THE FROZEN HORN.
(Vol. ii., p. 262.)
The quotation from Heylin is good; "the amusing anecdote from Munchausen" may be better; but the personal testimony of Sir John Mandeville is best of all, and, if I am not mistaken, as true a traveller's lie as ever was told. Many years ago I met with an extract from his antiquated volume, of which, having preserved no copy, I cannot give the admirable verbiage of the fourteenth century, but must submit for it the following tame translation in the flat English of our degenerate days.
He testifies that once, on his voyage through the Arctic regions, lat. ***, long. ***, the cold was so intense, that for a while whatever was spoken on board the vessel became frost-bound, and remained so, till, after certain days, there came a sudden thaw, which let loose the whole rabblement of sounds and syllables that had been accumulating during the suspense of audible speech; but now fell clattering down like hailstones about the ears of the crew, not less to their annoyance than the embargo had been to their dismay. Among the unlucky revelations at this denouement, the author gravely states that a rude fellow (the boatswain, I think), having cursed the knight himself in a fit of passion, his sin then found him out, and was promptly visited by retributive justice, in the form of a sound flogging. If this salutary moral of the fable be not proof sufficient to authenticate both the fact in natural history, and the veracity of the narrator, I know nothing in the world of evidence that could do so. It may be added, that the author of Hudibras, in his significant manner, alludes to the popular belief of such an atmospheric phenomenon in the following couplet:
"Where Truth in person doth appear,
Like words congeal'd in northern air."
Hudibras, Book i. Canto i.
It is possible that Zachary Grey, in his copiously illustrated edition of the poem, may have quoted Sir John Mandeville's account of this notable adventure, in his wanderings, like a true knight-errant, through Scythia, Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Media, Persia, Chaldea, Greece, Dalmatia, Belgium, &c. He wrote an Itinerary of his travels in English, French, and Latin. In these he occupied nearly forty years, and was long supposed to have died in the course of them, but (as if his person had been "congealed in northern air" and suddenly thawed into warm life again) when he re-appeared, his friends with difficulty recognised him.
J.M.G.
Hallamshire.