Chapter 9

Maudit est nom qui par C se commence,Coquin, cornard, caignard, coqu, caphard:Aussi par B, badaud, badin, bavard,Mais pire est C, si j'ay bien remembrance.

Much as the Doctor insisted upon the virtues of what he called the divine initial, he reprehended the uncharitable sentiment of these verses, and thought that the author never could have played at “I love my Love with an A,” or that the said game perhaps was not known among the French; for you must get to x, y, and z before you find it difficult to praise her in any letter in the alphabet, and to dispraise her in the same.

Initials therefore, he thought, (always with one exception) of no other consequence than as they pleased the ear, and combined gracefully in a cypher, upon a seal or ring. But in names themselves a great deal more presents itself to a reflecting mind.

Shenstone used to bless his good fortune that his name was not obnoxious to a pun. He would not have liked to have been complimented in the same strain as a certain Mr. Pegge was by an old epigrammatist.

What wonder if my friendship's force doth lastFirm to your goodness? You have pegg'd it fast.

Little could he foresee, as Dr. Southey has observed that it was obnoxious to a rhyme in French English. In the gardens of Ermenonville M. placed this inscription to his honour.

This plain stoneTo William Shenstone.In his writings he display'dA mind natural;At Leasowes he laidArcadian greens rural.

Poor Shenstone hardly appears more ridiculous in the frontispiece to his own works, where, in the heroic attitude of a poet who has won the prize and is about to receive the crown, he stands before Apollo in a shirt and boa, as destitute of another less dispensible part of dress as Adam in Eden, but like Adam when innocent, not ashamed: while the shirtless God holding a lyre in one hand prepares with the other to place a wreath of bay upon the brow of his delighted votary.

The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds fancied that if he gave his son an uncommon Christian name, it might be the means of bettering his fortune; and therefore he had him christened Joshua. It does not appear however that the name ever proved as convenient to the great painter as it did to Joshua Barnes. He to whose Barnesian labours Homer and Queen Esther, and King Edward III. bear witness, was a good man and a good scholar, and a rich widow who not imprudently inferred that he would make a good husband, gave him an opportunity by observing to him one day that Joshua made the Sun and Moon stand still, and significantly adding that nothing could resist Joshua. The hint was not thrown away;—and he never had cause to repent that he had taken, nor she that she had given it.

A Spanish gentleman who made it his pastime to write books of chivalry, being to bring into his work a furious Giant, went many days devising a name which might in all points be answerable to his fierceness, neither could he light upon any; till playing one day at cards in his friend's house, he heard the master of the house say to the boy—muchacho—tra qui tantos. As soon as he heard Traquitantos he laid down his cards and said that now he had found a name which would fit well for his Giant.2

2HUARTE.

I know not whether it was the happy-minded author of the Worthies and the Church History of Britain who proposed as an epitaph for himself the words “Fuller's Earth,” or whether some one proposed it for him. But it is in his own style of thought and feeling.

Nor has it any unbeseeming levity, like this which is among Browne's poems.

Here lieth in soothHonest John Tooth,Whom Death on a dayFrom us drew away.

Or this upon a Mr. Button,

Here lieth one, God rest his soulWhose grave is but a button-hole.

No one was ever punned to death, nor, though Ditton is said to have died in consequence of “the unhappy effect” which Swift's verses produced upon him, can I believe that any one was ever rhymed to death.

A man may with better reason bless his godfathers and godmothers if they chuse for him a name which is neither too common nor too peculiar.3

3It is said of an eccentric individual that he never forgave his Godfathers and Godmother for giving him the name of Moses, for which the short is Mo.

It is not a good thing to be Tom'd or Bob'd, Jack'd or Jim'd, Sam'd or Ben'd, Natty'd or Batty'd, Neddy'd or Teddy'd, Will'd or Bill'd, Dick'd or Nick'd, Joe'd or Jerry'd as you go through the world. And yet it is worse to have a christian name, that for its oddity shall be in every body's mouth when you are spoken of, as if it were pinned upon your back, or labelled upon your forehead. Quintin Dick for example, which would have been still more unlucky if Mr. Dick had happened to have a cast in his eye. The Report on Parochial Registration contains a singular example of the inconvenience which may arise from giving a child an uncouth christian name. A gentleman called Anketil Gray had occasion for a certificate of his baptism: it was known at what church he had been baptized, but on searching the register there, no such name could be found: some mistake was presumed therefore not in the entry, but in the recollection of the parties, and many other registers were examined without success. At length the first register was again recurred to, and then upon a closer investigation, they found him entered as Miss Ann Kettle Grey.

“Souvent,” says Brântome, “ceux qui portent le nom de leurs ayeuls, leurressemblent volontiers, comme je l'ay veu observer et en discourir à aucuns philosophes.” He makes this remark after observing that the Emperor Ferdinand was named after his grandfather Ferdinand of Arragon, and Charles V. after his great grandfather Charles the Bold. But such resemblances are as Brântome implies, imitational where they exist. And Mr. Keightley's observation, that “a man's name and his occupation have often a most curious coincidence,” rests perhaps on a similar ground, men being sometimes designated by their names for the way of life which they are to pursue. Many a boy has been called Nelson in our own days, and Rodney in our fathers', because he was intended for the sea service, and many a seventh son has been christened Luke in the hope that he might live to be a physician. In what other business than that of a lottery-office would the name Goodluck so surely have brought business to the house? Captain Death could never have practised medicine or surgery, unless under an alias; but there would be no better name with which to meet an enemy in battle. Dr. Damman was an eminent physician and royal professor of midwifery at Ghent in the latter part of the last century. He ought to have been a Calvinistic divine.

The Ancients paid so great a regard to names, that whenever a number of men were to be examined on suspicion, they began by putting to the torture the one whose name was esteemed the vilest. And this must not be supposed to have had its origin in any reasonable probability, such as might be against a man who being apprehended for a riot, should say his name was Patrick Murphy, or Dennis O'Connor, or Thady O'Callaghan; or against a Moses Levi, or a Daniel Abrahams for uttering bad money; it was for the import of the name itself, and the evidence of a base and servile origin which it implied.

“J'ai été tousjours fort etonné,” says Bayle, “que les familles qui portent un nom odieux ou ridicule, ne le quitent pas.” The Leatherheads and Shufflebottoms, the Higgenses and Huggenses, the Scroggses and the Scraggses, Sheepshanks and Ramsbottoms, Taylors and Barbers, and worse than all, Butchers, would have been to Bayle as abominable as they were to Dr. Dove. I ought, the Doctor would say, to have a more natural dislike to the names of Kite, Hawk, Falcon and Eagle; and yet they are to me (the first excepted) less odious than names like these: and even preferable to Bull, Bear, Pig, Hog, Fox or Wolf.

What a name, he would say, is Lamb for a soldier, Joy for an undertaker, Rich for a pauper, or Noble for a taylor: Big for a lean and little person, and Small for one who is broad in the rear and abdominous in the van. Short for a fellow six feet without his shoes, or Long for him whose high heels hardly elevate him to the height of five. Sweet for one who has either a vinegar face, or a foxey complection. Younghusband for an old batchelor. Merryweather for any one in November and February, a black spring, a cold summer or a wet autumn. Goodenough for a person no better than he should be: Toogood for any human creature, and Best for a subject who is perhaps too bad to be endured.

Custom having given to every Christian name itsalias, he always used either the baptismal name or its substitute as it happened to suit his fancy, careless of what others might do. Thus he never called any woman Mary, thoughMarehe said being the sea was in many respects but too emblematic of the sex. It was better to use a synonyme of better omen, and Molly therefore was to be preferred as being soft. If he accosted a vixen of that name in her worst temper hemollyfiedher. On the contrary he never could be induced to substitute Sally for Sarah.—Sally he said had a salacious sound, and moreover it reminded him of rovers, which women ought not to be. Martha he called Patty, because it came pat to the tongue. Dorothy remained Dorothy, because it was neither fitting that women should be made Dolls, nor Idols. Susan with him was always Sue, because women were to be sued, and Winifred Winny because they were to be won.

TRUE PRONUNCIATION OF THE NAME OF DOVE.—DIFFICULTIES OF PRONUNCIATION AND PROSODY.—A TRUE AND PERFECT RHYME HIT UPON.

Tal nombre, que a los siglos extendido,Se olvide de olvidarsele al Olvido.LOPE DEVEGA.

Considering the many mysteries which our Doctor discovered in the name of Dove, and not knowing but that many more may be concealed in it which will in due time be brought to light, I am particularly desirous,—I am solicitous,—I am anxious,—I wish (which is as much as if a Quaker were to say “I am moved,” or “it is upon my mind”) to fix for posterity, if possible, the true pronunciation of that name.If possible, I say, because whatever those readers may think, who have never before had the subject presented to their thoughts, it is exceedingly difficult. My solicitude upon this point will not appear groundless, if it be recollected to what strange changes pronunciation is liable, not from lapse of time alone, but from caprice and fashion. Who in the present generation knows not how John Kemble was persecuted about hisa-ches, a point wherein right as he was, he was proved to be wrong by a newnorma loquendi. Our allies are no longer iambic as they were wont to be, but pure trochees now like Alley Croker and Mr. Alley the counsellor.Betais at this day calledVetain Greece to the confusion of Sir John Cheke, to the triumph of Bishop Gardiner, and in contempt of the whole ovine race. Nay, to bring these observations home to the immediate purport of this chapter, the modern Greeks when they read this book will call the person on whose history it relates, Thaniel Thove! and the Thoctor! their Delta having undergone as great a change as the Delta in Egypt. Have I not reason then for my solicitude?

Whoever examines that very rare and curious book,Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse, printed by Johan Haukyns, 1530, (which is the oldest French grammar in our language, and older than any that the French possess in their own) will find indubitable proof that the pronunciation of both nations is greatly altered in the course of the last three hundred years.

Neither the Spaniards nor Portuguese retain in their speech that strong Rhotacism which they denoted by the doublerr, and which Camden and Fuller notice as peculiar to the people of Carlton in Leicestershire. Lily has not enumerated it among thoseismsfrom which boys are by all means to be deterred, a most heinousismhowever it is. A strange uncouth wharling, Fuller called it, and Camden describes it as a harsh and ungrateful manner of speech with a guttural and difficult pronunciation. They were perhaps a colony from Durham or Northumberland in whom theburrhad become hereditary.

Is the poetry of the Greeks and Romans ever read as they themselves read it? Have we not altered the very metre of the pentameter by our manner of reading it? Is it not at this day doubtful whether Cæsar was called Kæsar, Chæsar, or as we pronounce his name? And whether Cicero ought not to be called Chichero1or Kikero? Have I not therefore cause to apprehend that there may come a time when the true pronunciation of Dove may be lost or doubtful? Major Jardine has justly observed that in the great and complicated art of alphabetical writing, which is rendered so easy and familiar by habit, we are not always aware of the limits of its powers.

1The well known verses of Catullus would be against Chichero, at least.

Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda velletDicere, ethinsidias Arrius insidias:Et tum mirificè sperabat se esse locutum,Cum quantum poterat, dixerathinsidias, &c.CARM. lxxxiv.

Thehappears to have been an old Shibboleth, and not restricted either to Shropshire or Warwickshire. Mr. Evans' verses will occur to many readers of “The Doctor, &c.”

“Alphabetical writing,” says that always speculative writer, “was doubtless a wonderful and important discovery. Its greatest merit, I think, was that of distinguishing sounds from articulations, a degree of perfection to which the eastern languages have not yet arrived; and that defect may be, with those nations, one of the chief causes of their limited progress in many other things. You know they have no vowels, except some that have thea, but always joined to some articulation: their attempt to supply that defect by points give them but very imperfect and indistinct ideas of vocal and articulate sounds, and of their important distinction. But even languages most alphabetical, if the expression may be allowed, could not probably transmit by writing a compleat idea of their own sounds and pronunciation from any one age or people to another. Sounds are to us infinite and variable, and we cannot transmit by one sense the ideas and objects of another. We shall be convinced of this when we recollect the innumerable qualities of tone in human voices, so as to enable us to distinguish all our acquaintances, though the number should amount to many hundreds, or perhaps thousands. With attention we might discover a different quality of tone in every instrument; for all these there never can be a sufficient number of adequate terms in any written language; and when that variety comes to be compounded with a like variety of articulations, it becomes infinite to us. The varieties only upon the seven notes in music, varied only as to pitch and modulation throughout the audible scale, combined with those of time, are not yet probably half exhausted by the constant labour of so many ages. So that the idea of Mr. Steel and others, of representing to the eye the tune and time only of the sounds in any language, will probably ever prove inadequate to the end proposed, even without attempting the kinds and qualities of tones and articulations, which would render it infinite and quite impossible.”

Lowth asserts that “the true pronunciation of Hebrew is lost,—lost to a degree far beyond what can ever be the case of any European language preserved only in writing; for the Hebrew language, like most of the other Oriental languages, expressing only the consonants, and being destitute of its vowels, has lain now for two thousand years in a manner mute and incapable of utterance, the number of syllables is in a great many words uncertain, the quantity and accent wholly unknown.”

In the Pronouncing Dictionary of John Walker, (that great benefactor to all ladies employed in the task of education) the word is writtenDuv, with a figure of 2 over the vowel, designating that what he calls the short simpleuis intended, as in the English,tub,cup,sup, and the Frenchveuf,neuf. How Sheridan gives it, or how it would have been as Mr. Southey would say,uglyographizedby Elphinstone and the other whimsical persons who have laboured so disinterestedly in the vain attempt of regulating our spelling by our pronunciation, I know not, for none of their books are at hand. My Public will forgive me that I have not taken the trouble to procure them. It has not been neglected from idleness, nor for the sake of sparing myself any pains which ought to have been taken. Would I spare any pains in the service of my Public!

I have not sought for those books because their authority would have added nothing to Walker's: nor if they had differed from him, would any additional assistance have been obtained. They are in fact all equally inefficient for the object here required, which is so to describe and fix the true pronunciation of a particular word, that there shall be no danger of it ever being mistaken, and that when this book shall be as old as the Iliad, there may be no dispute concerning the name of its principal personage, though more places should vie with each other for the honour of having given birth to Urgand the Unknown, than contended for the birth of Homer. Now that cannot be done by literal notation. If you think it may, “I beseech you, Sir, paint me a voice! Make a sound visible if you can! Teach mine ears to see, and mine eyes to hear!”

The prosody of the ancients enables us to ascertain whether a syllable be long or short. Our language is so much more flexible in verse that our poetry will not enable the people of the third and fourth millenniums even to do this, without a very laborious collation, which would after all in many instances leave the point doubtful. Nor will rhyme decide the question; for to a foreigner who understands English only by book (and the people of the third and fourth millenniums may be in this state) Dove and Glove, Rove and Grove, Move and Prove, must all appear legitimate and interchangeable rhymes.

I must therefore have given up the matter in despair had it not been for a most fortunate and felicitous circumstance. There is one word in the English language which, happen what may, will never be out of use, and of which the true pronunciation like the true meaning is sure to pass down uninterruptedly and unaltered from generation to generation. That word, that one and only word which must remain immutable wherever English is spoken, whatever other mutations the speech may undergo, till the language itself be lost in the wreck of all things,—that word (Youths and Maidens ye anticipate it now!) that one and only word—

Τόδε μὲν οὐκέτι στόματος ὲν πύλαιςΚαθέξω·2

that dear delicious monosyllable LOVE, that word is a true and perfect rhyme to the name of our Doctor.

Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied;... pronounce but Love and Dove.3

2EURIPIDES.

3ROMEO ANDJULIET.

CHARLEMAGNE, CASIMIR THE POET, MARGARET DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE, NOCTURNAL REMEMBRANCER.—THE DOCTOR NOT AMBITIOUS OF FAME.—THE AUTHOR IS INDUCED BY MR. FOSBROOKE AND NORRIS OF BEMERTON TO EJACULATE A HEATHEN PRAYER IN BEHALF OF HIS BRETHREN.

Tutte le cose son rose et violeCh' io dico ò ch' io dirò de la virtute.FR. SANSOVINO.

It is recorded of Charlemagne by his secretary Eginhart, that he had always pen, ink and parchment beside his pillow, for the purpose of noting down any thoughts which might occur to him during the night: and lest upon waking he should find himself in darkness, a part of the wall, within reach from the bed was prepared, like the leaf of a tablet, with wax, on which he might indent his memoranda with a style.

The Jesuit poet Casimir had a black tablet always by his bedside, and a piece of chalk, with which to secure a thought, or a poetical expression that might occur to him,si quid insomnis noctu non infeliciter cogitabat ne id sibi periret.In like manner it is related of Margaret Duchess of Newcastle that some of her young ladies always slept within call, ready to rise at any hour in the night, and take down her thoughts, lest she should forget them before morning.

Some threescore years ago a little instrument was sold by the name of the Nocturnal Remembrancer; it consisted merely of some leaves of what is called asses-skin, in a leathern case wherein there was one aperture from side to side, by aid of which a straight line could be pencilled in the dark: the leaf might be drawn up, and fixed at measured distances, till it was written on from top to bottom.

OurDoctor, (—now that thou art so well acquainted with him and likest him so cordially, Reader, it would be ungenerous in me to call him mine)—ourDoctor needed no such contrivances. He used to say that he laid aside all his cares when he put off his wig, and that never any were to be found under his night cap. Happy man, from whom this might be believed! but so even had been the smooth and noiseless tenour of his life that he could say it truly. Anxiety and bereavements had brought to him no sleepless nights, no dreams more distressful than even the realities that produce and blend with them. Neither had worldly cares or ambitious hopes and projects ever disquieted him, and made him misuse in midnight musings the hours which belong to sleep. He had laid up in his mind an inexhaustible store of facts and fancies, and delighted in nothing more than in adding to these intellectual treasures; but as he gathered knowledge only for its own sake, and for the pleasure of the pursuit, not with any emulous feelings, or aspiring intent

—to be for ever known,And make the years to come his own,

he never said with the studious Elder Brother in Fletcher's comedy,

the childrenWhich I will leave to all posterity,Begot and brought up by my painful studiesShall be my living issue.

And therefore—voilà un homme qui était fort savant et fort eloquent, et neanmoins—(altering a little the words of Bayle),—il n'est pas connu dans la république des lettres, et il y a eu une infinité de gens beaucoup moins habile que lui, qui sont cent fois plus connus; c'est qu'ils ont publié des livres, et que la presse n'a point roulé sur ses productions. Il importe extrêmement aux hommes doctes, qui ne veulent pas tomber dans l'oubli après leur mort, de s'ériger en auteurs; sans cela leur nom ne passe guère la première génération; res erat unius ætatis. Le commun des lecteurs ne prend point garde au nom des savans qu'ils ne connaissent que par le témoignage d'autrui; on oublie bientôt un homme, lorsque l'eloge qu'en font les autres finit par—le public n'a rien ou de lui.

Bayle makes an exception of men who like Peiresc distinguish themselvesd'un façon singulière.

“I am not sure,” says Sir Egerton Brydges, “that the life of an author is an happy life; but yet if the seeds of authorship be in him, he will not be happy except in the indulgence of this occupation. Without the culture and free air which these seeds require, they will wither and turn to poison.” It is no desirable thing, according to this representation, to be born with such a predisposition to the most dangerous of all callings. But still more pitiable is the condition of such a person if Mr. Fosbrooke has described it truly: “the mind of a man of genius,” says he, (who beyond all question is a man of genius himself) “is always in a state of pregnancy, or parturition; and its power of bearing offspring is bounded only by supervening disease, or by death.” Those who are a degree lower in genius are in a yet worse predicament; such a sort of man, as Norris of Bemerton describes, who “although he conceives often, yet by some chance or other, he always miscarries, and the issue proves abortive.”

JUNOLUCINAfer opem!

This invocation the Doctor never made metaphorically for himself, whatever serious and secret prayers he may have preferred for others, when exercising one branch of his tripartite profession.

Bernardin de Saint Pierre says in one of his letters, when hisEtudes de la Naturewere in the press,Je suis a present dans les douleurs de l'enfantement, car il n'y a point de mère qui souffre autant en mettant un enfant au monde, et qui craigne plus qu'on ne l'ecorche ou qu'on ne les crève un œil, qu'un auteur qui revoit les épreuves de son ouvrage.

TWO QUESTIONS GROWING OUT OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.

A Taylor who has no objection to wear motley, may make himself a great coat with half a yard of his own stuff, by eking it out with cabbage from every piece that comes in his way.

ROBERTSOUTHEY.

But here two questions arise:

Ought Dr. Dove, or ought he not, to have been an author?

Was he, or was he not, the happier, for not being one?

“Not to leave the reader,” as Lightfoot says, “in abiviumof irresolutions,” I will examine each of these questions,escriviendo algunos breves reglones, sobre lo mucho que dezir y escrivir se podria en esto;—moviendo me principalmente a ello la grande ignorancia que sobre esta matheria veo manifiestamente entre las gentes de nuestro siglo.1

1GARIBAY.

“I am and have been,” says Robert Wilmot, “(if there be in me any soundness of judgment) of this opinion, that whatsoever is committed to the press is commended to eternity; and it shall stand a lively witness with our conscience, to our comfort or confusion, in the reckoning of that great day. Advisedly therefore was that proverb used of our elder Philosopher,Manum a Tabulâ;withhold thy hand from the paper, and thy papers from the print, or light of the world.”

Robert Wilmotsays, I say, using the present tense in setting his words before the reader, because of an author it may truly be said that “being dead he yet speaketh.” Obscure as this old author now is, for his name and his existing works are known only to those who love to pore among the tombs and the ruins of literature, yet by those who will always be enough “to make a few,” his name will continue to be known, long after many of those bubbles which now glitter as they float upon the stream of popularity are “gone for ever;” and his remains are safe for the next half millennium, if the globe should last so long without some cataclasm which shall involve its creatures and its works in one common destruction.

Wilmot is right in saying that whatever is written for the public, is as regards the individual responsibility of the writer, written for eternity, however brief may be its earthly duration;—an aweful consideration for the authors of wicked books, and for those who by becoming instrumental in circulating such books, involve themselves in the author's guilt as accessaries after the fact, and thereby bring themselves deservedly under the same condemnation.

Looking at the first question in this point of view, it may be answered without hesitation, the Doctor was so pure in heart, and consequently so innocent in mind that there was no moral reason why he ought not to have been an author. He would have written nothing but what,—religiously speaking might have been accounted among his good works,—so far as, so speaking, any works may deserve to be called good.

But the question has two handles, and we must now take it by the other.

An author more obscure in the literature of his own country than Wilmot, (unless indeed some Spanish or Italian Haslewood may have disinterred his name) has expressed an opinion, directly the reverse of Wilmot's concerning authorship. Ye who understand that noble language which the Emperor Charles V. ranked above all other living tongues may have the satisfaction of here reading it in the original.

“Muchos son los que del loable y fructuoso trabajo de escrevir, rehuir suelen; unos por no saber, a los quales su ignorancia en alguna manera escusa; otros por negligencia, que teniendo habilidad y disposicion par ello no lo hazen; y a estos es menester que Dios los perdone en lo passado, y emiende en lo por venir; otros dexan de hazello por temor de los detractores y que mal acostumbran dezir; los quales a mi parecer de toda reprehension son dignos, pues siendo el acto en si virtuoso, dexan de usarlo por temor. Mayormente que todos, o los mas que este exercicio usan, o con buen ingenio escriven, o con buen desseo querrian escrevir. Si con buen ingenio hazen buena obra, cierto es que dese ser alabada. Y së el defecto de mas no alcanzar algo, la haze diminuta de lo que mejor pudiera ser, deve se loar lo que el tal quisiera hazer, si mas supiera, o la invencion y fantasia de la obra, por que fue, o porque desseo ser bueno. De manere que es mucho mejor escrevir como quiera que se pueda hazer, que no por algun temor dexar de hazerlo.”2

2QUESTION DEAMOR. PROLOGO.

“Many,” says this author, “are they who are wont to eschew the meritorious and fruitful labour of writing, some for want of knowledge, whom their ignorance in some manner excuses; others for negligence, who having ability and fitness for this, nevertheless do it not, and need there is for them, that God should forgive them for the past, and amend them for the time to come, others forbear writing, for fear of detractors and of those who accustom themselves to speak ill, and these in my opinion are worthy of all reprehension, because the act being in itself so virtuous, they are withheld by fear from performing it. Moreover it is to be considered that all, or most of those who practise this art, either write with a good genius, or a good desire of writing well. If having a good genius they produce a good work, certes that work deserves to be commended. And if for want of genius it falls short of this, and of what it might better have been, still he ought to be praised, who would have made his work praiseworthy if he had been able, and the invention and fancy of the work, either because it is or because he wished it to be so. So that it is much better for a man to write whatever his ability may be, than to be withheld from the attempt by fear.”

A very different opinion was expressed by one of the most learned of men,Ego multos studiosos quotidie video, paucos doctos; in doctis paucos ingeniosos; in semidoctis nullos bonos; atque adeo literæ generis humani unicum solamen, jam pestis et perniciei maximæ loco sunt.3

3SCALIGER.

M. Cornet used to say,que pour faire des livres, il faloit être ou bien fou ou bien sage, que pour lui, comme il ne se croïoit pas assez sage pour faire un bon livre, ni assez fou pour en faire un méchant, il avoit pris le parti de ne point ecrire.

Pour lui, the Docteur of the Sorbonne:pour moi,—every reader will, in the exercise of that sovereign judgement whereof every reader is possessed, determine for himself whether in composing the present work I am to be deemedbien sage, orbien fou. I know what Mr. Dulman thinks upon this point, and that Mr. Slapdash agrees with him. To the former I shall say nothing; but to the latter, and to Slenderwit, Midge, Wasp, Dandeprat, Brisk and Blueman, I shall let Cordara the Jesuit speak for me.

O quanti, o quanti sono, a cui dispiaceVedere un uom contento; sol per questoLo pungono con stile acre e mordace,Per questi versi miei chi sa che prestoQualche zanzara contro me non s'armi,E non prenda di qui qualche pretesto.Io certo me l'aspetto, che oltraggiarmiTalun pretenderà sol perchè pare,Che di lieti pensier' sappia occuparmi.Ma canti pur, lo lascerò cantareE per mostrargli quanto me ne prendo,Tornerò, se bisogna, a verseggiare.

Leaving the aforesaidlitterateursto construe and apply this, I shall proceed in due course to examine and decide whether Dr. Daniel Dove ought, or ought not to have been an author,—being the first of two questions, propounded in the present chapter, as arising out of the last.

THE AUTHOR DIGRESSES A LITTLE, AND TAKES UP A STITCH WHICH WAS DROPPED IN THE EARLIER PART OF THIS OPUS.—NOTICES CONCERNING LITERARY AND DRAMATIC HISTORY, BUT PERTINENT TO THIS PART OF OUR SUBJECT.

Jam paululum digressus a spectantibus,Doctis loquar, qui non adeo spectare quamAudire gestiunt, logosque ponderant,Examinant, dijudicantque pro suoCandore vel livore; non latum tamenCulmum (quod aiunt) dum loquar sapientibusLoco movebor.MACROPEDIUS.

The boy and his schoolmaster were not mistaken in thinking that some of Textor's Moralities would have delighted the people of Ingleton as much as any of Rowland Dixon's stock pieces. Such dramas have been popular wherever they have been presented in the vernacular tongue. The progress from them to the regular drama was slow, perhaps not so much on account of the then rude state of most modern languages, as because of the yet ruder taste of the people. I know not whether it has been observed in literary history how much more rapid it was in schools, where the Latin language was used, and consequently fit audience was found, though few.

George von Langeveldt, or Macropedius as he called himself, according to the fashion of learned men in that age, was contemporary with Textor, and like him one of the pioneers of literature, but he was a person of more learning and greater intellectual powers. He was born about the year 1475, of a good family in the little town or village of Gemert, at no great distance from Bois-le-Duc. As soon as his juvenile studies were compleated he entered among theFratres Vitæ Communis;they employed him in education, first as Rector in their college at Bois-le-duc, then at Liege, and afterwards at Utrecht from whence in 1552, being infirm and grievously afflicted with gout, he returned to Bois-le-duc there to pass the remainder of his days, as one whose work was done. Old and enfeebled however as he was, he lived till the year 1558, and then died not of old age, but of a pestilential fever.

There is an engraved portrait of him in the hideous hood and habit of his order; the countenance is that of a good-natured, intelligent, merry old man: underneath are these verses by Sanderus the topographer.

Tu Seneca, et nostri potes esse Terentius ævi,Seu struis ad faciles viva theatra pedes,Sen ploras tragicas, Macropedi, carmine clades,Materiam sanctis adsimilante modis.Desine jam Latios mirari Roma cothurnos;Nescio quid majus Belgica scena dabit.

Macropedius published Rudiments both of the Greek and Latin languages; he had studied the Hebrew and Chaldee; had some skill in mathematics, and amused his leisure in making mathematical instruments, a branch of art in which he is said to have been an excellent workman. Most of the men who distinguished themselves as scholars in that part of the Low Countries, toward the latter part of the 16th century had been his pupils: for he was not more remarkable for his own acquirements than for the earnest delight which he took in instructing others. There is some reason for thinking that he was a severe disciplinarian, perhaps a cruel one. Herein he differed widely from Textor, who took every opportunity for expressing his abhorrence of magisterial cruelty. In one of these Dialogues with which Guy and young Daniel were so well acquainted, two schoolmasters after death are brought before Rhadamanthus for judgement; one for his inhumanity is sent to be tormented in Tartarus, part of his punishment in addition to those more peculiarly belonging to the region, being that

Verbera quæ pueris intulit, ipse ferat:

the other who indulged his boys and never maltreated them is ordered to Elysium, the Judge saying to him

—tua te in pueros clementia salvumReddit, et æternis persimilem superis.

That Textor's description of the cruelty exercised by the pedagogues of his age was not overcharged, Macropedius himself might be quoted to prove, even when he is vindicating and recommending such discipline as Dr. Parr would have done. I wish Parr had heard an expression which fell from the honest lips of Isaac Reid, when a school, noted at that time for its consumption of birch, was the subject of conversation; the words would have burnt themselves in. I must not commit them to the press; but this I may say, that the Recording Angel entered them on the creditor side of that kind-hearted old man's account.

Macropedius, like Textor, composed dramatic pieces for his pupils to represent. The latter, as has been shown in a former chapter, though he did not exactly take the Moralities for his model, produced pieces of the same kind, and adapted his conceptions to the popular facts, while he clothed them in the language of the classics. His aim at improvement proceeded no farther, and he never attempted to construct a dramatic fable. That advance was made by Macropedius, who in one of his dedicatory epistles laments that among the many learned men who were then flourishing, no Menander, no Terence was to be found, their species of writing, he says, had been almost extinct since the time of Terence himself, or at least of Lucilius. He regretted this because comedy might be rendered useful to persons of all ages,quid enim plus pueris ad eruditionem, plus adolescentibus ad honesta studia, plus provectioribus, immò omnibus in commune ad virtutem conducat?

Reuchlin, or Capnio (as he who was one of the lights of his generation was misnamed and misnamed himself,) who had with his other great and eminent merits that of restoring or rather introducing into Germany the study of Hebrew, revived the lost art of comedy. If any one had preceded him in this revival, Macropedius was ignorant of it, and by the example and advice of this great man he was induced to follow him, not only as a student of Hebrew, but as a comic writer. Hrosvitha indeed, a nun of Gandersheim in Saxony, who lived in the tenth century and in the reign of Otho II. composed six Latin comediesin emulationof Terence, but in praise of virginity; and these with other of her poems were printed at Nuremberg in the year 1501. The book I have never seen, nor had De Bure, nor had he been able (such is its rarity) to procure any account of it farther than enabled him to give its title. The name of Conrad Celtes, the first German upon whom the degree of Poet Laureate was conferred, appears in the title, as if he had discovered the manuscript;Conrado Celte inventore. De Bure says the volume wasattribué au même Conradus Celtes. It is rash for any one to form an opinion of a book which he has never examined, unless he is well acquainted with the character and capacity of its author; nevertheless I may venture to observe that nothing can be less in unison with the life and conversation of this Latin poet, as far as these may be judged of by his acknowledged poems, than the subjects of the pieces published under Hrosvitha's name; and no reason can be imagined why if he had written them himself, he should have palmed them upon the public as her composition.

It is remarkable that Macropedius when he spoke of Reuchlin's comedies should not have alluded to these, for that he must have seen them there can be little or no doubt. One of Reuchlin's is said to have been imitated fromla Farce de Pathelin, which under the title of the Village Lawyer has succeeded on our own stage, and which was so deservedly popular that the French have drawn from it more than one proverbial saying. The French Editor who affirms this says that Pathelin was printed in 1474, four years before the representation of Reuchlin's comedy, but the story is one of those good travellers which are found in all countries, and Reuchlin may have dramatised it without any reference to the French drama, the existence of which may very probably have been unknown to him, as well as to Macropedius. Both his pieces are satirical. His disciple began with a scriptural drama upon the Prodigal Son, Asotus is its title. It must have been written early in the century, for about 1520 he laid it aside as a juvenile performance, and faulty as much because of the then comparatively rude state of learning, as of his own inexperience.

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