Ne veuilles pas, o sire,
Me reprendre en ton ire;
that is, "Rebuke me not in thy indignation," which she sung to a fashionable jig. Antony, king of Navarre, sung Revenge moy prens la querelle, or "Stand up, O Lord, to revenge my quarrel," to the air of a dance of Poitou. We may conceive the ardour with which this novelty was received, for Francis sent to Charles the Fifth Marot's collection, who both by promises and presents encouraged the French bard to proceed with his version, and entreating Marot to send him as soon as possible Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus, because it was his favourite psalm. And the Spanish as well as French composers hastened to set the Psalms of Marot to music. The fashion lasted, for Henry the Second set one to an air of his own composing. Catharine de' Medici had her psalm, and it seems that every one at court adopted some particular psalm for themselves, which they often played on lutes and guitars, &c. Singing psalms in verse was then one of the chief ingredients in the happiness of social life.
The universal reception of Marot's Psalms induced Theodore Beza to conclude the collection, and ten thousand copies were immediately dispersed. But these had the advantage of being set to music, for we are told they were "admirably fitted to the violin and other musical instruments." And who was the man who had thus adroitly taken hold of the public feeling to give it this strong direction? It was the solitary Thaumaturgus, the ascetic Calvin, who from the depths of his closet at Geneva had engaged the finest musical composers, who were, no doubt, warmed by the zeal of propagating his faith to form these simple and beautiful airs to assist the psalm-singers. At first this was not discovered, and Catholics as well as Huguenots were solacing themselves on all occasions with this new music. But when Calvin appointed these psalms, as set to music, to be sung at his meetings, and Marot's formed an appendix to the Catechism of Geneva, this put an end to all psalm-singing for the poor Catholics! Marot himself was forced to fly to Geneva from the fulminations of the Sorbonne, and psalm-singing became an open declaration of what the French called "Lutheranisme," when it became with the reformed a regular part of their religious discipline. The Cardinal of Lorraine succeeded in persuading the lovely patroness of the "holy song-book," Diane de Poictiers, who at first was a psalm-singer and an heretical reader of the Bible, to discountenance this new fashion. He began by finding fault with the Psalms of David, and revived the amatory elegances of Horace: at that moment even the reading of the Bible was symptomatic of Lutheranism; Diane, who had given way to these novelties, would have a French Bible, because the queen, Catharine de' Medici, had one, and the Cardinal finding a Bible on her table, immediately crossed himself, beat his breast, and otherwise so well acted his part, that "having thrown the Bible down and condemned it, he remonstrated with the fair penitent, that it was a kind of reading not adapted for her sex, containing dangerous matters: if she was uneasy in her mind she should hear two masses instead of one, and rest contented with her Paternosters and her Primer, which were not only devotional but ornamented with a variety of elegant forms, from the most exquisite pencils of France." Such is the story drawn from a curious letter, written by a Huguenot, and a former friend of Catharine de' Medici, and by which we may infer that the reformed religion was making considerable progress in the French Court,—had the Cardinal of Lorraine not interfered by persuading the mistress, and she the king, and the king his queen, at once to give up psalm-singing and reading the Bible!
"This infectious frenzy of psalm-singing," as Warton describes it, "under the Calvinistic preachers, had rapidly propagated itself through Germany as well as France. It was admirably calculated to kindle the flame of fanaticism, and frequently served as the trumpet to rebellion. These energetic hymns of Geneva excited and supported a variety of popular insurrections in the most flourishing cities of the Low Countries, and what our poetical antiquary could never forgive, "fomented the fury which defaced many of the most beautiful and venerable churches of Flanders."
At length it reached our island at that critical moment when it had first embraced the Reformation; and here its domestic history was parallel with its foreign, except, perhaps, in the splendour of its success. Sternhold, an enthusiast for the Reformation, was much offended, says Warton, at the lascivious ballads which prevailed among the courtiers, and, with a laudable design to check these indecencies, he undertook to be our Marot—without his genius: "thinking thereby," says our cynical literary historian, Antony Wood, "that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets, but did not, only some few excepted." They were practised by the Puritans in the reign of Elizabeth; for Shakspeare notices the Puritan of his day "singing psalms to hornpipes,"[[303]] and more particularly during the protectorate of Cromwell, on the same plan of accommodating them to popular tunes and jigs, which one of them said "were too good for the devil." Psalms were now sang at Lord Mayors' dinners and city feasts; soldiers sung them on their march and at parade; and few houses, which had windows fronting the streets, but had their evening psalms; for a story has come down to us, to record that the hypocritical brotherhood did not always care to sing unless they were heard![[304]]
ON THE RIDICULOUS TITLES ASSUMED BY ITALIAN ACADEMIES.
The Italians are a fanciful people, who have often mixed a grain or two of pleasantry and even of folly with their wisdom. This fanciful character betrays itself in their architecture, in their poetry, in their extemporary comedy, and their Improvisatori; but an instance not yet accounted for of this national levity, appears in those denominations of exquisite absurdity given by themselves to their Academies! I have in vain inquired for any assignable reason why the most ingenious men, and grave and illustrious personages, cardinals, and princes, as well as poets, scholars, and artists, in every literary city, should voluntarily choose to burlesque themselves and their serious occupations, by affecting mysterious or ludicrous titles, as if it were carnival-time, and they had to support masquerade characters, and accepting such titles as we find in the cant style of our own vulgar clubs, the Society of "Odd Fellows," and of "Eccentrics!" A principle so whimsical but systematic must surely have originated in some circumstance not hitherto detected.
A literary friend, recently in an Italian city exhausted by the sirocco, entered a house whose open door and circular seats appeared to offer to passengers a refreshing sorbetto; he discovered, however, that he had got into "the Academy of the Cameleons," where they met to delight their brothers, and any "spirito gentil" they could nail to a recitation. An invitation to join the academicians alarmed him, for with some impatient prejudice against these little creatures, vocal with prose e rime, and usually with odes and sonnets begged for, or purloined for the occasion, he waived all further curiosity and courtesy, and has returned home without any information how these "Cameleons" looked, when changing their colours in an "accademia."