Authors have often been compelled to eat their words, but the operation has seldom been performed literally. In the seventeenth century, owing to the disastrous part which Christian IV. of Denmark took in the Thirty Years' War, his kingdom was shorn of its ancient power and was overshadowed by the might of Sweden. One Theodore Reinking, lamenting the diminished glory of his race, wrote a book entitled Dania ad exteros de perfidia Suecorum (1644). It was not a very excellent work, neither was its author a learned or accurate historian, but it aroused the anger of the Swedes, who cast Reinking into prison. There he remained many years, when at length he was offered his freedom on the condition that he should either lose his head or eat his book. Our author preferred the latter alternative, and with admirable cleverness devoured his book when he had converted it into a sauce. For his own sake we trust his work was not a ponderous or bulky volume.
CHAPTER VII. SATIRE.
Roger Rabutin de Bussy—M. Dassy—Trajan Boccalini—Pierre Billard—Pietro Aretino—Felix Hemmerlin—John Giovanni Cinelli—Nicholas Francus—Lorenzo Valla—Ferrante Pallavicino—François Gacon—Daniel Defoe—Du Rosoi—Caspar Scioppius.
To "sit in the seat of the scorner" has often proved a dangerous position, as the writers of satires and lampoons have found to their cost, although their sharp weapons have often done good service in checking the onward progress of Vice and Folly. All authors have not shown the poet's wisdom who declared:—
"Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet."
Nor have all the victims of satire the calmness and self-possession of the philosopher who said: "If evil be said of thee, and it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." It would have been well for those who indulged in this style of writing, if all the victims of their pens had been of the same mind as Frederick the Great, who said that time and experience had taught him to be a good post-horse, going through his appointed daily stage, and caring nothing for the curs that barked at him along the road.
Foremost among the writers of satire stands Count Roger Rabutin de Bussy, whose mind was jocose, his wit keen, and his sarcasm severe. He was born in 1618, and educated at a college of Jesuits, where he manifested an extraordinary avidity for letters and precocious talents. The glory of war fired his early zeal, and for sixteen years he followed the pursuit of arms. Then literature claimed him as her slave. His first book, Les amours du Palais Royal, excited the displeasure of King Louis XIV., and prepared the way for his downfall. In his Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (Paris, 1665, 1 vol., in-12) he satirised the lax manners of the French Court during the minority of the King, and had the courage to narrate the intrigue which Louis carried on with La Vallière. He spares few of the ladies of the Court, and lashes them all with his satire, amongst others Mesdames d'Olonne and de Chatillon. Unhappily for the Count, he showed the book, when it was yet in MS., to the Marchioness de Beaume, his intimate friend. But the best of friends sometimes quarrel, and unfortunately the Count and the good lady quarrelled while yet the MS. was in her possession. A grand opportunity for revenge thus presented itself. She showed to the ladies of the Court the severe verses which the Count had written; and his victims were so enraged that they carried their complaints to the King, who had already felt the weight of the author's blows in some verses beginning:—
"Que Deodatus est heureux
De baiser ce bec amoureux,
Qui, d'une oreille à l'autre va.
Alléluia," etc.