[93] Thackeray says of Congreve: "He loved, conquered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle, the heroine of all his plays, the favorite of all the town of her day."
[94] Galileo was remarkable, even in his youth, for mechanical genius, and also for his accomplishments in painting, poetry, music, and song. In early childhood, it is said of him, "while other boys were whipping their tops, he was scientifically considering the cause of the motion."
[95] "I was nigh taking my life with my own hands," he wrote, "but art held me back. I could not leave the world until I had revealed what was within me." In view of his great misfortune, his dying words are very touching: "I shall be able to hear in heaven!"
[96] When "Paradise Lost" was first published, in 1667, Edmund Waller, himself a poet, politician, and critic, said: "The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, has published a tedious poem on the fall of man; if its length be not considered a merit, it has no other." The second edition was not brought out until seven years later, 1674, the year in which Milton died. This edition was prefaced by two short poems, the first by Andrew Marvell in English, and the second by Samuel Barrow in Latin, in which Milton's poem is placed "above all Greek, above all Roman fame."
[97] When a friend complained to Camoens that he had not furnished some promised verses for him, the disheartened poet replied: "When I wrote verses I was young, had sufficient food, was a lover, and beloved by many friends, and by the ladies; then I felt poetical ardor; now I have no spirits to write, no peace of mind or of body."
[98] The county jail in which Bunyan spent the twelve years of his life from 1660 to 1672 was taken down in 1801. It stood on what is now the vacant piece of land at the corner of the High Street and Silver Street, used as a market-place, in Bedford. Silver Street was so named because it was the quarter where the Jews in early times trafficked in the precious metals.
[99] Ben Jonson tried his fortune as an actor, but did not succeed. A duel with a brother actor, whom unhappily he killed, caused him to be imprisoned by the sentence of the court. He was ten years younger than Shakespeare, and survived him twenty-one years, dying in 1637.
[100] Imprisonment could not deprive Boëthius of the consolation of philosophy, nor Raleigh of his eloquence, nor Davenant of his grace, nor Chaucer of his mirth: nor five years of slavery at Algiers deaden the wit of Cervantes.—Willmott.
[101] Urged by the King of Spain to punish Raleigh for his attack on the town of St. Thomas, James I. basely resolved to carry into execution a sentence sixteen years old, which had been followed by an imprisonment of thirteen years, and then a release. So Raleigh was brought up before the Court of King's Bench to receive sentence, and was beheaded the next morning.
[102] Philip III., King of Spain, saw a student one day at a distance on the banks of the river Manzanares, reading a book, and from time to time breaking off to roar with laughter and show other signs of delight. "That person is either mad or is reading 'Don Quixote,'" said the king,—a volume of panegyric in a few words. Cervantes did not have to wait the verdict of posterity as to his incomparable history of the famous Knight La Mancha; it sprung at once into unbounded popularity, while "it laughed Spain's chivalry away."