REMARKS IN THE PRINTING OFFICE. THE AUTHOR CONFESSES A DISPOSITION TO GARRULITY. PROPRIETY OF PROVIDING CERTAIN CHAPTERS FOR THE RECEPTION OF HIS EXTRANEOUS DISCOURSE. CHOICE OF AN APPELLATION FOR SUCH CHAPTERS.
EXCEPTIONS TO ONE OF KING SOLOMON'S RULES—A WINTER'S EVENING AT DANIEL'S FIRE-SIDE.
EXCEPTIONS TO ONE OF KING SOLOMON'S RULES—A WINTER'S EVENING AT DANIEL'S FIRE-SIDE.
These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater length, but I think a little plot of ground, thick sown, is better than a great field which, for the most part of it, lies fallow.
NORRIS.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old his feet will not depart from it.” Generally speaking it will be found so; but is there any other rule to which there are so many exceptions?
Ask the serious Christian as he calls himself, or the Professor (another and more fitting appellative which the Christian Pharisees have chosen for themselves)—ask him whether he has found it hold good? Whether his sons when they attained to years of discretion (which are the most indiscreet years in the course of human life) have profited as he expected by the long extemporaneous prayers to which they listened night and morning, the sad sabbaths which they were compelled to observe, and the soporific sermons which closed the domestic religiosities of those melancholy days? Ask him if this discipline has prevented them from running headlong into the follies and vices of the age? from being birdlimed by dissipation? or caught in the spider's web of sophistry and unbelief? “It is no doubt a true observation,” says Bishop Patrick, “that the ready way to make the minds of youth grow awry, is to lace them too hard, by denying them their just freedom.”
Ask the old faithful servant of Mammon, whom Mammon has rewarded to his heart's desire, and in whom the acquisition of riches has only encreased his eagerness for acquiring more—ask him whether he has succeeded in training up his heir to the same service? He will tell you that the young man is to be found upon race-grounds, and in gaming-houses, that he is taking his swing of extravagance and excess, and is on the high road to ruin.
Ask the wealthy Quaker, the pillar of the meeting—most orthodox in heterodoxy,—who never wore a garment of forbidden cut or colour, never bent his body in salutation, or his knees in prayer,—never uttered the heathen name of a day or month, nor ever addrest himself to any person without religiously speaking illegitimate English,—ask him how it has happened that the tailor has converted his sons? He will fold his hands, and twirl his thumbs mournfully in silence. It has not been for want of training them in the way wherein it was his wish that they should go.
You are about, Sir, to send your son to a public school; Eton or Westminster; Winchester or Harrow; Rugby or the Charter House, no matter which. He may come from either an accomplished scholar to the utmost extent that school education can make him so; he may be the better both for its discipline and its want of discipline; it may serve him excellently well as a preparatory school for the world into which he is about to enter. But also he may come away an empty coxcomb or a hardened brute—a spendthrift—a profligate—a blackguard or a sot.
To put a boy in the way he should go, is like sending out a ship well found, well manned and stored, and with a careful captain; but there are rocks and shallows in her course, winds and currents to be encountered, and all the contingencies and perils of the sea.
How often has it been seen that sons, not otherwise deficient in duty toward their parents, have, in the most momentous concerns of life, taken the course most opposite to that in which they were trained to go, going wrong where the father would have directed them aright, or taking the right path in spite of all inducements and endeavours for leading them wrong! The son of Charles Wesley, born and bred in methodism and bound to it by all the strongest ties of pride and prejudice, became a papist. This indeed was but passing from one erroneous persuasion to another, and a more inviting one. But Isaac Casaubon also had the grief of seeing a son seduced into the Romish superstition, and on the part of that great and excellent man, there had been no want of discretion in training him, nor of sound learning and sound wisdom. Archbishop Leighton, an honor to his church, his country, and his kind, was the child of one of those firebrands who kindled the Great Rebellion. And Franklin had a son, who notwithstanding the example of his father (and such a father!) continued stedfast in his duty as a soldier and a subject; he took the unsuccessful side—but
nunquam successu crescat honestum.1
nunquam successu crescat honestum.1
1LUCAN.
No such disappointment was destined to befal our Daniel. The way in which he trained up his son was that into which the bent of the boy's own nature would have led him; and all circumstances combined to favour the tendency of his education. The country abounding in natural objects of sublimity and beauty (some of these singular in their kind) might have impressed a duller imagination than had fallen to his lot; and that imagination had time enough for its workings during his solitary walks to and from school morning and evening. His home was in a lonely spot; and having neither brother nor sister, nor neighbours near enough in any degree to supply their place as playmates, he became his father's companion imperceptibly as he ceased to be his fondling. And the effect was hardly less apparent in Daniel than in the boy. He was no longer the same taciturn person as of yore; it seemed as if his tongue had been loosened, and when the reservoirs of his knowledge were opened they flowed freely.
Their chimney corner on a winter's evening presented a group not unworthy of Sir Joshua's pencil. There sate Daniel, richer in marvellous stories than ever traveller who in the days of mendacity returned from the East; the peat fire shining upon a countenance which weather-hardened as it was, might have given the painter a model for a Patriarch, so rare was the union which it exhibited of intelligence, benevolence and simplicity. There sate the boy with open eyes and ears, raised head, and fallen lip, in all the happiness of wonder and implicit belief. There sate Dinah, not less proud of her husband's learning than of the towardly disposition and promising talents of her son,—twirling the thread at her spinning wheel, but attending to all that past; and when there was a pause in the discourse, fetching a deep sigh, and exclaiming “Lord bless us! what wonderful things there are in the world!” There also sate Haggy, knitting stockings, and sharing in the comforts and enjoyments of the family when the day's work was done. And there sate William Dove;—but William must have a chapter to himself.
ONE WHO WAS NOT SO WISE AS HIS FRIENDS COULD HAVE WISHED, AND YET QUITE AS HAPPY AS IF HE HAD BEEN WISER. NEPOTISM NOT CONFINED TO POPES.
William Dove was Daniel's only surviving brother, seven years his junior. He was born with one of those heads in which the thin partition that divides great wits from folly is wanting. Had he come into the world a century sooner, he would have been takennolens volensinto some Baron's household, to wear motley, make sport for the guests and domestics, and live in fear of the rod. But it was his better fortune to live in an age when this calamity rendered him liable to no such oppression, and to be precisely in that station which secured for him all the enjoyments of which he was capable, and all the care he needed. In higher life, he would probably have been consigned to the keeping of strangers who would have taken charge of him for pay; in a humbler degree he must have depended upon the parish for support; or have been made an inmate of one of those moral lazar-houses in which age and infancy, the harlot and the idiot, the profligate and the unfortunate are herded together.
William Dove escaped these aggravations of calamity. He escaped also that persecution to which he would have been exposed in populous places where boys run loose in packs, and harden one another in impudence, mischief and cruelty. Natural feeling, when natural feeling is not corrupted, leads men to regard persons in his condition with a compassion not unmixed with awe. It is common with the country people when they speak of such persons to point significantly at the head and say'tis not all there;—words denoting a sense of the mysteriousness of our nature which perhaps they feel more deeply on this than on any other occasion. No outward and visible deformity can make them so truly apprehend how fearfully and wonderfully we are made.
William Dove's was not a case of fatuity. Thoughallwas not there, there was a great deal. He was what is calledhalf-saved. Some of his faculties were more than ordinarily acute, but the power of self conduct was entirely wanting in him. Fortunately it was supplied by a sense of entire dependence which produced entire docility. A dog does not obey his master more dutifully than William obeyed his brother; and in this obedience there was nothing of fear; with all the strength and simplicity of a child's love, it had also the character and merit of a moral attachment.
The professed and privileged Fool was generally characterized by a spice of knavery, and not unfrequently of maliciousness: the unnatural situation in which he was placed, tended to excite such propensities and even to produce them. William had shrewdness enough for the character, but nothing of this appeared in his disposition; ill-usage might perhaps have awakened it, and to a fearful degree, if he had proved as sensible to injury as he was to kindness. But he had never felt an injury. He could not have been treated with more tenderness in Turkey (where a degree of holiness is imputed to persons in his condition) than was uniformly shewn him within the little sphere of his perambulations. It was surprizing how much he had picked up within that little sphere. Whatever event occurred, whatever tale was current, whatever traditions were preserved, whatever superstitions were believed, William knew them all; and all that his insatiable ear took in, his memory hoarded. Half the proverbial sayings in Ray's volume were in his head, and as many more with which Ray was unacquainted. He knew many of the stories which our children are now receiving as novelties in the selections from Grimm'sKinder- und Haus-Marchen, and as many of those which are collected in the Danish Folk-Sagn. And if some zealous lover of legendary lore, (like poor John Leyden, or Sir Walter Scott) had fallen in with him, the Shakesperian commentators might perhaps have had the whole story of St. Withold; the Wolf of the World's End might have been identified with Fenris and found to be a relic of the Scalds: and Rauf Collyer and John the Reeve might still have been as well known as Adam Bell, and Clym of the Clough and William of Cloudeslie.
William had a great fondness for his nephew. Let not Protestants suppose that Nepotism is an affection confined to the dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church. In its excess indeed it is peculiarly a Papal vice,—which is a degree higher than a Cardinal one; but like many other sins it grows out of the corruption of a good feeling. It may be questioned whether fond uncles are not as numerous as unkind ones, notwithstanding our recollections of King Richard and the Children in the Wood. We may use the epithet nepotious for those who carry this fondness to the extent of doting, and as expressing that degree of fondness it may be applied to William Dove: he was a nepotious uncle. The father regarded young Daniel with a deeper and more thoughtful, but not with a fonder affection, not with such a doting attachment. Dinah herself, though a fond as well as careful mother did not more thoroughly
and perhaps the boy so long as he was incapable of distinguishing between their moral qualities, and their relative claims to his respect and love and duty, loved his uncle most of the three. The father had no idle hours; in the intervals when he was not otherwise employed, one of his dear books usually lay open before him, and if he was not feeding upon the page, he was ruminating the food it had afforded him. But William Dove from the time that his nephew became capable of noticing and returning caresses seemed to have concentered upon him all his affections. With children affection seldom fails of finding its due return; and if he had not thus won the boy's heart in infancy, he would have secured it in childhood by winning his ear with these marvellous stories. But he possessed another talent which would alone have made him a favourite with children,—the power of imitating animal sounds with singular perfection. A London manager would have paid him well for performing the cock in Hamlet. He could bray in octaves to a nicety, set the geese gabbling by addressing them in their own tongue, and make the turkey-cock spread his fan, brush his wing against the ground, and angrily gob-gobble in answer to a gobble of defiance. But he prided himself more upon his success with the owls, as an accomplishment of more difficult attainment. In this Mr. Wordsworth's boy of Winander was not more perfect. Both hands were used as an instrument in producing the notes; and if Pope could have heard the responses which came from barn and doddered oak and ivied crag, he would rather, (satirist as he was,) have left Ralph unsatirized, than have vilified one of the wildest and sweetest of nocturnal sounds.
1DONNE.
He was not less expert to a human ear in hitting off the wood-pigeon's note, though he could not in this instance provoke a reply. This sound he used to say ought to be natural to him, and it was wrong in the bird not to acknowledge his relation. Once when he had made too free with a lasses lips, he disarmed his brother of a reprehensive look, by pleading that as his name was William Dove it behoved him both tobilland tocoo.
A WORD TO THE READER, SHEWING WHERE WE ARE, AND HOW WE CAME HERE, AND WHEREFORE; AND WHITHER WE ARE GOING.
Reader, you have not forgotten where we are at this time: you remember I trust, that we are neither at Dan nor Beersheba; nor any where between those two celebrated places; nor on the way to either of them: but that we are in the Doctor's parlour, that Mrs. Dove has just poured out his seventh cup of tea, and that the clock of St. George's has struck five. In what street, parade, place, square, row, terrace or lane, and in what town, and in what county; and on what day, and in what month, and in what year, will be explained in due time. You cannot but remember what was said in the second chapterpost-initiumconcerning the importance and the necessity of order in an undertaking like this. “All things,” says Sir Thomas Brown, “began in order; so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order, and mystical mathematics of the City of Heaven:” This awful sentence was uttered by the Philosopher of Norwich upon occasion of a subject less momentous than that whereon we have entered, for what are the mysteries of theQuincunxcompared to the delineation of a human mind? Be pleased only at present to bear in mind where we are. Place but as much confidence in me as you do in your review, your newspaper, and your apothecary; give me but as much credit as you expect from your tailor; and if your apothecary deserves that confidence as well, it will be well for you, and if your credit is as punctually redeemed it will be well for your tailor. It is not without cause that I have gone back to the Doctor's childhood and his birth place. Be thou assured, O Reader! that he never could have been seated thus comfortably in that comfortable parlour where we are now regarding him—never by possibility could have been at that time in that spot, and in those circumstances;—never could have been the Doctor that he was,—nay according to all reasonable induction, all tangible or imaginable probabilities,—never would have been a Doctor at all,—consequently thou never couldst have had the happiness of reading this delectable history, nor I the happiness of writing it for thy benefit and information and delight,—had it not been for his father's character, his father's books, his schoolmaster Guy, and his Uncle William, with all whom and which, it was therefore indispensable that thou shouldst be made acquainted.
A metaphysician, or as some of my contemporaries would affect to say a psychologist, if he were at all a master of his art bablative (for it is as much anars bablativaas the Law, which was defined to be so by that old traitor and time-server Serjeant Maynard)—a metaphysician I say, would not require more than three such octavo volumes as those of Mr. Malthus's Essay on Population, to prove that no existing circumstance could at this time be what it is, unless all preceding circumstances had from the beginning of time been precisely what they were. But, my good Reader, I have too much respect for you, and too much regard for your precious time, and too much employment, or amusement (which is a very rational kind of employment) for my own, to waste it in demonstrating a truism. No man knows the value of time more feelingly, than I do!
1BEAUMONTand FLETCHER.
It is my wish and intention to make you acquainted with a person most worthy to be known, for such the subject of this history will be admitted to be: one whom when you once know him it will be impossible that you should ever forget: one for whom I have the highest possible veneration and regard; (and though it is not possible that your feelings towards him should be what mine are) one who, the more he is known, will and must be more and more admired. I wish to introduce this person to you. Now, Sir, I appeal to your good sense, and to your own standard of propriety, should I act with sufficient respect either to yourself or him, if, without giving you any previous intimation, any information, concerning his character and situation in life; or in any way apprizing you who and what he was, I were to knock at your door and simply present him to you as Doctor Dove? No, my dear Sir! it is indispensable that you should be properly informed who it is whom I thus introduce to your acquaintance; and if you are the judicious person that I suppose you to be, you will be obliged to me as long as you live. “For why,” as old Higgins hath it,—
Ill fare that reader's heart who of this book says otherwise! “Tam suavia dicam facinora, ut malè sit ei qui talibus non delectetur!” said a very different person from old Higgins, writing in a different vein, I have not read his book, but so far as my own is concerned, I heartily adopt his malediction.
Had I been disposed, as the Persians say, to let the steed of the pen expatiate in the plains of prolixity, I should have carried thee farther back in the generations of the Doves. But the good garrulous son of Garcilasso my Lord (Heaven rest the soul of the Princess who bore him,—for Peru has never produced any thing else half so precious as his delightful books,)—the Inca-blooded historian himself, I say, was not more anxious to avoid that failing than I am. Forgive me, Reader, if I should have fallen into an opposite error; forgive me if in the fear of saying too much I should have said too little. I have my misgivings:—I may have run upon Scylla while striving to avoid Charybdis. Much interesting matter have I omitted; much have I past by on which I “cast a longing lingering look behind;”—much which might worthily find a place in the History of Yorkshire;—or of the West Riding (if that history were tripartitively distributed;)—or in the Gentleman's Magazine;—or in John Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century: (I honor John Nichols, I honor Mr. Urban!) much more might it have had place,—much more might it be looked for here.
I might have told thee, Reader, of Daniel the Grandfather, and of Abigail his second wife, who once tasted tea in the housekeeper's apartments at Skipton Castle; and of the Great Grandfather who at the age of twenty-eight died of the small pox, and was the last of the family that wore a leathern jerkin; and of his father Daniel theatavus, who was the first of the family that shaved, and who went with his own horse and arms to serve in that brave troop, which during the wreck of the King's party the heir of Lowther raised for the loyal cause: and of that Daniel's Grandfather (thetritavus) who going to Kentmere to bring home a wife was converted from the popish superstition by falling in with Bernard Gilpin on the way. That apostolic man was so well pleased with his convert, that he gave him his own copy of Latimer's sermons,—that copy which was one of our Daniel's Sunday books, and which was religiously preserved in reverence for this ancestor, and for the Apostle of the North (as Bernard Gilpin was called) whose autograph it contained.
The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than could be done by the most elaborate dissertation. And the History of the Doves might be rendered as interesting and as instructive as that of the Seymours or the Howards. Frown not, My Lord of Norfolk, frown not, your Grace of Somerset, when I add, that it would contain less for their descendants to regret.
A HISTORY NOTICED WHICH IS WRITTEN BACKWARD. THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES AN ESPECIAL EVIL FOR SCHOOLBOYS.
It has been the general practice of historians, from the time of Moses, to begin at the beginning of their subject: but as a river may be traced either from its sources or its mouth, so it appears that a history may be composed in the reversed order of its chronology; and a French author of very considerable ability and great learning has actually written a history of the Christian religion from his own times upwards. It forms part of an elaborate and extensive work entitledParallele des Religions, which must have been better known than it appears to be at present if it had not happened to be published in Paris during the most turbulent year of the Revolution. Perhaps if I had carried back the memoirs of the Dove family, I might have followed his example in chusing the up-hill way, and have proceeded from son to father in the ascending line. But having resolved (whether judiciously or not) not to go farther back in these family records than the year of our Lord 1723, being the year of the Doctor's birth, I shall continue in the usual course, and pursue his historyab incunabulisdown to that important evening on which we find him now reaching out his hand to take that cup of tea which Mrs. Dove has just creamed and sugared for him. After all the beaten way is usually the best, and always the safest. “He ought to be well mounted,” says Aaron Hill, “who is for leaping the hedges of custom.” For myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the hazards of a steeple chace.
Proceeding therefore after the model of a Tyburn biography, which being an ancient as well as popular form is likely to be the best,—we come after birth and parentage to education. “That the world from Babel was scattered into divers tongues, we need not other proof,” says a grave and good author, “than as Diogenes proved that there is motion,—by walking;—so we may see the confusion of languages by our confused speaking. Once all the earth was of one tongue, one speech and one consent; for they all spake in the holy tongue wherein the world was created in the beginning. Butpro peccato dissentionis humanæ(as saith St. Austin,)—for the sin of men disagreeing,—not only different dispositions but also different languages came into the world.—They came to Babel with a disagreeing agreement; and they came away punished with a speechless speech. They disagree among themselves, while every one strives for dominion. They agree against God in theirNagnavad lan Liguda,—we will make ourselves a rendezvous for idolatry. But they come away speaking to each other, but not understood of each other; and so speak to no more purpose than if they spake not at all. This punishment of theirs at Babel is like Adam's corruption, hereditary to us; for we never come under the rod at the Grammar School, but we smart for our ancestor's rebellion at Babel.”
Light lie the earth upon the bones of Richard Guy, the Schoolmaster of Ingleton! He never consumed birch enough in his vocation to have made a besom; and his ferule was never applied unless when some moral offence called for a chastisement that would be felt. There is a closer connection between good-nature and good sense than is commonly supposed. A sour ill-tempered pedagogue would have driven Daniel through the briars and brambles of the Grammar and foundered him in its sloughs; Guy led him gently along the green-sward. He felt that childhood should not be made altogether a season of painful acquisition, and that the fruits of the sacrifices then made are uncertain as to the account to which they may be turned, and are also liable to the contingencies of life at least, if not otherwise jeopardized. “Puisque le jour peut lui manquer, laissons le un peu jouir de l'Aurore!” The precepts which warmth of imagination inspired in Jean Jacques was impressed upon Guy's practice by gentleness of heart. He never crammed the memory of his pupil with such horrific terms as Prothesis, Aphæresis, Epenthesis, Syncope, Paragoge, and Apocope; never questioned him concerning Appositio, Evocatio, Syllepsis, Prolepsis, Zeugma, Synthesis, Antiptosis, and Synecdoche; never attempted to deter him (as Lily says boys are above all things to be deterred) from those faults which Lily also says, seem almost natural to the English,—the heinous faults of Iotacism, Lambdacism, (which Alcibiades affected,)—Ischnotesism, Trauli'sm and Plateasm. But having grounded him well in the nouns and verbs, and made him understand the concords, he then followed in part the excellent advice of Lily thus given in his address to the Reader:
“When these concords be well known unto them (an easy and pleasant pain, if the foregrounds be well and thoroughly beaten in) let them not continue in learning of the rules orderly, as they lie in their Syntax, but rather learn some pretty book wherein is contained not only the eloquence of the tongue, but also a good plain lesson of honesty and godliness; and thereof take some little sentence as it lieth, and learn to make the same first out of English into Latin, not seeing the book, or construing it thereupon. And if there fall any necessary rule of the Syntax to be known, then to learn it, as the occasion of the sentence giveth cause that day; which sentence once made well, and as nigh as may be with the words of the book, then to take the book and construe it; and so shall he be less troubled with the parsing of it, and easiliest carry his lesson in mind.”
Guy followed this advice in part; and in part he deviated from it, upon Lily's own authority, as “judging that the most sufficient way which he saw to be the readiest mean;” while therefore he exercised his pupil in writing Latin pursuant to this plan, he carried him on faster in construing, and promoted the boy's progress by gratifying his desire of getting forward. When he had done with Cordery, Erasmus was taken up,—for some of Erasmus's colloquies were in those days used as a school book, and the most attractive one that could be put into a boy's hands. After he had got through this, the aid of an English version was laid aside. And here Guy departed from the ordinary course, not upon any notion that he could improve upon it, but merely because he happened to possess an old book composed for the use of Schools, which was easy enough to suit young Daniel's progress in the language, and might therefore save the cost of purchasing Justin or Phædrus or Cornelius Nepos, or Eutropius,—to one or other of which he would otherwise have been introduced.
A DOUBT CONCERNING SCHOOL BOOKS, WHICH WILL BE DEEMED HERETICAL: AND SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY SUBSTITUTE FOR OVID OR VIRGIL.
They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no knowledge but in a skilful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to illustrate some other knowledge.
HERBERT'SREMAINS.
I am sometimes inclined to think that pigs are brought up upon a wiser system, than boys at a grammar school. The Pig is allowed to feed upon any kind of offal, however coarse, on which he can thrive, till the time approaches when pig is to commence pork, or take a degree as bacon; and then he is fed daintily. Now it has sometimes appeared to me that in like manner, boys might acquire their first knowledge of Latin from authors very inferior to those which are now used in all schools; provided the matter was unexceptionable and the Latinity good; and that they should not be introduced to the standard works of antiquity till they are of an age in some degree to appreciate what they read.
Understand me, Reader, as speaking doubtfully,—and that too upon a matter of little moment; for the scholar will return in riper years to those authors which are worthy of being studied, and as for the blockhead—it signifies nothing whether the book which he consumes by thumbing it in the middle and dog-earing it at the corners be worthy or not of a better use. Yet if the dead have any cognizance of posthumous fame, one would think it must abate somewhat of the pleasure with which Virgil and Ovid regard their earthly immortality, when they see to what base purposes their productions are applied. That their verses should be administered to boys in regular doses, as lessons or impositions, and some dim conception of their meaning whipt into the tail when it has failed to penetrate the head, cannot be just the sort of homage to their genius which they anticipated or desired.
Not from any reasonings or refinements of this kind, but from the mere accident of possessing the book, Guy put into his pupil's hands the Dialogues of Johannes Ravisius Textor. Jean Tixier, Seigneur de Ravisy, in the Nivernois, who thus latinized his name, is a person whose works, according to Baillet's severe censure, were buried in the dust of a few petty colleges and unfrequented shops, more than a century ago. He was however in his day a person of no mean station in the world of letters, having been Rector of the University of Paris, at the commencement of the 16th century; and few indeed are the writers whose books have been so much used; for perhaps no other author ever contributed so largely to the manufacture of exercises whether in prose or verse, and of sermons also. Textor may be considered as the first compiler of theGradus ad Parnassum;and that collection of Apopthegms was originally formed by him, which Conrade Lycosthenes enlarged and re-arranged; which the Jesuits adopted after expurgating it; and which during many generations served as one of the standard common-place books for common-place divines in this country as well as on the continent.
But though Textor was continually working in classical literature with a patience and perseverance which nothing but the delight he experienced in such occupations could have sustained, he was without a particle of classical taste. His taste was that of the age wherein he flourished, and these his Dialogues are Moralities in Latin verse. The designs and thoughts which would have accorded with their language had they been written either in old French or old English, appear when presented in Latinity, which is always that of a scholar, and largely interwoven with scraps from familiar classics, as strange as Harlequin and Pantaloon would do in heroic costume.
Earth opens the first of these curious compositions with a bitter complaint for the misfortunes which it is her lot to witness. Age (Ætas) overhears the lamentation and enquires the cause; and after a dialogue in which the author makes the most liberal use of his own common-places, it appears that the perishable nature of all sublunary things is the cause of this mourning.Ætasendeavours to persuadeTerrathat her grief is altogether unreasonable by such brief and cogent observations asFata jubent,Fata volunt,Ita Diis placitum. Earth asks the name of her philosophic consoler, but upon discovering it, calls herfalsa virago, andmeretrix, and abuses her as being the very author of all the evils that distress her. HoweverÆtassucceeds in talkingTerrainto better humour, advises her to exhort man that he should not set his heart upon perishable things, and takes her leave asHomoenters. After a recognition between mother and son,Terraproceeds to warnHomoagainst all the ordinary pursuits of this world. To convince him of the vanity of glory she calls up in succession the ghosts of Hector, Achilles, Alexander and Samson, who tell their tales and admonish him that valor and renown afford no protection against Death. To exemplify the vanity of beauty Helen, Lais, Thisbe and Lucretia are summoned, relate in like manner their respective fortunes, and remind him thatpulvis et umbra sumus. Virgil preaches to him upon the emptiness of literary fame. Xerxes tells him that there is no avail in power, Nero that there is none in tyranny, Sardanapalus that there is none in voluptuousness. But the application whichHomomakes of all this, is the very reverse to what his mother intended: he infers that seeing he must die at last, live how he will, the best thing he can do is to make a merry life of it, so away he goes to dance and revel and enjoy himself: andTerraconcludes with the mournful observation that men will still pursue their bane, unmindful of their latter end.
Another of these Moralities begins with three Worldlings (Tres Mundani) ringing changes upon the pleasures of profligacy, in Textor's peculiar manner, each in regular succession saying something to the same purport in different words. As thus
PRIMUSMUNDANUS.Si breve tempus abit,
SECUNDUSMUNDANUS.Si vita caduca recedit;
TERTIUSMUNDANUS.Si cadit hora.
PRIMUSMUNDANUS.Dies abeunt,
SECUNDUSMUNDANUS.Perit Omne,
TERTIUSMUNDANUS.Venit Mors,
PRIMUSMUNDANUS.Quidnam prodesset fati meminisse futuri?
SECUNDUSMUNDANUS.Quidnam prodesset lachrymis consumere vitam?
TERTIUSMUNDANUS.Quidnam prodesset tantis incumbere curis?
Upon which an unpleasant personage who has just appeared to interrupt their trialogue observes,
It isMorsherself who asks the question. The three Worldlings however behave as resolutely as Don Juan in the old drama; they tell Death that they are young and rich and active and vigorous, and set all admonition at defiance. Death or rather Mrs. Death, (forMorsbeing feminine is calledlæna, andmeretrix, andvirago,) takes all this patiently, and letting them go off in a dance, calls up Human Nature who has been asleep meantime, and asks her how she can sleep in peace while her sons are leading a life of dissipation and debauchery? Nature very coolly replies by demanding why they should not? and Death answers, because they must go to the infernal regions for so doing. Upon this Nature, who appears to be liberally inclined, asks if it is credible that any should be obliged to go there? and Death to convince her calls up a soul from bale to give an account of his own sufferings. A dreadful account thisDamnatusgives; and when Nature, shocked at what she hears, enquires if he is the only one who is tormented inOrcus,Damnatusassures her that hardly one in a thousand goes to Heaven, but that his fellow-sufferers are in number numberless; and he specifies among them Kings and Popes, and Senators and severe Schoolmasters,—a class of men whom Textor seems to have held in great and proper abhorrence—as if like poor Thomas Tusser he had suffered under their inhuman discipline.
Horrified at this, Nature asks advice ofMors, andMorsadvises her to send a Son of Thunder round the world, who should reprove the nations for their sins, and sow the seeds of virtue by his preaching.Peregrinusgoes upon this mission and returns to give an account of it. Nothing can be worse than the report. As for the Kings of the Earth, it would be dangerous, he says, to say what they were doing. The Popes suffered the ship of Peter to go wherever the winds carried it. Senators were won by intercession or corrupted by gold. Doctors spread their nets in the temples for prey, and Lawyers were dumb unless their tongues were loosened by money.—Had he seen the Italians?—Italy was full of dissentions, ripe for war, and defiled by its own infamous vice. The Spaniards?—They were suckled by Pride. The English?—
In short the Missionary concludes that he has found every where an abundant crop of vices, and that all his endeavours to produce amendment have been like ploughing the sea shore. Again afflicted Nature asks advice ofMors, andMorsrecommends that she should call up Justice and send her abroad with her scourge to repress the wicked. But Justice is found to be so fast asleep that no calling can awaken her.Morsthen advises her to summonVeritas;alas! unhappyVeritasenters complaining of pains from head to foot and in all the intermediate parts, within and without; she is dying and entreats that Nature will call some one to confess her. But who shall be applied to?—Kings? They will not come.—Nobles?Veritasis a hateful personage to them.—Bishops, or mitred Abbots? They have no regard for Truth.—Some Saint from the desert? Nature knows not where to find one! PoorVeritastherefore dies “unhouseled, disappointed, unanealed;” and forthwith three Demons enter rejoicing that Human Nature is left with none to help her, and that they are Kings of this world. They call in their Ministers,CaroandVoluptasandVitium, and send them to do their work among mankind. These successful missionaries return, and relate how well they have sped every where; and the Demons being by this time hungry, after washing in due form, and many ceremonious compliments among themselves, sit down to a repast which their ministers have provided. The bill of fare was one which Beelzebub's Court of Aldermen might have approved. There were the brains of a fat monk,—a roasted Doctor of Divinity who afforded great satisfaction,—a King's sirloin,—some broiled Pope's flesh, and part of a Schoolmaster; the joint is not specified, but I suppose it to have been the rump. Then came a Senator's lights and a Lawyer's tongue.
When they have eaten of these dainties till the distended stomach can hold no more,Virtuscomes in and seeing them send off the fragments to their Tartarean den, calls upon mankind to bestow some sustenance upon her, for she is tormented with hunger. The Demons and their ministers insult her and drive her into banishment; they tell Nature that to-morrow the great King of Orcus will come and carry her away in chains; off they go in a dance, and Nature concludes the piece by saying that what they have threatened must happen, unless Justice shall be awakened, Virtue fed, andVeritasrestored to life by the sacred book.
There are several other Dialogues in a similar strain of fiction. The rudest and perhaps oldest specimen of this style is to be found in Pierce Ploughman, the most polished in Calderon, the most popular in John Bunyan's Holy War, and above all in his Pilgrim's Progress. It appears from the Dialogues that they were not composed for the use of youth alone as a school book, but were represented at College; and poor as they are in point of composition, the oddity of their combinations, and the wholesome honesty of their satire, were well adapted to strike young imaginations and make an impression there which better and wiser works might have failed to leave.
A schoolmaster who had been regularly bred would have regarded such a book with scorn, and discerning at once its obvious faults, would have been incapable of perceiving any thing which might compensate for them. But Guy was not educated well enough to despise a writer like old Textor. What he knew himself, he had picked up where and how he could, in bye ways and corners. The book was neither in any respect above his comprehension, nor below his taste; and Joseph Warton, never rolled off the hexameters of Virgil or Homer,ore rotundo, with more delight, when expatiating with all the feelings of a scholar and a poet upon their beauties, to such pupils as Headley and Russell and Bowles, than Guy paraphrased these rude but striking allegories to his delighted Daniel.