Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 31

which Dryden, contemplating on the red-faced boorish boy astride on a barrel on our sign-posts, tastelessly sinks into gross vulgarity:

On whate'er side he turns his _honest_ face.

This Latinism of _honestum_ even the literal inelegance of Davidson had spirit enough to translate, "Where'er the G.o.d hath moved around his _graceful head_." The hideous figure of that ebriety, in its most disgusting stage, the ancients exposed in the b.e.s.t.i.a.l Silenus and his crew; and with these, rather than with the Ovidian and Virgilian deity, our own convivial customs have a.s.similated.

We shall probably outlive that custom of hard-drinking which was so long one of our national vices. The Frenchman, the Italian, and the Spaniard only taste the luxury of the grape, but seem never to have indulged in set convivial parties, or drinking-matches, as some of the northern people. Of this folly of ours, which was, however, a borrowed one, and which lasted for two centuries, the history is curious: the variety of its modes and customs; its freaks and extravagances; the technical language introduced to raise it into an art; and the inventions contrived to animate the progress of the thirsty souls of its votaries.[155]

Nations, like individuals, in their intercourse are great imitators; and we have the authority of Camden, who lived at the time, for a.s.serting that "the English in their long wars in the Netherlands first learnt to drown themselves with immoderate drinking, and by drinking others'

healths to impair their own. Of all the northern nations, they had been before this most commended for their sobriety." And the historian adds, "that the vice had so diffused itself over the nation, that in our days it was first restrained by severe laws."[156]

Here we have the authority of a grave and judicious historian for ascertaining the first period and even origin of this custom; and that the nation had not, heretofore, disgraced itself by such prevalent ebriety, is also confirmed by one of those curious contemporary pamphlets of a popular writer, so invaluable to the philosophical antiquary. Tom Nash, a town-wit of the reign of Elizabeth, long before Camden wrote her history, in his "Pierce Pennilesse," had detected the same origin.--"Superfluity in drink," says this spirited writer, "is a sin that ever since we have mixed ourselves with the Low Countries is counted honourable; but before we knew their lingering wars, was held in that highest degree of hatred that might be. Then if we had seen a man go wallowing in the streets, or lain sleeping under the board, we should have spet at him, and warned all our friends out of his company."[157]

Such was the fit source of this vile custom, which is further confirmed by the barbarous dialect it introduced into our language; all the terms of drinking which once abounded with us are, without exception, of a base northern origin.[158] But the best account I can find of all the refinements of this new science of potation, when it seems to have reached its height, is in our Tom Nash, who being himself one of these deep experimental philosophers, is likely to disclose all the mysteries of the craft.

He says--"Now, he is n.o.body that cannot drink _super-nagulum_; _carouse_ the hunter's _hoope_; quaff _vpse freeze crosse_; with _healths, gloves, mumpes, frolickes_, and a thousand such domineering inventions."[159]

_Drinking super-nagulum_, that is, _on the nail_, is a device, which Nash says is new come out of France: but it had probably a northern origin, for far northward it still exists. This new device consisted in this, that after a man, says Nash, hath turned up the bottom of the cup to drop it on his nail, and make a pearl with what is left, which if it shed, and cannot make it stand on, by reason there is too much, he must drink again for his penance.

The custom is also alluded to by Bishop Hall in his satirical romance of "_Mundus alter et idem_," "A Discovery of a New World," a work which probably Swift read, and did not forget. The Duke of Tenter-belly in his oration, when he drinks off his large goblet of twelve quarts, on his election, exclaims, should he be false to their laws--"Let never this goodly-formed goblet of wine go jovially through me; and then he set it to his mouth, stole it off every drop, save _a little remainder_, which he was by custom to _set upon his thumb's nail_, and lick it off as he did."

The phrase is in Fletcher:

I am thine _ad unguem_--

that is, he would drink with his friend to the last. In a ma.n.u.script letter of the times, I find an account of Columbo, the Spanish amba.s.sador, being at Oxford, and drinking healths to the Infanta. The writer adds--"I shall not tell you how our doctors pledged healths to the Infanta and the arch-d.u.c.h.ess; and if any left _too big a snuff_, Columbo would cry, _Supernaculum! supernaculum!_"[160]

This Bacchic freak seems still preserved: for a recent traveller, Sir George Mackenzie, has noticed the custom in his Travels through Iceland.

"His host having filled a silver cup to the brim, and put on the cover, then held it towards the person who sat next to him, and desired him to take off the cover, and look into the cup, a ceremony intended to secure fair play in filling it. He drank our health, desiring to be excused from emptying the cup, on account of the indifferent state of his health; but we were informed at the same time that if any one of us should neglect any part of the ceremony, or _fail to invert the cup, placing the edge on one of the thumbs_ as a proof that we had swallowed every drop, the defaulter would be obliged by the laws of drinking to fill the cup again, and drink it off a second time. In spite of their utmost exertions, the penalty of a second draught was incurred by two of the company; we were dreading the consequences of having swallowed so much wine, and in terror lest the cup should be sent round again."

_Carouse the hunter's hoop._--"Carouse" has been already explained: _the hunter's hoop_ alludes to the custom of hoops being marked on a drinking-pot, by which every man was to measure his draught. Shakspeare makes the Jacobin Jack Cade, among his furious reformations, promise his friends that "there shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; _the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops_, and I will make it a felony to drink small beer." I have elsewhere observed that our modern Baccha.n.a.lians, whose feats are recorded by the bottle, and who insist on an equality in their rival combats, may discover some ingenuity in that invention among our ancestors of their _peg-tankards_, of which a few may yet occasionally be found in Derbys.h.i.+re;[161] the invention of an age less refined than the present, when we have heard of globular gla.s.ses and bottles, which by their shape cannot stand, but roll about the table; thus compelling the unfortunate Baccha.n.a.lian to drain the last drop, or expose his recreant sobriety.

We must have recourse again to our old friend Tom Nash, who acquaints us with some of "the general rules and inventions for drinking, as good as printed precepts or statutes by act of parliament, that go from drunkard to drunkard; as, still to _keep your first man_; not to leave any _flocks_ in the bottom of the cup; _to knock the gla.s.s on your thumb_ when you have done; to have some _shoeing-horn_ to pull on your wine, as a rasher on the coals or a red-herring."

_Shoeing-horns_, sometimes called _gloves_, are also described by Bishop Hall in his "Mundus alter et idem." "Then, sir, comes me up _a service of shoeing-horns_ of all sorts; salt cakes, red-herrings, anchovies, and gammon of bacon, and abundance of _such pullers-on_."

That famous surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings, which banquet proved so fatal to Robert Green, a congenial wit and a.s.sociate of our Nash, was occasioned by these _shoeing-horns_.

Ma.s.singer has given a curious list of "_a service of shoeing-horns_."

---- I usher Such an unexpected dainty bit for breakfast As never yet I cook'd; 'tis not Botargo, Fried frogs, potatoes marrow'd, cavear, Carps' tongues, the pith of an English chine of beef, _Nor our Italian delicate, oil'd mushrooms_, And yet _a drawer-on too_;[162] and if you show not An appet.i.te, and a strong one, I'll not say To eat it, but devour it, without grace too, (For it will not stay a preface) I am shamed, And all my past provocatives will be jeer'd at, Ma.s.sINGER, _The Guardian_, A. ii. S. 3.

To _knock the gla.s.s on the thumb_, was to show they had performed their duty. Barnaby Rich describes this custom: after having drank, the president "turned the bottom of the cup upward, and in ostentation of his dexterity, gave it a fillip, to make it cry _ting_."

They had among these "domineering inventions" some which we may imagine never took place, till they were told by "the hollow cask"

How the waning night grew old.

Such were _flap-dragons_, which were small combustible bodies fired at one end and floated in a gla.s.s of liquor, which an experienced toper swallowed unharmed, while yet blazing. Such is Dr. Johnson's accurate description, who seems to have witnessed what he so well describes.[163]

When Falstaff says of Poins's acts of dexterity to ingratiate himself with the prince, that "he drinks off _candle-ends_ for flap-dragons," it seems that this was likewise one of these "frolics," for Nash notices that the liquor was "to be stirred about with a _candle's-end_, to make it taste better, and not to hold your peace while the pot is stirring,"

no doubt to mark the intrepidity of the miserable "skinker." The most ill.u.s.trious feat of all is one, however, described by Bishop Hall. If the drinker "could put his finger into the flame of the candle without playing hit-I-miss-I! he is held a sober man, however otherwise drunk he might be." This was considered as a trial of victory among these "canary-birds," or bibbers of canary wine.[164]

We have a very common expression to describe a man in a state of ebriety, that "he is as drunk as a beast," or that "he is beastly drunk." This is a libel on the brutes, for the vice of ebriety is perfectly human. I think the phrase is peculiar to ourselves: and I imagine I have discovered its origin. When ebriety became first prevalent in our nation, during the reign of Elizabeth, it was a favourite notion among the writers of the time, and on which they have exhausted their fancy, that a man in the different stages of ebriety showed the most vicious quality of different animals; or that a company of drunkards exhibited a collection of brutes, with their different characteristics.

"All dronkardes are beasts," says George Gascoigne, in a curious treatise on them,[165] and he proceeds in ill.u.s.trating his proposition; but the satirist Nash has cla.s.sified eight kinds of "drunkards;" a fanciful sketch from the hand of a master in humour, and which could only have been composed by a close spectator of their manners and habits.

"The first is _ape-drunk_, and he leaps and sings and hollows and danceth for the heavens; the second is _lyon-drunk_, and he flings the pots about the house, calls the hostess w--- e, breaks the gla.s.s-windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him; the third is _swine-drunk_, heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a little more drink and a few more clothes; the fourth is _sheep-drunk_, wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word; the fifth is _maudlen-drunk_, when a fellow will weep for kindness in the midst of his drink, and kiss you, saying, 'By G.o.d! captain, I love thee; go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee: I would (if it pleased G.o.d) I could not love thee so well as I do,' and then he puts his finger in his eye and cries. The sixth is _martin-drunk_, when a man is drunk, and drinks himself sober ere he stir; the seventh is _goat-drunk_, when in his drunkenness he hath no mind but on lechery.

The eighth is _fox-drunk_, when he is crafty-drunk, as many of the Dutchmen be, which will never bargain but when they are drunk. All these _species_, and more, I have seen practised in _one company at one sitting_; when I have been permitted to remain sober amongst them only to note their several humours." These beast-drunkards are characterised in a frontispiece to a curious tract on Drunkenness where the men are represented with the heads of apes, swine, &c. &c.

A new era in this history of our drinking-parties occurred about the time of the Restoration, when politics heated their wine, and drunkenness and loyalty became more closely connected. As the puritanic coldness wore off, the people were perpetually, in 1650, warmed in drinking the king's health on their knees; and, among various kinds of "ranting cavalierism," the cavaliers during Cromwell's usurpation usually put a crumb of bread into their gla.s.s, and before they drank it off, with cautious ambiguity exclaimed, "G.o.d send this _crum well_ down!" which by the way preserves the orthoepy of that extraordinary man's name, and may be added to the instances adduced in our present volume "On the orthography of proper names." We have a curious account of a drunken bout by some royalists, told by Whitelocke in his Memorials. It bore some resemblance to the drinking-party of Catiline: they mingled their own blood with their wine.[166] After the Restoration, Burnet complains of the excess of convivial loyalty.

"Drinking the king's health was set up by too many as a distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of loyalty, and drew many into great excess after his majesty's restoration."[167]

LITERARY ANECDOTES.

A writer of penetration sees connexions in literary anecdotes which are not immediately perceived by others: in his hands anecdotes, even should they be familiar to us, are susceptible of deductions and inferences, which become novel and important truths. Facts of themselves are barren; it is when these facts pa.s.s through reflections, and become interwoven with our feelings, or our reasonings, that they are the finest ill.u.s.trations; that they a.s.sume the dignity of "philosophy teaching by example;" that, in the moral world, they are what the wise system of Bacon inculcated in the natural knowledge deduced from experiments; the study of nature in her operations. "When examples are pointed out to us," says Lord Bolingbroke, "there is a kind of appeal, with which, we are flattered, made to our senses, as well as to our understandings. The instruction comes then from our authority; we yield to fact, when we resist speculation."

For this reason, writers and artists should, among their recreations, be forming a constant acquaintance with the history of their departed kindred. In literary biography a man of genius always finds something which relates to himself. The studies of artists have a great uniformity, and their habits of life are monotonous. They have all the same difficulties to encounter, although they do not all meet with the same glory. How many secrets may the man of genius learn from literary anecdotes! important secrets, which his friends will not convey to him.

He traces the effects of similar studies; warned sometimes by failures, and often animated by watching the incipient and shadowy attempts which closed in a great work. From one he learns in what manner he planned and corrected; from another he may overcome those obstacles which, perhaps, at that very moment make him rise in despair from his own unfinished labour. What perhaps he had in vain desired to know for half his life is revealed to him by a literary anecdote; and thus the amus.e.m.e.nts of indolent hours may impart the vigour of study; as we find sometimes in the fruit we have taken for pleasure the medicine which restores our health. How superficial is that cry of some impertinent pretended geniuses of these times who affect to exclaim, "Give me no anecdotes of an author, but give me his works!" I have often found the anecdotes more interesting than the works.

Dr. Johnson devoted one of his periodical papers to a defence of anecdotes, and expresses himself thus on certain collectors of anecdotes: "They are not always so happy as to select the most important. I know not well what advantage posterity can receive from the only circ.u.mstance by which Tickell has distinguished _Addison_ from the rest of mankind,--the _irregularity of his pulse_; nor can I think myself overpaid for the time spent in reading the life of _Malherbe_, by being enabled to relate, after the learned biographer, that Malherbe had two predominant opinions; one, that the looseness of a single woman might destroy all her boast of ancient descent; the other, that French beggars made use, very improperly and barbarously, of the phrase _n.o.ble gentlemen_, because either word included the sense of both."

These just observations may, perhaps, be further ill.u.s.trated by the following notices. Dr. J. Warton has informed the world that _many of our poets have been handsome_. This, certainly, neither concerns the world, nor the cla.s.s of poets. It is trifling to tell us that Dr.

Johnson was accustomed "_to cut his nails to the quick_." I am not much gratified by being informed, that Menage wore _a greater number of stockings_ than any other person, excepting one, whose name I have really forgotten. The biographer of Cujas, a celebrated lawyer, says that _two things_ were _remarkable_ of this _scholar_. The _first_, that he studied on the floor, lying prostrate on a carpet, with his books about him; and, _secondly_, that his perspiration exhaled an agreeable smell, which he used to inform his friends he had in common with Alexander the Great! This admirable biographer should have told us whether he frequently turned from his very uneasy att.i.tude. Somebody informs us, that Guy Patin resembled Cicero, whose statue is preserved at Rome; on which he enters into a comparison of Patin with Cicero; but a man may resemble a _statue_ of Cicero, and yet not be Cicero. Baillet loads his life of Descartes with a thousand minutiae, which less disgrace the philosopher than the biographer. Was it worth informing the public, that Descartes was very particular about his wigs; that he had them manufactured at Paris; and that he always kept four? That he wore green taffety in France: but that in Holland he quitted taffety for cloth; and that he was fond of omelets of eggs?

It is an odd observation of Clarendon in his own life, that "Mr.

Chillingworth was of a stature little superior to Mr. Hales; and it _was an age in which there were many great and wonderful men of_ THAT SIZE."

Lord Falkland, formerly Sir Lucius Carey, was of a low stature, and smaller than most men; and of Sidney G.o.dolphin, "There was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room; so that Lord Falkland used to say merrily, that he thought it was a great ingredient in his friends.h.i.+p for Mr. G.o.dolphin, that he was pleased to be found in his company where he was the properer man." This irrelevant observation of Lord Clarendon is an instance where a great mind will sometimes draw inferences from accidental coincidences, and establish them into a general principle; as if the small size of the men had even the remotest connexion with their genius and their virtues. Perhaps, too, there was in this a tincture of the superst.i.tions of the times: whatever it was, the fact ought not to have degraded the truth and dignity of historical narrative. We have writers who cannot discover the particulars which characterise THE MAN--their souls, like damp gunpowder, cannot ignite with the spark when it falls on them.

Yet of anecdotes which appear trifling, something may be alleged in their defence. It is certainly safer for _some_ writers to give us all they know, than to try their discernment for rejection. Let us sometimes recollect, that the page over which we toil will probably furnish materials for authors of happier talents. I would rather have a Birch, or a Hawkins, appear heavy, cold, and prolix, than that anything material which concerns a Tillotson, or a Johnson, should be lost. It must also be confessed, that an anecdote, or a circ.u.mstance, which may appear inconsequential to a reader, may bear some remote or latent connexion: a biographer who has long contemplated the character he records, sees many connexions which escape an ordinary reader. Kippis, in closing the life of the diligent Dr. Birch, has, from his own experience, no doubt, formed an apology for that minute research, which some have thought this writer carried to excess. "It may be alleged in our author's favour, that a man who has a deep and extensive acquaintance with a subject, often sees a connexion and importance in some smaller circ.u.mstances, which may not immediately be discerned by others; and, on that account, may have reasons for inserting them, that will escape the notice of superficial minds."

CONDEMNED POETS.

I flatter myself that those readers who have taken any interest in my volume have not conceived me to have been deficient in the elevated feeling which, from early life, I have preserved for the great literary character: if time weaken our enthusiasm, it is the coldness of age which creeps on us, but the principle is unalterable which inspired the sympathy. Who will not venerate those master-spirits "whose PUBLISHED LABOURS advance the good of mankind," and those BOOKS which are "the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life?" But it has happened that I have more than once incurred the censure of the inconsiderate and the tasteless, for attempting to separate those writers who exist in a state of perpetual illusion; who live on querulously, which is an evil for themselves, and to no purpose of life, which is an evil to others. I have been blamed for exemplifying "the illusions of writers in verse,"[168] by the remarkable case of Percival Stockdale,[169] who, after a condemned silence of nearly half a century, like a vivacious spectre throwing aside his shroud in gaiety, came forward, a venerable man in his eightieth year, to a.s.sure us of the immortality of one of the worst poets of his age; and for this wrote his own memoirs, which only proved, that when authors are troubled with a literary hallucination, and possess the unhappy talent of reasoning in their madness, a little raillery, if it cannot cure, may serve at least as a salutary regimen.

I shall ill.u.s.trate the case of condemned authors who will still be pleading after their trials, by a foreign dramatic writer. Among those incorrigible murmurers at public justice, not the least extraordinary was a M. Peyraud de Beaussol, who, in 1775, had a tragedy, _Les Arsacides_, in six acts, printed, "not as it was acted," as Fielding says on the t.i.tle-page of one of his comedies, but "as it was d.a.m.ned!"

In a preface, this _Sir Fretful_, more inimitable than that original, with all the gravity of an historical narrative, details the public conspiracy; and with all the pathetic touches of a s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner, the agonies of his literary egotism.

He declares that it is absurd to condemn a piece which they can only know by the t.i.tle, for heard it had never been! And yet he observes, with infinite _navete_, "My piece is as generally condemned as if the world had it all by heart."

One of the great objections against this tragedy was its monstrous plan of six acts; this innovation did not lean towards improvement in the minds of those who had endured the long sufferings of tragedies of the accepted size. But the author offers some solemn reasons to induce us to believe that six acts were so far from being too many, that the piece had been more perfect with a seventh! M. de Beaussol had, perhaps, been happy to have known, that other dramatists have considered that the usual restrictions are detrimental to a grand genius. Nat. Lee, when in Bedlam, wrote a play in twenty-five acts.