Part 4

The palace of Ptolemy Philadelphus was the asylum of learned men whom he admired and patronized. He paid particular attention to Euclid, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Lycophron, and by increasing the library, of which his father had laid the foundation, he shewed his taste for learning and wish to encourage genius. This celebrated library at his death contained 200,000 volumes of the best and choicest books, and it was afterwards increased to 700,000 volumes. The method adopted for making this collection was the seizing of all the books that were brought by the Greeks or other foreigners into Egypt, and sending them to Ptolemy, who had them transcribed by persons employed for that purpose. The transcripts were then delivered to the proprietors, and the originals laid up in the library. Ptolemy Euergetes, for instance, borrowed of the Athenians the works of Sophocles, Euripides, and Æschylus, and only returned them the copies, which he caused to be transcribed in as beautiful a manner as possible; the originals he retained for his own library, presenting the Athenians with fifteen talents for the exchange, that is, with upwards of £3,000 sterling. As the Alexandrian academy was at first in the quarter of the city called _Bruchion_, the library was placed there, but when the number of books amounted to 400,000 volumes, another library within the _Serapeum_ was erected, by way of supplement to it, and on that account called the daughter of the former. The books lodged in the Serapeum increased to the number of 300,000, and these two made up the number of 700,000 volumes, of which the royal libraries of the Ptolemys were said to consist.

In the war which Julius Cæsar waged with the inhabitants of Alexandria, the library of Bruchion was accidentally, but unfortunately, burned; but the library in the Serapeum still remained. The whole was magnificently repaired by Cleopatra, who deposited there the 200,000 volumes, forming the library of the kings of Pergamus, with which she had been presented by Antony. These, and others added to them from time to time, rendered the new library of Alexandria more numerous and considerable than the former, and though it was plundered more than once during the revolutions which happened in the Roman empire, yet it was as frequently supplied with the same number of books, and continued for many ages to be of great fame and use, until it was burnt by the Saracens, in the year 642 of the Christian æra.

There was a building adjoining to this library, called the Museum, for the accommodation of a college or society of learned men, who were supported there at the public expense, and where there were covered walks and seats where they might carry on disputations.

The next library of antiquity was that founded at Pergamus, by Eumenes, and considerably increased by the literary taste of his wealthy and learned successors, at whose court merit and virtue were always sure of finding an honorable patronage. This library which consisted of 200,000 volumes, was given by Antony to Cleopatra, as has been already mentioned.—Parchment was first invented and made use of at Pergamus to transcribe books upon, as Ptolemy had forbidden the exportation of Papyrus from Egypt, in order to prevent Eumenes from making a library as valuable and choice as that of Alexandria.

The first public library at Rome, and in the world, as Pliny observes, was erected by Asinius Pollio, in the Atrium of the Temple of Liberty on Mount Aventine. Augustus founded a Greek and Latin library in the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, and another in the name of his sister Octavia, adjoining to the Theatre of Marcellus.

Among the ancient libraries that of Lucullus is mentioned by Plutarch in terms of the highest praise. The number of volumes was immense, and they were written in elegant hands. The use he made of them was still more honorable to him than the possession of so much literary treasure. The library of Lucullus was open to all; the Greeks who were at Rome repaired with pleasure to his galleries and porticos, as to the retreat of the muses, and there spent whole days in conversation upon subjects of literature, delighted to retire to such a scene from other pursuits. Lucullus himself, who was a perfect master of the Greek language often joined and conferred with these learned men in their walks.

There were several other libraries at Rome, the chief of which was the Ulpian library, instituted by Trajan, which Dioclesian annexed as an ornament to his baths. One of the most elegant was that of Serenus Samonicus, preceptor of the Emperor Gordian. It is said to have contained not less than 60,000 volumes, and that the room in which they were deposited was paved with gilded marble. The walls were ornamented with glass and ivory; and the shelves, cases, presses, and desks, made of ebony and silver. There were libraries in the capital, in the Temple of Peace, and in the house of Tiberius. Many private persons had good libraries particularly in their country villas. The Roman libraries were in general adorned with statues and pictures, particularly of ingenious and learned men.

Learning and the arts received a fatal blow by the destruction of the heathen temples, in the reign of Constantine. The devastations then committed, are depicted in the strongest and most lively colours by Mr. Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Many valuable libraries perished by the Barbarians of the north, who invaded Italy in the fourth and fifth centuries. By these rude hands perished the library of Perseus, king of Macedon, which Paulus Æmilius brought to Rome with its captive owner; as did also that noble library, just mentioned, established for the use of the public by Asinius Pollio, which was collected from the spoils of all the enemies he had subdued, and was much enriched by him at a great expense. The libraries of Cicero and Lucullus met with the same fate, and those of Julius Cæsar, of Augustus, Vespasian, and Trajan also perished, together with that of the Emperor Gordian.

KING CHARLES THE FIRST.

The Journey of Prince Charles (afterwards Charles the First) and the Duke of Buckingham to Spain, was considered at the time to be such a piece of knight-errantry as scarcely any age could parallel. Spanheim in his history of Louisa-Juliana, Electress Palatine, mother of the king of Bohemia, says “that never Prince was more obliged to a sister, than king Charles I. was to the queen of Bohemia; since it was only the consideration of _her_ and _her children_, who were then the _next heirs_ after _him_ to the Crown of England, that prevailed with the Court of Spain _to permit him ever to see England again_.”

Charles the First, though of abstemious habits kept a splendid and hospitable table, at the beginning of his reign. Of this trait in his character, hitherto unnoticed, the following account affords a sufficient proof.

There were daily in his court eighty six tables, well furnished each meal, whereof the king’s table had twenty-eight dishes; the queen’s twenty-four; four other tables sixteen dishes each; three other ten dishes each; twelve other had seven dishes each; seventeen other tables had each of them five dishes; three other had four each; thirty-two other tables had each three dishes; and thirteen other had each two dishes; in all about five hundred dishes each meal, with bread, beer, wine, and all other things necessary. All which was provided, mostly by the several purveyors, who, by commission, legally and regularly authorized, did receive those provisions at a moderate price, such as had been formerly agreed upon in the several counties of England, which price, (by reason of the value of money much altered) was become low, yet a very inconsiderable burthen to the kingdom in general, but thereby was greatly supported the royal dignity in the eyes of strangers as well as subjects.

The English nobility and gentry, according to the king’s example, were excited to keep a proportionable hospitality in their several country mansions, the husbandmen encouraged to breed cattle, all tradesmen to a cheerful industry; and there was then a free circulation of money throughout the whole body of the kingdom. There was spent yearly in the king’s house of gross meat fifteen hundred oxen, seven thousand sheep, twelve hundred veals, three hundred porkers, four hundred storks or young beefs, six thousand eight hundred lambs, three hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty-six hams; also one hundred and forty dozen of geese, two hundred and fifty dozen of capons, four hundred and seventy dozen of hens, seven hundred and fifty dozen of pullets, one thousand four hundred and seventy dozen of chickens; for bread three thousand six hundred bushels of wheat: and for drink six hundred tuns of wine, and one thousand seven hundred tuns of beer; moreover of butter forty six thousand six hundred and forty pounds, together with fish and fowl, venison, fruit and spice proportionably.

THE FAIR GERALDINE AND THE EARL OF SURREY.

The “Fair Geraldine” the general object of Lord Surrey’s empassioned sonnets, is commonly said to have lived at Florence, and to have been of the family of the _Geraldi_, of that city. This is however, a misapprehension of an expression in one of our poet’s Odes, and of a passage in Drayton’s Heroic Epistles. This lady was Elizabeth, third daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth Earl of Kildare. She appears to have received her education at Hunsdon House, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. It was here she was first seen by the Earl of Surrey, and she immediately became the object of his fervent but fruitless devotion. She was married first to Sir Anthony Browne, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and secondly to Edward Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, surviving by many years her noble and unfortunate admirer. There is a Portrait of the “Fair Geraldine” in the Woburn collection.

It is not precisely known at what period the Earl of Surrey began his travels. They have the air of a romance. He made the tour of Europe in the true spirit of chivalry, and with the ideas of an Amadis; he proclaimed the unparalleled charms of his Mistress, and prepared to defend the cause of her beauty with the weapons of Knight-errantry; nor was this adventurous journey performed without the intervention of an enchanter. The first city in Italy which he proposed to visit was Florence, the capital of Tuscany, and the original seat of the ancestors of his Geraldine.

In his way thither he passed a few days at the Emperor’s court; where he became acquainted with Cornelius Agrippa, a celebrated adept in natural magic. This visionary Philosopher shewed our hero in a mirror of glass, a representation of Geraldine, reclining on a couch, sick, and reading one of his most tender sonnets by a waxen taper. His imagination, which wanted not the flattering representations and artificial incentives of illusion, was heated anew by this interesting and affecting spectacle. Inflamed with every enthusiasm of the most romantic passion, he hastened to Florence; and on his arrival, immediately published a defiance against any person who could handle a lance and was in love, whether Christian, Jew, Turk, Saracen, or Cannibal, who should presume to dispute the superiority of Geraldine’s beauty. As the lady was pretended to be of Tuscan extraction, the pride of the Florentines was flattered on this occasion; and the Grand Duke of Tuscany permitted a general and unmolested ingress into his dominions of the combatants of all countries, until this important trial should be decided. The challenge was accepted, and the Earl proved victorious. The shield which was presented to him by the Duke of Tuscany before the tournament began, is exhibited in Vertue’s valuable print of the Arundel family, and was actually in the possession of one of the late Dukes of Norfolk.

These heroic vanities did not, however, so totally engross the time which the Earl of Surrey spent in Italy, as to alienate his mind from letters; he studied with the greatest success a critical knowledge of the Italian tongue; and that he might give new lustre to the name of Geraldine, attained a just taste for the peculiar graces of the Italian poetry.

He was recalled to England for some idle reason by the king, much sooner than he expected; and he returned home the most elegant traveller, the most polite lover, the most learned nobleman, and the most accomplished gentleman of his age. Dexterity in tilting and gracefulness in managing a horse under arms, were excellencies now viewed with a critical eye, and practised with a high degree of emulation. In 1540 at a tournament held in the presence of the Court at Westminster, and in which some of the principal nobility were engaged, Surrey was distinguished above the rest for his address in the use and exercise of arms.

But all these accomplishments, and the popularity that attended them, laid the foundation of a fatal death for this illustrious nobleman. They excited the jealousy of his capricious monarch Henry VIII. Lord Orford says “The unwieldy king growing distempered and froward, and apprehensive for the tranquillity of his boy-successor, easily conceived or admitted jealousies infused into him by the Earl of Hertford and the Protestant party, though one of the last acts of his fickle life was to found a convent.” Treason was therefore objected to the Earl of Surrey upon the most frivolous pretences; of which the principal was, his quartering the arms of Edward the Confessor with those of Howard, though even this insignificant fact had been justified by the practice of his family, and the sanction of the heralds. He was arraigned in the Guildhall, London, found guilty by a jury, and judgment of death being given, he was beheaded on Tower Hill, in January, 1547.

The Earl of Surrey was professedly a man of gallantry and pleasure, possessing a highly cultivated mind, and excelling in all the polite and elegant accomplishments of the age in which he lived. The flattery which has been bestowed upon his character by Poets, Heralds, and Genealogists, has not ceased to flow from his death to the present hour. A recent genealogical writer has been superlatively lavish of his panegyrics upon the excellencies and even upon the morals of the gallant Earl. There is, however, one extraordinary circumstance in the life of this nobleman which has been entirely overlooked by all his encomiasts. This is, that while his father urged him to connect himself in marriage with one lady; while the king was jealous of his designs upon a second; and while he himself as may be collected from his poem “To a Lady who refused to dance with him,” made proposals of marriage to a third, he was during all this time married to the lady Frances,[6] daughter of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, by whom he had five children, namely, two sons and three daughters. The sons were Thomas, afterwards fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Henry, created Earl of Northampton, by king James the First. To this lady the Earl of Surrey was united at the age of fifteen, and several years after his premature death, we find her bearing the title of Countess of Surrey, and possessing the guardianship of his children, therefore it is apparent they were never divorced. Can it be supposed that the example of a lustful king had instructed his courtiers, among their other accomplishments, to find pretexts for the dissolution of the marriage tie, whenever interest or their guilty passions prompted them to such baseness? Yet this is the man whose moral, as well as poetical and literary character, we are told “it is delightful to contemplate.”

The Earl of Surrey had one sister, Mary, who was married to Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, natural son of Henry VIII. who died in 1536 at the age of seventeen without issue. There is a most beautiful portrait of this lady in Chamberlaine’s collection of the Holbein Heads. Mr. Lodge exclaims pathetically “Would that her story had died with her; and that we might have been at liberty to fancy the character of so fair a creature as fair as her countenance. But the truth must be told. At the iniquitous trial of her brother in 1547, this lady was called on as a witness and brought forward a body of evidence against him so keenly pointed, and so full of secrets, which from their nature must have been voluntarily disclosed by her, that we cannot but suspect her conduct of a degree of rancour, unpardonable in any case, but in this unnatural.”

Footnote 6:

There is a portrait of this lady among the Holbein Heads, published by Mr. Chamberlaine.

JEWS IN ENGLAND.

William the Conqueror permitted great numbers of Jews to come over from Rouen, and to settle in England in the last year of his reign. Their number soon increased, and they spread themselves throughout most of the cities and capital towns in England where they built synagogues. There were fifteen hundred at York about the year 1189. At Bury, in Suffolk, is a very complete remain of a Jewish synagogue of stone in the Norman style, large and magnificent. Hence it was that many of the learned English Ecclesiastics of those times became acquainted with their books and language. In the reign of William Rufus, the Jews were remarkably numerous at Oxford, and had acquired considerable property; and some of their Rabbis were permitted to open a school in the university, where they instructed not only their own people, but many Christian students, in Hebrew literature, about the year 1094. Within 200 years after their admission or establishment by the Conqueror, they were banished the kingdom. This circumstance was highly favourable to the circulation of their learning in England. The suddenness of their dismission obliged them for present subsistence, and other reasons, to sell their moveable goods of all kinds, among which were large quantities of of Rabbinical books. The monks in various parts availed themselves of the distribution of these treasures. At Huntingdon and Stamford there was a prodigious sale of their effects, containing immense stores of Hebrew manuscripts, which were immediately purchased by Gregory of Huntingdon, prior of the abbey of Ramsey. Gregory speedily became an adept in the Hebrew, by means of these valuable acquisitions, which he bequeathed to his monastery about the year 1250. Other members of the same convent, in consequence of these advantages, are said to have been equal proficients in the same language, soon after the death of Prior Gregory, among whom were Robert Dodford, Librarian of Ramsey, and Laurence Holbech, who compiled a Hebrew Lexicon. At Oxford a great number of their books fell into the hands of Roger Bacon, or were bought by his brethren the Franciscan friars of that university.

THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

The first translation of any part of the Holy Scriptures into English that was committed to the press, was _The New Testament_, translated from the Greek, by William Tyndale, with the assistance of John Foye and William Roye, and printed first in 1526, in octavo.

Tyndale published afterwards, in 1530, a translation of the _Five Books of Moses_, and of _Jonah_, in 1531, in octavo. An English translation of the _Psalter_, done from the Latin of Martin Bucer, was also published at Strasburgh in 1530, by Francis Foye, octavo. And the same book together with _Jeremiah_, and the _Song of Moses_, were likewise published in 1534, in duodecimo, by George Joye, sometime fellow of Peter-House in Cambridge.

The first time _the whole Bible_ appeared in English, was in the year 1535 in folio. The translator and publisher was Miles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, who revised Tyndale’s version, compared it with the original, and supplied what had been left untranslated by Tyndale. It was printed at Zurich, and dedicated to King Henry the Eighth. This was the Bible, which by Cromwell’s injunction of September, 1536, _was ordered to be laid in Churches_.

LUXURY OF ANCIENT ROME.

The most remote countries of the ancient world were ransacked to supply the pomp and delicacy of Rome. The forests of Scythia afforded some valuable furs. Amber was brought overland from the shores of the Baltic to the Danube; and the Barbarians were astonished at the price which they received in exchange for so useless a commodity. Pliny has observed with some humour that even fashion had not found out the use of amber. Nero sent a Roman knight to purchase great quantities on the spot where it was produced. There was a considerable demand for Babylonian carpets and other manufactures of the East; but the most important and unpopular branch of foreign trade was carried on with Arabia and India. Every year about the time of the summer solstice, a fleet of a hundred and twenty vessels sailed from Myoshormos, a port of Egypt on the Red Sea. By the periodical assistance of the monsoons, they traversed the ocean in about forty days. The coast of Malabar, or the island of Ceylon, was the usual limit of their navigation, and it was in those markets that the merchants from the more remote countries of Asia expected their arrival. The return of the fleet of Egypt was fixed to the months of December or January; and as soon as their rich cargo had been transported on the backs of camels, from the Red Sea to the Nile, and had descended that river as far as Alexandria, it was poured without delay, into the capital of the empire. The objects of oriental traffic were splendid and trifling; silk, a pound of which was esteemed not inferior in value to a pound of gold; precious stones, among which the pearl claimed the first rank after the diamond: and a variety of aromatics, that were consumed in religious worship and the pomp of funerals. The labour and risk of the voyage was rewarded with almost incredible profit; but the profit was made upon Roman subjects, and a few individuals were enriched at the expense of the public. As the natives of Arabia and India were contented with the productions and manufactures of their own country, silver, on the side of the Romans, was the principal, if not the only instrument of commerce. It was a complaint worthy of the gravity of the senate, that in the pursuit of female ornaments, the wealth of the state was irrecoverably given away to foreign and hostile nations. The annual loss is computed by a writer of an inquisitive, but censorious temper, at upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling.[7]

Footnote 7:

Pliny, Hist. Nat. xii. 18.

RHYME.

Every language has powers, and graces, and music peculiar to itself; and what is becoming in one, would be ridiculous in another. Rhyme was barbarous in Latin and Greek verse, because these languages by the sonorousness of their words, by their liberty of transposition and inversion, by their fixed quantities and musical pronunciation, could carry on the melody of verse without its aid; and an attempt to construct English verses after the form of hexameters, and pentameters, and sapphics, is as barbarous among us. It is not true that rhyme is merely a monkish invention. On the contrary, it has obtained under different forms in the versification of most known nations. It is found in the ancient poetry of the northern nations of Europe; it is said to be found among the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians, and the Americans. This shews that there is something in the return of similar sounds, which is grateful to the ears of most part of mankind.