Horace Smith, speaking of the ancient Oracles, says, “If the presiding deities had not been shrewd punsters, or able to inspire the Pythoness with ready equivoques, the whole establishment must speedily have been declared bankrupt. Sometimes they only dabbled in accentuation, and accomplished their prophecies by the transposition of a stop, as in the well-known answer to a soldier inquiring his fate in the war for which he was about to embark. Ibis, redibis. Nunquam in bello peribis. (You will go, you will return. Never in war will you perish.) The warrior set off in high spirits upon the faith of this prediction, and fell in the first engagement, when his widow had the satisfaction of being informed that he should have put the full stop after the word nunquam, which would probably have put a full stop to his enterprise and saved his life.”
INDIAN HERALDRY.
A sanguine Frenchman had so high an opinion of the pleasure to be enjoyed in the study of heraldry, that he used to lament, as we are informed by Menage, the hard case of our forefather Adam, who could not possibly amuse himself by investigating that science or that of genealogy.
A similar instance of egregious preference for a favorite study occurs in a curious work on Heraldry, published in London, in 1682, the author of which adduces, as an argument of the science of heraldry being founded on the universal propensities of human nature, the fact of having seen some American Indians with their skins tattooed in stripes parallel and crossed (barries). The book bears the following title:—Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam. Authore Johanne Gibbono Armorumservulo quem a mantilio dicunt Cæruleo. The singular and amusing extract appended is copied from page 156:—
The book entitled Jews in America tells you that the sachem and chief princes of the Nunkyganses, in New England, submitted to King Charles I., subscribing their names, and setting their seals, which were a BOW BENT, CHARGED WITH AN ARROW, a T reversed, A TOMAHAWK OR HATCHET ERECTED, such a one borne BARRYWISE, edge downward, and a FAWN. A great part of Anno 1659, till February the year following, I lived in Virginia, being most hospitably entertained by the honorable Col. R. Lee, sometime secretary of state there, and who after the king’s martyrdom hired a Dutch vessel, freighted her himself, and went to Brussels, surrendered up Sir William Barclaie’s old commission (for the government of that Province), and received a new one from his present majesty (a loyal action, and deserving my commemoration): neither will I omit his arms, being Gul. a Fes. chequy, or, Bl between eight billets Arg. being descended from the Lees of Shropshire, who sometimes bore eight billets, sometimes ten, and sometimes the Fesse Contercompone (as I have seen by our office-records). I will blason it thus: In Clypeo rutilo; Fasciam pluribus quadratis auri et cyani, alternis æquisque spaciis (ducter triplici positis) confectam et inter octo Plinthides argenteas collocatam. I say, while I lived in Virginia, I saw once a war-dance acted by the natives. The dancers were painted some party per pale Gul. et sab. from forehead to foot (some PARTY PER FESSE, of the same colors), and carried little ill-made shields of bark, also painted of those colors (for I saw no other), some PARTY PER FESSE, some PER PALE (and some BARRY), at which I exceedingly wondered, and concluded that heraldry was engrafted naturally into the sense of the human race. If so, it deserves a greater esteem than is now-a-days put upon it.
THE ANACHRONISMS OF SHAKSPEARE.
Poets, in the proper exercise of their art, may claim greater license of invention and speech, and far greater liberty of illustration and embellishment, than is allowed to the sober writer of history; but historical truth or chronological accuracy should not be entirely sacrificed to dramatic effect, especially when the poem is founded upon history, or designed generally to represent historical truth. In the matchless works of Shakspeare we look instinctively for exactness in the details of time, place, and circumstance; and it is therefore with no little surprise that we find he has misplaced, in such instances as the following, the chronological order of events, of the true state of which it can hardly be supposed he was ignorant.
In the play of Coriolanus, Titus Lartius is made to say, addressing C. Marcius,—
Thou wast a soldier even to Cato’s wish.