Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, February, 1885

This anxiety of Smith’s, who had justly confidence in his executors, has frequently been entertained very reasonably indeed with regard to reminiscences, the spicy character of which often requires the publication to be long posthumous, but tempts the graceless to make it not so. Rochefoucauld’s “Mémoires,” which have, however, more of the chronicle and less of the journal than is generally relished, were certainly delayed, as the event turned out, long enough after his death, in appearing in any tolerable form. But it had been like not to be so. While he was still living he found that at the shop of Widow Barthelin, relict of a printer of Rouen, his work had been secretly put to press by the orders of the Comte de Brienne. The Count had furtively made a copy from the manuscript borrowed from Arnaud d’Andilly, to whom Rochefoucauld had submitted it for the purposes of correction – “Particulièrement pour la pureté de la langue.” Measures as furtive were necessary to recover it. The Duke accordingly pounced on the printer, gave Widow Barthelin twenty-five pistoles, carried off the whole of the edition, and stored it in a garret of the Hôtel de Liancourt at Paris. We doubt if it is generally known that this edition, wherein the widow had shown few signs of care, was entitled, “Relation des guerres civiles de France, depuis août 1649 jusqu’à la fin de 1652.” In curious contrast is the fact that sometimes a relative destroys what the author has shown no vigilant scrupulousness in suppressing. It was perhaps esteemed by the “very devout lady of the family of St. John,” who was mother to the notable Rochester, on whose death Bishop Burnet has so improvingly written, that the final scenes of her son made it unsuitable that any of his papers should be kept – especially the history of the intrigues of the court of Charles II. reported by Bolingbroke to have been written by him in a series of letters to his friend Henry Saville.

Nor let it be supposed that this would have been so adverse to the desires of Rochester himself. The late James Thompson, author of the “City of Dreadful Night,” destroyed before his death all that he had written previous to 1857, though he has been very virulent against a sample king who of malice prepense with gross ingratitude thus treated the donor of a priceless if imaginary gift: —

A writer brought him truth;
And first he imprisoned the youth;
And then he bestowed a free pyre
That the works might have plenty of fire,
And also to cure the pain
Of the headache called thought in the brain.

Pierius Valerianus tells us that Antonius Marosticus, when held in high esteem and loved of all men, enjoying the dainties of life at the court of some Cardinal, and dallying with existence which he had rooted hopes would henceforth be peaceful, was carried off within three days by a sudden epidemic. The doleful deed, Pierius says, was made more distressful by the fact that sanitary considerations required the cremation of all the dead man’s books with the dead man’s body. How far the sense of tragedy may lie in this melancholy incident, the death of Shelley helps one to appreciate. His corpse was washed ashore near the Via Reggio, four miles from that of his friend Williams, which lay close to the tower of Migliarino, at the Bocca Lericcio. The attitude was memorable. His right hand was clasped in his heart. Bent back and thrust away, as if in haste, was in a side pocket the last volume of the poet Keats. It had been lent by Leigh Hunt, who had told the borrower to keep it till he should return it by his own hands. This impossible, and Hunt refusing to receive it through others, it was burnt with the body amid frankincense and myrrh.

It was fit that the pathetic in death should spring from a cause so troublous in life. Again and again was Shelley wounded by the forced suppression of his work. Doubtless merit is not extreme in the two-act tragedy of “Œdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant.” But its fate was as subtle and sure as that of Œdipus himself. Written abroad, it was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously, and stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” who threatened a prosecution upon it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the pains of bringing it out did not deem it worth the cost, to pocket and nerve, of a contest, and it was laid aside – only to be revived in Mrs. Shelley’s second edition. It is said, indeed, that but seven copies are extant, one of which Mr. Buxton Forman, the industrious and intelligent editor to whom the best students of Shelley feel themselves the most beholden, secured, by search through the vast stores of Mr. Lacy, the dramatic publisher of the Strand – one of the very last plays in the very last boxes – a mere paper pamphlet, devoid of a wrapper, carried away at the cost of a six-pence, proving to be the treasure. And far was the Œdipus from being the sole cause of trouble in respect of the works of its author. Posthumous Poems of Shelley were suppressed on the application of Sir Timothy, his father. The Posthumous Letters, which excellent forgers had contrived to manufacture from articles written after the decease of the poet, exercising an amount of ingenuity described as “most extraordinary,” and receiving the reward of the labor of their hands from Sir Percy Shelley, or from Mr. Moxon, were called in on the discovery of the fraud. “Laon and Cythna” was cancelled to make way for the “Revolt of Islam.” “Queen Mab,” which had been written when Shelley was eighteen, though completed only when in his twenty-first year, was surreptitiously published while its author was in Italy – copies having been distributed among his friends – and though adjudged by the Court of Chancery, from which an injunction was sought for restraint of this irregular edition, to be disentitled to privilege on the futile score of an immorality shocking to the British constitution, it and its notes were, so late as 1840, the subject of prosecutions and convictions to all who openly, being men of fair fame, ventured to publish it, as Mr. Moxon experienced.

The poets, indeed, of Shelley’s time were peculiarly unfortunate. It is a sound enough deduction of law that what is evil – is filthy, or blasphemous, or scandalous – cannot be for the benefit of the public to learn of, nor therefore an object of the law, which is built on the needs of society, to extend its protection to – a protection which has in view the advantages of private individuals only as members of society. But in this refusal of the active bestowment of privilege the guardian of public morals in an individual man, in no sense a representative of his country – a judge of the old Court of Chancery. Now in active suppression, in punishment for enticing the public to things contaminating and none the less subtle because presented in intellectual form, there is indeed the benefit of the presence of a judge, but the issue is with a jury. And the unfortunate interval, or breach, through which public morals are so roughly assailable is measured (usually at least) by the sum of the differences between a publication disentitled to privilege or worthy of punishment, and the judgment of an individual or the opinion of the country. In this vast moral interval, to say nothing of the interval of time which rapidity in administration, on the one hand, and slowness in administration on the other, scarcely ever fail to involve, there is an enticement to the indifferent part of the population, or to that bold and heroic part which dares to set up its private and painfully honest judgment against the judgment of a Chancery judge – to trade upon the bruited knowledge of a suspected well of evil, unchecked by unpalatable astringency in consumption of the draught. With the narrowness of men like Lords Eldon and Ellenborough, and the rebellious attitude held by a nation consciously approaching to the dawn of an age of a freedom of thought greater because more nobly and wit-wisely sanctioned, this breach was disastrously great, and beckoned the way to a flood of mischances directly or affectively extensive.

Now, a highly curious result of the working of these doctrines was seen in cases in which – not as with Shelley, nor as with Byron, who vainly sought in February 1822 to suppress the edition of “Cain” which the pirate, Benbow, had printed, and who in the same year saw his “Vision” first refused by the publishers of the Row, then given to John Hunt, then placed by John and his brother in the first number of the Liberal, and then made the subject of a true bill returned by a Middlesex grand jury on an indictment preferred by the “Constitutional Association” – in cases in which, I say, the authors, from change of opinion, were opposed to any publication of their earlier works. The most prominent instance of this occurs, of course, in the “Wat Tyler” of Laureate Southey. In the height of his pantisocratic schemes, and full of Socialist feelings, Southey had written this dramatic poem, and placed the manuscript in the hands of his brother-in-law, Robert Lovell; he took it to Mr. Ridgway, the London publisher. When Southey visited the Metropolis shortly afterwards, the year was 1794, Mr. Ridgway was in Newgate. Thither Southey went, and either found incarcerated in the same apartment with his publisher, or took with him, the Rev. Mr. Winterbottom, a dissenting minister. It was agreed that “Wat Tyler” should be published anonymously. The piece, however, appears to have been forgotten, and wholly to have escaped the memory of both publisher and Southey. But it had crept – so Cottle, Hone, and Browne may best be reconciled – into the hands of Mr. Winterbottom, who taking it with him, when years had passed, while on a visit to friends at Worcester, beguiled some dull hour by reading the piece for the amusement of the company, who were well pleased to pamper their dislike to Southey by chuckling at his ratting in political opinions. But generosity clearly demanded that this pleasant spirit of carping should have a sphere extended far beyond a Worcestershire company. So thought two of the guests, who, obtaining the manuscript, with great devotion sacrificed the long hours of night by transcribing it, being careful the while to preserve the privacy which attends the most highly charitable actions. Through their hands the transcription reached the publisher, and no sooner had his edition appeared than Southey became naturally anxious to lay the ghost of his former beliefs. For that purpose, with the advice of his friends, he applied for an injunction. Lord Eldon refused to grant it, on the plea that “a person cannot recover damages upon a work which in its nature is calculated to do injury to the public.” The decision of the Court encouraged the vendors to redouble their efforts, and not fewer than 60,000 copies are said to have been sold during the excitement the case created. As for poor Southey, he defended himself as best he could in the Courier, and underwent the further suspense of seeing a prosecution urged against him by turbulent spirits in the legislature – Lord Brougham first, and Mr. William Smith after. The ridicule was all the more increased by the fact that Southey had recently published in the Quarterly Review an article in most striking contrast. And it is noticeable that in his American Quarterly Review Dr. Orestes A. Brownson printed opinions destructive of his early views, which had also been in sympathy with Socialistic and transcendental movements, as well as with Unitarianism, and threw cold water upon, and indeed endeavored in his own country altogether to suppress, the work by which in this country he is best known, “Charles Elwood; or, the Infidel Converted.”

Certainly few authors have had better justification for a change of opinion than Adrian Beverland. In a work quite unfit for general reading, which purported to be issued “Eleutheropoli, in Horto Hesperidum, typis Adami, Evæ, Terræ filii, 1678,” he had maintained with nasty nicety that view of original sin which Henri Corneille Agrippa in his “Declamatio de originali Peccato” had nearly as undisguisedly maintained before him. For this performance he was cast into prison at Leyden, and would have fared badly enough had he not found means of escape. His work, however, was sufficiently thought of to provoke from Leonard Ryssenius a “justa detestatio libelli sceleratissimi,” just as a previous work had called from Allard Uchtman a “Vox clamantis in deserto, ad sacrorum ministros, adversus Beverlandum.” Passing these by, Beverland himself was contented to write stinging libels against the Leyden magistrates and professors, and then to flee to London, where he engaged himself principally in collecting odious pictures. But after a time came a measure of repentance, and though no excessive purity can be claimed for an “Admonition” published by Bateman, of London, in 1697, yet the preface or “advertisement” does certainly contain a strong condemnation of his “Peccatum originale.” Fifteen years after, he died in a state of deep poverty, a madman – impressed with the horrible idea that he was pursued by two hundred men allied by oath to slay him.

A state more interesting that either stanch advocacy or loud condemnation of a position once relied on is that of hesitation. It is one peculiarly unlikely to express itself, because the tendency of hesitation is to refrain; or if expressing itself to arrest attention, because subtile or feeble qualifications refer their interest to the themes they hedge and do not centre in themselves. But when a mind throws itself with force into a posture of racked doubt, and bids us be aware that the struggle, not the issue, is of utter worth, or when with yet greater fervor of expectancy a revelation, we know not whence, we know not whither, is awaited with every nerve full-strained, the world more surely than by either other mood becomes a gallery rocked with hearkening spectators. I think there is something of this earnest hesitation in a career it is not difficult, at this distance of time, to futilize – Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s. There is a very human weakness in his self-debate upon the publication of the “De Veritate,” but there is a very human need – and, moreover, a need made personal (as are all needs), though founded in philanthropy. Truly the more sacred experience is – unless it can reach to that intensity and presentness which thrills all who stand enclosed in the thin line of its horizon – the more clearly it is desecrated by the common tread, and seems a thing to mock at. So is it with the scene which Herbert himself describes.

Being thus doubtful in my chamber, one fair day in the summer, my casement being open towards the sun, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my work, “De Veritate,” in my hand, and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words: “O Thou eternal God, Author of the light which now shines upon me, and Giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech Thee, give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress it.” I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud, though yet gentle noise, came from heaven (for it was like nothing on earth), which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded; whereupon also I resolved to print my book.

An aspect of mind combining both resolution and diffidence, which has lead to the obliteration of literary work, is reliance on a friend’s counsel. An amusing example of this is related in the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Callistus concerning Marsilius Ficinus. This gentleman had translated Plato into Latin, and came to his learned friend Musurus Candiotus to know his opinion of it. Candiotus, after perusing some few leaves, perceived that it would not satisfy the expectation of the learned, and was even of opinion that it was so slubbered over as to resemble the original (as Cicero the younger did his father) in nothing but in name. He accordingly took up a sponge, dipped it in an ink-pot, and blotted out the first page. This done, he turns to Ficinus. “Thou seest,” quoth he “how I have corrected the first page; if thou wilt, I will correct the rest in like sort.” Now Ficinus was fully as mild in temper as slender in scholarship. “No reason,” says he, “that Plato should be disgraced through my default; refine away.” And according to his words was it done.

It would appear from Scaliger that even had not Ficinus commenced his out-sponged work afresh, literature would not have lamentably lost. Far, indeed, would this have been from true, had the influence of a friend prevailed to wipe from among the works of Gray “The Progress of Poetry,” and “The Bard.” I will not deny of its setting the sentence in which Walpole communicates the likelihood of such a fate.

One quality I may safely arrogate to myself: I am not afraid to praise. Many are such timid judges of composition, that they hesitate to wait for the public opinion. Show them a manuscript, though they highly approve it in their hearts, they are afraid to commit themselves by speaking out. Several excellent works have perished from this cause; a writer of real talents being often a mere sensitive plant with regard to his own productions. Some cavils of Mason (how inferior a poet and judge!) had almost induced Gray to destroy his two beautiful and sublime odes. We should not only praise, but hasten to praise.

In modern days the function of Mason is more generally filled by adverse public critics. The case of the late Edward Fitzgerald, who by an unfavorable review was induced to withdraw from circulation his “Six Dramas of Calderon,” and probably altogether to withhold from the public his rendering of “La Vida es Sueño,” and “El Mágico Prodigioso,” is until the present unhappily in point.

More melancholy still are those episodes of literary history which present the wearied author consigning with forced smile and show of acquiescence – “coactus volo” – the products of his craft to an untimely end. English history does not lack its instances of these heroic souls in motley, these Herculeses with their distaffs. There is John Selden, and there is Reginald Pecock: let us bare the mishaps of these representatives.

In the time of James I., the clergy were pleased to advance to the utmost the doctrine of the divine right of tithes – a divinity entailed in a pedigree of patriarchal ages, Jewish priesthood, and Christian priesthood. Upon so venerable a claim so cogently revived, lawyers yet looked with jealousy. For they saw in every claim by divine right, where royal and sub-royal patrons were unconcerned, a limitation of human rights, with their correlative human duties very apt to be regulated by positive law. Selden, partaking of the legal spirit – coincident this once with the historic – produced his “History of Tithes,” a plain narrative, margented with copious authorities, which established abundantly the duty of paying tenths – but established on the distasteful ground of human authority. James, who patronised divinity partly to show the ardor with which he in his one turn could venerate, partly for the reflected strength wherewith it encircled himself, partly from conceit and cowardice, and partly from better motives, summoned the author to appear before him in December 1618, at his palace at Theobalds. Introduced by Ben Jonson and Edward Hayward, Selden maintained the test of two conferences at Theobalds, and one at Whitehall with the monarch in person; but this in nowise prevented his being called, on January 28, 1618, before seven members of the High Commission Court in whose presence he was induced to make and sign this declaration.

My good Lords, I most humbly acknowledge the error which I have committed in publishing “The History of Tithes,” and especially in that I have at all, by showing any interpretation of Holy Scriptures, by meddling with councils, fathers, or canons, or by what else soever occurs in it, offered any occasion of argument against any right of maintenance, jure divino, of the minister of the Gospel; beseeching your Lordships to receive this ingenuous and humble acknowledgment, together with the unfeigned protestation of my grief, for that through it I have so incurred both his Majesty’s and your Lordships’ displeasure conceived against me in behalf of the Church of England.

Beside this forced submission, the authority which had exacted it prohibited the book. Further, Selden was forbidden to publish anything in his own defence, while public invitation – pluckily used – was given to any who should choose to attack either him or his history with all the virulence of pocket and party polemics. Nor was this all, but Selden stooped at the bidding of the king to uphold opinions, no doubt on three small points, which he had seemed to impugn in his greater work. It is pleasant to add that he circulated among his friends in manuscript answers to the attacks which were published against him.

The fall of Pecock was more abject, and less relieved. About 1449 he had written – not printed, of course – “The Repressor.” He had in design to defend the clergy from the aspersions, as he conceived them, of the “Bible-man” or Lollards. With this view he vindicated the use of images, the going on pilgrimages, and the retention of the various ranks of the hierarchy in their full directive authority. In 1450 he remained in sufficient esteem – though indeed his treatise was not much circulated for four or five years – to be transferred to the see of Chichester. From that time, however, his good fortune deserted him. The Duke of York conceived it well to cover his strides towards the crown, with the redress of grievances; and the disgrace of Pecock’s patrons, the Duke of Suffolk and the Bishop of Norwich, together with the personal dislike the king contracted towards him, made Chichester a safe object of attack. While all things were thus working for the good man’s evil, the council met at Westminster in the autumn of 1457, whence by general acclamation Pecock was expelled. He was cited to appear before Archbishop Bourchier on November 11, and the character of his offence became more definitised. He had held cheap the authority of the old doctors, he had denied that the Apostles’ Creed was made by the Apostles, and at the same time he had magnified the office of reason – rather than singly of the Scriptures, or rather than singly of the Church – as an ultimate test. Accordingly, to this citation he appeared, armed with nine of his books, into which it must be confessed were introduced some newly conceived passages and some erasures. A committee of Bishops, to whom the matter was then referred, reported adversely; and after further disputation the archbishop offered Pecock his choice of making a public abjuration of his errors, or of being first degraded, and then delivered over to the secular arm “as the food of fire, and fuel for the burning.” He chose the abjuration: a preliminary confession was forthwith made, a written confession was added at Lambeth on the 3rd of December, and on the next day, Sunday, arrayed in his episcopal habit, in the presence of 20,000 persons, he knelt at the feet of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Rochester, Durham, and of his “own pure and free will, and without any man’s coercion or dread,” made his recantation. In this he had declared that he presumed of his own natural wit to prefer the judgment of reason before the Testaments and the authority of the Church; had published many perilous doctrines and books containing enumerated heresies; and now considered himself grievously to have sinned and wickedly to have deceived the people of God, but returned to the unity of the mother Holy Church and renounced both the rehearsed heresies and all other “spices,” or kinds of heresy, and exhorted all men not to trust in his books, neither to keep or read them in any wise, but to bring them in haste to the Primate or his agents; in that he publicly assented that his books should be deputed unto the fire, and openly be burnt as an example and terror to all others. The recantation ended, a fire was kindled at the Cross. With his own hands Pecock delivered three folios and eleven quartos of his own composition to the executioner, who took and threw them in the flames, while the Bishop exclaimed aloud “My pride and presumption have brought upon me these troubles and these reproaches.” Little could he then think that in some future day England would, at public cost, republish the chief of the books his own lips had condemned.

But the punishment of Pecock did not end here. It was perhaps not much to him that the University of Oxford (which has consistently shown a spirit of illiberality, or at least a burning disposition, throughout its eras almost down to the present age) should in solemn procession, its Chancellor at its head, march to a place where four roads met – the Quatre-voix or Carfax – and there burn to ashes every copy of his works on which hands could be laid. But, deprived of his bishopric, it was necessary that directions should be given for his personal fare. These came to the Abbot of Thorney, to whose Cambridgeshire Abbey the cleric was sent. He was to live for ever in one closed chamber, so contrived that he might hear Mass; to be attended by one sad man to make his bed; to be forbidden all books but a breviary, a mass-book, a psalter, a legend, and a Bible; to be refused any thing to write with or on; but to be allowed a sufficiency of food and fire. And in this dolorous state there is all reason to suppose his closing days were spent.[74 - He was in fact a “recluse” in the ancient and proper sense of the term. For in the Bishop’s time it still remained customary, after an imposing ceremony, literally to seal and shut up by the hands of a bishop those – men or women – who elected to be recluses, in a small chamber built for the purpose close to the wall of some church with an opening inwards that the immured tenant might hear the service and receive necessary subsistence. We are told, for example, by St. Foix that Agnes de Rochier, the beautiful daughter of a rich tradesman, commenced such a life at the church of St. Opportune, in Paris, on the 5th of October, 1403, and though then of only eighteen years, lived in this hermetic state till the ripe enough age of eighty.]

It is recorded of St. Briccius, that when a boy he saw the devil behind the altar, noting the misdemeanors of people on a piece of parchment. This seems to have stirred in him a desire for parchment that he in turn might write; but so firmly did the devil by his teeth stick to the stolen goods, that on the achievement of mastery by his juvenile but saintly competitor, the horny, wicked head was knocked against the wall, at which painful juncture St. Martin, ever valorous, so conjured the devil that he caused him willy nilly to blot out what he had written. What then, one wonders, was the devil’s code of which the people’s acts were breaches. What his diabolic, though discarded standard? The prescience of St. Briccius or St. Martin would doubtless be required to tell. But it is plain he too is fabled as possessed with desire to bend the will of men in obedience to some crystallized tradition, some extraneous rule. And yet, what is this principle of tradition, this authority-binding, which in this form and that defeats equally Fanny Burney or Gray, Shelley, Southey, or Selden? It is something which, no matter what its ineptness to the circumstances of the present, cannot yield; which is made up of the circumstances of the past, and has in its whole as much as in every shred the inevitability of the past, which pushes by informed private judgment and reason – perhaps on the wiser plea that, ourselves a product of the past, the accumulated and sifted wisdom of that past, the residue of eclecticism on eclecticism, must be most appropriate to guide; or else perhaps on the more foolish, that makes a creed osseous in one infinitely remote exercise of one man’s inspired thoughts. As if, in the latter alternative, the very strength was not the very weakness of the argument which reduces after all everything to single and perhaps sullied private judgment; and as if in the former the very strength was not again the very weakness of the argument which cuts off arbitrarily as the last point of systematized knowledge (more often not at the last) its own method of history. For does it not result that if it be truly said, there is nothing new under the sun, there must in all cases be selection, and if selection be thus the real principle of action, why is some portion of accessible knowledge, some portion even of received knowledge, to be cast without the bounds of usable materials, as though to prohibit us too perchance, from strengthening that uniformity or preponderance in independent selections to which tradition owes its strength? Thirlwall may act as Pecock, and Beddoes as Fitzgerald – but both the virtue of action and the virtue of restraint are lost.

Herodotus, if we may believe Blakesley and Professor Sayce, though the “Father of History,” by no means illustrates tradition at its best. Different, however, would it be, could we make up our minds, backed by the later authority of Canon Rawlinson to side in this perennial contest with Henri Estienne. This scholar in preparing an edition of that ancient traveller took occasion to maintain that his author was the reporter of things fabulous to an extent far less than was generally supposed. Hearing that of this defence, which was written in Latin, it was proposed to make a translation into French, he determined, as an old critic says, to become now a traditore, as he had formerly early been a traduttore, and to render his own work. But if this was his original purpose, he immediately lost sight of it. He took up, in fact, his argument thus: – From the unlikelihood of an event it is unreasonable to conclude against it: Herodotus may have reported things true, in presenting unlikely tales, otherwise, we must banish a prodigious amount of incontestable but absurd matter, though much of this character has occurred of late, especially in popery, as I proceed to instance in anecdotes which objectors may style apocryphal, fables they will call malicious, and chronicles they are certain to brand as scandalous. Now, this was clearly of intolerable bearing. And according to Tollius, its upshot was that Estienne was burnt in effigy at Paris; though, having fled to the mountains of Auvergne, and being in the thick of winter, he was enabled to chuckle at his joke that he never was so cold as when he was being burnt, a joke the authenticity of which late commentators might perhaps have less readily impeached had they remembered that Antonio de Dominis had used it, as he too for writing an unappreciated book was consumed in effigy at Rome, while he lay shivering with the cold of a November at sea and a fugitive’s fears at heart. Certain it is that at Geneva Estienne met with repulse. For the archives of that state show that late in 1566, on his first applying for a license to expose for sale his “Apologie pour Herodote,” he was directed to amend “certains feulletz où il y a des propos vilains et parlans trop évidemment des princes en mal” and that after these amendments were duly made he deliberately encouraged the suppression of his work, by taking advantage of an imperfect piratical edition, appearing at Lyons, to add without license the famous “Avertissement” with its tables or indexes, which drew down upon him imprisonment, followed quickly by enlargement coupled with conspicuous deprivation of the Eucharist on one occasion – if that be the meaning of “pour punition, privé de la cène, pour une fois.”

With consequences more radical, but with either far more boldness or far less wit, Camille Desmoulins upwards of two centuries after courted the suppression, not indeed of a book, but of life. It was full four years since he had learnt that the parliament of Toulouse had hurried to the flames his “La Libre France,” when entering the Jacobin Club, just two days after the publication of the fifth number of his Vieux Cordelier, he heard the question being for the third time put, whether he should be expelled. His presence quelling in no measure the rising anger, Robespierre, desirous to stay the wrath of the Jacobins by sacrificing the work to save the author, spoke. “Camille,” said he with dryness, and that air of patronage which the simulation of a tempered passion carries, “is a spoilt child; he had a good disposition; bad company has led him astray.” “We must,” urged he, concluding, “deal vigorously with these numbers, which even Brissot would not have dared to acknowledge, but we must keep Desmoulins among us. I demand, for example’s sake, that these numbers be burnt before this society.” But with what surprise did the echo of this speech, proceeding clearly, and accompanied with indignant flash of eye, greet him – “Bravo, Robespierre; but I will answer with Rousseau, To burn is not to answer.” Strange retort! Had pride so dulled perception, or surprise with one stroke slain confidence in all? No wonder that not less the change of time than the terms, the very measuredness of the answering words bidding Camille learn that he was treated with indulgence, and disclosing that his mode of justification would be held to show that the worst import of his writings was designed, left in him a sense that his present non-expulsion, even the restoration of the title of “Cordelier,” had no security. The lull was false, Desmoulins was lost.

Concession to honest criticism was received with not more tact by Richelieu than by Desmoulins. It is true that in the Cardinal’s case the upshot, perilous as it seemed to one of the grand supports of dramatic literature, was merely ludicrous – but it may also be true that that was because the appeal was indeed through the intellect, but to the passive, not the active powers of man. The Cardinal was dramatist, and had carried politics into comedy by making the characters called France, Spain, or names of other States develop the fortunes of “Europe.” Anxious to get the countenance of the Academy, which his energies had lately organized, he sent the piece to them, that any errors in the rules of the style or poetry might be corrected. The Academy fulfilled their task, criticising so severely that scarcely a line was left unaltered. The Cardinal – but I may as well adopt the tale as Noël d’Argonne tells it.

The Cardinal, to whom it was brought back in this condition, was so enraged, that he tore it on the spot, and threw it in pieces into the hearth. This was in summer, and fortunately there was no fire in the hearth. The Cardinal went to bed; but he felt the tenderness of a father for his dear Europe; he regretted having used it so cruelly; and calling up his secretary, he ordered him to collect with care the papers from the chimney, and to go and look whether he could find any paste in the house – adding that in all probability he would find some starch with the women who took charge of his linen. The secretary went to their apartment; and having found what he wanted, he spent the greater part of the night with the Cardinal in trying to paste together the dismembered comedy. Next morning he had it recopied in his presence, and changed almost every one of the corrections of the Academy, affecting, at the same time, to retain a few of the least important. He sent it back to them the same day by Boisrobert, and told them they would perceive how much he had profited by their criticisms; but as all men were liable to err, he had not thought it necessary to follow them implicitly. The Academy, who had learned the vexation of the Cardinal, took care not to retouch the piece, and returned it to him with their unanimous approbation.

It seems a pity that after so much care and tenderness the play should have been produced along with “The Cid,” and that the audience, less manageable than the Academy, on the announcement that “Europe” would be repeated the next day, murmured their wish for Corneille’s piece. But the influence he sought to throw upon the fortunes of the Cid there can be no need to recount to Englishmen. Only it is clear that Richelieu was more like Cicero than Virgil, the former of whom indeed affected to be desirous of burning some productions, but was easily diverted by pleasant flattery; but the latter of whom, after having bestowed the labor of twelve years on his immortal poem, was genuinely conscious of imperfections which so few beside himself could have perceived, that in his last moments he ordered it to be committed to the flames, a fate evaded only by disregard of his solemn testamentary injunction. It is equally clear that Richelieu had not the plea of neglect and undeserved disfavor felt in its extreme by William Collins. For his odes, first published in 1747, crept slowly into notice, were spoken of indifferently by his acquaintance Dr. Johnson, and met with feeble praise from Gray. The while the author was sensible of their beauty, and so deeply felt the coldness with which they were received, that he obtained from his publisher the unsold copies and burnt them with his own hand. “If then his highly finished productions brought back but disappointment,” hypothesises Mr. Thomas Miller, “how thankful he must have felt that he had not committed himself further by sending into the world such works as his own fine taste condemned! We believe that when he had completed his ”Ode on the Passions,” he knew he had produced a poem which ought to live forever, for we cannot conceive that the mind which erected so imperishable a fabric could have a doubt of its durability.” Alas! an immortality which sees no origin in præsenti– how burdensome it is to bear.[75 - It was observed by Scott of Amwell, a critic of the verbal school, but not without his soundness, and junior to Collins by nine years, that the Oriental Eclogues, which appeared in 1742, were “always possessed of considerable reputation,” till Johnson “having hinted that Collins, once in conversation with a friend, happened to term them his Irish Eclogues, those who form opinions not from their own reason or their own feelings, but from the hints of others,” caught the hint and circulated it. “That Collins,” he adds, “ever supposed his eclogues destitute of merit there is no reason to believe; but it is very probable, when his judgment was improved by experience, he might discover and be hurt by their faults, among which may possibly be found some few instances of inconsistence or absurdity.”]

It was the conviction of “Messieurs de Port Royal” that in the denial of self was a tower of moral strength; and in this denial of self they included a true abnegation of the glories of authorship. “If any work for God were well done,” said St. Cyran, “it was the Divine Grace which had effectually co-operated to its performance, and the human instrument was nothing, and less than nothing.” With this there was not one of his colleagues unwilling practically to show that he agreed – Pascal least of all. What greater instance of literary modesty can be alleged than the destruction by him of his treatise on geometry, upon his learning that Arnauld had prepared the volume given to the world in 1667 as “Elements” of that subject and his seeing its fitness for the Port Royal schools? With most it would be much easier to apply the system of Naugerius, who loving Catullus, but hating Martial, set apart one day that every year he might sacrifice by fire a copy of the works of one epigrammatist to the manes of the other. It is only fair to add that Naugerius, who died while on an embassy to Francis I. in 1529, destroyed shortly before his death a history of his native city, Venice, carried forward from 1486, which he had himself compiled, and submitted to the same effective purging a considerable proportion of his own poetic compositions.

At this point I conclude. I perceive indeed that there remains scattered through literature unused material of interest, and even that motives to self-suppression of several entire classes have been here unexemplified. But of this we might feel confident, that the more and more this subject were opened up, personal as it appears to the authors themselves, the more and more would one be struck with the duty of the State, and no less than of the State of professed critics and of friends of the hearth, not only not to discourage the expressions of genius if even somewhat errant, but where there is the true appeal – then, as Walpole says, to hasten to praise. —Gentleman’s Magazine.

HOW SHOULD WE DRESS?

The New German Theories on Clothing

BY DORA DE BLAQUIÈRE

Some allusion has already been made to the medical theories respecting clothing that have emanated recently from a celebrated German professor, Dr. Gustav Jaeger, of the Royal Polytechnic School at Stuttgart. His investigations into the subject commenced in the year 1872, and appeared to have been fairly exhaustive in the way of scientific experiment and personal experience, with the result that Dr. Jaeger considers he has discovered that the health of the world in general is much prejudiced by the materials, as well as the forms, in general use. In Germany his views seem to have met with very extensive acceptance; they have revolutionised the trade of Stuttgart, where Dr. Jaeger practises his profession; and many of the leading men – such as Count von Moltke and others – have adopted his clothing; and it seems probable that his principles will be applied to the German army, with the view of promoting the health of the troops. In Italy the first physicians have declared in favor of it, and so universally does the demand appear to have arisen on the Continent, that the present writer found Dr. Jaeger’s garments commonly exposed for sale in Switzerland, at Berne, Lucerne, and Vevey, and other smaller towns.

The stall for Dr. Jaeger’s clothing has formed an attraction at the “Healtheries” this season, and, by the formation of a limited company, who have opened a depôt in Fore Street for its sale, those who desire to look into the subject, and form their own opinions, will be able to do so in England.

Dr. Jaeger’s reform is not a difficult one, and consists of the fundamental doctrine that, as we are animals, we should wear animal clothing. The physical “reasons why” are – first, that their non-conducting qualities are a guarantee that the temperature of the body shall be in a great measure preserved, while on the other hand the shape and arrangement of their constituent hairs provide for the escape of moisture by capillary attraction; and their adaptation to both these ends is greater than that of any vegetable fabric.

In England we have for many years acted instinctively on these conditions, and we have adopted woollen, in the shape of flannel, for use in cricket, boating, tennis, and in any athletic exercises likely to cause profuse perspiration, as being the safest covering to ensure us against cold and the sudden and dangerous chills which are likely to follow overheating in a climate like ours. Our action has been the result of observation and experience, which, however, according to Dr. Jaeger, might have been carried still further and applied more widely still. For this profuse perspiration is simply an intensification of the daily action of the skin, which only ceases with life itself. If this action be imperfect or repressed, fat and water accumulate in the tissues, lowering their powers, and the flesh, which should feel elastic and firm, is flabby, causing many disorders in the general economy of the body.

Besides water and fat, the skin excretes carbonic acid, and the different decomposed products of fat – such as lactic, formic, and butyric acids – to which the sour odor of perspiration is due. Much carbonic acid is dissolved in the perspiration, and escapes with it. Thus, it is not difficult to see that the kind of covering which acts as the best conductor of moisture and its impurities, and at the same time is a bad conductor of heat, and prevents its escape, is that which we must adopt as the healthiest and the cleanest.

The power of absorption by vegetable life, of the poisonous emanations from animal life, is well known, and this process is not limited, it would appear, to living plants, but is continued by vegetable fibres – such as linen and cotton – with this difference, that the living plant assimilates these emanations and the dead fibre does not, but exhales them again when wetted or warmed. Thus our clothes, in consequence of their vegetable character, attract and retain these noxious principles which should by rights be immediately thrown off. Animal materials, such as wool, are made by nature – according to Dr. Jaeger – to protect animal life, and will neither attract noxious emanations nor prevent their evaporation from the body. This is shown, he observes, by the sense of smell and by the unpleasantness noticed in cotton and linen underclothing, linings, and apparel which have been long worn.

There are many people to whom these considerations have a vital and especial interest. Certain skins perspire much more freely than others. This peculiarity occurs in persons of rheumatic and consumptive tendencies, even when quite free from actual disease. Women in middle age, also, and all in whom the circulatory system is weakened from any cause, have this tendency. But the people to whom, in addition, the Jaeger system appeals the most are certainly those who are corpulent, or show any tendency to become so. And as this point will probably interest many readers, I will give a brief notice of what Dr. Jaeger says on the subject.

To be in what we English people call “good condition” there must be a correct proportion of the most important bodily constituents – viz., albumen, fat, and water. The first is the foundation of nerve, muscle, blood, etc., and in fact sustains the existence of the body. Relatively to albumen, water and fat may be viewed as auxiliaries, although they are indispensable in themselves. A proper condition of body requires that these three constituents shall be present in certain proportions, while the richer the body is in albumen the sounder it will be, and the fitter for work. On the other hand, any excess of fat or water will lessen its energies, and its power of repelling the action of influences likely to promote disease.

Of the evils of the increase of fat most people who suffer from it are only too conscious. But besides the more visible ones, they are usually poor-blooded, and consequently lacking in vital energy, while the fat diminishes the necessary space for the circulation of the blood and the respiratory organs. The first of these evils shows itself in flushing of the face when the circulation is quickened by exertion, and in the difficulty felt in the return of the blood from the lower parts of the body to the heart, which causes lassitude in the legs, and a tendency to varicose veins; while, if the circulation of water in the system be also impeded, dropsical swellings in the legs will ensue. The limitation of space due to fat hinders also the free play of the lungs, and the obese are disabled from exceptional exertion which necessitates fuller breathing than usual.

Thus every one wishing to preserve health and working capacity, must keep strict watch on the deposit of fat going on in the body; and all such symptoms must be taken as evincing a wrong system of living; and in order to stay its further accumulation and get rid of what is superfluous, recourse must be had to augmented action of the skin.

The increased percentage of water and fat in the system renders it also more liable to disease, more sensitive to cold, and disposed to chest affections in the winter. In addition, the working powers of the mind are sensibly lessened. Dr. Jaeger has discovered that their presence in excess can be tested by the specific gravity and the rapidity of the nervous action: and he has constructed an air-tight chamber where experiments may be conducted on the former, and a stop-watch tests the rapidity of the latter.

Not less interesting is Dr. Jaeger’s theory of the source of the emotions, which he places in the albumen in the bodily tissues, emanating in the form of subtile essences, which are opposed to each other in the effect they produce, and which may be distinguished as “salutary” and “noxious.” As a rule, the sanitary principle is fragrant, the noxious tainted and offensive. The odor may be most readily perceived in the hair of the head, and is more evident in the adult than the child. If the subject of the test be in a cheerful mood, the scent will be agreeable and sweet; but if sorrowful, depressed, or in pain, the scent will be disagreeable. This odor may be noticed in the anguish of fever, under the influence of terror, and exhales from the mouth and nose, and, as Dr. Jaeger has proved by experiment, from the brain as well.

These things Dr. Jaeger considers that the experience of many readers will confirm, and that they have great practical importance in connection with his system. The German names given to these odorous substances are Lust und Unlust Stoffe, substances of pleasure and dislike. The former are thought by the Doctor to be the healing powers of the body, which heighten all the vital actions and its powers of resistance against contagion of all kinds. Sheep’s wool in particular attracts these substances of pleasure, while the plant fibre favors the accumulation of the substances of dislike, with all their evil consequences. This last fact, which the German scientific medical world considers Dr. Jaeger has proved, is supposed to be of the greatest importance, as showing how to raise the resistibility of the human body against contagious disease. The observations made extend to diphtheria, cholera, typhus, smallpox, measles, whooping-cough, and influenza.

I have endeavored thus far to divest the subject, as far as possible, of scientific matter, so that the principle may be easily understood by those who have made no previous study of these or any kindred subjects, relating to the hygiene and sanitary management of the body. I will now turn to the more practical considerations of the materials and shapes of the clothing recommended.

Dr. Jaeger advocates the use of nothing but wool, both for clothing and also for the bed and bedding. No half-measures will answer; even the linings of coats and dresses must be of wool, and men’s collars, and even women’s stay-laces, must be of the same. The material which, after much consideration, he has selected, is what is called “stockingette web,” which is merely woollen yarn woven in an elastic manner, like jerseys and stockings, and the woollen and merino under-shirts and drawers, now in common use. The somewhat clumsy name “stockingette” owes its origin to the fact that there was no technical name for that kind of elastic weaving which is applied to stockings, and which was called into existence as a “piece” material by the fashion of wearing jerseys, three or four years ago. Dr. Jaeger considers this weaving porous and supple and more durable than flannel; while they feel more comfortable on the skin, and areless liable to shrink than flannel, when in the hands of the washerwomen.

No admixture of vegetable fibre should be admitted, and the practice of wearing a woollen shirt under a cotton or linen one, Dr. Jaeger considers enervating and weakening. Clothing should fit quite tightly to the skin, so as to allow of the least possible movement of air between it and the body; the second great rule being that it should be twice as thick along the middle line of the trunk, from the neck downwards, as at the sides or back. Another point for consideration is the number of garments to be worn one over the other. On this question Dr. Jaeger is of opinion that the clothing for men and boys should simply consist of a woollen shirt, woollen socks or stockings, cloth trousers fitting as closely as may be, and a cloth coat. The coat sleeves and linings should be of woollen, and these, as well as the trouser legs, when the latter do not fit tightly, must be closed against upward draughts by webbings sewn into them, and fitting tightly round the arms and ankles. No drawers are required, no waistcoat, and no overcoat; not even in the winter time, except when driving. Men’s coats must fit tightly up to the neck, and compactly to the figure, and all others must be laid aside as unsanitary. The coat must also be double-breasted, and like all the rest of the materials recommended, must be undyed, of the natural color, or treated with uninjurious fast dyes. The same rule applies to the trousers, which must fasten so as to continue the middle line of extra warmth. This rule has special application to those who desire to melt away superfluous fat, or those who are subject to disorders of the stomach or digestive organs.

The feet are to be covered with woollen socks, with a special division for each toe; or else one for the great toe, while the upper part of the boot must be of felt, and the lower part of felt or porous leather; the boot being kept thoroughly porous, so that the feet may be as cleanly and pure as the hands. The usual starched linen collar is substituted by one made of unstiffened white cashmere, or one of the wool in its natural hue. These collars can be obtained in every shape and style, stand up and turn-downs, and they are considered as the most comfortable that could possibly be devised, as well as preventions of throat disorders. The hat should be of felt, and no linings of leather nor linen are admissible. Instead of these a strip of felt should be used, or else the hat should be quite without lining, like a Turkish fez. The shellac used in stiffening hats is said to have an injurious effect, and those who are bald or threatened with baldness, or those who suffer from headaches, are especially advised to try the unstiffened sanitary hat and its woollen lining.