Part 90
Of all the dramatic works of Lope de Vega, the Lives of the Saints are in every respect the most irregular. Allegorical characters, buffoons, saints, peasants, students, kings, God, the infant Jesus, the devil, and the most heterogeneous beings that the wildest imagination could bring together, are introduced. Music seems always to have been an indispensable accessary. Lope de Vega’s spiritual comedy, entitled the Life of Saint Nicolas de Tolentino,[288] commences with a conversation maintained by a party of students, who make a display of their wit and scholastic learning. Among them is the future saint, whose piety shines with the brighter lustre when contrasted with the disorderly gaiety of those by whom he is surrounded. The devil disguised by a mask joins the party. A skeleton appears in the air; the sky opens, and the Almighty is discovered sitting in judgment, attended by Justice and Mercy, who alternately influence his decisions. Next succeeds a love intrigue between a lady named Rosalia, and a gentleman named Feniso. The future saint then reenters attired in canonicals, and delivers a sermon in redondillas. The parents of the saint congratulate themselves on possessing such a son; and this scene forms the conclusion of the first act. At the opening of the second a party of soldiers are discovered; the saint enters accompanied by several monks, and offers up a prayer in the form of a sonnet. Brother Peregrino relates the romantic history of his conversion. Subtle theological quiddities ensue, and numerous anecdotes of the lives of the saints are related. St. Nicolas prays again through the medium of a sonnet. He then rises in the air, either by the power of faith, or the help of the theatrical machinery; and the Holy Virgin and St. Augustin descend from heaven to meet him. The sonnet by which St. Nicolas performs this miracle is the most beautiful in this sacred farce. In the third act the scene is transferred to Rome, where two cardinals exhibit the holy sere-cloth to the people by torch-light. Music performed on clarinets adds to the solemnity of this ceremony, during which pious discourses are delivered. St. Nicolas is next discovered embroidering the habit of his order; and the pious observations which he makes, while engaged in this occupation, are accompanied by the chanting of invisible angels. The music attracts the devil, who endeavours to tempt St. Nicolas. The next scene exhibits souls in the torments of purgatory. The devil again appears attended by a retinue of lions, serpents, and other hideous animals; but in a scene, which is intended for burlesque, (_graciosamente_,) a monk armed with a great broom drives off the devil and his suite. At the conclusion of the piece the saint, whose beatification is how complete, descends from heaven in a garment bespangled with stars. As soon as he touches the earth, the souls of his father and mother are released from purgatory, and rise through a rock; the saint then returns hand-in-hand with his parents to heaven, music playing as they ascend.[289]
[288] St. Nicolas de Tolentino is a saint of modern creation.
[289] Bouterwek.
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PORTUGUESE MYSTERIES.
One of the spiritual dramas of Gil Vicente, performed at Lisbon, commences with shepherds, who discourse and enter a chapel, which is decorated with all the apparatus necessary for the celebration of the festival of Christmas. The shepherds cannot sufficiently express their rustic admiration of the pomp exhibited in the chapel. Faith (_La Fé_) enters as an allegorical character. She speaks Portuguese, and after announcing herself to the shepherds as True Faith, she explains to them the nature of faith, and enters into an historical relation of the mysteries of the incarnation. This is the whole subject of the piece.
Another of these dramas, wherein the poet’s fancy has taken a wider range, presents scenes of a more varied nature. Mercury enters as an allegorical character, and as the representative of the planet which bears his name. He explains the theory of the planetary system and the zodiac, and cites astronomical facts from Regiomontanus, in a long series of stanzas in the old national style. A seraph then appears, who is sent down from heaven by God, in compliance with the prayers of Time. The seraph, in the quality of a herald, proclaims a large yearly fair in honour of the Holy Virgin, and invites customers to it. A devil next makes his appearance with a little stall which he carries before him. He gets into a dispute with Time and the seraph, and asserts, that among men such as they are, he shall be sure to find purchasers for his wares. He therefore leaves to every customer his free choice. Mercury then summons eternal Rome as the representative of the church. She appears, and offers for sale Peace of Mind, as the most precious of her merchandise. The devil remonstrates, and Rome retires. Two Portuguese peasants now appear in the market: one is very anxious to sell his wife, and observes, that if he cannot sell her, he will give her away for nothing, as she is a wicked spendthrift. Amidst this kind of conversation a party of peasant women enter, one of whom, with considerable comic warmth, vents bitter complaints against her husband. She tells, with a humorous simplicity, that her ungrateful husband has robbed her garden of its fruits before they were ripe; that he never does any thing, but leads a sottish life, eating and drinking all day, &c. The man who has already been inveighing against his wife immediately recognises her, and says,--“That is my slippery helpmate.” During this succession of comic scenes the action does not advance. The devil at last opens his little stall and displays his stock of goods to the female peasants; but one of them, who is the most pious of the party, seems to suspect that all is not quite right with regard to the merchandise, and she exclaims--“Jesus! Jesus! true God and man!” The devil immediately takes to flight, and does not reappear; but the seraph again comes forward and mingles with the rustic groups. The throng continues to increase; other countrywomen with baskets on their heads arrive; and the market is stored with vegetables, poultry, and other articles of rural produce. The seraph offers Virtues for sale; but they find no purchasers. The peasant girls observe, that in their village money is more sought after than virtue, when a young man wants a wife. One of the party, however, says, that she wished to come to the market because it happened to fall on the festival of the mother of God; and because the Virgin does not sell her gifts of grace, but distributes them gratis. This observation crowns the theological morality of the piece, which terminates with a hymn of praise, in the popular style, in honour of the Holy Virgin.[290]
[290] Bouterwek.
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POACHING.
A poor itinerant player, caught performing the part of a poacher, and being taken before the magistrates assembled at a quarter sessions for examination, one of them asked him what right he had to kill a hare? when he replied in the following ludicrous parody on Brutus’s speech to the Romans, in defence of the death of Cæsar:--
“Britons, hungry-men, and epicures! hear me for my cause; and be silent--that you may hear; believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom; and awake your senses that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of this hare, to him I say, that a player’s love for hare is no less than his. If, then, that friend demand why a player rose against a hare, this is my answer,--not that I loved hare less, but that I loved eating more. Had you rather this hare were living, and I had died starving--than that this hare were dead, that I might live a jolly fellow? As this hare was pretty, I weep for him; as he was nimble, I rejoice at it; as he was plump, I honour him; but, as he was eatable, I slew him. There are tears, for his beauty; joy, for his condition; honour, for his speed; and death, for his toothsomeness. Who is here so cruel, would see a starved man? If any, speak, for him have I offended. Who is here so silly, that would not take a tit bit? If any, speak, for him have I offended. Who is here so sleek, that does not love his belly? If any, speak, for him have I offended.”
“You have offended justice, sirrah,” cried one of the magistrates, out of all patience at this long and strange harangue.
“Then,” cried the culprit, guessing at the hungry feelings of the bench, “since justice is dissatisfied, it must needs have something to devour--Heaven forbid I should keep any gentleman from his dinner--so, if you please, I’ll wish your worships a good day, and a good appetite.”
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HAPPY UNION.
Quin used to say, that of all the bans of marriage he ever heard, none gave him such pleasure as the union of delicate _Ann Chovy_ with good _John Dory_. This sentiment was worthy of such a disciple of Apicius.
S. S. S.
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~Fine View.~
LEITH HILL, NEAR DORKING.
_Extracted from a letter from_ MR. DENNIS _to_ MR. SERJEANT, _near seventy years ago_.
In a late journey which I took into the wild of Sussex, I passed over a hill, which showed me more transporting sights than ever I had seen before, either in England or Italy. The prospects which in Italy pleased me most were the Valdarno from the Apennines of Rome, and the Mediterranean from the mountain of Viterbo; of Rome at forty, and the Mediterranean at fifty miles distant from it; and that of the famous Campagna of Rome from Tivoli and Frescati, to the very foot of the mountain Viterbo, without any thing to intercept your sight.
But from an hill which I passed in my late journey into Sussex, I had a prospect more extensive than any of these, and which surpassed them at once in rural charms, in pomp, and magnificence. The hill which I speak of is called Leith-hill, and is about five miles southward from Dorking, about six miles from Box-hill, and near twelve from Epsom. It juts itself out about two miles beyond that range of hills, which terminate the north downs to the south. After conquering the hill itself the sight is enchantingly beautiful. Beneath lie open to our view all the wilds of Surrey and Sussex, and a great part of that of Kent, admirably diversified in every part of them with woods, and fields of corn and pasture, and everywhere adorned with stately rows of trees. This beautiful vale is thirty miles in breadth, and sixty in length, terminating on the south by the majestic range of hills and the sea. About noon on a serene day you may, at thirty miles distance, see the waters of the sea through a chasm of the mountains. And that which, above all, makes it a noble and wonderful prospect is, that at the same time you behold this noble sight, by a little turn of your head towards the north, you look full over Box-hill, and see the country beyond it, between that and London, and St. Paul’s, at twenty-five miles distance, with Highgate and Hampstead beyond it all. It may perhaps appear incredible to some, that a place which affords so great and so surprising a prospect should have remained so long in obscurity, and that it is unknown to the very visitors of Epsom and Box-hill. But, alas! we live in a country more fertile of great things, than of men to admire them.
Whoever talked of Cooper’s-hill, till sir John Denham made it illustrious?--How long did Milton remain in obscurity, while twenty paltry authors, little and vile compared to him, were talked of and admired? But in England, nineteen in twenty like by other people’s opinions, and not by their own.
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PARSIMONY.
Augustine Pentheny, Esq. who died on the 23d of November, 1810, in the eighty-third year of his age, at an obscure lodging in Leeson-street, Dublin, was a miser of the most perfect drawing that nature ever gave to the world. He was born in the village of Longwood, county of Meath, and became a journeyman-cooper. Very early in life he was encouraged to make a voyage to the West Indies, to follow his trade, under the patronage of his maternal uncle, another adventurer of the name of Gaynor, better known among his neighbours by the name of “Peter Big Brogues,” from the enormous shoes he was mounted in on the day he set out on his travels. Peter acquired an immense fortune, and lived to see his only child married to sir G. Colebrook, chairman to the East India Company, and a banker in London, to whom Peter gave with his daughter two hundred thousand pounds. His nephew, Anthony, acquired the enormous sum of three hundred thousand pounds in the islands of Antigua and Santa Cruz.
Anthony Pentheny saw mankind only through one medium--money. His vital powers were so diverted from generous or social objects by the prevailing passion of gold, that he could discover no trait in any character, however venerable or respectable, that was not seconded by riches; in fact, any one that was not rich he considered as an inferior animal, neither worthy of notice, nor safe to be admitted into society. This feeling he extended to female society, and, if possible, with a greater degree of disgust. A woman he considered only as an incumbrance on a man of property, and therefore he could never be prevailed upon to admit one into his confidence. Wedlock he utterly and uniformly rejected. His wife was the public funds, and his children dividends; and no parent or husband ever paid more deference or care to the objects of his affection. He was never known to diminish his immense hoard, by rewarding a generous action; or to alleviate distress, or accidental misfortune, by the application of a single shilling. It could scarcely be expected that a man would give gifts or bestow gratuities, who was a niggard of comforts to himself. The evening before he died, some busy friend sent a respectable physician to him. The old miser evinced no dislike, until he recollected the doctor might expect a fee; this alarmed him, and immediately raising himself in the bed, he addressed his “medical friend” in the following words: “Doctor, I am a strong man, and know my disorder, and could cure myself, but as Mr. Nangle has sent you to my assistance, I shall not exchange you for any other person, if we can come to an understanding; in fact, I wish to know what you will charge for your attendance until I am recovered.” The doctor answered “eight guineas.” “Ah! sir,” said the old man, “if you knew my disorder you would not be exorbitant; but to put an end to this discussion, I will give you six guineas and a half.” The doctor assented, and the patient held out his arm with the fee, to have his pulse considered, and laid himself down again.
Old Pentheny’s relations were numerous, but, in his opinion, wholly unqualified, by want of experience in the management of money, to nurse his wealth, and therefore he bequeathed the entire of it to a rich family in the West Indies, with the generous exception of four pounds annually to a faithful servant, who had lived with him twenty-four years. In his will he expresses great kindness for “poor John,” and says he bequeaths the four pounds for his kind services, that his latter days might be spent in comfortable independence! He appointed Waller Nangle, Esq. and major O’Farrell, his executors, and the right hon. David La Touche and lord Fingal, trustees. Like Thellusson, he would not allow his fortune to pass to his heirs immediately, as he directed that the entire should be funded for fourteen years, and then, “in its improved state,” be at the disposal of the heirs he had chosen.
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ON A LADY,
A GREAT CARDPLAYER, WHO MARRIED A GARDENER.
_Trumps_ ever ruled the charming maid, Sure all the world must pardon her, The Destinies _turn’d up_ a _spade_-- She married John the gardener.
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~Discoveries~
OF THE
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. III.
THE INNATE IDEAS OF DESCARTES AND LEIBNITZ, DERIVED FROM PLATO, HERACLITUS, PYTHAGORAS, AND THE CHALDEANS--THE SYSTEM OF MALLEBRANCHE FROM THE SAME SOURCE, AND ST. AUGUSTINE.
The innate perception of first truths, maintained by Descartes and Leibnitz, which raised such warm and subtle disputes among metaphysicians, is a doctrine derived from Plato. That great philosopher, who acquired the surname of divine, by having written best on the subject of Deity, entertained a very peculiar sentiment respecting the origin of the soul. He calls it “an emanation of the divine essence, from whom it imbibed all its ideas; but that having sinned, it was degraded from its first estate, and condemned to a union with body, wherein it is confined as in a prison; that its forgetfulness of its former ideas was the necessary consequence of this penalty.” He adds, that “the benefit of philosophy consists in repairing this loss, by gradually leading back the soul to its first conceptions, accustoming it by degrees to recognise its own ideas, and by a full recollection of them to comprehend its own essence, and the true nature of things.” From that Platonic principle of the soul’s “divine emanation,” it naturally followed, that, having formerly had within itself the knowledge of every thing, it still retained the faculty of recalling to mind its immortal origin and primeval ideas. Descartes and Leibnitz reasoned in the very same manner, in admitting eternal and first truths to be imprinted on the soul:--they substitute indeed the creation and preexistence of souls, in place of the “divine emanation” of them taught by Plato; but they defend their system by the same sort of arguments.
Mallebranche entered the lists in defence of Descartes’s principles, and took upon him to support an opinion respecting the nature of ideas, which caused universal astonishment by its apparent singularity, and was treated as almost extravagant; although he advanced nothing but what might be defended by the authority of the finest geniuses of antiquity. After having defined ideas to be “the immediate, or nearest objects of the mind when it perceives any thing.” Mallebranche demonstrates the reality of their existence, by displaying their qualities, which never can belong to nothing, that have no properties. He then distinguishes between sentiments and ideas; considers the five different ways, whereby the mind comes at the view of external objects; shows the fallacy of four of them, and establishes the preeminence of the fifth, as being that alone which is conformable to reason, by saying, that it is absolutely necessary God should have in himself the ideas of all essences, otherwise he never could have given them existence. He undertakes to prove, that God, by his presence, is nearly united to our souls; insomuch, that he may be called the place of spirits, as space is of bodies; and thence he concludes, that the soul may discern in God whatever is representative of created things, if it be the will of God to communicate himself in that manner to it. He remarks, that God, or the universal intelligence, contains in himself those ideas which illuminate us; and that his works having been formed on the model of his ideas, we cannot better employ ourselves than in contemplating them, in order to discover the nature and properties of created things.
Mallebranche was treated as a visionary for having advanced these sentiments, although he accompanied them with the most solid and judicious proofs that metaphysics could afford; but he was never charged with plagiarism, though his system and manner of proof exist literally in ancient authors. After reciting passages from the “Oracula Chaldæorum,” which he reveres as a divine oracle, he says, “The gods here declare where the existence of ideas is to be found, even in God himself, who is their only source; they being the model according to which the world was formed, and the spring from which every thing arose. Others, by applying immediately to the divine ideas themselves, are enabled to discover sublime truths; but as for our part, we are content to be satisfied with what the gods themselves have declared in favour of Plato, in assigning the name of ideas to causes purely intellectual; and affirming, that they are the archetypes of the world, and the thoughts of the supreme father; that, in effect, they reside in the paternal intellect, and emanate from him to concur in the formation of the world.”
Pythagoras and his disciples understood almost the same thing by their numbers, that Plato did by his ideas. The Pythagorists expressed themselves with regard to numbers in the same terms as Plato uses, calling them “τα ὁντως ὁντα, real existences, the only things truly endowed with essence, eternally invariable.” They give them also the appellation of incorporeal entities, by means of which all other beings participate of existence.
Heraclitus adopted those first principles of the Pythagoreans, and expounded them in a very clear and systematic manner. “Nature,” says he, “being in a perpetual flow, there must belong to it some permanent entities, on the knowledge of which all science is founded, and which may serve as the rule of our judgment in fleeting and sensible objects.”
Democritus also taught, that the images of objects are emanations of the Deity, and are themselves divine; and that our very mental ideas are so too. Whether the doctrine be true or erroneous is not here a subject of inquiry: the present purpose being merely to show the analogy between the principles of Mallebranche and those of the ancients.
Plato, who, of all the ancient philosophers, deservedly ranks the highest, for the clearness and accuracy wherewith he hath explained and laid open this system, gives the appellation of “ideas” to those eternal intellectual substances, which were, with regard to God, the exemplary forms or types of all that he created; and are, with regard to men, the object of all science, and of their contemplation when they would attain to the knowledge of sensible things. “The world,” according to Plato, “always existed in God’s ideas; and when at length he determined to produce it into being, such as it is at present, he created it according to those eternal models, forming the sensible into the likeness of the intellectual world.” Admitting, with Heraclitus, the perpetual fluctuation of all sensible things, Plato perceived that there could be no foundation for science, unless there were things real and permanent to build it upon, which might be the fixed object of knowledge, to which the mind might have recourse, whenever it wanted to inform itself of sensible things. We clearly see that this was Plato’s apprehension of things; and we need only look at the passages quoted from him to be convinced, that whatever Mallebranche said on the subject, he derived from Plato.
Mallebranche would not have been railed against as impious, had his antagonists known to whom he was indebted for his opinions and reasonings; and that St. Augustine himself had said, “Ideas are eternal and immutable; the exemplars, or archetypes of all created things; and, in short, exist in God.” In this respect he differs somewhat from Plato, who separated them from the divine essence: but we may easily discern a perfect conformity between the father of the church and the modern philosopher.
Leibnitz was in some measure of the opinion of father Mallebranche; and it was natural that he should be, for he derived his principles from the same ancient sources. His “monads” were “entities truly existing; simple substances; the eternal images of universal nature.”
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