"harder beset
And more endangered than when Argo passed
Through Bosphorus betwixt the justling rocks,
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis and by the other whirlpool steered."
Though thus frequently employing the story, Milton did not use the proverb.
Not only the story but the proverb, was known to Shakspeare, who makes Launcelot use it in his plain talk with Jessica:[7]—"Truly, then, I fear you are damned both by father and mother; thus, when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother: well, you are gone both ways." Malone, in his note to this passage, written in the last century, says,—"Alluding to the well-known line of modern Latin poet, Philippe Gaultier, in his poem entitled 'Alexandreïs.'" To this note of Malone's, another editor, George Steevens, whose early bibliographical tastes inspired the praise of Dibdin, adds as follows:—"Shakspeare might have met with a translation of this line in many places; among others in the Dialogue between Custom and Veretie, concerning the use and abuse of Dancing and Minstrelsie:—
"'While Silla they do seem to shun,
In Charibd they do fall.'"
But this proverb had already passed into tradition and speech. That Shakspeare should absorb and use it was natural. He was the universal absorbent.
The history of this verse seemed for a while forgotten. Like the Wandering Jew, it was a vagrant, unknown in origin, but having perpetual life. Erasmus, whose learning was so vast, quotes the verse in his great work on Proverbs, and owns that he does not know the author of it. Here is this confession:—"Celebratur apud Latinos hic versiculus, quocunque natus auctore, nam in presentia non occurrit."[8] It seems from these words that this profound scholar regarded the verse as belonging to antiquity: at least I so interpret the remark, that it was "celebrated among the Latins." But though ignorant of its origin, it is clear that the idea which it embodies found much favor with this representative of moderation. He dwells on it with particular sympathy, and reproduces it in various forms. Here is the equivalent on which he hangs his commentary: Evitata Charybdi, in Scyllam incidi. It is easy to see how inferior in form this is to the much-quoted verse. It seems to be a literal translation of some Greek iambics, also of uncertain origin, although attributed to Apostolius, one of the learned Greeks scattered over Europe by the fall of Constantinople. There is also something like it in the Greek of Lucian.[9] Erasmus quotes words of kindred sentiment from the "Phormio" of Terence: Ita fugias ne præter casam, which he tells us means that we should not so fly from any vice as to be carried into a greater.[10] He quotes also another proverb with the same signification: Fumum fugiens, in ignem incidi, which warns against running into the fire to avoid the smoke. In his letters the ancient fable recurs more than once. On one occasion he warns against the dangers of youth, and says that the ears must be stopped, not, as in the Homeric story, by wax, but "by the precepts of philosophy."[11] In another letter he avows a fear lest in shunning Scylla he may fall on Charybdis:—"Nunc vereor ne sic vitemus hanc Scyllam, ut incidamus in Charybdim multo perniciosiorem."[12] Thus did his instinctive prudence find expression in this familiar illustration.
If Erasmus had been less illustrious for learning,—perhaps if his countenance were less interesting, as we now look upon it in the immortal portraits by two great artists, Hans Holbein and Albert Dürer,—I should not be tempted to dwell on this confession of ignorance. And yet it belongs to the history of this verse, which has had strange ups and downs in the world. The poem from which it is taken, after enjoying an early renown, was forgotten,—and then again, after a revival, was forgotten, again to enjoy another revival. The last time it was revived through this solitary verse, without which, I cannot doubt, it would have been extinguished in night.
"How far that little candle throws his beams!"
Even before the days of Erasmus, who died in 1536, this verse had been lost and found. It was circulated as a proverb of unknown origin, when Galeotto Marzio, an Italian, of infinite wit and learning[13] who flourished in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and was for some time the instructor of the children of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, pointed out its author. In a work of Ana, amusing and instructive, entitled "De Doctrina Promiscua," which first saw the light in Latin, and was afterwards translated into Italian, the learned author says,—"Hoc carmen est Gualteri Galli de Gestis Alexandri, et non vagum proverbium, ut quidam non omnino indocti meminerint." It was not a vague proverb, as some persons not entirely unlearned have supposed, but a verse of the "Alexandreïs." And yet shortly afterwards the great master of proverbs, whose learning seemed to know no bounds, could not fix its origin. At a later day, Pasquier, in his "Recherches de la France,"[14] I made substantially the same remark as Marzio. After alluding to the early fame of its author, he says,—"C'est lui dans les oeuvres duquel nous trouvons un vers, souvent par nous allegué sans que plusieurs sachent qui en fut l'auteur." In quoting this verse the French author uses Decidis instead of Incidis. The discovery by Marzio, and the repetition of this discovery by Pasquier, are chronicled at a later day in the Conversations of Ménage, who found a French Boswell before the Bosweil of Dr. Johnson was born.[15] Jortin, in the elaborate notes to his Life of Erasmus, borrows from Ménage, and gives the same history.[16]
When Galeotto Marzio made his discovery, this poem was still in manuscript; but there were several editions before the "Adagia" of Erasmus. An eminent authority—the "Histoire Littéraire de la France,"[17] that great work commenced by the Benedictines, and continued by the French Academy—says that it was printed for the first time at Strasburg, in 1513. This is a mistake, which has been repeated by Warton.[18] Brunet, in his "Manuel de Libraire," mentions an edition, without place or date, with the cipher of Guillaume Le Talleur, who was a printer at Rouen, in 1487. Panzer, in his "Annales Typographici,"[19] describes another edition, with the monogram of Richard Pynson, the London printer, at the close of the fifteenth century. Beloe, in his "Anecdotes of Literature,"[20] also speaks of an edition with the imprint of R. Pynson. There appears to have been also an edition under date of 1496. Then came the Strasburg edition of 1513, by J. Adelphus. All these are in black letter. Then came the Ingolstadt edition, in 1541, in Italic, or, as it is called by the French, "cursive characters," with a brief life of the poet, by Sebastian Link. This was followed, in 1558, by an edition at Lyons, also in Italic, announced as now for the first time appearing in France, nunc primum in Gallia, was a mistake. This edition seems to have enjoyed peculiar favor. It has been strangely confounded with imaginary editions which have never existed; thus, the Italian Quadrio assures us that the best was at London, in 1558;[21] and the French Millin assures us that the best was at Leyden, in 1558.[22] No such editions appeared; and the only edition of that year was at Lyons. After a lapse of a century, in 1659, there was another edition, by Athanasius Gugger, a monk of the Monastery of St. Gall, in France, published at the Monastery itself, according to manuscripts there, and from its own types, formis ejusdem. The editor was ignorant of the previous editions, and in his preface announces the poem as a new work, although ancient; according to his knowledge, never before printed; impatiently regarded and desired by many; and not less venerable for antiquity than for erudition:—"En tibi, candide lector, opus novum, ut sic antiquum, nusquam quod sciam editum, a multis cupide inspectum et desideratum, non minus antiquitate quam eruditione venerabile."