Library Notes

by A. P. Russell

Northcote mentioned to Hazlitt an instance of some young country people who had to sleep on the floor in the same room, and they parted the men from the women by some sacks of corn, which served for a line of demarcation and an inviolable partition between them. Hazlitt spoke of a countrywoman, who, coming to an inn in the west of England, wanted a bed; and being told they had none to spare, still persisted, till the landlady said in a joke, "I tell you, good woman, I have none, unless you can prevail with the ostler to give you half of his." "Well," said she, "if he is a sober, prudent man, I shall not mind." The Princess Borghese (Bonaparte's sister), who was no saint, sat to Canova for a model, and being asked, "If she did not feel a little uncomfortable," answered, "No, there was a fire in the room."

In the same character opposite faculties and qualities are sometimes so blended as to give very mysterious results. Every reader knows how difficult it often is to separate the irony and seriousness of Swift and De Foe, so very nicely they run together. Pure imagination is so realistic as to appear indubitable truth. The History of the Plague is an example; and Robinson Crusoe: what boy ever doubted the truth of the narrative? or, while he was reading them, the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, incredible as they are? There is a story of a peasant and The Vicar of Wakefield. The dull rustic was a slow reader, and could get through but a few pages in a long evening; yet he was absorbed by the story, and read it as if it were a veritable history. A wag in the family, discerning the situation, thought to amuse himself by putting back the book-mark each morning nearly to the point the man had read from the previous evening, so that it turned out he was all winter getting through the little volume. When he had finished it, the wag asked him his opinion of it. He answered that it was good,—that he had no doubt every word of it was true,—but it did seem to him there was some repetition in it!

A clergyman's widow of eighty, the mother of the first Sir David Dundas—at one time commander-in-chief of the British army—is thus described by Cockburn: "We used to go to her house in Bunker's Hill, [Edinburgh] when boys, on Sundays, between the morning and afternoon sermons, where we were cherished with Scotch broth and cakes, and many a joke from the old lady. Age had made her incapable of walking, even across the room; so, clad in a plain black-silk gown, and a pure muslin cap, she sat half-encircled by a high-backed, black leather chair, reading, with silver spectacles stuck on her thin nose, and interspersing her studies and her days with much laughter, and not a little sarcasm. What a spirit! There was more fun and sense round that chair than in the theatre or the church. I remember one of her grand-daughters stumbling, in the course of reading the newspapers to her, on a paragraph which stated that a lady's reputation had suffered from some indiscreet talk on the part of the Prince of Wales. Up she of fourscore sat, and said with an indignant shake of her shriveled fist and a keen voice,—'The dawmed villain! does he kiss and tell!'"

In the Barberini palace is the celebrated portrait of Beatrice Cenci, by Guido. The melancholy and strange history of this beautiful girl has been told in a variety of ways, and is probably familiar to every reader. Guido saw her on her way to execution, and has painted her as she was dressed, in the gray habit and head-dress, made by her own hands, and finished but an hour before she put it on. "There are engravings and copies of the picture all over the world, but none that I have seen," said Willis, "give any idea of the excessive gentleness, and serenity of the countenance. The eyes retain traces of weeping, the child-like mouth, the soft, girlish lines of features that look as if they had never worn more than the one expression of youthfulness and affection, are all in repose, and the head is turned over the shoulder with as simple a sweetness as if she had but looked back to say a good-night before going to her chamber to sleep. She little looks like what she was—one of the firmest and boldest spirits whose history is recorded. After murdering her father for his fiendish attempts upon her virtue, she endured every torture rather than disgrace her family by confession, and was only moved from her constancy, at last, by the agonies of her younger brother on the rack. Who would read capabilities like these, in those heavenly and child-like features?"

There is related an incident of the American civil war which illustrates how ignorance and superstition sometimes give birth to eloquence. An army officer had been speaking of the ideas of power entertained by the poor negro slaves. He said they had an idea of God, as the Almighty, and they had realized in their former condition the power of their masters. Up to the time of the arrival among them of the Union forces, they had no knowledge of any other power. Their masters fled upon the approach of the federal soldiers, and this gave the negroes a conception of a power greater than that exercised by them. This power they called "Massa Linkum." Their place of worship was a large building which they called "the praise house;" and the leader of the meeting, a venerable black man, was known as "the praise man." On a certain day, when there was quite a large gathering of the people, considerable confusion was created by different persons attempting to tell who and what "Massa Linkum" was. In the midst of the excitement the white-headed leader commanded silence. "Brederin," said he, "you don't know nosein' what you're talkin' 'bout. Now, you just listen to me. Massa Linkum, he eberywhar. He know eberyting." Then, solemnly looking up, he added, "He walk de earf like de Lord!"

Curran, who was so merry and charming in conversation, was also very melancholy. He said he never went to bed in Ireland without wishing not to rise again. It seems to be a law of our nature that "as high as we have mounted in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low." Burns expresses it, "Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, thrill the deepest notes of woe;" and Hood, "There's not a string attuned to mirth, but has its chord in melancholy;" and Burton, "Naught so sweet as melancholy," naught "so damned as melancholy;" and King Solomon, "I said of laughter, It is mad."

It is narrated that one day Philip III., King of Spain, was standing in one of the balconies of his palace observing a young Spanish student, who was sitting in the sun and reading a book, while he was bursting out into fits of laughter. The farther the student read, the more his gayety increased, until at last he was so violently excited that he let the book fall from his hands, and rolled on the ground in a state of intense hilarity. The king turned to his courtiers and said, "That young man is either mad, or he is reading Don Quixote." One of the guards of the palace went to pick up the book and found that his majesty had guessed rightly. Yet Miguel Cervantes, the author of this book which is so amusing, had dragged on the most wretched and melancholy existence. He was groaning and weeping while all Spain was laughing at the numerous adventures of the Knight of La Mancha and the wise sayings of Sancho Panza.

The biographer of Grimaldi speaks of the devouring melancholy which pursued the celebrated clown whenever he was off the stage, or left to his own resources; and it is well known that Liston, whose face was sufficient to set an audience in a good humor, was a confirmed hypochondriac. It is said he used to sit up after midnight to read Young's Night Thoughts, delighting in its monotonous solemnity.

"The gravest nations," says Landor, "have been the wittiest; and in those nations some of the gravest men. In England, Swift and Addison; in Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been réveurs. Few men have been graver than Pascal; few have been wittier." Robert Chambers tells in one of his essays of a person residing near London, who could make one's sides ache at any time with his comic songs, yet had so rueful, woe-begone a face that his friends addressed him by the name of Mr. Dismal. Nothing remains of Butler's private history but the record of his miseries; and Swift, we are told, was never known to smile. Burns confessed in one of his letters that his design in seeking society was to fly from constitutional melancholy. "Even in the hour of social mirth," he tells us, "my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner." The most facetious of all Lamb's letters was written to Barton in a fit of the deepest melancholy.

"The elaboration of humor," said Irving, "is often a very serious task; and we have never witnessed a more perfect picture of mental misery than was once presented to us by a popular dramatic writer whom we found in the agonies of producing a farce which subsequently set the theatre in a roar."