Chapter 4

It may easily be supposed that the Doctor was versed in the science of numbers; not merely that common science which is taught at schools and may be learnt from Cocker's Arithmetic, but the more recondite mysteries which have in all ages delighted minds like his; and of which the richest specimens may be seen in the writings of the Hugonot Minister Jean de l'Espagne, and in those of our contemporary Mr. John Bellamy, author of the Ophion, of various papers in the Classical Journal, and defender of the Old and New Testament.

Cet auteur est assez digne d'etre lu, says Bayle of Jean de l'Espagne, and he says it in some unaccountable humour, too gravely for a jest. The writer who is thus recommended was Minister of the Reformed French Church in Westminster, which met at that time in Somerset Chapel, and his friend Dr. De Garencieres, who wrote commendatory verses upon him in French, Latin and Greek, calls him

Belle lumiere des Pasteurs,Ornement du Siecle ou nous sommes,Qui trouve des admirateursPar tout ou il y a des hommes.

He was one of those men to whom the Bible comes as a book of problems and riddles, a mine in which they are always at work, thinking that whatever they can throw up must needs be gold. Among the various observations which he gave the world without any other order, as he says, than that in which they presented themselves to his memory, there may be found good, bad and indifferent. He thought the English Church had improperly appointed a Clerk to say Amen for the people. Amen being intended, among other reasons, as a mark whereby to distinguish those who believed with the officiating Priest from Idolaters and Heretics. He thought it was not expedient that Jews should be allowed to reside in England, for a Jew would perceive in the number of our tolerated sects, a confusion worse than that of Babel; and as the multitude here are always susceptible of every folly which is offered, and the more monstrous the faith, to them the better mystery, it was to be feared, he said, that for the sake of converting two or three Jews we were exposing a million Christians to the danger of Judaizing; or at least that we should see new religions start up, compounded of Judaism with Christianity. He was of opinion, in opposition to what was then generally thought in England that one might innocently say God bless you, to a person who sneezed, though he candidly admitted that there was no example either in the Old or New Testament, and that in all the Scriptures only one person is mentioned as having sneezed, to wit the Shunamite's son. He thought it more probable from certain texts that the Soul at death departs by way of the nostrils, than by way of the mouth according to the vulgar notion:—had he previously ascertained which way it came in, he would have had no difficulty in deciding which way it went out. And he propounded and resolved a question concerning Jephtha which no person but himself ever thought of asking:Pourquoy Dieu voulant delivrer les Israelites, leur donna pour liberateur, voire pour Chef et Gouverneur perpetuel, un fils d'une paillarde?“O Jephtha, Judge of Israel,” that a Frenchman should call thee in filthy Frenchfils d'une putain!

But the peculiar talent of theBelle Lumiere des Pasteurswas for cabalistic researches concerning numbers, or what he callsL'Harmonie du Temps. Numbers, he held, (and every generation, every family, every individual was marked with one,) were not the causes of what came to pass, but they were marks or impresses which God set upon his works, distinguishing them by the difference of these their cyphers. And he laid it down as a rule that in doubtful points of computation, the one wherein some mystery could be discovered was always to be preferred. QUOY?—(think how triumphantly his mouth opened and his nose was erected and his nostrils were dilated, when he pronounced that interrogation)—QUOY?la varieté de nos opinions qui provient d'imperfection, aneantira-t-elle les merveilles de Dieu?In the course of his Scriptural computations he discovered that when the Sun stood still at the command of Joshua, it was precisely 2555 years after the Creation, that is seven years of years, a solar week, after which it had been preordained that the Sun should thus have its sabbath of rest:Ceci n'est il pas admirable?It was on the tenth year of the tenth year of the years that the Sun went back ten degrees, which was done to show the chronology:ou est le stupide qui ne soit ravi en admiration d'une si celeste harmonie?With equal sagacity and equal triumph he discovered how the generations from Adam to Christ went by twenty-twos; and the generations of Christ by sevens, being 77 in all, and that from the time the promise of the Seed was given till its fulfilment there elapsed a week of years, seven times seventy years, seventy weeks of years, and seven times seventy weeks of years by which beautiful geometry, if he might be permitted to use so inadequate a term, the fullness of time was made up.

What wonderful significations also hath Mr. Bellamy in his kindred pursuits discovered and darkly pointed out! Doth he not tell us of seven steps, seven days, seven priests, seven rams, seven bullocks, seven trumpets, seven shepherds, seven stars, seven spirits, seven eyes, seven lamps, seven pipes, seven heads, four wings, four beasts, four kings, four kingdoms, four carpenters; the number three he has left unimproved,—but for two,—

which number Nature framedIn the most useful faculties of man,To strengthen mutually and relieve each other,Two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs and feet,That where one failed the other might supply,

for this number Mr. Bellamy has two cherubims, two calves, two turtles, two birds alive, two1, two baskets of figs, two olive trees, two women grinding, two men in the fields, two woes, two witnesses, two candlesticks; and when he descends to the unit, he tells us of one tree, one heart, one stick, one fold, one pearl,—to which we must add one Mr. John Bellamy the Pearl of Commentators.

1The blank is in the MS.

But what is this to the exquisite manner in which he elucidates the polytheism of the Greeks and Romans, showing us that the inferior Gods of their mythology were in their origin only men who had exercised certain departments in the state, a discovery which he illustrates in a manner the most familiar, and at the same time the most striking for its originality. Thus, he says, if the Greeks and Romans had been Englishmen, or if we Englishmen of the present day were Greeks and Romans, we should call our Secretary at War, Lord Bathurst for instance, Mars; the Lord Chancellor (Lord Eldon to wit) Mercury,—as being at the head of the department for eloquence.—(But as Mercury is also the God of thieves may not Mr. Bellamy, grave as he is, be suspected of insinuating here that the Gentlemen of the Long Robe are the most dextrous of pickpockets?)—The first Lord of the Admiralty, Neptune. The President of the College of Physicians, Apollo. The President of the Board of Agriculture, Janus. Because with one face he looked forward to the new year, while at the same time he looked back with the other on the good or bad management of the agriculture of the last, wherefore he was symbolically represented with a second face at the back of his head. Again Mr. Bellamy seems to be malicious, in thus typifying or seeming to typify Sir John Sinclair between two administrations with a face for both. The ranger of the forests he proceeds, would be denominated Diana. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Minerva;—Minerva in a Bishop's wig! The first Lord of the Treasury, Juno; and the Society of Suppression of Vice,—Reader, lay thy watch upon the table, and guess for three whole minutes what the Society for the Suppression of Vice would be called upon this ingenious scheme, if the Greeks and Romans were Englishmen of the present generation, or if we of the present generation were heathen Greeks and Romans. I leave acarte blanchebefore this, lest thine eye outrunning thy judgement, should deprive thee of that proper satisfaction which thou wilt feel if thou shouldst guess aright. But exceed not the time which I have affixed for thee, for if thou dost not guess aright in three minutes, thou wouldest not in as many years.

VENUS. Yes Reader. By Cyprus and Paphos and the Groves of Idalia. By the little God Cupid,—by all the Loves and Doves,—and by the lobbies of the London theatres—he calls the Society for the Suppression of Vice, VENUS!

Fancy, says Fuller, runs riot when spurred with superstition. This is his marginal remark upon a characteristic paragraph concerning the Chambers about Solomon's Temple, with which I will here recreate the reader. “As for the mystical meaning of these chambers, Bede no doubt, thought he hit the very mark—when finding therein the three conditions of life, all belonging to God's Church: in the ground chamber, such as live in marriage; in the middle chamber such as contract; but in theexcelsisor third story, such as have attained to the sublimity of perpetual virginity. Rupertus in the lowest chamber lodgeth those of practical lives with Noah; in the middle—those of mixed lives with Job; and in the highest—such as spend their days with Daniel in holy speculations. But is not this ratherlusus, thanallusio, sporting with, than expounding of scriptures? Thus when the gates of the Oracle are madefive square, Ribera therein reads our conquest over the five senses, and when those of the door of the Temple are said to befour square, therein saith he is denoted thequaternionof Evangelists. After this rate, Hiram (though no doubt dexterous in his art) could not so soon fit a pillar with a fashion as a Friar can fit that fashion with a mystery. If made three square, then the Trinity of Persons: four square, the cardinal virtues: five square, thePentateuch of Moses:six square, thePetitionsor theLord's Prayer:seven square, theirSacraments:eight square, theBeatitudes:nine square, the Orders of Angels: ten square, the Commandments: eleven square, the moral virtues: twelve square, the articles of the creed are therein contained. In a word—for matter of numbers—fancy is never at a loss—like a beggar, never out of her way, but hath some haunts where to repose itself. But such as in expounding scriptures reap more than God did sow there, never eat what they reap themselves, because such grainless husks, when seriously thrashed out, vanish all into chaff.”2

2Pisgah Sight of Palestine, Book iii. c. vii.

THE MYSTERY OF NUMBERS PURSUED, AND CERTAIN CALCULATIONS GIVEN WHICH MAY REMIND THE READER OF OTHER CALCULATIONS EQUALLY CORRECT—ANAGRAMMATIZING OF NAMES, AND THE DOCTOR'S SUCCESS THEREIN.

“There is no efficacy in numbers, said the wiser Philosophers; and very truly,”—saith Bishop Hacket in repeating this sentence; but he continues,—“some numbers are apt to enforce a reverent esteem towards them, by considering miraculous occurrences which fell out inholy Scriptureon such and such a number.—Non potest fortuitò fieri, quod tam sæpe fit, says Maldonatus whom I never find superstitious in this matter. It falls out too often to be called contingent; and the oftener it falls out, the more to be attended.”1

1On referring to Bishop Hacket's Sermons I find this Motto it not copied outVerbatim. See p. 245.

This choice morsel hath led us from the science of numbers. Great account hath been made of that science in old times. There was an epigrammatist who discovering that the name of his enemy Damagoras amounted in numerical letters to the same sum asΛοιμὸςthe plague, inferred from thence that Damagorus and the Plague were one and the same thing; a stingless jest serving like many satires of the present age to show the malice and not the wit of the satirist. But there were those among the ancients who believed that stronger influences existed in the number of a name, and that because of their arithmetical inferiority in this point, Patroclus was slain by Hector, and Hector by Achilles. Diviners grounded upon this a science which they called Onomantia or Arithmomantia. When Maurice of Saxony to the great fear of those who were most attached to him, engaged in war against Charles V, some one encouraged his desponding friends by this augury, and said that if the initials of the two names were considered, it would be seen that the fortunes of Maurice preponderated over those of Charles in the proportion of a thousand to a hundred.

A science like this could not be without attractions for the Doctor; and it was with no little satisfaction that he discovered in the three Ds with which his spoons and his house linen were marked, by considering them as so many capital Deltas, the figures 444, combining the complex virtues of the four thrice told. But he discovered greater secrets in the names of himself and his wife when taken at full length. He tried them in Latin and could obtain no satisfactory result, nor had he any better success in Greek when he observed the proper orthography ofΔανιὴλandΔεββῶρα.2But anagrammatists are above the rules of orthography, just as Kings, Divines and Lawyers are privileged, if it pleases them, to dispense with the rules of grammar. Taking these words therefore letter by letter according to the common pronunciation (for who said he pronounces them Danieel and Deboarah?) and writing the surname in Greek letters instead of translating it, the sum which it thus produced was equal to his most sanguine wishes, for thus it proved

Daniel and Deborah Dove.ΔανιὲλΔεβόῥαΔοὺε.

The whole being added together gave the following product

2ΔεβόῥῥαGen. xxxv. 8.,ΔεββῶραJudges iv. 4. The doubleῥwill not affect the mystery!

Here was the number 761 found in fair addition, without any arbitrary change of letters, or licentious innovation in orthography. And herein was mystery. The number 761 is a prime number; from hence the Doctor inferred that as the number was indivisible, there could be no division between himself and Mrs. Dove; an inference which the harmony of their lives fully warranted. And this alone would have amply rewarded his researches. But a richer discovery flashed upon him. The year 1761 was the year of his marriage, and to make up the deficient thousand there was M for marriage and matrimony. These things he would say must never be too explicit; their mysterious character would be lost if they lay upon the surface; like precious metals and precious stones you must dig to find them.

He had bestowed equal attention and even more diligence in anagrammatizing the names. His own indeed furnished him at first with a startling and by no means agreeable result; for upon transposing the component letters of Daniel Dove, there appeared the wordsLeaden void!Nor was he more fortunate in a Latin attempt, which gave himDan vile Deo.Vel dona Deias far as it bore a semblance of meaning was better; but when after repeated dislocations and juxta positions there came forth the wordsDead in love, Joshua Sylvester was not more delighted at finding that Jacobus Stuart madejusta scrutabo, and James StuartA just Master, than the Doctor,—for it was in the May days of his courtship. In the course of these anagrammatical experiments he had a glimpse of success which made him feel for a moment like a man whose lottery ticket is next in number to the £20,000 prize. Dove failed only in one letter of being Ovid. In old times they did not stand upon trifles in these things, and John Bunyan was perfectly satisfied with extracting from his name the wordsNu hony in a B,—a sentence of which the orthography and the import are worthy of each other. But although the Doctor was contented with a very small sufficit of meaning, he could not depart so violently from the letters here. The disappointment was severe though momentary: it was, as we before observed, in the days of his courtship; and could he thus have made out his claim to be called Ovid, he had as clear a right to add Naso as the Poet of Sulmo himself, or any of the Nasonic race, for he had been at the promontory, “and why indeed Naso,” as Holofernes has said?—Why not merely for that reason ‘looking toward Damascus’ which may be found in the second volume of this work in the sixty-third chapter and at the two hundred and thirtieth page, but also “for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention?”3

3Love's Labour Lost, Act iv. Sc. ii.

Thus much for his own name. After marriage he added his wife's with the conjunction copulative, and then came outDear Delia had bound one:nothing could be more felicitous, Delia as has already been noticed, having been the poetical name by which he addressed the object of his affections. Another result wasI hadden a dear bond-love, but having some doubts as to the syntax of the verb, and some secret dislike to its obsolete appearance, he altered it intoNed, I had a dear bond-love, as though he was addressing his friend Dr. Miller the organist, whose name was Edward.

THE SUBJECT OF ANAGRAMS CONTINUED; A TRUE OBSERVATION WHICH MANY FOR WANT OF OBSERVATION WILL NOT DISCOVER TO BE SUCH, VIZ., THAT THERE IS A LATENT SUPERSTITION IN THE MOST RATIONAL OF MEN.—LUCKY AND UNLUCKY—FITTING AND UNFITTING—ANAGRAMS, AND HOW THE DOCTOR'S TASTE IN THIS LINE WAS DERIVED FROM OUR OLD ACQUAINTANCE JOSHUA SYLVESTER.

Ha gran forza una vecchia opinione;E bisogna grand' arte, e gran fatica,A cavarla del capo alle persone.BRONZINOPITTORE.

Anagrams are not likely ever again to hold so high a place among the prevalent pursuits of literature as they did in the seventeenth century, when Louis XIII. appointed the Provençal Thomas Billen to be his Royal Anagrammatist, and granted him a salary of 1200livres. But no person will ever hit upon an apt one without feeling that degree of pleasure and surprize with which any odd coincidence is remarked. Has any one who knows Johnny the Bear heard his name thus anagrammatized without a smile? we may be sure he smiled and growled at the same time when he first heard it himself.

Might not Father Salvator Mile, and Father Louis Almerat, who were both musicians, have supposed themselves as clearly predestined to be musical, as ever seventh son of a Septimus thought himself born for the medical professions, if they had remarked what Penrose discovered for them, that their respective names, with the F. for Friar prefixed, each contained the letters of the six musical notesut,re,mi,fa,sol,la, and not a letter more or less?

There is, and always hath been, and ever will be, a latent superstition in the most rational of men. It belongs to the weakness and dependence of human nature. Believing as the scriptures teach us to believe, that signs and tokens have been vouchsafed in many cases, is it to be wondered at that we seek for them sometimes in our moods of fancy, or that they suggest themselves to us in our fears and our distress? Men may cast off religion and extinguish their conscience without ridding themselves of this innate and inherent tendency.

Proper names have all in their origin been significant in all languages. It was easy for men who brooded over their own imaginations, to conceive that they might contain in their elements a more recondite, and perhaps, fatidical signification; and the same turn or twist of mind which led the Cabbalists to their extravagant speculations have taken this direction, when confined within the limits of languages which have no supernatural pretensions. But no serious importance was attached to such things, except by persons whose intellects were in some degree deranged. They were sought for chiefly as an acceptable form of compliment, sometimes in self-complacency of the most offensive kind, and sometimes for the sting which they might carry with them. Lycophron is said to have been the inventor of this trifling.

The Rules for the true discovery of perfect anagrams, as laid down by Mrs. Mary Fage,1allowed as convenient a license in orthography as the Doctor availed himself of in Greek.

E may most—what conclude an English word,And so a letter at a need afford.H is an aspiration and no letter;It may be had or left which we think better.I may be I or Y as need require;Q ever after doth a U desire;Two Vs may be a double U; and thenA double U may be two Vs again.X may divided be, and S and CMay by that letter comprehended be.Z a double S may comprehend:And lastly an apostrophe may easeSometimes a letter when it doth not please.

1In her Fames Roule, or the names of King Charles, his Queen and his most hopeful posterity; together with the names of the Dukes, Marquisses, &c., anagrammatized, and expressed by acrostick lines on their lives. London, 1637, R. S.

Two of the luckiest hits which anagrammatists have made were on the Attorney General William Noy,I moyl in law;and Sir Edmundbury GodfreyI find murdered by rogues. Before Felton's execution it was observed that his anagram wasNo, flie not.

A less fortunate one made the Lady Davies mad, or rather fixed the character of her madness. She was the widow of Sir John Davies, the statesman and poet, and having anagrammatized Eleanor Davies into Reveal O Daniel, she was crazy enough to fancy that the spirit of the Prophet Daniel was incorporated in her. The Doctor mentioned the case with tenderness and a kind of sympathy. “Though the anagram says Dr. Heylyn, had too much by an L and too little by an S, yet she found Daniel and Reveal in it, and that served her turn.” Setting up for a Prophetess upon this conceit, and venturing upon political predictions in sore times, she was brought before the Court of High Commission, where serious pains were preposterously bestowed in endeavouring to reason her out of an opinion founded on insanity. All, as might have been expected, and ought to have been foreseen, would not do, “till Lamb, then Dean of the Arches, shot her through and through with an arrow borrowed from her own quiver.” For while the Divines were reasoning the point with her out of scripture, he took a pen into his hand, and presently finding that the letters of her name might be assorted to her purpose, said to her, Madam, I see that you build much on anagrams, and I have found out one which I hope will fit you: Dame Eleanor Davies,—Never so mad a Ladie!He then put it into her hands in writing, “which happy fancy brought that grave Court into such a laughter, and the poor woman thereupon into such a confusion, that afterwards she either grew wiser, or was less regarded.”—This is a case in which it may be admitted that ridicule was a fair test of truth.

When Henri IV. sent for Marshal Biron to court, with an assurance of full pardon if he would reveal without reserve the whole of his negociations and practices, that rash and guilty man resolved to go and brave all dangers, because certain Astrologers had assured him that his ascendant commanded that of the King, and in confirmation of this some flattering friend discovered in his nameHenri de Bourbonthis anagramDe Biron Bonheur.Comme ainsi fust, says one of his contemporaries,qu'il en fist gloire, quelque Gentilhomme bien advisé là present—dit tout bas à l'oreille d'un sien amy, s'il le pense ainsi il n'est pas sage, et trouvera qu'il y a duRobindedansBiron.Robinwas a name used at that time by the French as synonymous with simpleton. But of unfitting anagrams none were ever more curiously unfit than those which were discovered in Marguerite de Valois, the profligate Queen of Navarre;Salve, Virgo Mater Dei; ou, de vertu royal image!The Doctor derived his taste for anagrams from the poet with whose rhymes and fancies he had been so well embued in his boyhood, old Joshua Sylvester, who as the translator of Du Bartas, signed himself to the King in anagrammatical FrenchVoy Sire Saluste, and was himself addressed in anagrammatical Latin asVere Os Salustii.

“Except Eteostiques,” say Drummond of Hawthornden, “I think the Anagram the most idle study in the world of learning. Their maker must behomo miserrimæ patientiæ, and when he is done, what is it butmagno conatu nugas magnas agere!you may of one and the same name make both good and evil. So did my Uncle find in Anna Regina,Ingannare, as well as of Anna Britannorum Regina,Anna Regnantium Arbor:as he who in Charles de Valois, foundChassè la dure loy, and after the massacre foundChasseur desloyal. Often they are most false, as Henri de Bourbon,Bonheur de Biron. Of all the anagrammatists and with least pain, he was the best who, out of his own name, being Jacques de la Chamber, foundLa Chamber de Jacques, and rested there: and next to him, here at home, a Gentleman whose mistress's name being Anna Grame, he found it anAnagramealready.”

THE DOCTOR'S IDEAS OF LUCK, CHANCE, ACCIDENT, FORTUNE AND MISFORTUNE.—THE DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE'S DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHANCE AND FORTUNE WHEREIN NO-MEANING IS MISTAKEN FOR MEANING.—AGREEMENT IN OPINION BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHER OF DONCASTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER OF NORWICH.—DISTINCTION BETWEEN UNFORTUNATELY UGLY, AND WICKEDLY UGLY.—DANGER OF PERSONAL CHARMS.

Ἔστι γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐπίφθεγμα τὸ αὐτόματον, ἀνθρώπων ὡς ἔτυχε καὶ ἀλογίστως φρονούντων, καὶ τὸν μὲν λόγον αὐτῶν μὴ καταλαμβανόντων, διὰ δὲ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τῆς καταλήψεως, αλόγως οἰομένων διατετάχθαι ταῦτα, ὧν τὸν λόγον ἐιπεῖν ὀυκ ἔχουσιν.

CONSTANT. ORAT. ADSANCT. CÆT. C. VII.

“Deformity is either natural, voluntary, or adventitious, being either caused byGod's unseen Providence, (by men nick-named, chance,) or by men's cruelty.”

FULLER'SHOLYSTATE, B. iii. c. 15.

It may readily be inferred from what has already been said of our Philosopher's way of thinking, that he was not likely to use the words luck, chance, accident, fortune or misfortune, with as little reflection as is ordinarily shown in applying them. The distinction which that fantastic—and yet most likeable person—Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, makes between Chance and Fortune was far from satisfying him. “Fortune,” says her Grace, (she might have been called her Beauty too) “is only various corporeal motions of several creatures—designed to one creature, or more creatures; either tothatcreature, orthosecreatures advantage, or disadvantage; if advantage, man names it Good Fortune; if disadvantage, man names it Ill Fortune. As for Chance, it is the visible effects of some hidden cause; and Fortune, a sufficient cause to produce such effects; for the conjunction of sufficient causes, doth produce such or such effects, which effects could not be produced—if any of those causes were wanting: so that Chances are but the effects of Fortune.”

The Duchess had just thought enough about this to fancy that she had a meaning, and if she had thought a little more she might have discovered that she had none.

The Doctor looked more accurately both to his meaning and his words; but keeping as he did, in my poor judgement, the golden mean between superstition and impiety, there was nothing in this that savoured of preciseness or weakness, nor of that scrupulosity which is a compound of both. He did not suppose that trifles and floccinaucities of which neither the causes nor consequences are of the slightest import, were predestined; as for example—whether he had beef or mutton for dinner, wore a blue coat or a brown—or took off his wig with his right hand or with his left. He knew that all things are under the direction of almighty and omniscient Goodness; but as he never was unmindful of that Providence in its dispensations of mercy and of justice, so he never disparaged it.

Herein the Philosopher of Doncaster agreed with the Philosopher of Norwich who saith, “let not fortune—which hath no name in Scripture, have any in thy divinity. Let providence, not chance, have the honour of thy acknowledgements, and be thy Œdipus on contingences. Mark well the paths and winding ways thereof; but be not too wise in the construction, or sudden in the application. The hand of Providence writes often by abbreviatures, hieroglyphics or short characters, which like the laconism on the wall, are not to be made out but by a hint or key from that spirit which indicted them.”1

1The Readers of Jeremy Taylor will not fail to remember the passage following from his Great Exemplar.

“God's Judgments are likethe writing upon the wall, which was a missive of anger from God upon Belshazzar. It came upon an errand of revenge, and yet was writ in so dark characters that none could read it but a prophet.”—DISC. xviii.Of the Causes and Manner of the Divine Judgments.

Some ill, he thought, was produced in human affairs by applying the term unfortunate to circumstances which were brought about by imprudence. A man was unfortunate, if being thrown from his horse on a journey, he broke arm or leg, but not if he broke his neck in steeple-hunting, or when in full cry after a fox; if he were impoverished by the misconduct of others, not if he were ruined by his own folly and extravagance; if he suffered in any way by the villainy of another, not if he were transported, or hanged for his own.

Neither would he allow that either man or woman could with propriety be called, as we not unfrequently hear in common speech,unfortunatelyugly.Wickedlyugly, he said, they might be, and too often were; and in such cases the greater their pretensions to beauty, the uglier they were. But goodness has a beauty of its own, which is not dependent upon form and features, and which makes itself felt and acknowledged however otherwise ill-favoured the face may be in which it is set. He might have said with Seneca,errare mihi visus est qui dixit

Gratior est pulchro veniens e corpore virtus;

nullo enim honestamento eget; ipsa et magnum sui decus est, et corpus suum consecret.None, he would say with great earnestness, appeared so ugly to his instinctive perception as some of those persons whom the world accounted handsome, but upon whom pride, or haughtiness or conceit had set its stamp, or who bore in their countenances what no countenance can conceal, the habitual expression of any reigning vice, whether it were sensuality and selfishness, or envy, hatred, malice and uncharitableness. Nor could he regard with any satisfaction a fine face which had no ill expression, if it wanted a good one: he had no pleasure in beholding mere formal and superficial beauty, that which lies no deeper than the skin, and depends wholly upon “a set of features and complexion.” He had more delight, he said in looking at one of the statues in Mr. Weddel's collection, than at a beautiful woman if he read in her face that she was as little susceptible of any virtuous emotion as the marble. While therefore he would not allow that any person could be unfortunately ugly, he thought that many were unfortunately handsome, and that no wise parent would wish his daughter to be eminently beautiful, lest what in her childhood was naturally and allowably the pride of his eye—should when she grew up become the grief of his heart. It requires no wide range of observation to discover that the woman who is married for her beauty has little better chance of happiness than she who is married for her fortune. “I have known very few women in my life,” said Mrs. Montagu, “whom extraordinary charms and accomplishments did not make unhappy.”

NO DEGREE OF UGLINESS REALLY UNFORTUNATE.—FIDUS CORNELIUS COMPARED TO A PLUCKED OSTRICH.—WILKES' CLAIM TO UGLINESS CONSIDERED AND NEGATIVED BY DR. JOHNSON, NOTWITHSTANDING HOGARTH'S PORTRAIT.—CAST OF THE EYE À LA MONTMORENCY.—ST. EVREMOND AND TURENNE.—WILLIAM BLAKE THE PAINTER, AND THE WELSH TRIADS.—CURIOUS EXTRACT FROM THAT VERY CURIOUS AND RARE BOOK, THE DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF HIS OWN PICTURES,—AND A PAINFUL ONE FROM HIS POETICAL SKETCHES.

“If thou beest not so handsome as thou wouldest have been thank God thou art not more unhandsome than thou art.'Tis His mercy thou art not the mark for passenger's fingers to point at, an Heteroclite in nature, with some member defective or redundant. Be glad that thy clay cottage hath all the necessary forms thereto belonging, though the outside be not so fairly plaistered as some others.”

FULLER'SHOLYSTATE, B. iii. c. 15.

I asked him once if there was not a degree of ugliness which might be deemed unfortunate, because a consciousness of it affected the ill-favoured individual so as to excite in him discontent and envy, and other evil feelings. He admitted that in an evil disposition it might have this tendency; but he said a disposition which was injuriously affected by such a cause, would have had other propensities quite as injurious in themselves and in their direction, evolved and brought into full action by an opposite cause. To exemplify this he instanced the two brothers Edward IV. and Richard III.

Fidus Cornelius burst into tears in the Roman Senate, because Corbulo called him a plucked ostrich:adversus alia maledicta mores et vitam convulnerantia, frontis illi firmitas constitit; adversus hoc tam absurdum lacrimæ prociderunt; tanta animorum imbecillitas est ubi ratio discessit.But instances of such weakness, the Doctor said, are as rare as they are ridiculous. Most people see themselves in the most favourable light. “Ugly!” a very ugly, but a very conceited fellow exclaimed one day when he contemplated himself in a looking-glass; “ugly! and yet there's something genteel in the face!” There are more coxcombs in the world than there are vain women; in the one sex there is a weakness for which time soon brings a certain cure, in the other it deserves a harsher appellation.

As to ugliness, not only in this respect do we make large allowances for ourselves, but our friends make large allowances for us also. Some one praised Palisson to Madame de Sevigné for the elegance of his manners, the magnanimity, the rectitude and other virtues which he ought to have possessed;hé bienshe replied,pour moi je ne connois que sa laideur; qu'on me le dedouble donc.Wilkes, who pretended as little to beauty, as he did to public virtue, when he was off the stage used to say, that in winning the good graces of a lady there was not more than three days difference between himself and the handsomest man in England. One of his female partizans praised him for his agreeable person, and being reminded of his squinting, she replied indignantly, that it was not more than a gentleman ought to squint. So rightly has Madame de Villedieu observed that

En mille occasions l'amour a sçeu prouverQue tout devient pour luy, matiere à sympathie,Quand il fait tant que d'en vouloir trouver.

She no doubt spoke sincerely, according to the light wherein, in the obliquity of her intellectual eyesight she beheld him. Just as that prince of republican and unbelieving bigots, Thomas Holles said of the same person, “I am sorry for the irregularities of Wilkes; they are however only as spots in the sun!” “It is the weakness of the many,” says a once noted Journalist “that when they have taken a fancy to a man, or to the name of a man they take a fancy even to his failings.” But there must have been no ordinary charm in the manners of John Wilkes, who in one interview overcame Johnson's well-founded and vehement dislike. The good nature of his countenance, and its vivacity and cleverness made its physical ugliness be overlooked; and probably his cast of the eye, which was a squint of the first water, seemed only a peculiarity which gave effect to the sallies of his wit.

Hogarth's portrait of him he treated with characteristic good humour, and allowed it “to be an excellent compound caricature, or a caricature of what Nature had already caricatured. I know but one short apology said he, to be made for this gentleman, or to speak more properly, for thepersonof Mr. Wilkes; it is, that he did not make himself; and that he never was solicitous about thecase(as Shakespeare calls it) only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never heard that he ever hung over the glassy stream, like another Narcissus admiring the image in it; nor that he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain, while it is capable of giving so much pleasure to others. I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cottage to which he is tenant for life, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order. While the share of health and animal spirits which heaven has given out, should hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation; or will ever be brought to ourIngenium Galbæ malè habitat:—Monsieur est mal logé.” This was part of a note for his intended edition of Churchill.

Squinting, according to a French writer, is not unpleasing, when it is not in excess. He is probably right in this observation. A slight obliquity of vision sometimes gives an archness of expression, and always adds to the countenance a peculiarity, which when the countenance has once become agreeable to the beholder, renders it more so. But when the eye-balls recede from each other to the outer verge of their orbits, or approach so closely that nothing but the intervention of the nose seems to prevent their meeting, a sense of distortion is produced, and consequently of pain.Il y a des gens, says Vigneul Marville,qui ne sauroient regarder des louches sans en sentir quelque douleur aux yeux. Je suis des ceux-la.This is because the deformity is catching, which it is well known to be in children; the tendency to imitation is easily excited in a highly sensitive frame—as in them; and the pain felt in the eyes gives warning that this action which is safe only while it is unconscious and unobserved, is in danger of being deranged.

A cast of the eyeà la Montmorencywas much admired at the Court of Louis XIII. where the representative of that illustrious family had rendered it fashionable by his example. Descartes is said to have liked all persons who squinted for his nurse's sake, and the anecdote tells equally in favour of her and of him.

St. Evremond says in writing the Eulogy of Turenne.Je ne m'amuserai point à depeindre tous les traits de son visage. Les caractéres des Grands Hommes n'ont rien de commun avec les portraits des belles femmes. Mais je puis dire en gros qu'il avoit quelque chose d'auguste et d'agréable; quelque chose en sa physionomie qui faisoit concevoir je ne sai quoi de grand en son ame, et en son esprit. On pouvoit juger à le voir, que par un disposition particuliere la Nature l'avoit préparé à faire tout ce qu'il a fait.If Turenne had not been an ill-looking man, the skilful eulogist would not thus have excused himself from giving any description of his countenance; a countenance from which indeed, if portraits belie it not, it might be inferred that nature had prepared him to change his party during the civil wars, as lightly as he would have changed his seat at a card-table,—to renounce the Protestant faith, and to ravage the Palatinate.Ne souvenez-vous pas de la physionomie funeste de ce grand homme,says Bussy Rabutin to Madame de Sevigné. An Italian bravo saidche non teneva specchio in camera, perche quando si crucciava diveniva tanto terribile nell' aspetto, che veggendosi haria fatto troppo gran paura a se stesso.1

1ILCORTEGIANO, 27.

Queen Elizabeth could not endure the sight of deformity; when she went into public her guards it is said removed all misshapen and hideous persons out of her way.

Extreme ugliness has once proved as advantageous to its possessor as extreme beauty, if there be truth in those Triads wherein the Three Men are recorded who escaped from the battle of Camlan. They were Morvran ab Teged, in consequence of being so ugly, that every body thinking him to be a Demon out of Hell fled from him; Sandde Bryd-Angel, or Angel-aspect, in consequence of being so fine of form, so beautiful and fair, that no one raised a hand against him—for he was thought to be an Angel from Heaven: and Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr, or Great-grasp (King Arthur's porter) from his size and strength, so that none stood in his way, and every body ran before him; excepting these three, none escaped, from Camlan,—that fatal field where King Arthur fell with all his chivalry.

That painter of great but insane genius, William Blake, of whom Allan Cunningham has written so interesting a memoir, took this Triad for the subject of a picture, which he called the Ancient Britons. It was one of his worst pictures,—which is saying much; and he has illustrated it with one of the most curious commentaries in his very curious and very rare descriptive Catalogue of his own Pictures.

It begins with a translation from the Welsh, supplied to him no doubt by that good simple-hearted, Welsh-headed man, William Owen, whose memory is the great store-house of all Cymric tradition and lore of every kind.

“In the last battle of King Arthur only Three Britons escaped; these were the Strongest Man, the Beautifullest Man, and the Ugliest Man. These Three marched through the field unsubdued as Gods; and the Sun of Britain set, but shall arise again with tenfold splendour, when Arthur shall awake from sleep, and resume his dominion over earth and ocean.

“The three general classes of men,” says the painter, “who are represented by the most Beautiful, the most Strong, and the most Ugly, could not be represented by any historical facts but those of our own countrymen, the Ancient Britons, without violating costumes. The Britons (say historians) were naked civilised men, learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain in their acts and manners; wiser than after ages. They were overwhelmed by brutal arms, all but a small remnant. Strength, Beauty and Ugliness escaped the wreck, and remain for ever unsubdued, age after age.

“The British Antiquities are now in the Artist's hands; all his visionary contemplations relating to his own country and its ancient glory, when it was, as it again shall be, the source of learning and inspiration. He has in his hands poems of the highest antiquity. Adam was a Druid, and Noah. Also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age, which began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command; whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth. All these things are written in Eden. The artist is an inhabitant of that happy country; and if every thing goes on as it has begun, the work of vegetation and generation may expect to be opened again to Heaven, through Eden, as it was in the beginning.

“The Strong Man represents the human sublime. The Beautiful Man represents the human pathetic, which was in the ban of Eden divided into male and female. The Ugly Man represents the human reason. They were originally one man, who was fourfold: he was self divided and his real humanity drawn on the stems of generation; and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God. How he became divided is a subject of great sublimity and pathos. The Artist has written it, under inspiration, and will if God please, publish it. It is voluminous, and contains the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and of Adam.

“In the mean time he has painted this picture, which supposes that in the reign of that British Prince, who lived in the fifth century, there were remains of those naked heroes in the Welsh mountains. They are now. Gray saw them in the person of his Bard on Snowdon; there they dwell in naked simplicity; happy is he who can see and converse with them, above the shadows of generation and death. In this picture, believing with Milton the ancient British history, Mr. Blake has done as all the ancients did, and as all the moderns who are worthy of fame, given the historical fact in its poetical vigour; so as it always happens; and not in that dull way that some historians pretend, who being weakly organised themselves, cannot see either miracle or prodigy. All is to them a dull round of probabilities and possibilities; but the history of all times and places is nothing else but improbabilities and impossibilities,—what we should say was impossible, if we did not see it always before our eyes.

“The antiquities of every nation under Heaven are no less sacred than those of the Jews, they are the same thing, as Jacob Bryant and all antiquaries have proved. How other antiquities came to be neglected and disbelieved, while those of the Jews are collected and arranged is an enquiry, worthy of both the Antiquarian and the Divine. All had originally one language, and one religion, this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preached the Gospel of Jesus, the reasoning historian, turner and twister of courses and consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, cannot with all their artifice, turn or twist one fact, or disarrange self evident action and reality. Reasons and opinions concerning acts are not history. Acts themselves alone are history, and they are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the acts O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable, or impossible. His opinion, who does not see spiritual agency, is not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is improbable, must reject all History, and retain doubts only.

“It has been said to the Artist, take the Apollo for the model of your beautiful man, and the Hercules for your strong man, and the Dancing Fawn for your ugly man. Now he comes to his trial. He knows that what he does is not inferior to the grandest antiques. Superior they cannot be, for human power cannot go beyond either what he does, or what they have done, it is the gift of God, it is inspiration and vision. He had resolved to emulate those precious remains of antiquity. He has done so, and the result you behold. His ideas of strength and beauty have not been greatly different. Poetry as it exists now on earth, in the various remains of ancient authors, Music as it exists in old tunes or melodies, Painting and Sculpture as it exists in the remains of antiquity and in the works of more modern genius, is Inspiration, and cannot be surpassed; it is perfect and eternal: Milton, Shakspeare, Michael Angelo, Rafael, the finest specimens of ancient Sculpture and Painting, and Architecture, Gothic, Grecian, Hindoo and Egyptian are the extent of the human mind. The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To suppose that Art can go beyond the finest specimens of Art that are now in the world, is not knowing what Art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the Spirit.

“It will be necessary for the Painter to say something concerning his ideas of Beauty, Strength and Ugliness.

“The beauty that is annexed and appended to folly, is a lamentable accident and error of the mortal and perishing life; it does but seldom happen; but with this unnatural mixture the sublime Artist can have nothing to do; it is fit for the burlesque. The beauty proper for sublime Art, is lineaments, or forms and features that are capable of being the receptacle of intellect; accordingly the Painter has given in his beautiful man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty. The face and limbs (?) that deviates or alters least, from infancy to old age, is the face and limbs (?) of greatest Beauty and Perfection.

“The Ugly likewise, when accompanied and annexed to imbecillity and disease, is a subject for burlesque and not for historical grandeur; the artist has imagined the Ugly man; one approaching to the beast in features and form, his forehead small, without frontals; his nose high on the ridge, and narrow; his chest and the stamina of his make, comparatively little, and his joints and his extremities large; his eyes with scarce any whites, narrow and cunning, and everything tending toward what is truly ugly; the incapability of intellect.

“The Artist has considered his strong man as a receptacle of Wisdom, a sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not spindle out into length, without strength, nor are they too large and unwieldy for his brain and bosom. Strength consists in accumulation of power to the principal seat, and from thence a regular gradation and subordination; strength in compactness, not extent nor bulk.

“The strong man acts from conscious superiority, and marches on in fearless dependence on the divine decrees, raging with the inspirations of a prophetic mind. The Beautiful man acts from duty, and anxious solicitude for the fates of those for whom he combats. The Ugly man acts from love of carnage, and delight in the savage barbarities of war, rushing with sportive precipitation into the very teeth of the affrighted enemy.

“The Roman Soldiers rolled together in a heap before them: ‘like the rolling thing before the whirlwind:’ each shew a different character, and a different expression of fear, or revenge, or envy, or blank horror, or amazement, or devout wonder and unresisting awe.

“The dead and the dying, Britons naked, mingled with armed Romans, strew the field beneath. Amongst these, the last of the Bards who were capable of attending warlike deeds, is seen falling, outstretched among the dead and the dying; singing to his harp in the pains of death.

“Distant among the mountains are Druid Temples, similar to Stone Henge. The sun sets behind the mountains, bloody with the day of battle.

“The flush of health in flesh, exposed to the open air, nourished by the spirits of forests and floods, in that ancient happy period, which history has recorded, cannot be like the sickly daubs of Titian or Rubens. Where will the copier of nature, as it now is, find a civilized man, who has been accustomed to go naked. Imagination only can furnish us with colouring appropriate, such as is found in the frescoes of Rafael, and Michael Angelo: the disposition of forms always directs colouring in works of true art. As to a modern man, stripped from his load of clothing, he is like a dead corpse. Hence Rubens, Titian, Correggio, and all of that class, are like leather and chalk; their men are like leather, and their women like chalk, for the disposition of their forms will not admit of grand colouring; in Mr. B's Britons, the blood is seen to circulate in their limbs; he defies competition in colouring.”

My regard for thee, dear Reader, would not permit me to leave untranscribed this very curious and original piece of composition. Probably thou hast never seen, and art never likely to see either the “Descriptive Catalogue” or the “Poetical Sketches” of this insane and erratic genius, I will therefore end the chapter with theMad Songfrom the latter,—premising onlyDificultosa provincia es la que emprendo, y à muchos parecerà escusada; mas para la entereza desta historia, ha parecido no omitir aguesta parte.2

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