Chapter 22

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 themselves in a cabin which is heated to an uncommon degree. While the guest devours the food with which they serve him, the other continually stirs the fire. The stranger must bear the excess of the heat as well as of the repast. He vomits ten times before he will yield; but, at length obliged to acknowledge himself overcome, he begins to compound matters. He purchases a moment's respite by a present of clothes or dogs; for his host threatens to heat the cabin, and oblige him to eat till he dies. The stranger has the right of retaliation allowed to him: he treats in the same manner, and exacts the same presents. Should his host not accept the invitation of him whom he had so handsomely regaled, in that case the guest would take possession of his cabin, till he had the presents returned to him which the other had in so singular a manner obtained.

For this extravagant custom a curious reason has been alleged. It is meant to put the person to a trial, whose friendship is sought. The Kamschatkan who is at the expense of the fires, and the repast, is desirous to know if the stranger has the strength to support pain with him, and if he is generous enough to share with him some part of his property. While the guest is employed on his meal, he continues heating the cabin to an insupportable degree; and for a last proof of the stranger's constancy and attachment, he exacts more clothes and more dogs. The host passes through the same ceremonies in the cabin of the stranger; and he shows, in his turn, with what degree of fortitude he can defend his friend. The most singular customs would appear simple, if it were possible for the philosopher to understand them on the spot.

As a distinguishing mark of their esteem, the negroes of Ardra drink out of one cup at the same time. The king of Loango eats in one house, and drinks in another. A Kamschatkan kneels before his guests; he cuts an enormous slice from a sea-calf; he crams it entire into the mouth of his friend, furiously crying out "_Tana!_"--There! and cutting away what hangs about his lips, snatches and swallows it with avidity.

A barbarous magnificence attended the feasts of the ancient monarchs of France. After their coronation or consecration, when they sat at table, the nobility served them on horseback.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: In Cochin-China, a traveller may always obtain his dinner by simply joining the family of the first house he may choose to enter, such hospitality being the general custom.]

[Footnote 55: _Esprit des Usages, et des Coutumes._]

[Footnote 56: If the master be present, he devotes himself to cramming his guests to repletion.]

MONARCHS.

Saint Chrysostom has this very acute observation on _kings_: Many monarchs are infected with a strange wish that their successors may turn out bad princes. Good kings desire it, as they imagine, continues this pious politician, that their glory will appear the more splendid by the contrast; and the bad desire it, as they consider such kings will serve to countenance their own misdemeanours.

Princes, says Gracian, are willing to be _aided_, but not _surpassed_: which maxim is thus illustrated.

A Spanish lord having frequently played at chess with Philip II., and won all the games, perceived, when his Majesty rose from play, that he was much ruffled with chagrin. The lord, when he returned home, said to his family--"My children, we have nothing more to do at court: there we must expect no favour; for the king is offended at my having won of him every game of chess." As chess entirely depends on the genius of the players, and not on fortune, King Philip the chess-player conceived he ought to suffer no rival.

This appears still clearer by the anecdote told of the Earl of Sunderland, minister to George I., who was partial to the game of chess. He once played with the Laird of Cluny, and the learned Cunningham, the editor of Horace. Cunningham, with too much skill and too much sincerity, beat his lordship. "The earl was so fretted at his superiority and surliness, that he dismissed him without any reward. Cluny allowed himself sometimes to be beaten; and by that means got his pardon, with something handsome besides."

In the Criticon of Gracian, there is a singular anecdote relative to kings.

A Polish monarch having quitted his companions when he was hunting, his courtiers found him, a few days after, in a market-place, disguised as a porter, and lending out the use of his shoulders for a few pence. At this they were as much surprised as they were doubtful at first whether the _porter_ could be his _majesty_. At length they ventured to express their complaints that so great a personage should debase himself by so vile an employment. His majesty having heard them, replied--"Upon my honour, gentlemen, the load which I quitted is by far heavier than the one you see me carry here: the weightiest is but a straw, when compared to that world under which I laboured. I have slept more in four nights than I have during all my reign. I begin to live, and to be king of myself. Elect whom you choose. For me, who am so well, it were madness to return to _court_." Another Polish king, who succeeded this philosophic _monarchical porter_, when they placed the sceptre in his hand, exclaimed--"I had rather tug at an _oar_!" The vacillating fortunes of the Polish monarchy present several of these anecdotes; their monarchs appear to have frequently been philosophers; and, as the world is made, an excellent philosopher proves but an indifferent king.

Two observations on kings were offered to a courtier with great _naïveté_ by that experienced politician, the Duke of Alva:--"Kings who affect to be familiar with their companions make use of _men_ as they do of _oranges_; they take oranges to extract their juice, and when they are well sucked they throw them away. Take care the king does not do the same to you; be careful that he does not read all your thoughts; otherwise he will throw you aside to the back of his chest, as a book of which he has read enough." "The squeezed orange," the King of Prussia applied in his dispute with Voltaire.

When it was suggested to Dr. Johnson that kings must be unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that this was an ill-founded notion. "Being a king does not exclude a man from such society. Great kings have always been social. The King of Prussia, the only great king at present (this was THE GREAT Frederic) is very social. Charles the Second, the last king of England who was a man of parts, was social; our Henries and Edwards were all social."

The Marquis of Halifax, in his character of Charles II., has exhibited a _trait_ in the royal character of a good-natured monarch; that _trait_, is _sauntering_. I transcribe this curious observation, which introduces us into a levee.

"There was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours which he passed amongst his mistresses, who served only to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of pleasure, called SAUNTERING, was the sultana queen he delighted in.

"The thing called SAUNTERING is a stronger temptation to princes than it is to others.--The being galled with importunities, pursued from one room to another with asking faces; the dismal sound of unreasonable complaints and ill-grounded pretences; the deformity of fraud ill-disguised:--all these would make any man run away from them, and I used to think it was the motive for making him walk so fast."

OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE.

The title of _illustrious_ was never given, till the reign of Constantine, but to those whose reputation was splendid in arms or in letters. Adulation had not yet adopted this noble word into her vocabulary. Suetonius composed a book to record those who had possessed this title; and, as it was _then_ bestowed, a moderate volume was sufficient to contain their names.

In the time of Constantine, the title of _illustrious_ was given more particularly to those princes who had distinguished themselves in war; but it was not continued to their descendants. At length, it became very common; and every son of a prince was _illustrious_. It is now a convenient epithet for the poet.

In the rage for TITLES the ancient lawyers in Italy were not satisfied by calling kings ILLUSTRES; they went a step higher, and would have emperors to be _super-illustres_, a barbarous coinage of their own.

In Spain, they published a book of _titles_ for their kings, as well as for the Portuguese; but Selden tells us, that "their _Cortesias_ and giving of titles grew at length, through the affectation of heaping great attributes on their princes to such an insufferable forme, that a remedie was provided against it." This remedy was an act published by Philip III. which ordained that all the _Cortesias_, as they termed these strange phrases they had so servilely and ridiculously invented, should be reduced to a simple superscription, "To the king our lord," leaving out those fantastical attributes of which every secretary had vied with his predecessors in increasing the number.

It would fill three or four of these pages to transcribe the titles and attributes of the Grand Signior, which he assumes in a letter to Henry IV. Selden, in his "Titles of Honour," first part, p. 140, has preserved them. This "emperor of victorious emperors," as he styles himself, at length condescended to agree with the emperor of Germany, in 1606, that in all their letters and instruments they should be only styled _father_ and _son_: the emperor calling the sultan his son; and the sultan the emperor, in regard of his years, his _father_.

Formerly, says Houssaie, the title of _highness_ was only given to kings; but now it has become so common that all the great houses assume it. All the great, says a modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to _highness_. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, will usurp that of _majesty_.

Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his queen Isabella of Castile, were only treated with the title of _highness_. Charles was the first who took that of _majesty_: not in his quality of king of Spain, but as emperor. St. Foix informs us, that kings were usually addressed by the titles of _most illustrious_, or _your serenity_, or _your grace_; but that the custom of giving them that of _majesty_ was only established by Louis XI., a prince the least majestic in all his actions, his manners, and his exterior--a severe monarch, but no ordinary man, the Tiberius of France. The manners of this monarch were most sordid; in public audiences he dressed like the meanest of the people, and affected to sit on an old broken chair, with a filthy dog on his knees. In an account found of his household, this _majestic_ prince has a charge made him for two new sleeves sewed on one of his old doublets.

Formerly kings were apostrophised by the title of _your grace_. Henry VIII. was the first, says Houssaie, who assumed the title of _highness_; and at length _majesty_. It was Francis I. who saluted him with this last title, in their interview in the year 1520, though he called himself only the first gentleman in his kingdom!

So distinct were once the titles of _highness_ and _excellence_, that when Don Juan, the brother of Philip II., was permitted to take up the latter title, and the city of Granada saluted him by the title of _highness_, it occasioned such serious jealousy at court, that had he persisted in it, he would have been condemned for treason.

The usual title of _cardinals_, about 1600, was _seignoria illustrissima_; the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister and cardinal, in his old age, assumed the title of _eccellencia reverendissima_. The church of Rome was in its glory, and to be called _reverend_ was then accounted a higher honour than to be styled _illustrious_. But by use _illustrious_ grew familiar, and _reverend_ vulgar, and at last the cardinals were distinguished by the title of _eminent_.

After all these historical notices respecting these titles, the reader will smile when he is acquainted with the reason of an honest curate of Montferrat, who refused to bestow the title of _highness_ on the duke of Mantua, because he found in his breviary these words, _Tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus_; from all which he concluded, that none but the Lord was to be honoured with the title of _highness_! The "Titles of Honour" of Selden is a very curious volume, and, as the learned Usher told Evelyn, the most valuable work of this great scholar. The best edition is a folio of about one thousand pages. Selden vindicates the right of a king of England to the title of _emperor_.

"And never yet was TITLE did not move; And never eke a mind, _that_ TITLE did not love."

TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS.

In countries where despotism exists in all its force, and is gratified in all its caprices, either the intoxication of power has occasioned sovereigns to assume the most solemn and the most fantastic titles; or the royal duties and functions were considered of so high and extensive a nature, that the people expressed their notion of the pure monarchical state by the most energetic descriptions of oriental fancy.

The chiefs of the Natchez are regarded by their people as the children of the sun, and they bear the name of their father.

The titles which some chiefs assume are not always honourable in themselves; it is sufficient if the people respect them. The king of Quiterva calls himself the _great lion_; and for this reason lions are there so much respected, that they are not allowed to kill them, but at certain royal huntings.

The king of Monomotapa is surrounded by musicians and poets, who adulate him by such refined flatteries as _lord of the sun and moon_; _great magician_; and _great thief!_--where probably thievery is merely a term for dexterity.

The Asiatics have bestowed what to us appear as ridiculous titles of honour on their _princes_. The king of Arracan assumes the following ones: "Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads under his feet."

His majesty of Ava is called _God_: when he writes to a foreign sovereign he calls himself the king of kings, whom all others should obey, as he is the cause of the preservation of all animals; the regulator of the seasons, the absolute master of the ebb and flow of the sea, brother to the sun, and king of the four-and-twenty umbrellas! These umbrellas are always carried before him as a mark of his dignity.

The titles of the kings of Achem are singular, though voluminous. The most striking ones are sovereign of the universe, whose body is luminous as the sun; whom God created to be as accomplished as the moon at her plenitude; whose eye glitters like the northern star; a king as spiritual as a ball is round; who when he rises shades all his people; from under whose feet a sweet odour is wafted, &c. &c.

The Kandyan sovereign is called _Dewo_ (God). In a deed of gift he proclaims his extraordinary attributes. "The protector of religion, whose fame is infinite, and of surpassing excellence, exceeding the moon, the unexpanded jessamine buds, the stars, &c.; whose feet are as fragrant to the noses of other kings as flowers to bees; our most noble patron and god by custom," &c.

After a long enumeration of the countries possessed by the king of Persia, they give him some poetical distinctions: _the branch of honour_; _the mirror of virtue_; and _the rose of delight_.

ROYAL DIVINITIES.

There is a curious dissertation in the "Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres," by the Abbé Mongault, "on the divine honours which were paid to the governors of provinces during the Roman republic;" in their lifetime these originally began in gratitude, and at length degenerated into flattery. These facts curiously show how far the human mind can advance, when led on by customs that operate unperceivably on it, and blind us in our absurdities. One of these ceremonies was exquisitely ludicrous. When they voted a statue to a proconsul, they placed it among the statues of the gods in the festival called _Lectisternium_, from the ridiculous circumstances of this solemn festival. On that day the gods were invited to a repast, which was however spread in various quarters of the city, to satiate mouths more mortal. The gods were however taken down from their pedestals, laid on beds ornamented in their temples; pillows were placed under their marble heads; and while they reposed in this easy posture they were served with a magnificent repast. When Cæsar had conquered Rome, the servile senate put him to dine with the gods! Fatigued by and ashamed of these honours, he desired the senate to erase from his statue in the capitol the title they had given him of a _demi-god_!

The adulations lavished on the first Roman emperors were extravagant; but perhaps few know that they were less offensive than the flatterers of the third century under the Pagan, and of the fourth under the Christian emperors. Those who are acquainted with the character of the age of Augustulus have only to look at the one, and the other _code_, to find an infinite number of passages which had not been tolerable even in that age. For instance, here is a law of Arcadius and Honorius, published in 404:--

"Let the officers of the palace be warned to abstain from frequenting tumultuous meetings; and that those who, instigated by a _sacrilegious_ temerity, dare to oppose the authority of _our divinity_, shall be deprived of their employments, and their estates confiscated." The letters they write are _holy_. When the sons speak of their fathers, it is, "Their father of _divine_ memory;" or "Their _divine_ father." They call their own laws _oracles_, and _celestial_ oracles. So also their subjects address them by the titles of "_Your Perpetuity_, _your Eternity._" And it appears by a law of Theodoric the Great, that the emperors at length added this to their titles. It begins, "If any magistrate, after having concluded a public work, put his name rather than that of _Our Perpetuity_, let him be judged guilty of high-treason." All this reminds one of "the celestial empire" of the Chinese.

Whenever the Great Mogul made an observation, Bernier tells us that some of the first Omrahs lifted up their hands, crying, "Wonder! wonder! wonder!" And a proverb current in his dominion was, "If the king saith at noonday it is night, you are to say, Behold the moon and the stars!" Such adulation, however, could not alter the general condition and fortune of this unhappy being, who became a sovereign without knowing what it is to be one. He was brought out of the seraglio to be placed on the throne, and it was he, rather than the spectators, who might have truly used the interjection of astonishment!

DETHRONED MONARCHS

Fortune never appears in a more extravagant humour than when she reduces monarchs to become mendicants. Half a century ago it was not imagined that our own times should have to record many such instances. After having contemplated _kings_ raised into _divinities_, we see them now depressed as _beggars_. Our own times, in two opposite senses, may emphatically be distinguished as the _age of kings_.

In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire's. Eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of conversation, they are discovered to be _eight monarchs_ in Europe, who had been deprived of their crowns!

What added to this exquisite satire was, that there were eight living monarchs at that moment wanderers on the earth;--a circumstance which has since occurred!

Adelaide, the widow of Lothario, king of Italy, one of the most beautiful women in her age, was besieged in Pavia by Berenger, who resolved to constrain her to marry his son after Pavia was taken; she escaped from her prison with her almoner. The archbishop of Reggio had offered her an asylum: to reach it, she and her almoner travelled on foot through the country by night, concealing herself in the day-time among the corn, while the almoner begged for alms and food through the villages.

The emperor Henry IV. after having been deposed and imprisoned by his son, Henry V., escaped from prison; poor, vagrant, and without aid, he entreated the bishop of Spires to grant him a lay prebend in his church. "I have studied," said he, "and have learned to sing, and may therefore be of some service to you." The request was denied, and he died miserably and obscurely at Liege, after having drawn the attention of Europe to his victories and his grandeur!

Mary of Medicis, the widow of Henry the Great, mother of Louis XIII., mother-in-law of three sovereigns, and regent of France, frequently wanted the necessaries of life, and died at Cologne in the utmost misery. The intrigues of Richelieu compelled her to exile herself, and live an unhappy fugitive. Her petition exists, with this supplicatory opening: "Supplie Marie, Reine de France et de Navarre, disant, que depuis le 23 Février elle aurait été arrêtée prisonnière au château de Compiègne, sans être ni accusée ni soupçonné," &c. Lilly, the astrologer, in his Life and Death of King Charles the First, presents us with a melancholy picture of this unfortunate monarch. He has also described the person of the old queen-mother of France:--

"In the month of August, 1641, I beheld the old queen-mother of France departing from London, in company of Thomas, Earl of Arundel. A sad spectacle of mortality it was, and produced tears from mine eyes and many other beholders, to see an aged, lean, decrepit, poor queen, ready for her grave, necessitated to depart hence, having no place of residence in this world left her, but where the courtesy of her hard fortune assigned it. She had been the only stately and magnificent woman of Europe: wife to the greatest king that ever lived in France; mother unto one king and unto two queens."

In the year 1595, died at Paris, Antonio, king of Portugal. His body is interred at the Cordeliers, and his heart deposited at the Ave-Maria. Nothing on earth could compel this prince to renounce his crown. He passed over to England, and Elizabeth assisted him with troops; but at length he died in France in great poverty. This dethroned monarch was happy in one thing, which is indeed rare: in all his miseries he had a servant, who proved a tender and faithful friend, and who only desired to participate in his misfortunes, and to soften his miseries; and for the recompense of his services he only wished to be buried at the feet of his dear master. This hero in loyalty, to whom the ancient Romans would have raised altars, was Don Diego Bothei, one of the greatest lords of the court of Portugal, and who drew his origin from the kings of Bohemia.