Chapter 25

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 _amours_; How hosts distrest, her _smock_ for _banner_ wore, Which vanquished foes! ---- how _fish_ in conventicles met, And _mackerel_ were with _bait of doctrine_ caught: How cattle have judicious hearers been!-- How _consecrated hives_ with bells were hung, And _bees_ kept mass, and holy _anthems sung_! How _pigs_ to th' _rosary_ kneel'd, and _sheep_ were taught To bleat _Te Deum_ and _Magnificat_; How _fly-flap_, of church-censure houses rid Of insects, which at _curse of fryar_ died. How _ferrying cowls_ religious pilgrims bore O'er waves, without the help of sail or oar; How _zealous crab_ the _sacred image_ bore, And swam a catholic to the distant shore. With shams like these the giddy rout mislead, Their folly and their superstition feed.

All these are allusions to the extravagant fictions in the "Golden Legend." Among other gross impositions to deceive the mob, Oldham likewise attacks them for certain publications on topics not less singular. The tales he has recounted, Oldham says, are only baits for children, like toys at a fair; but they have their profounder and higher matters for the learned and inquisitive. He goes on:--

One undertakes by scales of miles to tell The bounds, dimensions, and extent of HELL; How many German leagues that realm contains! How many chaldrons Hell each year expends In coals for roasting Hugonots and friends! Another frights the rout with useful stories Of wild chimeras, limbos--PURGATORIES-- Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung, Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue, To be redeem'd with masses and a song.--SATIRE IV.

The readers of Oldham, for Oldham must ever have readers among the curious in our poetry, have been greatly disappointed in the pompous edition of a Captain Thompson, which illustrates none of his allusions. In the above lines Oldham alludes to some singular works.

Treatises and topographical descriptions of HELL, PURGATORY, and even HEAVEN, were once the favourite researches among certain zealous defenders of the Romish Church, who exhausted their ink-horns in building up a Hell to their own taste, or for their particular purpose.[60] We have a treatise of Cardinal Bellarmin, a Jesuit, on _Purgatory_; he seems to have the science of a surveyor among all the secret tracks and the formidable divisions of "the bottomless pit."

Bellarmin informs us that there are beneath the earth four different places, or a profound place divided into four parts. The deepest of these places is _Hell_; it contains all the souls of the damned, where will be also their bodies after the resurrection, and likewise all the demons. The place nearest _Hell_ is _Purgatory_, where souls are purged, or rather where they appease the anger of God by their sufferings. He says that the same fires and the same torments are alike in both these places, the only difference between _Hell_ and _Purgatory_ consisting in their duration. Next to _Purgatory_ is the _limbo_ of those _infants_ who die without having received the sacrament; and the fourth place is the _limbo_ of the _Fathers_; that is to say, of those _just men_ who died before the death of Christ. But since the days of the Redeemer, this last division is empty, like an apartment to be let. A later catholic theologist, the famous Tillemont, condemns _all the illustrious pagans_ to the _eternal torments of Hell_? because they lived before the time of Jesus, and therefore could not be benefited by the redemption! Speaking of young Tiberius, who was compelled to fall on his own sword, Tillemont adds, "Thus by his own hand he ended his miserable life, _to begin another, the misery of which will never end_!" Yet history records nothing bad of this prince. Jortin observes that he added this _reflection_ in his later edition, so that the good man as he grew older grew more uncharitable in his religious notions. It is in this manner too that the Benedictine editor of Justin Martyr speaks of the illustrious pagans. This father, after highly applauding Socrates, and a few more who resembled him, inclines to think that they are not fixed in _Hell_. But the Benedictine editor takes great pains to clear the good father from the shameful imputation of supposing that a _virtuous pagan might be saved_ as well as a Benedictine monk! For a curious specimen of this _odium theologicum_, see the "Censure" of the Sorbonne on Marmontel's Belisarius.

The adverse party, who were either philosophers or reformers, received all such information with great suspicion. Anthony Cornelius, a lawyer in the sixteenth century, wrote a small tract, which was so effectually suppressed, as a monster of atheism, that a copy is now only to be found in the hands of the curious. This author ridiculed the absurd and horrid doctrine of _infant damnation_, and was instantly decried as an atheist, and the printer prosecuted to his ruin! Cælius Secundus Curio, a noble Italian, published a treatise _De Amplitudine beati Regni Dei_, to prove that _Heaven_ has more inhabitants than _Hell_,--or, in his own phrase, that the _elect_ are more numerous than the _reprobate_. However we may incline to smile at these works, their design was benevolent. They were the first streaks of the morning light of the Reformation. Even such works assisted mankind to examine more closely, and hold in greater contempt, the extravagant and pernicious doctrines of the domineering papistical church.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: One of the most horrible of these books was the work of the Jesuit Pinamonti; it details with frightful minuteness the nature of hell-torments, accompanied by the most revolting pictures of the condemned under various refined torments. It was translated in an abbreviated form, and sold for a few pence as a popular religious book in Ireland, and may be so still. It is divided into a series of meditations for each day in the week, on hell and its torments.]

THE ABSENT MAN.

The character of Bruyère's "Absent Man" has been translated in the Spectator, and exhibited on the theatre. It is supposed to be a fictitious character, or one highly coloured. It was well known, however, to his contemporaries, to be the Count de Brancas. The present anecdotes concerning the same person were unknown to, or forgotten by, Bruyère; and are to the full as extraordinary as those which characterise _Menalcas_, or the Absent Man.

The count was reading by the fireside, but Heaven knows with what degree of attention, when the nurse brought him his infant child. He throws down the book; he takes the child in his arms. He was playing with her, when an important visitor was announced. Having forgot he had quitted his book, and that it was his child he held in his hands, he hastily flung the squalling innocent on the table.

The count was walking in the street, and the Duke de la Rochefoucault crossed the way to speak to him.--"God bless thee, poor man!" exclaimed the count. Rochefoucault smiled, and was beginning to address him:--"Is it not enough," cried the count, interrupting him, and somewhat in a passion; "is it not enough that I have said, at first, I have nothing for you? Such lazy vagrants as you hinder a gentleman from walking the streets." Rochefoucault burst into a loud laugh, and awakening the absent man from his lethargy, he was not a little surprised, himself, that he should have taken his friend for an importunate mendicant! La Fontaine is recorded to have been one of the most absent men; and Furetière relates a most singular instance of this absence of mind. La Fontaine attended the burial of one of his friends, and some time afterwards he called to visit him. At first he was shocked at the information of his death; but recovering from his surprise, observed--"True! true! I recollect I went to his funeral."

WAX-WORK.

We have heard of many curious deceptions occasioned by the imitative powers of wax-work. A series of anatomical sculptures in coloured wax was projected by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, under the direction of Fontana. Twenty apartments have been filled with those curious imitations. They represent in every possible detail, and in each successive stage of denudation, the organs of sense and reproduction; the muscular, the vascular, the nervous, and the bony system. They imitate equally well the form, and more exactly the colouring, of nature than injected preparations; and they have been employed to perpetuate many transient phenomena of disease, of which no other art could have made so lively a record.[61]

There is a species of wax-work, which, though it can hardly claim the honours of the fine arts, is adapted to afford much pleasure--I mean figures of wax, which may be modelled with great truth of character.

Menage has noticed a work of this kind. In the year 1675, the Duke de Maine received a gilt cabinet, about the size of a moderate table. On the door was inscribed, "_The Apartment of Wit_." The inside exhibited an alcove and a long gallery. In an arm-chair was seated the figure of the duke himself, composed of wax, the resemblance the most perfect imaginable. On one side stood the Duke de la Rochefoucault, to whom he presented a paper of verses for his examination. M. de Marsillac, and Bossuet bishop of Meaux, were standing near the arm-chair. In the alcove, Madame de Thianges and Madame de la Fayette sat retired, reading a book. Boileau, the satirist, stood at the door of the gallery, hindering seven or eight bad poets from entering. Near Boileau stood Racine, who seemed to beckon to La Fontaine to come forwards. All these figures were formed of wax; and this philosophical baby-house, interesting for the personages it imitated, might induce a wish in some philosophers to play once more with one.

There was lately an old canon at Cologne who made a collection of small wax models of characteristic figures, such as personifications of Misery, in a haggard old man with a scanty crust and a brown jug before him; or of Avarice, in a keen-looking Jew miser counting his gold: which were done with such a spirit and reality that a Flemish painter, a Hogarth or Wilkie, could hardly have worked up the _feeling_ of the figure more impressively. "All these were done with truth and expression which I could not have imagined the wax capable of exhibiting," says the lively writer of "An Autumn near the Rhine." There is something very infantine in this taste; but I lament that it is very rarely gratified by such close copiers of nature as was this old canon of Cologne.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 61: The finest collection at present is in Guy's Hospital, Southwark; they are the work of an artist especially retained there, who by long practice has become perfect, making a labour of love of a pursuit that would be disgustful to many.]

PASQUIN AND MARFORIO.

All the world have heard of these _statues_: they have served as vehicles for the keenest satire in a land of the most uncontrolled despotism. The _statue of Pasquin_ (from whence the word _pasquinade_) and that of _Marforio_ are placed in Rome in two different quarters. _Marforio_ is an ancient _statue_ of _Mars_, found in the _Forum_, which the people have corrupted into _Marforio_. _Pasquin_ is a marble _statue_, greatly mutilated, supposed to be the figure of a gladiator.[62] To one or other of these _statues_, during the concealment of the night, are affixed those satires or lampoons which the authors wish should be dispersed about Rome without any danger to themselves. When _Marforio_ is attacked, _Pasquin_ comes to his succour; and when _Pasquin_ is the sufferer, he finds in _Marforio_ a constant defender. Thus, by a thrust and a parry, the most serious matters are disclosed: and the most illustrious personages are attacked by their enemies, and defended by their friends.

Misson, in his Travels in Italy, gives the following account of the origin of the name of the statue of _Pasquin_:--

A satirical tailor, who lived at Rome, and whose name was _Pasquin_, amused himself by severe raillery, liberally bestowed on those who passed by his shop; which in time became the lounge of the newsmongers. The tailor had precisely the talents to head a regiment of satirical wits; and had he had time to _publish_, he would have been the Peter Pindar of his day; but his genius seems to have been satisfied to rest cross-legged on his shopboard. When any lampoons or amusing bon-mots were current at Rome, they were usually called, from his shop, _pasquinades_. After his death, this statue of an ancient gladiator was found under the pavement of his shop. It was soon set up, and by universal consent was inscribed with his name; and they still attempt to raise him from the dead, and keep the caustic tailor alive, in the marble gladiator of wit.

There is a very rare work, with this title:--"Pasquillorum Tomi Duo;" the first containing the verse, and the second the prose pasquinades, published at Basle, 1544. The rarity of this collection of satirical pieces is entirely owing to the arts of suppression practised by the papal government. Sallengre, in his literary Memoirs, has given an account of this work; his own copy had formerly belonged to Daniel Heinsius, who, in verses written in his hand, describes its rarity and the price it too cost:--

Roma meos fratres igni dedit, unica Phoenix Vivo, aureisque venio centum Heinsio.

"Rome gave my brothers to the flames, but I survive a solitary Phoenix. Heinsius bought me for a hundred golden ducats."

This collection contains a great number of pieces composed at different times, against the popes, cardinals, &c. They are not, indeed, materials for the historian, and they must be taken with grains of allowance. We find sarcastic epigrams on Leo X., and the infamous Lucretia, daughter of Alexander VI.: even the corrupt Romans of the day were capable of expressing themselves with the utmost freedom. Of Alexander VI. we have an apology for his conduct:

Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum; Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest.

"Alexander _sells_ the keys, the altars, and Christ; As he _bought_ them first, he had a right to _sell them_!"

On Lucretia:--

Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed re Thais; Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus!

"Beneath this stone sleeps Lucretia by name, but by nature Thais; the daughter, the wife, and the daughter-in-law of Alexander!"

Leo X. was a frequent butt for the arrows of Pasquin:--

Sacra sub extremâ, si forte requiritis, horâ Cur Leo non potuit sumere; vendiderat.

"Do you ask why Leo did not take the sacrament on his death-bed?--How could he? He had sold it!"

Many of these satirical touches depend on puns. Urban VII., one of the _Barberini_ family, pillaged the Pantheon of brass to make cannon,[63] on which occasion Pasquin was made to say:--

Quod non fecerunt _Barbari_ Romæ, fecit _Barberini_.

On Clement VII., whose death was said to be occasioned by the prescriptions of his physician:--

Curtius occidit Clementem; Curtius auro Donandus, per quem publica parta salus.

"Dr. Curtius has killed the pope by his remedies; he ought to be remunerated as a man who has cured the state."

The following, on Paul III., are singular conceptions:--

Papa Medusæum caput est, coma turba Nepotum; Perseu cæde caput, Cæsaries periit.

"The pope is the head of Medusa; the horrid tresses are his nephews; Perseus, cut off the head, and then we shall be rid of these serpent-locks."

Another is sarcastic--

Ut canerent data multa olim sunt Vatibus æra: Ut taceam, quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?

"Heretofore money was given to poets that they might sing: how much will you give me, Paul, to be silent?"

This collection contains, among other classes, passages from the Scriptures which have been applied to the court of Rome; to different nations and persons; and one of "_Sortes Virgilianæ per Pasquillum collectæ_,"--passages from Virgil frequently happily applied; and those who are curious in the history of those times will find this portion interesting. The work itself is not quite so rare as Daniel Heinsius imagined; the price might now reach from five to ten guineas.[64]

These satirical statues are placed at opposite ends of the town, so that there is always sufficient time to make Marforio reply to the gibes and jeers of Pasquin in walking from one to the other. They are an ingenious substitute for publishing to the world, what no Roman newspaper would dare to print.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 62: The description of these two famous statues is not correctly given in the text. The statue called _Marforio_ is the figure of a recumbent river god of colossal proportions, found near the arch of Septimius Severus. When the museum of the capitol was completed, the Pope moved the figure into the court-yard; there it is still to be seen. He also wished to move that of _Pasquin_, but the Duke de Braschi refused to allow it; and it still stands on its pedestal, at the angle of the Braschi Palace, in the small square that takes the name of Piazza del Pasquino from that circumstance. It is much mutilated, but is the ruin of a very fine work; Bernini expressed great admiration for it. It is considered by Count Maffei to represent Ajax supporting Menelaus. The torso of the latter figure only is left, the arms of the former are broken away; but enough remains of both to conjecture what the original might have been in design. The _pose_ of both figures is similar to the fine group known as Ajax and Telamon, in the Loggia of the Pitti Palace at Florence.]

[Footnote 63: The cannon were to supply the castle of St. Angelo, but a large portion of the metal (which formerly covered the roof of the temple) was used to construct the canopy and pillars which still stand over the tomb of St. Peter, in the great cathedral at Rome.]

FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS.

The ladies in Japan gild their teeth; and those of the Indies paint them red. The pearl of teeth must be dyed black to be beautiful in Guzerat. In Greenland the women colour their faces with blue and yellow. However fresh the complexion of a Muscovite may be, she would think herself very ugly if she was not plastered over with paint. The Chinese must have their feet as diminutive as those of the she-goat; and to render them thus, their youth is passed in tortures. In ancient Persia an aquiline nose was often thought worthy of the crown; and if there was any competition between two princes, the people generally went by this criterion of majesty. In some countries, the mothers break the noses of their children; and in others press the head between two boards, that it may become square. The modern Persians have a strong aversion to red hair: the Turks, on the contrary, are warm admirers of it. The female Hottentot receives from the hand of her lover, not silks nor wreaths of flowers, but warm guts and reeking tripe, to dress herself with enviable ornaments.

In China, small round eyes are liked; and the girls are continually plucking their eye-brows, that they may be thin and long. The Turkish women dip a gold brush in the tincture of a black drug, which they pass over their eye-brows. It is too visible by day, but looks shining by night. They tinge their nails with a rose-colour. An African beauty must have small eyes, thick lips, a large flat nose, and a skin beautifully black. The Emperor of Monomotapa would not change his amiable negress for the most brilliant European beauty.

An ornament for the nose appears to us perfectly unnecessary. The Peruvians, however, think otherwise; and they hang on it a weighty ring, the thickness of which is proportioned by the rank of their husbands. The custom of boring it, as our ladies do their ears, is very common in several nations. Through the perforation are hung various materials; such as green crystal, gold, stones, a single and sometimes a great number of gold rings.[65] This is rather troublesome to them in blowing their noses; and the fact is, as some have informed us, that the Indian ladies never perform this very useful operation.

The female head-dress is carried in some countries to singular extravagance. The Chinese fair carries on her head the figure of a certain bird. This bird is composed of copper or of gold, according to the quality of the person; the wings spread out, fall over the front of the head-dress, and conceal the temples. The tail, long and open, forms a beautiful tuft of feathers. The beak covers the top of the nose; the neck is fastened to the body of the artificial animal by a spring, that it may the more freely play, and tremble at the slightest motion.

The extravagance of the Myantses is far more ridiculous than the above. They carry on their heads a slight board, rather longer than a foot, and about six inches broad; with this they cover their hair, and seal it with wax. They cannot lie down, or lean, without keeping the neck straight; and the country being very woody, it is not uncommon to find them with their head-dress entangled in the trees. Whenever they comb their hair, they pass an hour by the fire in melting the wax; but this combing is only performed once or twice a year.

The inhabitants of the land of Natal wear caps or bonnets, from six to ten inches high, composed of the fat of oxen. They then gradually anoint the head with a purer grease, which mixing with the hair, fastens these _bonnets_ for their lives.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 64: This vehicle for satire was introduced early into England; thus, in 1589, was published "The return of the renowned Cavaliero Pasquill to England from the other side of the seas, and his meeting with Marforio at London, upon the Royall Exchange."]

[Footnote 65: For some very strong remarks on this fashion, the reader may consult Bulwer's _Anthropometamorphosis, or Artificiall Changeling_, 1653. The author is very ungallant in his strictures on "precious jewels in the snouts of such swine."]

MODERN PLATONISM.

Erasmus, in his Age of Religious Revolution, expressed an alarm, which in some shape has been since realized. He strangely, yet acutely observes, that "_literature_ began to make a great and happy progress; but," he adds, "I fear two things--that the study of _Hebrew_ will promote _Judaism_, and the study of _philology_ will revive PAGANISM." He speaks to the same purpose in the Adages, c. 189, as Jortin observes. Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and that the votaries of the _god_ of _Delphi_ had their faith confirmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predictions verified; that besides all this, the oracles that have reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating to Greece;--this learned writer is at a loss to account for a knowledge that he thinks has something divine in it: it was a knowledge to be found nowhere in Greece but among the _Oracles_. He would account for this phenomenon by supposing there existed a succession of learned men devoted to this purpose. He says, "Either we must admit the knowledge of the priests, or turn _converts to the ancients_, and believe in the _omniscience of Apollo, which in this age I know nobody in hazard of_." Yet, to the astonishment of this writer, were he now living, he would have witnessed this incredible fact! Even Erasmus himself might have wondered.