Chapter 8

PINAKIDIA.

Under the head of “Random Thoughts,” “Odds and Ends,” “Stray Leaves,” “Scraps,” “Brevities,” and a variety of similar titles, we occasionally meet, in periodicals and elsewhere, with papers of rich interest and value—the result, in some cases, of much thought and more research, expended, however, at a manifest disadvantage, if we regard merely the estimate which the public are willing to set upon such articles. It sometimes occurs that in papers of this nature may be found a collective mass of general, but more usually of classical erudition, which, if dexterously besprinkled over a proper surface of narrative, would be sufficient to make the fortunes of one or two hundred ordinary novelists in these our good days, when all heroes and heroines are necessarily men and women of “extensive acquirements.” But, for the most part, these “Brevities,” &c. are either piecemeal cullings at second hand, from a variety of sources hidden or supposed to be hidden, or more audacious pilferings from those vast storehouses of brief facts, memoranda, and opinions in general literature, which are so abundant in all the principal libraries of Germany and France. Of the former species, theKoranof Lawrence Sterne is, at the same time, one of the most consummately impudent and silly; and it may well be doubted whether a single paragraph of any merit in the whole of it may not be found,nearly verbatim, in the works of some one of hisimmediate cotemporaries. If theLaconof Mr. Colton is any better, its superiority consists altogether in a deeper ingenuity in disguising his stolen wares, and in that prescriptive right of the strongest which, time out of mind, has decided upon calling every Napoleon a conqueror, and every Dick Turpin a thief. Seneca; Machiavelli;1Balzac, the author of “La Maniere de bien Penser;” Bielfeld, the German, who wrote, in French, “Les Premiers Traits de L'Erudition Universelle;” Rochefoucault; Bacon; Bolingbroke; and especially Burdon, of “Materials for Thinking” memory, possess, among them, indisputable claims to the ownership of nearly every thing worth owning in the book.

1It is remarkable that much of what Colton has stolen from Machiavelli, was previously stolen by Machiavelli from Plutarch. A MS. book of theApophthegms of the Ancients, by this latter writer, having fallen into Machiavelli's hands, he put them nearly all into the mouth of his hero, Castrucio Castricani.

Of the latter species of theft, we see frequent specimens in the continental magazines of Europe, and occasionally meet with them even in the lower class of periodicals in Great Britain. These specimens are usually extracts, by wholesale, from such works as the “Bibliotheque des Memorabilia Literaria,” the “Recueil des Bons Pensées,” the “Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses,” the “Literary Memoirs” of Sallengré, the “Melanges Literaires” of Suard and André, or the “Pieces Interressantes et peu Connues” of La Place. D'Israeli's “Curiosities of Literature,” “Literary Character,” and “Calamities of Authors,” have, of late years, proved exceedingly convenient to some little American pilferers in this line, but are now becoming too generally known to allow much hope of their good things being any longer appropriated with impunity.

Such collections, as those of which we have been speaking, are usually entertaining in themselves, and, for the most part, we relish every thing about them save their pretensions to originality. In offering, ourselves, something of the kind to the readers of the Messenger, we wish to be understood as disclaiming, in a great degree, every such pretension. Most of the following article is original, and will be readily recognized as such by the classical and general reader—some portions of it may have been written down in the words, or nearly in the words, of the primitive authorities. The whole is taken from a confused mass of marginal notes, and entries in a common-place-book. No certain arrangement has been considered necessary; and, indeed, so heterogeneous a farrago it would have been an endless task to methodize. We have chosen the headingPinakidia, or Tablets, as one sufficiently comprehensive. It was used, for a somewhat similar purpose, by Dionysius of Harlicarnassus.

The whole of Bulwer's elaborate argument on the immortality of the soul, which he has put into the mouth of the “Ambitious Student,” may be confuted through the author's omission of one particular point in his summary of the attributes of Deity—a point which we cannot believe omitted altogether through accident. A single link is deficient in the chain—but the chain is worthless without it. No man doubts the immortality of the soul—yet of all truths this truth of immortality is the most difficult to prove by any mere series of syllogisms. We would refer our readers to the argument here mentioned.

The rude rough wild waste has its power to please,

a line in one Mr. Odiorne's poem, “The Progress of Refinement,” is pronounced by the American author of a book entitled “Ante-Diluvian Antiquities,” “the very best alliteration in all poetry.”

TheTurkish Spyis the original of many similar works—among the best of which are Montesquieu'sPersian Letters, and theBritish Spyof our own Wirt. It was written undoubtedly by John Paul Marana, an Italian,inItalian, but probably was first published in French. Dr. Johnson, who saw only an English translation, supposed it an English work. Marana died in 1693.

The hunter and the deer a shade

is a much admired line in Campbell'sGertrude of Wyoming—but the identical line is to be found in the poems of the American Freneau.

Corneille's celebratedMoiof Medea is borrowed from Seneca. Racine, in Phœdra, has stolen nearly the whole scene of the declaration of love from the same puerile writer.

The peculiar zodiac of the comets is comprised in these verses of Cassini—

Antinous, Pegasusque, Andromeda, Taurus, Orion,Procyon, atque Hydrus, Centaurus, Scorpius, Arcus.

Speaking of the usual representation of the banquet-scene in Macbeth, Von Raumer, the German historian, mentions a shadowy figure thrown by optical means into the chair of Banquo, and producing intense effect upon the audience. Enslen, a German optician, conceived this idea, and accomplished it without difficulty.

A religious hubbub, such as the world has seldom seen, was excited, during the reign of Frederic II, by theimaginedvirulence of a book entitled “The Three Impostors.” It was attributed to Pierre des Vignes, chancellor of the king, who was accused by the Pope of having treated the religions of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet as political fables. The work in question, however, which was squabbled about, abused, defended, and familiarlyquotedby all parties, is well proved never to have existed.

The word Τυχη, or Fortune, does not appear once in the whole Iliad.

The “Lamentations” of Jeremiah are written, with the exception of the last chapter, in acrostic verse: that is to say, every line or couplet begins, in alphabetical order, with some letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In the third chapter each letter is repeated three times successively.

The fullest account of the Amazons is to be found in Diodorus Siculus.

Theophrastus, in his botanical works, anticipated thesexual system of Linnæus. Philolaus of Crotona maintained that comets appeared after a certain revolution—and Æcetes contended for the existence of what is now called the new world. Pulci, “the sire of the half-serious rhyme,” has a passage expressly alluding to a western continent. Dante, two centuries before, has the same allusion.

De vostri sensi ch è del rimanenteNon vogliate negar l'esperenzaDiretro al sol, del mondo sensa gente.

Cicero makesfinismasculine, Virgil feminine. Usque ad eum finem—Cicero. Quæ finis standi? Hæc finis Priami fatorum—Virgil.

Dante left a poem in three languages—Latin, Provençal, and Italian. Rambaud de Vachieras left one in five.

Marcus Antoninus wrote a book entitled Των εις εαυτον—Of the things which concern himself. It would be a good title for a Diary.

Lipsius, in his treatise “De Supplicio Crucis,” says that the upright beam of the cross was afixtureat the place of execution, whither the criminal was made to bear only the transverse arm. Consequently the painters are in error who depict our Savior bearing the entire cross.

The stream flowing through the middle of the valley of Jehoshaphat, is called, in the Gospel of St. John, “the brook of cedars.” In the Septuagint the word is κεδρον, darkness, from the Hebrew Kiddar, black, and not κεδρων, of cedars.

Seneca says that Appion, a grammarian of the age of Caligula, maintained that Homer himself made the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into books, and evidences the first word of the Iliad, Μηνιν, the Μη of which signifies 48, the number of books in both poems. Seneca however adds, “Talia sciat oportet qui multa vult scire.”

The tale in Plato's “Convivium,” that man at first was male and female, and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a natural love towards one another, seems to be only a corruption of the account in Genesis of Eve's being made from Adam's rib.

Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies;

Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau—La moitié de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau

which may be thus translated,

Weep, weep, my eyes! it is no time to laughFor half myself has buried the other half.

Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this inscription—“Ingresso alla prigione di Torquato Tasso.”

Hedelin, a Frenchman, in the beginning of the 18th century, denied that any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to be made up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et circulatorum—à la maniere des chansons du Pontneuf.

The Rabbi Manasseh published a book at Amsterdam entitled “The Hopes of Israel.” It was founded upon the supposed number and power of the Jews in America. This supposition was derived from a fabulous account by Montesini of his having found a vast concourse of Jews among the Cordilleras.

The wordassassinis derived according to Hyle from Hassa, to kill. Some bring it from Hassan, the first chief of the association—some from the Jewish Essenes—Lemoine from a word meaning “herbage”—De Sacy and Hammer from “hashish” the opiate of hemp leaves, of which the assassins made a singular use.

“Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur” was a law of the twelve tables.

The origin of the phrase “corporal oath” is to be found in the ancient usage of touching, upon occasion of attestation, thecorporaleor cloth which covered the consecrated articles.

Montgomery in his lectures onLiterature(!) has the following—“Who does not turn with absolute contempt from the rings and gems, and filters, and caves and genii of Eastern Tales as from the trinkets of a toyshop, and the trumpery of a raree-show?” What man of genius but must answer “Not I.”

The Abbè de St. Pierre has fixed in his language two significant words, viz:bienfaisance, and the diminutivela gloriole.

There is no particular air known throughout Switzerland by the name of the Ranz des Vaches. Every canton has its own song varying in words, notes and even language. Mr. Cooper, the novelist, is our authority.

Incidis in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim

is neither in Virgil nor Ovid, as often supposed, but in the “Alexandrics” of Philip Gualtier a French poet of the thirteenth century.

Under a portrait of Tiberio Fiurilli who invented the character of Scaramouch, are these verses,

Cet illustre ComedienDe son art traca la carriere:Il fut le maitre de MoliereEt la Nature fut le sien.

A curious passage in a letter from Cicero to his literary friend Papyrius Pætus, shows that our custom of annexing a farce or pantomime to a tragic drama existed among the Romans.

In Cary's “Dante” is the following passage—

And pilgrim newly on his road with loveThrills if he hear the vesper bell from farThat seems to mourn for the expiring day.

Gray has also

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.

Marmontel in the “Encyclopedie” declares that the Italians did not possess a single comedy worth reading—therein displaying his ignorance. Some of the greatestnames in Italian Literature were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies—many of a high order.

A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of “Paradise Lost.” Andreini's Adamo was the model of Milton's Adam.

Milton has the expression “Forget thyself to marble.” Pope has the line “I have not yet forgot myself to stone.”

The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun in the first book of the Paradise Lost, had nearly occasioned the suppression of that epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion.

Campbell's line

Like angel visits few and far between,

is a palpable plagiarism. Blair has

Its visitsLike angel visits short and far between.

In Hudibras are these lines—

Each window like the pillory appearsWith heads thrust through, nailed by the ears.

Young in his “Love of Fame” has the following—

An opera, like a pillory, may be saidTo nail our ears down and expose our head.

Goldsmith's celebrated lines

Man wants but little here belowNor wants that little long,

are stolen from Young; who has

Man wants but little, nor that little long.

The character of the ancient Bacchus, that graceful divinity, seems to have been little understood by Dryden. The line in Virgil

Et quocunque deus circum caput egithonestum

is thus grossly mistranslated,

On whate'er side he turns hishonestface.

There are about one thousand lines identical in the Iliad and Odyssey.

Macrobius gives the form of an imprecation by which the Romans believed whole towns could be demolished and armies defeated. It commences “Dis Pater sive Jovis mavis sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare,” and ends “Si hæc ita faxitis ut ego sciam, sentiam, intelligamque, tum quisquis votum hoc faxit recte factum esto, ovibus atris tribus, Tellus mater, teque Jupiter, obtestor.”

The “Courtier” of Baldazzar Castiglione, 1528, is the first attempt at periodical moral Essay with which we are acquainted. The Noctes Atticæ of Aulus Gellius cannot be allowed to rank as such.

These lines were written over the closet door of M. Menard,

Las d'esperer, et de me plaindreDe l'amour, des grands, et du sortC'est ici que J'attends la mortSans la desirer ou la craindre.

Martin Luther in his reply to Henry VIIIth's book by which the latter acquired the title of “Defender of the Faith,” calls the monarch very unceremoniously “a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon dressed in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face.”

The Psalter of Solomon, which contains 18 psalms, is a work which was found in Greek in the library of Ausburg, and has been translated into Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda. It is supposed not to be Solomon's, but the work of some Hellenistical Jew, and composed in imitation of David's Psalms. The Psalter was known to the ancients, and was formerly in the famous Alexandrian MS.

An unshaped kind of something first appeared,

is a line in Cowley's famous description of the Creation.

It is probable that the queen of Sheba was Balkis—that Sheba was a kingdom in the Southern part of Arabia Felix, and that the people were called Sabæans. These lines of Claudian relate to the people and queen,

Medis, levibusque SabæisImperat hic sexus; reginarumque sub armisBarbariæ magna pars jacet.

Sheridan declared he would rather be the author of the ballad called Hosier's Ghost, by Glover, than of the Annals of Tacitus.

The word Jehovah is not Hebrew. The Hebrews had no such letters as J or V. The word is properly Iah-Uah—compounded of Iah Essence and Uah Existing. Its full meaning is the self-existing essence of all things.

The “Song of Solomon” throwing aside the heading of the chapters, which is the work of the English translators, contains nothing which relates to the Savior or the Church. It does not, like every other sacred book, contain even the name of the Deity.

In the Vatican is an ancient picture of Adam, with the Latin inscription “Adam divinitus edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor.”

The word translated “slanderers” in I Timothy iii, 2, and that translated “false accusers” in Titus ii, 3, are “female devils” in the original Greek of the New Testament.

The Hebrew language contains no word (except perhaps Jehovah) which conveys to the mind the idea of Eternity. The translators of the Old Testament have used the word Eternity but once.

“The slipper of Cinderella,” says the editor of the new edition of Warton “finds a parallel in the history of the celebrated Rhodope.” Cinderella is a tale of universal currency. An ancient Danish ballad has some of the incidents. It is popular among the Welch—also among the Poles—in Hesse and Swerhn. Schottky found it among the Servian fables. Rollenbagen in his Froschmauseler speaks of it as the tale of the despisedAschen-possel. Luther mentions it. It is in the Italian Pentamerone under the title of Cenerentola.

Porphyry, than whom no one could be better acquainted with the theology of the ancients, acknowledged Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpina, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs to be one and the same.

Servius on Virgil's Æneid speaks of abeardedVenus. The poet Calvus in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other titles calls Jupiter theMotherof the Gods.

In Suidas is a letter from Dionysius, the Areopagite, dated Heliopolis, in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ's crucifixion) to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of the sun at noon. “Either,” says Dionysius “the author of nature suffers, or he sympathizes with some who do.”

The most particular history of the Deluge, and the nearest of any to the account given by Moses is to be found in Lucian (De Dea Syria.)

The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco.

So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535 years, for according to

The book of Jasher, said to have been preserved from the deluge by Noah, but since lost, was extant in the time of Joshua, and in the time of David. Mr. Bryant thinks, however, very justly, that the ten tables of stone were the first written characters. The book of Jasher is mentioned Joshua x. 13, and 2 Samuel i. 18.

Andrè Chenier, imprisoned during the French Revolution, began thus some lines on his unhappy situation,

Peut-être avant que l'heure en cercle promenéeAit posè sur l'email brillantDans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornèeSon pied sonore et vigilant,Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere—

At this instant Andrè Chenier was interrupted by the officials of the guillotine.

Archbishop Usher, in a MS. of St. Patrick's life, said to have been found at Louvain as an original of a very remote date, detected several entire passages purloined from his own writings.

An extract from the “Mystery of St. Denis” is in the “Bibliotheque du Theatre Francois, depuis son origine, Dresde. 1768.” In this serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length decapitated, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.

The idea of “No light but rather darkness visible” was perhaps suggested to Milton by Spenser's

A little glooming light much like a shade.

In the Dutch Vondel's tragedy “The Deliverance of the Children of Israel” one of the principal characters is the Divinity himself.

Darwin is indebted for a great part of his “Great poem” to a Latin one by De La Croix, published in 1727 and entitled “Connubia Florum.”

Mr. Bryant in his learned “Mythology” says that although the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities.

The shield of Achilles in Homer seems to have been copied from some Pharos which the poet had seen in Egypt. What he describes on the central part of the shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial appearances.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ is said to have prophecied that a stone would fall from the sun. This is a mistake of the learned. All that Anaxagoras averred may be seen in the Scholiast upon Pindar (Olymp. Ode. 1.) It amounts only to this, that Petros was a name of the sun.

The Hebrew language has lain now for two thousand years mute and incapable of utterance. The “Masoretical punctuation” which professes to supply the vowels was formed a thousand years after the language had ceased to be spoken, and disagrees in many instances with the Seventy, Origen and other writers.

James Montgomery thinks proper to style M'Pherson's Ossian, a collection “of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs.”

The paucity of spondees in the English language, is the reason why we cannot tolerate an English Hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia, thus speaks of Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse:

So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace:Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar;But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse.

His form had not yet lostAllheroriginal brightness,

is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, wherein aperson is personified.

It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme: the terminations of the lines where they are most distinct, never showing any thing of the kind.

Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Arqua.

Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcæ.Suscipe, virgo parens, animam: sate virgine, parce,Fessaque jam terris, cœli requiescat in arce.

“Statua Statuæ” was an inscription handed about at Paris for the equestrian statue of Louis XV, begun by Bouchardon and finished by Pigal. The following also,

Bouchardon est un animalEt son ouvrage fait pitié:Il place les vices à chevalEt les vertus à pied.

And another,

Voila notre roi comme il est à VersaillesSans foi, sans loi, et sans entrailles.

Bochart derives Elysium from the Phœnician Elysoth, joy, through the Greek Ἠλυσιον. Circe from the Phœnician Kirkar, to corrupt—Siren from the Phœnician Sir, to sing—Scylla from the Phœnician Scol, destruction—Charybdis from the Phœnician Chor-obdam, chasm of ruin.

Attrogs, a fruit common in Palestine, is supposed to have been “the forbidden.” It has a rough rind, and resembles a citron or lemon.

The following quaint sentence is found in Saint Evremond. “I own I do not envy him, when I consider that there are in the next world such people as Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Eacus.”

The standard of Judas Maccabæus displayed the words “Mi camoca baelim Jehovah”—Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? This being afterwards intimated by the first letter of each word, in the manner of the S. P. Q. R., gave rise to the surname Maccabæus—for the initials in Hebrew form “Maccabi.”

Josephus, with Saint Paul and others, supposed man to be compounded of body, soul, and spirit. The distinction between soul and spirit is an essential point in ancient philosophy.

Lord Lyttleton acknowledged the authorship of two dialogues, in the first of which the personages were the Savior and Socrates, in the second king David and Cæsar Borgia.

Dante gives the name ofsonnetto his little canzone or ode beginning

O voi che per la via d'Amor passate.

Boileau is mistaken in saying that Petrarch ‘qui est regardé comme le pere du sonnet’ borrowed it from the French or Provençal writers. The Italian sonnet can be traced back as far as the year 1200. Petrarch was not born until 1304.

The learned Menage has this epitaph on Sannazarius

Ci git, dont l'esprit fût si beau,Sannazar, ce poete habile,Qui par ses vers divins approche de Virgile,Plus encore que par son tombeau.

The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa,

Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove;No—make me mistress to the man I love

are to be found in the original letters of Eloisa—at least the thought.

Mercier, in “L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante” seriously maintains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and J. D'Israeli says there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to the understanding.

One of the best epigrams affixed to the statue of Pasquin was the following upon Paul III,

Ut canerent data multa olim sunt vatibus æraUt taceam quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?

Milton in Paradise Lost, has this passage,

——when thescourgeInexorably, and thetorturing hourCall us to penance.

Gray, in his Ode to Adversity, has

Thou tamer of the human breastWhose ironscourge, andtorturing hourThe bad affright.

Gray tells us that the image of his bard, where

Loose his beard, and hoary hairStreamed like a meteor to the troubled air

was taken from a picture by Raphael: yet the beard of Hudibras is also likened to a meteor,

This hairy meteor did denounceThe fall of sceptres and of crowns.

The lines

For he that fights and runs awayMay live to fight another day,But he that is in battle slainWill never rise to fight again

are not to be found, as is thought, in Hudibras. Butler's verses ran thus;

For he that flies may fight againWhich he can never do that's slain.

The former are in a volume of ‘Poems’ by Sir John Mennes, reign of Charles II. The original idea is in Demosthenes. Ανερ ο φεογων και παλιν μαχησεται.

“Semel insanivimus omnes” is not from Horace but from Mantuanus, an Italian. In a work entitled “De honesto amore” is this line,

Id commune malum, semel insanivimus omnes.

Dryden in ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ has these lines,

David for him his tuneful harp had strungAnd heaven had wanted one immortal song.

Pope in his Epistle to Arbuthnot has

Friend of my life which did not you prolongThe world had wanted many an idle song.

Tickell's lines

While the charmed reader with thy thought compliesAnd views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes,

are evidently borrowed from those of Boileau,

En vain contre ‘Le Cid’ un ministre se ligue;Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue.

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