Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1

R. Juda, the prince of the rabbins, committed to writing all these traditions, and arranged them under six general heads, called orders or classes. The subjects are indeed curio...

In attacking rapine and robbery, under the first head he describes a kind of usury, which was practised in the days of Ben Jonson, and I am told in the present, as well as in th...

Honoré D'Urfé was the descendant of an illustrious family. His brother Anne married Diana of Chateaumorand, the wealthy heiress of another great house. After a marriage of no le...

"Certainly, my lord, you have had as many enemies and as many friends as ever any one particular person had; nor do I so much wonder at it, since I, a woman, cannot be exempt fr...

Livy has been reproached for his aversion to the Gauls; Dion, for his hatred of the republic; Velleius Paterculus, for speaking too kindly of the vices of Tiberius; and Herodotu...

The Abbé Olivet has described an amusement of Pelisson during his confinement in the Bastile, which consisted in feeding a spider, which he had discovered forming its web in the...

Literary history, even of our own days, records the fate of several who may be said to have _died of Criticism_.[114] But there is more sense and infinite humour in the mode whi...

The report of the cannon, and the smoke which the powder occasioned, prevented either the cries or the submersion of the holy fathers from being observed: and as if they were co...

"When the ceremony of the oath was concluded, our king, who was desirous of being friendly, began to say to the king of England, in a laughing way, that he must come to Paris, a...

Hume supplies an anecdote of singular royal distress. The queen of England, with her son Charles, "had a moderate pension assigned her; but it was so ill paid, and her credit ra...

My learned friend Sharon Turner has explained, in his "Vindication of the ancient British Poems," p. 231, the Welsh system of the metempsychosis. Their bards mention three circl...

He studied, and travelled, and took the clerical tonsure; but discovered dispositions more suitable to the pleasures of his age than to the gravity of his profession. He formed...

The sufferings of an author for the loss of his manuscripts strongly appear in the case of Anthony Urceus, a great scholar of the fifteenth century. The loss of his papers seems...

A patron is sometimes oddly obtained. Benserade attached himself to Cardinal Mazarin; but his friendship produced nothing but civility. The poet every day indulged his easy and...

Such is one of these miracles of "the Golden Legend," which a wicked wit might comment on, and see nothing extraordinary in the whole story. The two nuns might be missing betwee...

The tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus was said to have been derived from the odd circumstance in which the Bibles of the first printer, Fust, appeared to the world; but if...

Lord Herbert, in his Life of Henry VIII., notices the _great fall of the price of relics_ at the dissolution of the monasteries. "The respect given to relics, and some pretended...

[Footnote 99: The peasants of the Ober-Ammergau, a village in the Bavarian Alps, still perform, at intervals of ten years, a long miracle play, detailing the chief incidents of...

In all ages there has existed an anti-poetical party. This faction consists of those frigid intellects incapable of that glowing expansion so necessary to feel the charms of an...

Our professor proceeds to reveal the manner of managing the whole economy of the piece which is to be copied or disguised; and which consists in giving a new order to the parts,...

"In the early dawn of literature, and when the sacred Mysteries were the only theatrical performances, what is now called the stage did then consist of three several platforms,...

No customs seem more ridiculous than those practised by a Kamschatkan, when he wishes to make another his friend. He first invites him to eat. The host and his guest strip thems...

La Fontaine, says La Bruyère, appeared coarse, heavy, and stupid; he could not speak or describe what he had just seen; but when he wrote he was a model of poetry.

This is the first collected edition of a series of works which have separately attained to a great popularity: volumes that have been always delightful to the young and ardent i...

The reader desirous of being _merry_ with Aquinas's angels may find them in Martinus Scriblerus, in Ch. VII. who inquires if angels pass from one extreme to another without goin...

Chaucer has minutely detailed in "The Persone's Tale" the grotesque and the costly fashions of his day; and the simplicity of the venerable satirist will interest the antiquary...

Henry Fitzsermon, an Irish Jesuit, was imprisoned for his papistical designs and seditious preaching. During his confinement he proved himself to be a great amateur of controver...

In a religious book published by a fellow of the Society of Jesus, entitled, "The Faith of a Catholic," the author examines what concerns the incredulous Jews and other infidels...

In prison Boethius composed his work on the Consolations of Philosophy; and Grotius wrote his Commentary on Saint Matthew, with other works: the detail of his allotment of time...

I have ventured to enter into some details as to the earlier and obscurer years of my father's life, because I thought that they threw light upon human character, and that witho...

Tell, how _blessed Virgin_ to come down was seen, Like play-house punk descending in machine, How she writ _billet-doux_ and _love-discourse_, Made _assignations_, _visits_, and...

If this be not more poetical than true, it must have occurred at a moment when their last political change may have occasioned this silence on the waters. My servant _Tita_, who...

JANUARY Prima dies menses, et septima truncat ut ensis. FEBRUARY Quarta subit mortem, prosternit tertia fortem. MARCH Primus mandentem, disrumpit quarta bibentem. APRIL Denus et...

There is, however, an intemperance in study, incompatible often with our social or more active duties. The illustrious Grotius exposed himself to the reproaches of some of his c...

Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man; an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but skin and...

Had these "Wit-combats," between Shakspeare and Jonson, which Fuller notices, been chronicled by some faithful _Boswell_ of the age, our literary history would have received an...

We discover the origin of MODERN PLATONISM, as it may be distinguished, among the Italians. About the middle of the fifteenth century, some time before the Turks had become mast...

One of their birds, when it spreads its wings, blots out the sun. An egg from another fell out of its nest, and the white thereof broke and glued about three hundred cedar-trees...

An extraordinary literary imposture was that of one Joseph Vella, who, in 1794, was an adventurer in Sicily, and pretended that he possessed seventeen of the lost books of Livy...

The manners of the age are faithfully painted in the ancient Fabliaux. The judicial combat is introduced by a writer of the fourteenth century, in a scene where Pilate challenge...

His new friend introduced him almost immediately to Mr. James Pettit Andrews, a Berkshire gentleman of literary pursuits, and whose hospitable table at Brompton was the resort o...

It is impossible to form a literary journal in a manner such as might be wished; it must be the work of many, of different tempers and talents. An individual, however versatile...

Satirists, if they escape the scourges of the law, have reason to dread the cane of the satirised. Of this kind we have many anecdotes on record; but none more poignant than the...

The Irish antiquaries mention _public libraries_ that were before the flood; and Paul Christian Ilsker, with profounder erudition, has given an exact catalogue of _Adam's_. Mess...

Paulus Jovius had a country house, in an insular situation, of a most romantic aspect. Built on the ruins of the villa of Pliny, in his time the foundations were still to be tra...

The false idea which a title conveys is alike prejudicial to the author and the reader. Titles are generally too prodigal of their promises, and their authors are contemned; but...

One of the most singular anecdotes respecting DEDICATIONS in English bibliography is that of the Polyglot Bible of Dr. Castell. Cromwell, much to his honour, patronized that gre...

That minute detail of circumstances frequently found in writers of the history of their own times is more interesting than the elegant and general narratives of later, and proba...

"The genius of Plato is more polished, and that of Aristotle more vast and profound. Plato has a lively and teeming imagination; fertile in invention, in ideas, in expressions,...

Palavicini, in his History of the Council of Trent, to confer an honour on M. Lansac, ambassador of Charles IX. to that council, bestows on him a collar of the order of Saint Es...

The passion for forming vast collections of books has necessarily existed in all periods of human curiosity; but long it required regal munificence to found a national library....