BY PATER ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA.
IN TWO PARTS—PART ONE.
A writer in Blackwood, in reviewing the poems of Bishop Corbet, of facetious memory, insists that the church has been more distinguished for wit and humor, than any other of the learned professions. This may not hold true in these refined days, and especially with us, where the strength of a man's principles is apt to be measured by the length of his face, and where a large portion of the community seem to think that
'To laugh were want of goodness, and grimace.'
But it was not so in the time of Corbet, of South, of Swift, and of Sterne. Even in the present day, the name of Sydney Smith is identical with a grin, and evangelical old Rowland Hill himself could not keep down the busy devil of fun within him. But these are only exceptions. The taste of the age has declared itself, rightly enough, perhaps, against the mixture of things sacred and jocose; and the clergyman who is so unfortunate as to possess a fund of wit, must seek some other field for its display than the desk, happy if he be allowed to indulge it even in private, without a brotherly hint from that benevolent class of individuals, whose chief business in life is to attend to the foibles of their neighbors. To the student, however, it is a treat, to turn aside from the staid formality and correct dulness of the present age, to the times when it was permitted to a man to follow the bent of his genius, however devious; when illiterate audiences, more filled with the spirit of faith than with that of criticism, were as much edified by their preacher's jokes as by his homilies; and when even the good man, dreaming as little as Shakspeare himself that his tragi-comedy would fall under the ban of posterity, went on, firing off alternately the heavy ordnance of learned denunciation, and the lighter artillery of jest and jibe, at the head of the conscience-stricken sinner.
Our business, however, is not with the English worthies of this school, with whose merits and defects we are sufficiently familiar, but to introduce the reader to another genius of the same stamp, who flourished at Vienna, where he held no less a station than that of preacher at the emperor's court.
Pater Abraham a Sancta Clara, if we regard only his quaintness, his queerness, his bad puns, and his jokes, lugged in, like Sancho's proverbs, in season and out of season, was a lineal descendant of those worthy travelling friars, whom Schiller has immortalized by the Capuchin's Sermon, in the introduction to Wallenstein. But in learning, in fervor, in rough and rude but stirring eloquence, he is far above the herd of hedge-preachers. 'Though it appear a little out of fashion,' there is much that is sterling in him. Few court preachers ever spake so freely and fearlessly, or applied the lash of satire so unsparingly to every rank and condition. Had he lived in a more refined age, when cultivation might have chastened without destroying his fancy, he would have stood high among popular orators.
His name is probably new to most of our readers; for few of our German scholars ever peep into those ponderous folios in which earlier days delighted, or trace up the stream of German literature higher than Wieland or Klopstock. To such, it would be idle to expatiate on the crabbed beauties which adorn the Nibelungen-lied, the Minnesingers, old Hans Sachs, or Abraham a Sancta Clara. We trust, however, that in the latter they will find enough of oddity, at least, to render some slight acquaintance acceptable. His true name was Ulrich Megerle, and he was born in Suabia, (the Ireland of Germany,) in 1642. At the age of twenty, he became a bare-footed monk, of the Augustine order, and in 1669, was invited to Vienna, in the capacity of court preacher, an office he filled till his death, in 1709; preaching and writing the while with untiring zeal and industry. At a future time, we may brush the learned dust off some other volumes of his works: at present, we will take up one of his choicest bits of quaintness, the discourse called 'Mark!' composed of a series of warnings to the people of Vienna, written soon after the plague, which swept off seventy thousand inhabitants in six months. We have been obliged, of course, to take some few liberties in our version. Where one of his bad German puns proved utterly untranslateable, we have endeavored to fill its place with an English one, equally as bad, and as near the original as possible. It will be seen that here and there he varies the steady progress of his prose, and breaks into a rhyming pace, something between a canter and a hobble; showing that the amphibious measure adopted by the 'wondrous boy that wrote Alroy,' is not altogether original. Without farther preface, we shall proceed to our extracts. Thus, then, discourseth our reverend friend, in his exordium, of the signs that, as usual, preceded the pestilence:
'Signs in the heavens were furnished by the baleful and malevolent aspects of the planets. Signs in air are usually changeful weather, and heavy rains. Clouds, too, are so deemed; but in my poor judgment, the plague was caused, not only by unwholesome nebulæ, but by wicked nebulones. Signs of water are, abundance of fishes cast on shore, crabs, frogs, and toads; and it is certain, when sharks are found plying round courts of justice, when honesty sidles off like a crab, and when toadies are found in the high places, that God commonly sends a pestilence. Signs of earth, are, when idle, noxious weeds and herbs infest the ground; and of a surety, when such plants as sanguinary, dandy-lions, mushrooms, and painted-ladies, grow plentifully, it is easy to see what is meant thereby!' * * *
'Death began his career in Leopoldstadt, (the suburbs,) and there destroyed the people for a time, but in moderation. Afterward the pestilence crossed the Danube to the other suburbs; and it seemed at first as though Death ventured not to enter the capital, but would content himself with the suburbs, and the dark corners, and dirty spots thereof; so that men began wickedly to surmise, that he only wanted to pick out the refuse, to rummage beggars' wallets, and still his hunger with coarse crumbs; and that noble palaces, and rich houses, were safe from his scythe. 'Holla!' said Death, 'to let you know that no fortress is too strong for me, if girt with a fosse that could swallow the ocean, I will, spite of you all, conquer the city!' And he actually did in July.