Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 43

The works of Homer produced a controversy, both long and virulent, amongst the wits of France. This literary quarrel is of some note in the annals of literature, since it has produced two valuable books; La Motte's "Reflexions sur la Critique," and Madame Dacier's "Des Causes de la Corruption du Gout." La Motte wrote with feminine delicacy, and Madame Dacier like a University pedant. "At length, by the efforts of Valincour, the friend of art, of artists, and of peace, the contest was terminated." Both parties were formidable in number, and to each he made remonstrances, and applied reproaches. La Motte and Madame Dacier, the opposite leaders, were convinced by his arguments, made reciprocal concessions, and concluded a peace. The treaty was formally ratified at a dinner, given on the occasion by a Madame De Stael, who represented "Neutrality." Libations were poured to the memory of old Homer, and the parties were reconciled.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 88: Caricaturists were employed on both sides of the question, and by pictures as well as words the war of polemics was vigorously carried on. In one instance, the head of Luther is represented as the Devil's Bagpipe; he blows into his ear, and uses his nose as a chanter.

Cocleus, in one of his tracts, represents Luther as a monster with seven heads, indicative of his follies; the first is that of a disputatious doctor, the last that of Barabbas! Luther replied in other pamphlets, adorned with equally gross delineations levelled at his opponents.]

[Footnote 89: Bishop Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ will furnish an example of the coa.r.s.eness of invective used by both parties during the era of the Reformation; in such rhymes as "Plain Truth and Blind Ignorance"--"A Ballad of Luther and the Pope," &c. The old interlude of "Newe Custome," printed in Dodsley's _Old Plays_; and that of "l.u.s.ty Juventus," in Hawkins's _English Drama_, are choice specimens of the vulgarest abuse. Bishop Bale in his play of _King John_ (published in 1838 by the Camden Society), indulges in a levity and coa.r.s.eness that would not now be tolerated in an alehouse--"stynkyng heretic" on one side, and "vile popysh swyne" on the other, are among the mildest epithets used in these religious satires. One of the most curious is a dialogue between John Bon, a husbandman, and "Master Parson" of his parish, on the subject of transubstantiation; it was so violent in its style as to threaten great trouble to author and printer (see Strype's _Ecclesiastical Memorials_). It may be seen in vol. x.x.x.

of the Percy Society's publications.]

LITERARY BLUNDERS.

When Dante published his "Inferno," the simplicity of the age accepted it as a true narrative of his descent into h.e.l.l.

When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More was first published, it occasioned a pleasant mistake. This political romance represents a perfect, but visionary republic, in an island supposed to have been newly discovered in America. "As this was the age of discovery," says Granger, "the learned Budaeus, and others, took it for a genuine history; and considered it as highly expedient, that missionaries should be sent thither, in order to convert so wise a nation to Christianity."

It was a long while after publication that many readers were convinced that Gulliver's Travels were fict.i.tious.[90]

But the most singular blunder was produced by the ingenious "Hermippus Redivivus" of Dr. Campbell, a curious banter on the hermetic philosophy, and the universal medicine; but the grave irony is so closely kept up, that it deceived for a length of time the most learned. His notion of the art of prolonging life, by inhaling the breath of young women, was eagerly credited. A physician, who himself had composed a treatise on health, was so influenced by it, that he actually took lodgings at a female boarding-school, that he might never be without a constant supply of the breath of young ladies. Mr. Thicknesse seriously adopted the project. Dr. Kippis acknowledged that after he had read the work in his youth, the reasonings and the facts left him several days in a kind of fairy land. I have a copy with ma.n.u.script notes by a learned physician, who seems to have had no doubts of its veracity. After all, the intention of the work was long doubtful; till Dr. Campbell a.s.sured a friend it was a mere jeu-d'esprit; that Bayle was considered as standing without a rival in the art of treating at large a difficult subject, without discovering to which side his own sentiments leaned: Campbell had read more uncommon books than most men, and wished to rival Bayle, and at the same time to give many curious matters little known.

Palavicini, in his History of the Council of Trent, to confer an honour on M. Lansac, amba.s.sador of Charles IX. to that council, bestows on him a collar of the order of Saint Esprit; but which order was not inst.i.tuted till several years afterwards by Henry III. A similar voluntary blunder is that of Surita, in his _Annales de la Corona de Aragon_. This writer represents, in the battles he describes, many persons who were not present; and this, merely to confer honour on some particular families.

Fabiana, quoting a French narrative of travels in Italy, took for the name of the author the words, found at the end of the t.i.tle-page, _Enrichi de deux Listes_; that is, "Enriched with two lists:" on this he observes, "that Mr. Enriched with two lists has not failed to do that justice to Ciampini which he merited."[91] The abridgers of Gesner's Bibliotheca ascribe the romance of Amadis to one _Acuerdo Olvido_; Remembrance, Oblivion; mistaking the French translator's Spanish motto on the t.i.tle-page for the name of the author.

D'Aquin, the French king's physician, in his Memoir on the Preparation of Bark, takes _Mantissa_, which is the t.i.tle of the Appendix to the History of Plants, by Johnstone, for the name of an author, and who, he says, is so extremely rare, that he only knows him by name.

Lord Bolingbroke imagined, that in those famous verses, beginning with _Excudent alii_, &c., Virgil attributed to the Romans the glory of having surpa.s.sed the Greeks in historical composition: according to his idea, those Roman historians whom Virgil preferred to the Grecians were Sall.u.s.t, Livy, and Tacitus. But Virgil died before Livy had written his history, or Tacitus was born.

An honest friar, who compiled a church history, has placed in the cla.s.s of ecclesiastical writers Guarini, the Italian poet, on the faith of the t.i.tle of his celebrated amorous pastoral, _Il Pastor Fido_, "The Faithful Shepherd;" our good father imagined that the character of a curate, vicar, or bishop, was represented in this work.

A blunder has been recorded of the monks in the dark ages, which was likely enough to happen when their ignorance was so dense. A rector of a parish going to law with his paris.h.i.+oners about paving the church, quoted this authority from St. Peter--_Paveant illi, non paveam ego_; which he construed, _They are to pave the church, not I_. This was allowed to be good law by a judge, himself an ecclesiastic too.

One of the grossest literary blunders of modern times is that of the late Gilbert Wakefield, in his edition of Pope. He there takes the well-known "Song by a Person of Quality," which is a piece of ridicule on the glittering tuneful nonsense of certain poets, as a serious composition. In a most copious commentary, he proves that every line seems unconnected with its brothers, and that the whole reflects disgrace on its author! A circ.u.mstance which too evidently shows how necessary the knowledge of modern literary history is to a modern commentator, and that those who are profound in verbal Greek are not the best critics on English writers.

The Abbe Bizot, the author of the medallic history of Holland, fell into a droll mistake. There is a medal, struck when Philip II. set forth his _invincible Armada_, on which are represented the King of Spain, the Emperor, the Pope, Electors, Cardinals, &c., with their eyes covered with a bandage, and bearing for inscription this fine verse of Lucretius:--

O caecas hominum menteis! O pectora caeca!

The Abbe, prepossessed with the prejudice that a nation persecuted by the Pope and his adherents could not represent them without some insult, did not examine with sufficient care the ends of the bandages which covered the eyes and waved about the heads of the personages represented on this medal: he rashly took them for _a.s.ses' ears_, and as such they are engraved!

Mabillon has preserved a curious literary blunder of some pious Spaniards, who applied to the Pope for consecrating a day in honour of _Saint Viar_. His holiness, in the voluminous catalogue of his saints, was ignorant of this one. The only proof brought forward for his existence was this inscription:--

S. VIAR.

An antiquary, however, hindered one more festival in the Catholic calendar, by convincing them that these letters were only the remains of an inscription erected for an ancient surveyor of the roads; and he read their saints.h.i.+p thus:--

PRaeFECTUS VIARUM.

Maffei, in his comparison between Medals and Inscriptions, detects a literary blunder in Spon, who, meeting with this inscription,

Maximo VI Consule

takes the letters VI for numerals, which occasions a strange anachronism. They are only contractions of _Viro Ill.u.s.tri_--V I.

As absurd a blunder was this of Dr. Stukeley on the coins of Carausius; finding a battered one with a defaced inscription of

FORTVNA AVG.

he read it

ORIVNA AVG.

And sagaciously interpreting this to be the _wife_ of Carausius, makes a new personage start up in history; he contrives even to give some _theoretical Memoirs_ of the _August Oriuna_.[92]

Father Sirmond was of opinion that St. Ursula and her eleven thousand Virgins were all created out of a blunder. In some ancient MS. they found _St. Ursula et Undecimilla V. M._ meaning St. Ursula and _Undecimilla_, Virgin Martyrs; imagining that _Undecimilla_ with the _V._ and _M._ which followed, was an abbreviation for _Undecem Millia Martyrum Virginum_, they made out of _Two Virgins_ the whole _Eleven Thousand_!

Pope, in a note on Measure for Measure, informs us, that its story was taken from Cinthio's Novels, _Dec._ 8. _Nov._ 5. That is, _Decade 8, Novel 5._ The critical Warburton, in his edition of Shakspeare, puts the words in full length thus, _December_ 8, _November 5._

When the fragments of Petronius made a great noise in the literary world, Meibomius, an erudit of Lubeck, read in a letter from another learned scholar from Bologna, "We have here _an entire Petronius_; I saw it with mine own eyes, and with admiration." Meibomius in post-haste is on the road, arrives at Bologna, and immediately inquires for the librarian Capponi. He inquires if it were true that they had at Bologna _an entire Petronius_? Capponi a.s.sures him that it was a thing which had long been public. "Can I see this Petronius? Let me examine it!"--"Certainly," replies Capponi, and leads our erudit of Lubeck to the church where reposes _the body of St. Petronius_. Meibomius bites his lips, calls for his chaise, and takes his flight.

A French translator, when he came to a pa.s.sage of Swift, in which it is said that the Duke of Marlborough _broke_ an officer; not being acquainted with this Anglicism, he translated it _roue_, broke on a wheel!

Cibber's play of "_Love's Last s.h.i.+ft_" was ent.i.tled "_La Derniere Chemise de l'Amour_." A French writer of Congreve's life has taken his _Mourning_ for a _Morning_ Bride, and translated it _L'Espouse du Matin_.

Sir John Pringle mentions his having cured a soldier by the use of two quarts of _Dog and Duck water_ daily: a French translator specifies it as an excellent _broth_ made of a duck and a dog! In a recent catalogue compiled by a French writer of _Works on Natural History_, he has inserted the well-known "Essay on _Irish Bulls_" by the Edgeworths. The proof, if it required any, that a Frenchman cannot understand the idiomatic style of Shakspeare appears in a French translator, who prided himself on giving a verbal translation of our great poet, not approving of Le Tourneur's paraphrastical version. He found in the celebrated speech of Northumberland in Henry IV.

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so _woe-begone_--

which he renders "_Ainsi douleur! va-t'en!"_

The Abbe Gregoire affords another striking proof of the errors to which foreigners are liable when they decide on the _language_ and _customs_ of another country. The Abbe, in the excess of his philanthropy, to show to what dishonourable offices human nature is degraded, acquaints us that at London he observed a sign-board, proclaiming the master as _tueur des punaises de sa majeste_! Bug-destroyer to his majesty! This is, no doubt, the honest Mr. Tiffin, in the Strand; and the idea which must have occurred to the good Abbe was, that his majesty's bugs were hunted by the said destroyer, and taken by hand--and thus human nature was degraded!

A French writer translates the Latin t.i.tle of a treatise of Philo-Judaeus _Omnis bonus liber est_, Every good man is a free man, by _Tout livre est bon_. It was well for him, observes Jortin, that he did not live within the reach of the Inquisition, which might have taken this as a reflection on the _Index Expurgatorius_.

An English translator turned "Dieu _defend_ l'adultere" into "G.o.d _defends_ adultery."--Guthrie, in his translation of Du Halde, has "the twenty-sixth day of the _new_ moon." The whole age of the moon is but twenty-eight days. The blunder arose from his mistaking the word _neuvieme_ (ninth) for _nouvelle_ or _neuve_ (new).

The facetious Tom Brown committed a strange blunder in his translation of Gelli's Circe. The word _Starne_, not aware of its signification, he boldly rendered _stares_, probably from the similitude of sound; the succeeding translator more correctly discovered _Starne_ to be red-legged partridges!

In Charles II.'s reign a new collect was drawn, in which a new epithet was added to the king's t.i.tle, that gave great offence, and occasioned great raillery. He was styled _our most religious king_. Whatever the signification of _religious_ might be in the _Latin_ word, as importing the sacredness of the king's person, yet in the _English language_ it bore a signification that was no way applicable to the king. And he was asked by his familiar courtiers, what must the nation think when they heard him prayed for as their _most religious king_?--Literary blunders of this nature are frequently discovered in the versions of good cla.s.sical scholars, who would make the _English_ servilely bend to the Latin and Greek. Even Milton has been justly censured for his free use of Latinisms and Grecisms.

The blunders of modern antiquaries on sepulchral monuments are numerous.

One mistakes _a lion_ at a knight's feet for a _curled water dog_; another could not distinguish _censers_ in the hands of angels from _fis.h.i.+ng-nets_; _two angels_ at a lady's feet were counted as her two cherub-like _babes_; and another has mistaken a _leopard_ and a _hedgehog_ for a _cat_ and a _rat!_ In some of these cases, are the antiquaries or the sculptors most to be blamed?[93]

A literary blunder of Thomas Warton is a specimen of the manner in which a man of genius may continue to blunder with infinite ingenuity. In an old romance he finds these lines, describing the duel of Saladin with Richard Coeur de Lion:--