aviary, and others on the trees and bushes, almost tore their little throats with singing; but the c.o.c.k, who minded only his hens, and the hens, who were solely employed in sc.r.a.ping a neighbouring dunghill, did not show in any manner that they took the least pleasure in hearing the trump marine.

A modern traveller a.s.sures us, that he has repeatedly observed in the island of Madeira, that the lizards are attracted by the notes of music, and that he has a.s.sembled a number of them by the powers of his instrument. When the negroes catch them for food, they accompany the chase by whistling some tune, which has always the effect of drawing great numbers towards them. Stedman, in his Expedition to Surinam, describes certain sibyls among the negroes, who, among several singular practices, can charm or conjure down from the tree certain serpents, who will wreath about the arms, neck, and breast of the pretended sorceress, listening to her voice. The sacred writers speak of the charming of adders and serpents; and nothing, says he, is more notorious than that the eastern Indians will rid the houses of the most venomous snakes, by charming them with the sound of a flute, which calls them out of their holes. These anecdotes seem fully confirmed by Sir William Jones, in his dissertation on the musical modes of the Hindus.

"After food, when the operations of digestion and absorption give so much employment to the vessels, that a temporary state of mental repose must be found, especially in hot climates, essential to health, it seems reasonable to believe that a few agreeable airs, either heard or played without effort, must have all the good effects of sleep, and none of its disadvantages; _putting the soul in tune_, as Milton says, for any subsequent exertion; an experiment often successfully made by myself. I have been a.s.sured by a credible eye-witness, that two wild antelopes used often to come from their woods to the place where a more savage beast, Sirajuddaulah, entertained himself with concerts, and that they listened to the strains with an appearance of pleasure, till the monster, in whose soul there was no music, shot one of them to display his archery. A learned native told me that he had frequently seen the most venomous and malignant snakes leave their holes upon hearing tunes on a flute, which, as he supposed, gave them peculiar delight. An intelligent Persian declared he had more than once been present, when a celebrated lutenist, surnamed Bulbul (i.e., the nightingale), was playing to a large company, in a grove near s.h.i.+raz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician, sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to approach the instrument, and at length dropping on the ground in a kind of ecstacy, from which they were soon raised, he a.s.sured me, by a change in the mode."

Jackson of Exeter, in reply to a question of Dryden, "What pa.s.sion cannot music raise or quell?" sarcastically returns, "What pa.s.sion _can_ music raise or quell?" Would not a savage, who had never listened to a musical instrument, feel certain emotions at listening to one for the first time? But civilized man is, no doubt, particularly affected by _a.s.sociation of ideas_, as all pieces of national music evidently prove.

THE RANZ DES VACHES, mentioned by Rousseau in his Dictionary of Music, though without anything striking in the composition, has such a powerful influence over the Swiss, and impresses them with so violent a desire to return to their own country, that it is forbidden to be played in the Swiss regiments, in the French service, on pain of death. There is also a Scotch tune, which has the same effect on some of our North Britons.

In one of our battles in Calabria, a bagpiper of the 78th Highland regiment, when the light infantry charged the French, posted himself on the right, and remained in his solitary situation during the whole of the battle, encouraging the men with a famous Highland charging tune; and actually upon the retreat and complete rout of the French changed it to another, equally celebrated in Scotland, upon the retreat of and victory over an enemy. His next-hand neighbour guarded him so well that he escaped unhurt. This was the spirit of the "Last Minstrel," who infused courage among his countrymen, by possessing it in so animated a degree, and in so venerable a character.

MINUTE WRITING.

The Iliad of Homer in a nutsh.e.l.l, which Pliny says that Cicero once saw, it is pretended might have been a fact, however to some it may appear impossible. aelian notices an artist who wrote a distich in letters of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn.

Antiquity and modern times record many such penmen, whose glory consisted in writing in so small a hand that the writing could not be legible to the naked eye. Menage mentions, he saw whole sentences which were not perceptible to the eye without the microscope; pictures and portraits which appeared at first to be lines and scratches thrown down at random; one formed the face of the Dauphiness with the most correct resemblance. He read an Italian poem, in praise of this princess, containing some thousand verses, written by an officer, in a s.p.a.ce of a foot and a half. This species of curious idleness has not been lost in our own country, where this minute writing has equalled any on record.

Peter Bales, a celebrated caligrapher in the reign of Elizabeth, astonished the eyes of beholders by showing them what they could not see; for in the Harleian MSS. 530, we have a narrative of "a rare piece of work brought to pa.s.s by Peter Bales, an Englishman, and a clerk of the chancery;" it seems by the description to have been the whole Bible "in an English walnut no bigger than a hen's egg. The nut holdeth the book: there are as many leaves in his little book as the great Bible, and he hath written as much in one of his little leaves as a great leaf of the Bible." We are told that this wonderfully unreadable copy of the Bible was "seen by many thousands." There is a drawing of the head of Charles I. in the library of St. John's College, at Oxford, wholly composed of minute written characters, which, at a small distance, resemble the lines of an engraving. The lines of the head, and the ruff, are said to contain the book of Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. In the British Museum we find a drawing representing the portrait of Queen Anne, not much above the size of the hand. On this drawing appears a number of lines and scratches, which the librarian a.s.sures the marvelling spectator includes the entire contents of a thin _folio_, which on this occasion is carried in the hand.