At the sale of the library of the Duke de la Vallière, in 1784, among its numerous literary curiosities this garland appeared. It was actually sold for the extravagant sum of 14,510 livres! though in 1770, at Gaignat's sale, it only cost 780 livres. It is described to be "a manuscript on vellum, composed of twenty-nine flowers painted by one Robert, under which are inserted madrigals by various authors." But the Abbé Rive, the superintendent of the Vallière library, published in 1779 an inflammatory notice of this garland; and as he and the duke had the art of appreciating, and it has been said making spurious literary curiosities, this notice was no doubt the occasion of the maniacal price.
In the great French Revolution, this literary curiosity found its passage into this country. A bookseller offered it for sale at the enormous price of 500l. sterling! No curious collector has been discovered to have purchased this unique; which is most remarkable for the extreme folly of the purchaser who gave the 14,510 livres for poetry and painting not always exquisite. The history of the Garland of Julia is a child's lesson for certain rash and inexperienced collectors, who may here
Learn to do well by others harm.
TRAGIC ACTORS.
Montfleury, a French player, was one of the greatest actors of his time for characters highly tragic. He died of the violent efforts he made in representing Orestes in the Andromache of Racine. The author of the "Parnasse Reformé" makes him thus express himself in the shades. There is something extremely droll in his lamentations, with a severe raillery on the inconveniences to which tragic actors are liable.
"Ah! how sincerely do I wish that tragedies had never been invented! I might then have been yet in a state capable of appearing on the stage; and if I should not have attained the glory of sustaining sublime characters, I should at least have trifled agreeably, and have worked off my spleen in laughing! I have wasted my lungs in the violent emotions of jealousy, love, and ambition. A thousand times have I been obliged to force myself to represent more passions than Le Brun ever painted or conceived. I saw myself frequently obliged to dart terrible glances; to roll my eyes furiously in my head, like a man insane; to frighten others by extravagant grimaces; to imprint on my countenance the redness of indignation and hatred; to make the paleness of fear and surprise succeed each other by turns; to express the transports of rage and despair; to cry out like a demoniac: and consequently to strain all the parts of my body to render my gestures fitter to accompany these different impressions. The man then who would know of what I died, let him not ask if it were of the fever, the dropsy, or the gout; but let him know that it was of the Andromache!"
The Jesuit Rapin informs us, that when Mondory acted Herod in the Mariamne of Tristan, the spectators quitted the theatre mournful and thoughtful; so tenderly were they penetrated with the sorrows of the unfortunate heroine. In this melancholy pleasure, he says, we have a rude picture of the strong impressions which were made by the Grecian tragedians. Mondory indeed felt so powerfully the character he assumed, that it cost him his life.
Some readers may recollect the death of Bond, who felt so exquisitely the character of Lusignan in Zara, which he personated when an old man, that Zara, when she addressed him, found him dead in his chair.
The assumption of a variety of characters by a person of irritable and delicate nerves, has often a tragical effect on the mental faculties. We might draw up a list of ACTORS, who have fallen martyrs to their tragic characters. Several have died on the stage, and, like Palmer, usually in the midst of some agitated appeal to the feelings.[73]