CURIOUS SCRAPS RELATING TO CELEBRATED PERSONS.
(For the Mirror.)
When the famous Cornelia, daughter of the great Scipio, was importuned by a lady of her acquaintance to show her toilette, she deferred satisfying her curiosity till her children, who were the famous Gracchi, came from school, and then said, "En! haec ornamenta mea sunt."—"These are my ornaments."
Cyneas, the minister of Pyrrhus, asked the king (before their expedition into Italy) what he proposed to do when he had subdued the Romans? He answered, "Pass into Sicily." "What then?" said the minister. "Conquer the Carthaginians," replied the king. "And what follows that?" says the minister. "Be sovereign of Greece, and then enjoy ourselves," said the king. "And why," replied the sensible minister, "can we not do this last now?"
The emperors Nerva, Trajan, Antoninous, and Aurelius sold their palaces, their gold and silver plate, their valuable furniture, and other superfluities, heaped up by their predecessors, and banished from their tables all expensive delicacies. These princes, together with Vespasian, Pertinax, Alexander, Severus, Claudius the Second, and Tacitus, who were raised to the empire by their merit, and whom all ages have admired as the greatest and the best of princes, were always fond of the greatest plainness in their apparel, furniture, and outward appearance.
Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, who lived unknown and disgraced in Spain, was scarcely able to obtain an audience of his master Charles V.; and when the king asked who was the fellow that was so clamorous to speak to him, he cried out, "I am one who have got your majesty more provinces than your father left towns."
Camoens, the famous Portuguese poet, was unfortunately shipwrecked at the mouth of the river Meco, on the coast of Camboja, and lost his whole property; however, he saved his life and his poems, which he bore through the waves in one hand, whilst he swam ashore with the other. It is said, that his black servant, a native of Java, who had been his companion for many years, begged in the Streets of Lisbon for the support of his master, who died in 1579. His death, it is supposed, was accelerated by the anguish with which he foresaw the ruin impending over his country. In one of his letters he uses these remarkable expressions: "I am ending the course of my life; the world will witness how I have loved my country. I have returned not only to die in her bosom, but to die with her."
Henrietta, daughter of Henry IV. of France, and wife of Charles I. of England, was reduced to the utmost poverty; and her daughter, afterwards married to a brother of Louis XIV., is said to have lain in bed for want of coals to keep her warm. Pennant relates a melancholy fact of fallen majesty in the person of Mary d'Este, the unhappy queen of James II., who, flying with her infant prince from the ruin impending over their house, after crossing the Thames from abdicated Whitehall, took shelter beneath the ancient walls of Lambeth church a whole hour, from the rain of the inclement night of December 6th, 1688. Here she waited with aggravated misery till a common coach, procured from the next inn, arrived, and conveyed her to Gravesend, from whence she sailed, and bid adieu to this kingdom.
Pascal, one of the greatest geniuses and best men that ever lived, entertained a notion that God made men miserable here in order to their being happy hereafter; and in consequence of this notion, he imposed upon himself the most painful mortification. He even ordered a wall to be built before a window in his study, which afforded him too agreeable a prospect. He had also a girdle full of sharp points next his skin; and while he was eating or drinking any thing that was grateful to his palate, he was constantly pricking himself, that he might not be sensible of any pleasure. The virtuous Fenelon submitted without reserve to the arbitrary sentence of the pope, when he condemned a book which he had published, and even preached in condemnation of his own book, forbidding his friends to defend it. "What gross and humiliating superstitions (says their biographer) have been manifested by men, in other respects of sound and clear understandings, and of upright, honest hearts."
In the churchyard of St. Ann's, Soho, says Pennant, is a marble, erected near the grave of that remarkable personage, Theodore Antony Newhoff, king of Corsica, who died in this parish in 1756, immediately after leaving the king's-bench prison, by the benefit of the act of insolvency. The marble was erected, and the epitaph written, by the honourable Horace Walpole:—
"The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and kings;
But Theodore this moral learn'd ere dead—
Fate pour'd its lesson on his living head,
Bestow'd a kingdom, and denied him bread."
He registered his kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors. His biographer says, "He was a man whose claim to royalty was as indisputable as the most ancient titles to any monarchy can pretend to be; that is, the choice of his subjects, the voluntary election of an injured people, who had the common right of mankind to freedom, and the uncommon resolution of determining to be free."
P.T.W.