To strain human curiosity to the utmost limits of human credibility, a modern Pletho has risen in Mr. Thomas Taylor, who, consonant to the platonic philosophy in the present day, religiously professes polytheism! At the close of the eighteenth century, be it recorded, were published many volumes, in which the author affects to avow himself a zealous Platonist, and asserts that he can prove that the Christian religion is "a bastardized and barbarous Platonism." The divinities of Plato are the divinities to be adored, and we are to be taught to call God, Jupiter; the Virgin, Venus; and Christ, Cupid! The Iliad of Homer allegorised, is converted into a Greek bible of the arcana of nature! Extraordinary as this literary lunacy may appear, we must observe, that it stands not singular in the annals of the history of the human mind. The Florentine Academy, which Cosmo founded, had, no doubt, some classical enthusiasts; but who, perhaps, according to the political character of their country, were prudent and reserved. The platonic furor, however, appears to have reached other countries. In the reign of Louis XII., a scholar named Hemon de la Fosse, a native of Abbeville, by continually reading the Greek and Latin writers, became mad enough to persuade himself that it was impossible that the religion of such great geniuses as Homer, Cicero, and Virgil was a false one. On the 25th of August, 1503, being at church, he suddenly snatched the host from the hands of the priest, at the moment it was raised, exclaiming—"What! always this folly!" He was immediately seized. In the hope that he would abjure his extravagant errors, they delayed his punishment; but no exhortation or entreaties availed. He persisted in maintaining that Jupiter was the sovereign God of the universe, and that there was no other paradise than the Elysian fields. He was burnt alive, after having first had his tongue pierced, and his hand cut off. Thus perished an ardent and learned youth, who ought only to have been condemned as a Bedlamite.
Dr. More, the most rational of our modern Platonists, abounds, however, with the most extravagant reveries, and was inflated with egotism and enthusiasm, as much as any of his mystic predecessors. He conceived that he communed with the Divinity itself! that he had been shot as a fiery dart into the world, and he hoped he had hit the mark. He carried his self-conceit to such extravagance, that he thought his urine smelt like violets, and his body in the spring season had a sweet odour; a perfection peculiar to himself. These visionaries indulge the most fanciful vanity.
The "sweet odours," and that of "the violets," might, however, have been real—for they mark a certain stage of the disease of diabetes, as appears in a medical tract by the elder Dr. Latham.
ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
A volume on this subject might be made very curious and entertaining, for our ancestors were not less vacillating, and perhaps more capriciously grotesque, though with infinitely less taste, than the present generation. Were a philosopher and an artist, as well as an antiquary, to compose such a work, much diversified entertainment, and some curious investigation of the progress of the arts and taste, would doubtless be the result; the subject otherwise appears of trifling value; the very farthing pieces of history.
The origin of many fashions was in the endeavour to conceal some deformity of the inventor: hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other monstrous devices. If a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal hip, those who had very handsome hips would load them with that false rump which the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI. by a foreign lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on her neck. Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII. of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long points, full two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When Francis I. was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he received in the head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others, on the contrary, adapted fashions to set off their peculiar beauties: as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantry, and the fairness of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered.
Fashions have frequently originated from circumstances as silly as the following one. Isabella, daughter of Philip II. and wife of the Archduke Albert, vowed not to change her linen till Ostend was taken; this siege, unluckily for her comfort, lasted three years; and the supposed colour of the archduchess's linen gave rise to a fashionable colour, hence called l'Isabeau, or the Isabella; a kind of whitish-yellow-dingy. Sometimes they originate in some temporary event; as after the battle of Steenkirk, where the allies wore large cravats, by which the French frequently seized hold of them, a circumstance perpetuated on the medals of Louis XIV., cravats were called Steenkirks; and after the battle of Ramilies, wigs received that denomination.
The court, in all ages and in every country, are the modellers of fashions; so that all the ridicule, of which these are so susceptible, must fall on them, and not upon their servile imitators the citizens. This complaint is made even so far back as in 1586, by Jean des Caures, an old French moralist, who, in declaiming against the fashions of his day, notices one, of the ladies carrying mirrors fixed to their waists, which seemed to employ their eyes in perpetual activity. From this mode will result, according to honest Des Caures, their eternal damnation. "Alas! (he exclaims) in what an age do we live: to see such depravity which we see, that induces them even to bring into church these scandalous mirrors hanging about their waists! Let all histories, divine, human, and profane, be consulted; never will it be found that these objects of vanity were ever thus brought into public by the most meretricious of the sex. It is true, at present none but the ladies of the court venture to wear them; but long it will not be before every citizen's daughter and every female servant, will have them!" Such in all times has been the rise and decline of fashion; and the absurd mimicry of the citizens, even of the lowest classes, to their very ruin, in straining to rival the newest fashion, has mortified and galled the courtier.
On this subject old Camden, in his Remains, relates a story of a trick played off on a citizen, which I give in the plainness of his own venerable style. Sir Philip Calthrop purged John Drakes, the shoemaker of Norwich, in the time of King Henry VIII. of the proud humour which our people have to be of the gentlemen's cut. This knight bought on a time as much fine French tawny cloth as should make him a gown, and sent it to the taylor's to be made. John Drakes, a shoemaker of that town, coming to this said taylor's, and seeing the knight's gown cloth lying there, liking it well, caused the taylor to buy him as much of the same cloth and price to the same intent, and further bade him to make it of the same fashion that the knight would have his made of. Not long after, the knight coming to the taylor's to take measure of his gown, perceiving the like cloth lying there, asked of the taylor whose it was? Quoth the taylor, it is John Drakes' the shoemaker, who will have it made of the self-same fashion that yours is made of! 'Well!' said the knight, 'in good time be it! I will have mine made as full of cuts as thy shears can make it.' 'It shall be done!' said the taylor; whereupon, because the time drew near, he made haste to finish both their garments. John Drakes had no time to go to the taylor's till Christmas-day, for serving his customers, when he hoped to have worn his gown; perceiving the same to be full of cuts began to swear at the taylor, for the making his gown after that sort. 'I have done nothing,' quoth the taylor, 'but that you bid me; for as Sir Philip Calthrop's garment is, even so I have made yours!' 'By my latchet!' quoth John Drakes, 'I will never wear gentlemen's fashions again!'