Chapter 5

ASTROLOGY. ALMANACKS. PRISCILLIANISM RETAINED IN THEM TO THIS TIME.

I wander 'twixt the polesAnd heavenly hinges, 'mongst eccentricals,Centers, concentricks, circles and epicycles.ALBUMAZAR.

The connection between astrology and the art of medicine is not more firmly believed in Persia at this day, than it was among the English people during the age of almanack-makers. The column which contained the names of the saints for every day, as fully as they are still given in Roman Catholic almanacks, was less frequently consulted than those in which the aspects were set down, and the signs and the parts of the human body under their respective governance. Nor was any page in the book regarded with more implicit belief than that which represented the “Anatomy of Man's body as the parts thereof are governed by the twelve Constellations, or rather by the Moon as she passeth by them.” In those representations man indeed was not more uglily than fearfully made,—as he stood erect and naked, spiculated by emitted influences from the said signs, like another St. Sebastian; or as he sate upon the globe placed like a butt for him, while they radiated their shafts of disease and pain.

Portentous as the Homo in the almanack is, he made a much more horrific appearance in the Margarita Philosophica which is a Cyclopedia of the early part of the 16th century. There Homo stands, naked but not ashamed, upon the two Pisces, one foot upon each, the Fish being neither in air, nor water, nor upon earth, but self-suspended as it appears in the void. Aries has alighted with two feet on Homo's head, and has sent a shaft through the forehead into his brain. Taurus has quietly seated himself across his neck. The Gemini are riding astride a little below his right shoulder. The whole trunk is laid open, as if part of the old accursed punishment for high treason had been performed upon him. The Lion occupies the thorax as his proper domain, and the Crab is in possession of the abdomen. Sagittarius, volant in the void, has just let fly an arrow, which is on the way to his right arm. Capricornius breathes out a visible influence that penetrates both knees; Aquarius inflicts similar punctures upon both legs. Virgo fishes as it were at his intestines; Libra at the part affected by schoolmasters in their anger; and Scorpio takes the wickedest aim of all.

The progress of useful knowledge has in our own days at last banished this man from the almanack; at least from all annuals of that description that carry with them any appearance of respectability. If it has put an end to this gross superstition, it has done more than the Pope could do fourteen centuries ago, when he condemned it, as one of the pernicious errors of the Priscillianists.

In a letter to Turribius, Bishop of Astorga, concerning that heresy, Pope St. Leo the Great says: “Si universæ hæreses, quæ ante Priscilliani tempus exortæ sunt, diligentius retractentur, nullus pene invenitur error de quo non traxerit impietas ista contagium: quæ non contenta eorum recipere falsitates, qui ab Evangelio Christi sub Christi nomine deviarunt, tenebris se etiam paganitatis immersit, ut per magicarum artium prophana secreta, et mathematicorum vana mendacia, religionis fidem, morumque rationem in potestate dæmonum, et in affectu syderum collocarent. Quod si et credi liceat et doceri, nec virtutibus præmium, nec vitiis pœna debebitur, omniaque non solum humanarum legum, sed etiam divinarum constitutionum decreta solventur: quia neque de bonis, neque de malis actibus ullum poterit esse judicium, si in utramque partem fatalis necessitas motum mentis impellit, et quicquid ab hominibus agitur, non est hominum, sed astrorum. Ad hanc insaniam pertinet prodigiosa illa totius humani corporis per duodecim Cœli signa distinctio, ut diversis partibus diversæ præsideant potestates; et creatura, quam Deus ad imaginem suam fecit, in tantâ sit obligatione syderum, in quantâ est connectione membrorum.”

But invention has been as rare among heretics as among poets. The architect of the Priscillian heresy (the male heresy of that name, for there was a female one also) borrowed this superstition from the mathematicians,—as the Romans called the astrological impostors of those times. For this there is the direct testimony of Saint Augustine:Astruunt etiam fatalibus stellis homines colligatos, ipsumque corpus nostrum secundum duodecim signa cœli esse compositum; sicut hi qui Mathematici vulgo appellantur, constituentes in capite Arietem, Taurum in cervice, Geminos in humeris, Cancrum in pectore, et cetera nominatim signa percurrentes ad plantas usque perveniunt, quas Piscibus tribuunt, quod ultimum signum ab Astrologis nuncupatar.

These impostors derived this part of their craft from Egypt, where every month was supposed to be under the care of three Decans or Directors, for the import of the word must be found in the neighbouring language of the Hebrews and Syrians. There were thirty-six of these, each superintending ten days; and these Decans were believed to exercise the most extensive influence over the human frame. Astrological squares calculated upon this mythology are still in existence. St. Jerome called it the opprobrium of Egypt.

The medical superstition derived from this remote antiquity has continued down to the present generation in the English almanacks, is still continued in the popular almanacks of other countries, and prevails at this time throughout the whole Mahommedan and Eastern world. So deeply does error strike its roots, and so widely scatter its seeds; and so difficult is it to extirpate any error whatsoever, or any evil, which it is the interest of any class of men to maintain. And the rogues had much to say for themselves.

“Notwithstanding the abuses put upon the art of Astrology,” said an eminent Professor, “doubtless some judgement may be made thereby what any native may be by nature prone or addicted to. For the aspects of the Planets among themselves, as also the Fixed Stars, 'tis more than supposed, may cause many strange effects in sublunary bodies, but especially in those that have been almost worn out with decrepit age, or debilitated with violent or tedious diseases; wherefore this knowledge may be requisite, and of excellent use to physicians and chirurgeons, &c. for old aches and most diseases do vary according to the change of the air and weather, and that proceeds from the motion of the heavens and aspects of the planets.”—Who that has any old aches in his bones,—or has felt his corns shoot—but must acknowledge the truth that was brought forward here in support of an impudent system of imposture? The natural pride, and the natural piety of man, were both appealed to when he was told that the stars were appointed for signs and tokens,—that “the reason why God hath given him an upright countenance is, that he might converse with the celestial bodies, which are placed for his service as so many diamonds in an azure canopy of perpetuity,”—and that astrologers had a large field to walk in, for “all the productions of Time were the subjects of their science, and there is nothing under the Sun but what is the birth of Time.” There is no truth however pure, and however sacred, upon which falsehood cannot fasten, and engraft itself therein.

Laurence Humphrey, who was sufficiently known in Queen Elizabeth's days as one of the standard-bearers of the non-conformists, but who, like many others, grew conformable in the end as he grew riper in experience and sager in judgement,—in his Optimates or Treatise concerning Nobility, which he composed for the use of that class and of the Gentry, observed how “this science above all others was so snatched at, so beloved, and even devoured by most persons of honour and worship, that they needed no excitement to it, but rather a bridle; no trumpeter to set them on, but a reprover to take them off from their heat. Many,” he said, “had so trusted to it, that they almost distrusted God.” He would not indeed wholly condemn the art, but the nobility should not have him a persuader nor an applauder of it; for there were already enough! In vain might a Bishop warn his hearers from the pulpit and from the press that “no soothsayer, no palterer, no judicial astrologer is able to tell any man the events of his life.” Man is a dupeable animal. Quacks in medicine, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics know this, and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely any one who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling.

AN INCIDENT WHICH BRINGS THE AUTHOR INTO A FORTUITOUS RESEMBLANCE WITH THE PATRIARCH OF THE PREDICANT FRIARS. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FACT AND THE FABLE; AND AN APPLICATION WHICH, UNLIKE THOSE THAT ARE USUALLY APPENDED TO ESOP'S FABLES, THE READER IS LIKELY NEITHER TO SKIP NOR TO FORGET.

Diré aqui una maldad grande del Demonio.

PEDRO DECIEÇA DELEON.

While I was writing that last chapter, a flea appeared upon the page before me, as there did once to St. Dominic.

But the circumstances in my case and in St. Dominic's were different.

For, in the first place I, as has already been said, was writing; but St. Dominic was reading.

Secondly, the flea which came upon my paper was a real flea, a flea of flea-flesh and blood, partly flea-blood and partly mine, which the said flea had flea-feloniously appropriated to himself by his own process of flea-botomy. That which appeared upon St. Dominic's book was the Devil in disguise.

The intention with which the Devil abridged himself into so diminutive a form, was that he might distract the Saint's attention from his theological studies, by skipping upon the page, and perhaps provoke him to unsaintlike impatience by eluding his fingers.

But St. Dominic was not so to be deceived: he knew who the false flea was!

To punish him therefore for this diabolical intrusion, he laid upon him a holy spell whereby Flea Beelzebub was made to serve as a marker through the whole book. When Dominic, whether in the middle of a sentence or at the end, lifted his eyes from the page in meditation, Flea Beelzebub moved to the word at which the Saint had paused,—he moved not by his own diabolical will, but in obedience to an impulse which he had no power to resist; and there he remained, having as little power to remove, till the Saint's eye having returned to the book, and travelled farther, stopt at another passage. And thus St. Dominic used him through the volume, putting him moreover whenever he closed the book to thepeine forte et dure.

When Dominic had finished the volume, he dismissed his marker. Had it been a heretic, instead of the Devil, the canonized founder of the Friars Predicant, and Patron Saint of the Inquisition, would not have let him off so easily.

Indeed I cannot but think that his lenity in this case was ill-placed. He should have dealt with that flea as I did with mine.

“How, Mr. Author, was that?”

“I dealt with it, Sir, as Agesilaus unceremoniously did with one victim upon the altar of Chalciœcious Pallas, at the same time that with all due ceremony he was sacrificing another. An ox was the premeditated and customary victim; the extemporaneous and extraordinary one was a six-footed ‘small deer.’ Plutarch thought the fact worthy of being recorded; and we may infer from it that the Spartans did not always comb their long hair so carefully as the Three Hundred did at Thermopylæ, when on the morning of that ever glorious fight, they made themselves ready to die there in obedience to the institutions of their country. What the King of Lacedæmon did with his crawler, I did with my skipper;—I cracked it, Sir.”

“And for what imaginable reason can you have thought fit to publish such an incident to the world?”

“For what reason, Sir?—why, that Hop-o'-my-thumb the critic may know what he has to expect, if I lay hold of him!”

A CHAPTER CHARACTERISTIC OF FRENCH ANTIQUARIES, FRENCH LADIES, FRENCH LAWYERS, FRENCH JUDGES, FRENCH LITERATURE, AND FRENCHNESS IN GENERAL.

Quid de pulicibus? vitæ salientia puncta.

COWLEY.

Now, Reader, having sent away the small Critic with a flea in his ear, I will tell you something concerning one of the curiosities of literature.

The most famous flea, for a real flea, that has yet been heard of,—for not even the King of the Fleas, who, as Dr. Clarke and his fellow traveller found to their cost, keeps his court at Tiberias, approaches it in celebrity,—nor the flea of that song, which Mephistopheles sung in the cellar at Leipzig,—that flea for whom the King ordered breeches and hose from his own tailor; who was made prime minister; and who, when he governed the realm, distinguished himself, like Earl Grey, by providing for all his relations:—the most illustrious, I say, of all fleas,—pulicum facile princeps—was that flea which I know not whether to call Mademoiselle des Roches's flea, or Pasquier's flea, or the flea of Poictiers.

In the year 1579, when theGrands Jours, or Great Assizes, were held at Poictiers under President de Harlay, Pasquier, who was one of the most celebrated advocates, most accomplished scholars, and most learned men in France, attended in the exercise of his profession. Calling there one day upon Madame des Roches and her daughter, Mademoiselle Catherine, whom he describes asl'une des plus belles et sages de nostre France, while he was conversing with the young lady he espied a flea,parquée au beau milieu de son sein.

Upon this Pasquier made such a speech as a Frenchman might be expected to make upon so felicitous an occasion, admiring the taste of the flea, envying its happiness, and marvelling at its boldnessde s'estre mise en si beau jour; parce que jaloux de son heur, peu s'en falloit,he says,que je ne misse la main sur elle, en deliberation de luy faire un mauvais tour; et bien luy prenoit qu'elle estoit en lieu de franchise!This led to acontention mignardebetween the young lady and the learned lawyer, who was then more than fifty years of age;finalement, ayant esté l'autheur de la noise,says Pasquier,je luy dis que puisque ceste Puce avoit receu tant d'heur de se repaistre de son sang, et d'estre reciproquement honorée de nos propos, elle meritoit encores d'estre enchâssée dedans nos papiers, et que tresvolontiers je m'y employerois, si cette Dame vouloit de sa part faire le semblable; chose qu'elle m'accorda liberalement.Each was in earnest, but each, according to the old Advocate, supposed the other to be in jest: both went to work upon this theme after the visit, and each finished a copy of verses about the same time,tombants en quelques rencontres de mots les plus signalez pour le subject.Pasquier thinking to surprize the lady, sent his poem to her as soon as he had transcribed it, on a Sunday morning,—the better the day the better being the deed: and the lady apprehending that they might have fallen upon some of the same thoughts, lest she should be suspected of borrowing what she knew to be her own, sent back the first draught of her verses by his messenger, not having had time to write them fairly out.Heureuse, certes, rencontre et jouyssance de deux esprits, qui passe d'un long entrejet, toutes ces opinions follastres et vulgaires d'amour. Que si en cecy tu me permets d'y apporter quelque chose de mon jugement je te diray, qu'en l'un tu trouveras les discours d'une sage fille, en l'autre les discours d'un homme qui n'est pas trop fol; ayants l'un et l'autre par une bienseance des nos sexes joüé tels roolles que devions.

The Demoiselle after describing in her poem the feats of the flea, takes a hint from the resemblance in sound betweenpuceandpucelle, and making an allegorical use of mythology, makes by that means a decorous allusion to the vulgar notion concerning the unclean circumstances by which fleas, as they say, are bred:

Puce, si ma plume estoit digne,Je descrirois vostre origine;Et comment le plus grand des Dieux,Pour la terre quittant les cieux,Vous fit naître, comme il me semble,Orion et vous tout ensemble.

She proceeds to say that Pan became enamoured of this sister of Orion; that Diana to preserve her from his pursuit, metamorphosed her into a flea (en puce,) and that in this transformation nothing remained of her

SinonLa crainte, l'adresse, et le nom.

Pasquier in his poem gave himself a pretty free scope in his imaginary pursuit of the flea, and in all the allusions to which its name would on such an occasion invite an old Frenchman. If the story had ended here, it would have been characteristic enough of French manners,Or voy, je te prie,says Pasquier,quel fruict nous a produit cette belle altercation, ou pour mieux dire, symbolization de deux ames. Ces deux petits Jeux poëtiques commencerent à courir par les mains de plusieurs, et se trouverent si agreables, que sur leur modelle, quelques personnages de marque voulurent estre de la partie; et s'employerent sur mesme subject à qui mieux mieux, les uns en Latin, les autres en François, et quelquesuns en l'une et l'autre langue: ayant chacun si bien exploté en son endroict, qu' à chacun doit demeurer la victoire.

Among the distinguished persons who exercised their talents upon this worthy occasion, Brisson was one; that Brisson of whom Henri III. said that no king but himself could boast of so learned a subject; who lent the assistance of his great name and talents towards setting up the most lawless of all tyrannies, that of an insurrectionary government; and who suffered death under that tyranny, as the reward which such men always (and righteously as concerns themselves however iniquitous the sentence) receive from the miscreants with whom they have leagued. He began his poem much as a scholar might be expected to do, by alluding to the well known pieces which had been composed upon somewhat similar subjects.

Fœlices meritò Mures Ranæque loquacesQueis cæci vatis contigit ore cani:Vivet et extento lepidus Passerculus ævoCantatus numeris, culte Catulle tuis.Te quoque, parve Culex, nulla unquam muta silebitPosteritas, docti suave Maronis opus.Ausoniusque Pulex, dubius quem condidit auctor,Canescet sæclis innumerabilibus.Pictonici at Pulicis longè præclarior est sors,Quem fovet in tepido casta puella sinu.Fortunate Pulex nimium, tua si bona noris,Alternis vatum nobilitate metris.

In the remainder of his poem Brisson takes the kind of range which, if the subject did not actually invite, it seemed at least to permit. He produced also four Latin epigrams against such persons as might censure him for such a production, and these, as well as the poem itself, were translated into French by Pasquier. This was necessary for the public, not for Madame des Roches, and her daughter, who were versed both in Latin and Greek. Among the numerous persons whom the Assizes had brought to Poictiers, whether as judges, advocates, suitors, or idlers, every one who could write a Latin or a French verse tried his skill upon this small subject.Tout le Parnasse latin et françois du royaume,says Titon du Tillet,voulut prendre part a cette rare decouverte, sur tout apres avoir reconnu que la fille, quoique tressage, entendoit raillerie.There is one Italian sonnet in the collection, one Spanish, and, according to the Abbe Goujet, there are some Greek verses, but in the republication of Pasquier's works these do not appear: they were probably omitted, as not being likely ever again to meet with readers. Some of the writers were men whose names would have been altogether forgotten if they had not been thus preserved; and others might as well have been forgotten for the value of any thing which they have left; but some were deservedly distinguished in their generation, and had won for themselves an honourable remembrance, which will not pass away. The President Harlay himself encouraged Pasquier by an eulogistic epigram, and no less a person than Joseph Scaliger figures in Catullian verse among the flea-poets.

The name of the Demoiselle des Roches afforded occasion for such allusions to the rocks of Parnassus as the dealers in common place poetry could not fail to profit by.

Nil rerum variat perennis ordo.Et constant sibi Phæbus et sorores;Nec Pulex modo tot simul Poetas,Sed Parnassia fecit ipsa rupesRupes, aut Heliconia Hippocrene.

These verses were written by Pithou, to whose satirical talents his own age was greatly indebted for the part which he took in the Satyre Menippée; and to whose collections and serious researches his country will always remain so. Many others harped upon the same string; and Claude Binet, in one of his poems, compared the Lady to Rochelle, because all suitors had found her impregnable.

Nicolas Rapin, by way of varying the subject, wrote a poem in vituperation of the aforesaid flea, and called itLa Contrepuce. He would rather, he said, write in praise of a less mentionable insect; which however he did mention; and moreover broadly explained, and in the coarsest terms, the Lady's allusion to Orion.

The flea having thus become the business, as well as the talk of Poictiers, some epigrams were sported upon the occasion.

Causidicos habuit vigilantes Curia; namqueIllis perpetuus tinnit in aure Pulex.

The name of Nicolas Rapinus is affixed to this; that of Raphael Gallodonius to the following,

Ad consultissimos Supremi Senatus Gallici Patronos, in Rupeæ Pulicem ludentes.

Abdita causarum si vis responsa referre,Hos tam perspicuos consule Causidicos:Qui juris callent apices, vestigia morsuMetiri pulicum carmine certa sciunt.Ecquid eos latuisse putas dum seria tractant,Qui dum nugantur, tam bene parva canunt?

The President of the Parliament of Paris, Pierre de Soulfour, compared the flea to the Trojan horse, and introduced this gigantic compliment with a stroke of satire.

Quid Magni peperêre Dies? res mira canenda est,Vera tamen; Pulicem progenuere brevem.Quicquid id est, tamen est magnum; Magnisque DiebusNon sine divino numine progenitum.Ille utero potuit plures gestare poetas,Quam tulit audaces techna Pelasga duces.Tros equus heröes tantos non fudit ab alvo,Dulcisonos vates quot tulit iste Pulex:

Pasquier was proud of what he had done in starting the flea, and of the numerous and distinguished persons who had been pleased to follow his example in poetizing upon it;pour memorial de laquelle,he says,jai voulu dresser ce trophée, qui est la publication de leurs vers.So he collected all these verses in a small quarto volume, and published them in 1582, with this title. LAPUCE;ou Jeux Poëtiques Francois et Latins: composez sur la Puce aux Grands Jours de Poictiers l'an 1579: dont Pasquier fut le premier motif.He dedicated the volume to the President Harlay, in the following sonnet:

Pendant que du Harlay de Themis la lumiere,Pour bannir de Poictou l'espouventable mal,Exerçant la justice à tous de poids égal,Restablessoit l'Astrée en sa chaire premiere;Quelques nobles esprits, pour se donner carriere,Voulourent exalter un petit animal,Et luy coler aux flancs les aisles du chevalQui prend jusque au ciel sa course coutumiere.Harlay, mon Achille, relasche tes esprits;Sousguigne d'un bon œil tant soit peu ces escrits,Il attendent de toy, ou la mort, ou la vie:Si tu pers à les lire un seul point de ton temps,Ils vivront immortels dans le temple des ans,Malgre l'oubly, la mort, le mesdire et l'envie.

The original volume would have passed away with the generation to which it belonged, or if preserved, it would, like many others more worthy of preservation, have been found only in the cabinets of those who value books for their rarity rather than their intrinsic worth: this would have been its fate if it had not been comprized in the collective edition of Pasquier's works, which, as relating to his own times, to the antiquities of his country, and to French literature, are of the greatest importance. It was properly included there, not merely because it is characteristic of the nation, and of the age, but because it belongs to the history of the individual.

Here in England the Circuit always serves to sharpen the wits of those who are waiting, some of them hungrily, and but too many hopelessly, for practice; and as nowhere there is more talent running to seed than at the bar, epigrams circulate there as freely as opinions,—and much more harmlessly. But that the elders of the profession, and the judges should take part in such levities as theJeux Poetiquesof Poictiers, would at all times have been as much out of character in England, as it would be still in character among our lighter-heeled, lighter-hearted, and lighter-headed neighbours. The same facility in composing Latin verse would not now be found at the French bar; but if a flea were started there, a full cry might as easily be raised after it, as it was at theGrands Joursheld under the President Harlay; and they who joined in the cry would take exactly the same tone. You would find in their poetry just as much of what Pasquier callsmignardise, and just as little exertion of intellect in any other direction.

It is not language alone, all but all-powerful in this respect as language is, which makes the difference in whatever belongs to poetry, between the French and the English. We know how Donne has treated this very subject; and we know how Cleveland, and Randolph and Cowley would have treated it, licentiously indeed, but with such a profusion of fantastic thought, that a prodigality of talent would seem even greater than the abuse. In later times, if such a theme had presented itself, Darwin would have put the flea in a solar microscope, and painted the monster with surprizing accuracy in the most elaborate rhymes: he would then have told of fleas which had been taken and tamed, and bound in chains, or yoked to carriages; and this he would have done in couplets so nicely turned, and so highly polished, that the poetical artist might seem to vie with the flea-tamer and carriage-builder in patience and in minute skill. Cowper would have passed with playful but melancholy grace

From gay to grave, from lively to severe,

and might have produced a second Task. And in our own days, Rogers would case the flea, like his own gnat, in imperishable amber. Leigh Hunt would luxuriate in a fairy poem, fanciful as Drayton's Nymphidia, or in the best style of Herrick. Charles Lamb would crack a joke upon the subject; but then he would lead his readers to think while he was amusing them, make them feel if they were capable of feeling, and perhaps leave them in tears. Southey would give us a strain of scornful satire and meditative playfulness in blank verse of the Elizabethan standard. Wordsworth,—no, Wordsworth would disdain the flea: but some imitator of Wordsworth would enshrine the flea in a Sonnet the thought and diction of which would be as proportionate to the subject matter, as the Great Pyramid is to the nameless one of the Pharaohs for whose tomb it was constructed. Oxford and Cambridge would produce Latin verses, good in their manner as the best of Pasquier's collection, and better in every thing else; they would give us Greek verses also, as many and as good. Landor would prove himself as recondite a Latinist as Scaliger, and a better poet; but his hendecasyllables would not be so easily construed. Cruikshank would illustrate the whole collection with immortal designs, such as no other country, and no other man could produce. The flea would be introduced upon the stage in the next new Pantomime; Mr. Irving would discover it in the Apocalypse; and some preacher of Rowland Hill's school would improve it (as the phrase is) in a sermon, and exhort his congregation tofleefrom sin.

I say nothing of Mr. Moore, and the half dozen Lords who wouldmignardisethe subject like so many Frenchmen. But how would Bernard Barton treat it? Perhaps Friend Barton will let us see in one of the next year's Annuals.

I must not leave the reader with an unfavourable opinion of the lady whose flea obtained such singular celebrity, and whoquoique tres sage entendoit raillerie. Titon du Tillet intended nothing equivocal by that expression; and the tone which the Flea-poets took was in no degree derogatory to her, for the manners of the age permitted it. Les Dames des Roches both mother and daughter, were remarkable, and exemplary women; and there was a time when Poictiers derived as much glory from these blue ladies as from the Black Prince. The mother after living most happily with her husband eight and twenty years, suffered greatly in her widowhood from vexatious lawsuits, difficult circumstances, and broken health; but she had great resources in herself, and in the dutiful attachment of Catherine, who was her only child, and whom she herself had nursed and educated; the society of that daughter enabled her to bear her afflictions, not only with patience but with cheerfulness. No solicitations could induce Catherine to marry; she refused offers which might in all other respects have been deemed eligible, because she would not be separated from her mother, from whom she said death itself could not divide her. And this was literally verified, for in 1587 they both died of the plague on the same day.

Both were women of great talents and great attainments. Their joint works in prose and verse were published in their life time, and have been several times reprinted, but not since the year 1604. The poetry is said to be of little value; but the philosophical dialogues are praised as being neither deficient in genius nor in solidity, and as compositions which may still be perused with pleasure and advantage. This is the opinion of a benevolent and competent critic, the Abbe Goujet. I have never seen the book.

Before I skip back to the point from which my own flea and the Poictiers' flea have led me, I must tell a story of an English lady who under a similar circumstance was not so fortunate as Pasquier's accomplished friend. This lady, who lived in the country, and was about to have a large dinner party, was ambitious of making as great a display as her husband's establishment, a tolerably large one, could furnish; so that there might seem to be no lack of servants, a great lad who had been employed only in farm work was trimmed and dressed for the occasion, and ordered to take his stand behind his Mistress's chair, with strict injunctions not to stir from the place, nor do any thing unless she directed him; the lady well knowing that altho' no footman could make a better appearance as a piece of still life, some awkwardness would be inevitable, if he were put in motion. Accordingly Thomas having thus been duly drilled and repeatedly enjoined took his post at the head of the table behind his mistress, and for awhile he found sufficient amusement in looking at the grand set-out, and staring at the guests: when he was weary of this, and of an inaction to which he was so little used, his eyes began to pry about nearer objects. It was at a time when our ladies followed the French fashion of having the back and shoulders under the name of the neck uncovered much lower than accords either with the English climate, or with old English notions;—a time when, as Landor expresses it, the usurped dominion ofneckhad extended from the ear downwards, almost to where mermaids become fish. This lady was in the height, or lowness of that fashion; and between her shoulder-blades, in the hollow of the back, not far from the confines where nakedness and clothing met, Thomas espied what Pasquier had seen upon the neck of Mademoiselle des Roches. The guests were too much engaged with the business and the courtesies of the table to see what must have been worth seeing, the transfiguration produced in Thomas's countenance by delight, when he saw so fine an opportunity of shewing himself attentive, and making himself useful. The Lady was too much occupied with her company to feel the flea; but to her horror she felt the great finger and thumb of Thomas upon her back, and to her greater horror heard him exclaim in exultation, to the still greater amusement of the party—a vlea, a vlea! my lady, ecod I've caucht 'en!

WHEREIN THE CURIOUS READER MAY FIND SOME THINGS WHICH HE IS NOT LOOKING FOR, AND WHICH THE INCURIOUS ONE MAY SKIP IF HE PLEASES.

Voulant doncques satisfaire à la curiosité de touts bons compagnons, j'ay revolvé toutes les Pantarches des Cieux, calculé les quadrats de la Lune, crocheté tout ce que jamais penserent touts les Astrophiles, Hypernephelistes, Anemophylaces, Uranopetes et Ombrophores.

RABELAIS.

A minute's recollection will carry the reader back to the chapter whereon that accidental immolation took place, which was the means of introducing him to thebas-bleusof Poictiers. We were then engaged upon the connection which in Peter Hopkins's time still subsisted between astrology and the practice of medicine.

Court de Gebelin in his great hypothetical, fanciful, but withal ingenious, erudite, and instructive work, says that the almanack was one of the most illustrious and most useful efforts of genius of the first men, and that a complete history of it would be a precious canvas for the history of the human race, were it not that unfortunately many of the necessary materials have perished.On peut assurer,he says,que sans almanach, les operations de l'agriculture seroient incertaines; que les travaux des champs ne se rencontreroient que per hazard dans les tems convenables: qui il n'y auroit ni fêtes ni assemblées publiques, et que la memoire des tems anciens ne seroit qu'un cahos.

This is saying a little too much. But who is there that has not sometimes occasion to consult the almanack? Maximilian I. by neglecting to do this, failed in an enterprize against Bruges. It had been concerted with his adherents in that turbulent city, that he should appear before it at a certain time, and they would be ready to rise in his behalf, and open the gates for him. He forgot that it was leap year, and came a day too soon; and this error on his part cost many of the most zealous of his friends their lives. It is remarkable that neither the historian who relates this, nor the writers who have followed him, should have looked in the almanack to guard against any inaccuracy in the relation; for they have fixed the appointed day on the eve of St. Matthias, which being the 23d of February, could not be put out of its course by leap year.

This brings to my recollection a legal anecdote, that may serve in like manner to exemplify how necessary it is upon any important occasion to scrutinize the accuracy of a statement before it is taken upon trust. A fellow was tried (at the Old Bailey if I remember rightly) for high-way robbery, and the prosecutor swore positively to him, saying he had seen his face distinctly, for it was a bright moon-light night. The counsel for the prisoner cross-questioned the man, so as to make him repeat that assertion, and insist upon it. He then affirmed that this was a most important circumstance, and a most fortunate one for the prisoner at the bar: because the night on which the alleged robbery was said to have been committed was one in which there had been no moon; it was during the dark quarter! In proof of this he handed an almanack to the bench,—and the prisoner was acquitted accordingly. The prosecutor however had stated every thing truly; and it was known afterwards that the almanack with which the counsel came provided, had been prepared and printed for the occasion.

There is a pleasing passage in Sanazzaro's Arcadia, wherein he describes two large beechen tablets, suspended in the temple of Pan, one on each side of the altar,scritte di rusticane lettere; le quali successivamente di tempo in tempo per molti anni conservate dai passati pastori, contenevano in se le antiche leggi, e gli ammaestramenti della pastorale vita: dalle quali tutto quello che fra le selve oggi se adopra, ebbe prima origine.One of these tablets contained directions for the management of cattle. In the othereran notati tutti i di dell' anno, e i varj mutamenti delle stagioni, e la inequalità delle notte e del giorno, insieme con la osservazione delle ore, non poco necessarie a viventi, e li non falsi pronostici delle tempestati: e quando il Sole con suo nascimento denunzia serenita, e quando pioggia, e quando venti, e quando grandini; e quali giorni son della luna fortunati, e quali infelici alle opre de' mortali: e che ciascuno in ciascuna ora dovesse fuggire, o seguitare, per non offendere le osservabili volonta degli Dii.

It is very probable that Sanazzaro has transferred to his pastoral, what may then have been the actual usage in more retired parts of the country; and that before the invention of printing rendered almanacks accessible to every one, a calendar, which served for agricultural as well as ecclesiastical purposes, was kept in every considerable church. Olaus Magnus says that the northern countrymen used to have a calendar cut upon their walking sticks (baculos annales, he calls them); and that when they met at church from distant parts, they laid their heads together and made their computations. The origin of these wooden almanacks, which belong to our own antiquities, as well as to those of Scandinavia, is traced hypothetically to the heathen temple, authentically to the church. It has been supposed that the Cimbri received the Julian calendar from Cæsar himself, after his conquest as it is called of Britain; and that it was cut in Runic characters for the use of the priests, upon the rocks, or huge stones, which composed their rude temples, till some one thought of copying it on wood and rendering it portable, for common use:—donec tandem, (are Wormius's words),ingenii rarâ dexteritate emersit ille, quisquis tandem fuerit, qui per lignea hæcce compendia, tam utile tamque necessarium negotium plebi communicandum duxit: cujus nomen si exstaret æquiore jure fastis hisce insereretur, quam multorum tituli, quos boni publici cura vix unquam tetigit.

The introduction of the Julian calendar at that time is however nothing better than an antiquary's mere dream. At a later period the Germans, who had much more communication with the Romans than ever the Scandinavians had, divided the year into three seasons, if Tacitus was rightly informed; this being one consequence of the little regard which they paid to agriculture.Hyems et ver et æstas intellectum ac vocabula habent; autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur.

Moreover Wormius was assured, (and this was a fact which might well have been handed down by memory, and was not likely to have been recorded), that the wooden almanacks were originally copied from a written one in a very antient manuscript preserved in the church at Drontheim. There is no proof that a paganRimstokeever existed in those countries. The clergy had no interest in withholding this kind of knowledge from the people even in the darkest ages of papal tyranny and monkish imposture. But during the earlier idolatries of the Romans it seems to have been withheld; and it was against the will of the Senate that the Fasti were first divulged to the people by Cneius Flavius Scriba.

The carelessness of the Romans during many ages as to the divisions of time, seems scarcely compatible even with the low degree of civilization which they had attained. We are told that when the Twelve Tables were formed, no other distinctions of the day than those of sunrise and sunset were known among them by name; that some time after they begun to compute from noon to noon; and that for three hundred years they had nothing whereby to measure an hour, nor knew of any such denomination,tamdiu populi Romani indiscreta lux fait.A brazen pillar, which marked the hour of noon by its shortest shadow, was the only means of measuring time, till, in the first Punic war, the Consul M. Valerius Messala brought thither a sun-dial from the spoils of Catana in Sicily. This was in the 477th year of the City; and by that dial the Romans went ninety-nine years without adapting it to the meridian of Rome. A better was then erected; but they were still without any guide in cloudy weather, till in the year 595 after the building of the City, Scipio Nasica introduced the water-clock, which is said to have been invented about eighty years before by Ctesibius of Alexandria. When the Romans had begun to advance in civilization, no people ever made a more rapid progress in all the arts and abuses which follow in its train. Astrology came with astronomy from the East, for science had speedily been converted into a craft, and in the age of the Cæsars the Egyptian professors of that craft were among the pests of Rome.

More than one Roman calendar is in existence, preserved by the durability of the material, which is a square block of marble. Each side contains three months, in parallel columns, headed by the appropriate signs of the zodiac. In these the astronomical information was given, with directions for the agricultural business of the month, and notices of the respective gods under whose tutelage the months were placed, and of the religious festivals in their course, with a warning to the husbandmen against neglecting those religious duties, upon the due performance of which the success of their labours depended.

Those learned authors who look in the Scriptures for what is not to be found there, and supply by conjectures whatever they wish to find, have not decided whether astronomy was part of Adam's infused knowledge, or whether it was acquired by him, and his son Seth; but from Seth they say it descended to Abraham, and he imparted it to the Egyptians. Whatever may be thought of this derivation, the Egyptian mind seems always to have pullulated with superstition, as the slime of their own Nile is said to have fermented into low and loathsome forms of miscreated life. The Rabbis say that ten measures of witchcraft were sent into the world, and Egypt got nine of them.

The Greeks are said to have learnt from the Babylonians the twelve divisions of the day. The arrow-headed inscriptions at Babylon are supposed by some of those who have bestowed most attention upon them to be calendars: and there can be little doubt that where the divisions of time were first scientifically observed, there the first calendar would be formed. In Egypt however it is that we hear of them first; and such resemblances exist between the Egyptian calendar, and the oldest of those which have been discovered in the north of Europe, that Court de Gebelin supposes they must have had a common origin, and in an age anterior to those Chaldeans whose astronomical observations ascended nineteen hundred years before the age of Alexander. This is too wild an assumption to be soberly maintained. What is common to both found its way to Scandinavia in far later times. Christianity was imported into those countries with all the corruptions which it had gathered in the East as well as in the West; and the Christian calendar brought with it as many superstitions of European growth, as there was room for inserting. There was room for many even upon the Norwegian staff.

The lineal descendant of thatrimstokewas still in use in the middle of England at the close of the 17th century; though it was then, says Plot, a sort of antiquity so little known that it had hardly been heard of in the southern parts, and was understood but by few of the gentry in the northern. Clogg was the English name, whether so called from the word log, because they were generally made of wood, and not so commonly of oak or fir as of box; or from the resemblance of the larger ones to the clogs, “wherewith we restrain the wild, extravagant, mischievous motions of some of our dogs,” he knew not. There were some few of brass. Some were of convenient size for the pocket; and there were larger ones, which used to hang at one end of the mantle tree of the chimney for family use; as in Denmark therimstokewas found in every respectable yeoman's house at the head of the table, or suspended from a beam. Plot minutely and carefully described these, and endeavoured, but not always with success, to explain some of the hieroglyphes or symbols by which the festivals were denoted; all which he had seen had only the Prime (or Golden Number) and the immoveable feasts; the Prime, so called as indicatingprimas lunasthrough the year, our ancestors set in the margin of their calendars in characters of gold,—and thence its other name.

The rudest that has ever been discovered was found in pulling down part of a chateau in Bretagne. Its characters had so magical an appearance, that it would have been condemned by acclamation to the flames, if the Lord of the Chateau had not rescued it, thinking it was more likely to puzzle an antiquary than to raise the Devil. He sent it to Sainte-Palaye, and M. Lancelot succeeded in fully explaining it. Most barbarous as it was, there is reason for concluding that it was not older than the middle of the 17th century.

In Peter Hopkins's time the clogg was still found in farm houses. He remembered when a countryman had walked to the nearest large town, thirty miles distant, for the express purpose of seeing an almanack, the first that had been heard of in those parts. His enquiring neighbours crowded round the man on his return. “Well—well,” said he, “I know not! it maffles and talks. But all I could make out is that Collop Monday falls on a Tuesday next year.”

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