Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851

Foundation-stone of St. Mark's, Venice (Vol. iii., p.88.).—This singular relic is now preserved in the "Doucean Museum," at Goodrich Court, Herefordshire, with the numerous objects of art and antiquities bequeathed by Mr. Douce to the late Sir Samuel Meyrick. I believe that nothing can now be ascertained regarding the history of this stone, or how it came into the possession of Mr. Douce. Sir Samuel enumerates it amongst "Miscellaneous Antiquities," No. 2., in his interesting Inventory of this Collection, given in the Gentleman's Magazine, Feb., 1835, p. 198. The Doucean Museum comprises, probably, the finest series of specimens of sculpture in ivory existing in any collection in England. The Limoges enamels are also highly deserving of notice.

    Albert Way.

HISTOIRE DES SÉVARAMBES

(Vol. iii., pp. 4. and 72.)

I am not sufficiently familiar with Vossius or his works to form any opinion as to the accuracy of the conclusion which Mr. Crossley has arrived at. There is at least much obscurity in the matter, to which I have long paid some little attention.

My Copy is entitled,—

"The History of the Sevarambians: A People of the South continent. In Five Parts. Containing an Account of the Government, &c. Translated from the Memoirs of Capt. Siden, who lived fifteen years amongst them. Lond. 1738." (8vo. pp. xxiii. and 412.)

I have given this to show how it differs from that spoken of by Mr. C. as being in two parts, by Capt. Thos. Liden, and not a reprint, but a translation from the French, which Lowndes says was "considerably altered and enlarged."

If this be so, we can hardly ascribe to Vossius the edition of 1738. The preface intimates that the papers were written in Latin, French, Italian, and Dutch, and placed in the editor's hands in England, on his promising to methodise them and put them all into one language; but I do not observe the slightest allusion to the work having previously appeared either in English or French, although we find that Barbier, in his Dict. des Anon., gives the French edit. 1 pt. Paris, 1677; 2 pt. Paris, 1678 et 1679, 2 vols. 12mo.; Nouvelle edit. Amsterdam, 1716, 2 vols. 12mo.; and ascribes it to Denis Vairasse d'Alais.

There is a long account of this work in Dict. Historique, par Marchand: à la Haye, 1758, fo. sub. nom., Allais, as the author, observing—

"Il y a diversité d'opinions touchant la langue en laquelle il a été écrit ou composé."

The earliest he mentions is the English one of 1675, and an edition in the French, "à Paris, 1677;" which states on the title, Traduit de l'Anglois, whereas the second part is "imprimée à Paris chez l'Auteur, 1678," from which Marchand concludes that Allais was the writer, adding,—

"On n'a peut-être jamais vu de Fiction composée avec plus d'art et plus d'industrie, et il faut avouer qu'il y en a peu où le vraisemblable soit aussi ingénieusement et aussi adroitement conservé."

Wm. Taylor, of Norwich, writes to Southey, asking,—

"Can you tell me who wrote the History of the Sevarambians? The book is to me curious. Wieland steals from it so often, that it must have been a favourite in his library; if I had to impute the book by guess, I would fix on Maurice Ashby, the translator of Xenophon's Cyropædia, as the author."

to which Southey replies,—

"Of the Sevarambians I know nothing!" (See Gent. Mag. N.S. xxi. p. 355.)

Sir W. Scott, in his Memoirs of Swift, p. 304. (edit. 1834), speaking of Gulliver's Travels, says—

"A third volume was published by an unblushing forger, as early as 1727, without printer's name, a great part of which is unacknowledged plunder from a work entitled Hist. des Sévarambes, ascribed to Mons. Alletz, suppressed in France and other Catholic kingdoms on account of its deistical opinions."

It would seem from this, that Sir Walter was not aware of the English work, or knew much of its origin or the author.

    F. R. A.

Histoire des Sévarambes.—The second edition of Gulliver's Travels, entitled Travels into several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, 2 vols. 8vo., London, 1727, is accompanied with a spurious third volume, printed at London in the same year, with a similar title-page, but not professing to be a second edition. This third volume is divided into two parts: the first part consists, first, of an Introduction in pp. 20; next, of two chapters, containing a second voyage to Brobdingnag, which are followed by four chapters, containing a voyage to Sporunda. The second part consists of six chapters, containing a voyage to Sevarambia, a voyage to Monatamia, a voyage to Batavia, a voyage to the Cape, and a voyage to England. The whole of the third volume, with the exception of the introduction and the two chapters relating to Brobdingnag, is derived from the Histoire des Sévarambes, either in its English or French version.

    L.

TOUCHING FOR THE EVIL

(Vol. iii., pp. 42. 93.)

There is ample evidence that the French monarchs performed the ceremony of touching for the evil.

In a MS. in the University Library, Cambridge[18 - Dd. 2. 41. fo. 38 b.], is this memorandum:—

"The Kings of England and Fraunce by a peculiar guift cure the King's evill by touching them with their handes, and so doth the seaventh sonne."—Ant. Miraldus, p. 384.

Fuller intimates that St. Louis was the first king of France who healed the evil. "So witnesseth Andrew Chasne, a French author, and others."[19 - Fuller, Church History, edit. 1837, i. 228.]

Speaking of the illness of Louis XI., "at Forges neere to Chinon," in March, 1480, Philip de Commines says:

"After two daies he recovered his speech and his memory after a sort: and because he thought no man understood him so wel as my selfe, his pleasure was that I should alwaies be by him, and he confessed himselfe to the officiall in my presence, otherwise they would never have understood one another. He had not much to say, for he was shriven not long before, because the Kings of Fraunce use alwaies to confesse themselves when they touch those that be sick of the King's evill, which he never failed to do once a weeke. If other Princes do not the like, they are to blame, for continuall a great number are troubled with that disease."[20 - Danett's Translation. edit. 1614, p. 203.]

Pierre Desrey, in his Great Chronicles of Charles VIII., has the following passage relating to that monarch's proceedings at Rome in January, 1494-5:—

"Tuesday the 20th, the king heard mass in the French chapel, and afterwards touched and cured many afflicted with the king's evil, to the great astonishment of the Italians who witnessed the miracle."[21 - Monstrelet edit. 1845, ii. 471.]

And speaking of the king at Naples, in April, 1495, the same chronicler says:—

"The 15th of April, the king, after hearing mass in the church of the Annonciada, was confessed, and then touched and cured great numbers that were afflicted with the evil—a disorder that abounded much all over Italy—when the spectators were greatly edified at the powers of such an extraordinary gift.

*   *   *   *   *

"On Easter day, the 19th of April, the king was confessed in the church of St. Peter, adjoining to his lodgings, and then touched for the evil a second time."[22 - Ibid. 476.]

Fuller, in remarking upon the cure of the king's evil by the touch of our English monarchs, observes:—

"The kings of France share also with those of England in this miraculous cure. And Laurentius reports, that when Francis I., king of France, was kept prisoner in Spain, he, notwithstanding his exile and restraint, daily cured infinite multitudes of people of that disease; according to this epigram:

'Hispanos inter sanat rex chæradas, estque
Captivus Superis gratus, ut antè fuit.'

'The captive king the evil cures in Spain:
Dear, as before, he doth to God remain.'

"So it seemeth his medicinal quality is affixed not to his prosperity, but person; so that during his durance, he was fully free to exercise the same."[23 - Fuller, Church History, edit. 1837, i. 227.]

Cavendish, relating what took place on Cardinal Wolsey's embassy to Francis I., in 1527, has the following passage:—

"And at his [the king's] coming in to the bishop's palace [at Amiens], where he intended to dine with my Lord Cardinal, there sat within a cloister about two hundred persons diseased with the king's evil, upon their knees. And the king, or ever he went to dinner, provised every of them with rubbing them and blessing them with his bare hands, being bareheaded all the while; after whom followed his almoner distributing of money unto the persons diseased. And that done, he said certain prayers over them, and then washed his hands, and so came up into his chamber to dinner, where as my lord dined with him."[24 - Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, edit. Singer, 1825, vol. i. p. 104.]

Laurentius, cited by Fuller in the page already given, was, it seems, physician in ordinary to King Henry IV. of France. In a treatise entitled De Mirabili Strumarum Curatione, he stated that the kings of England never cured the evil. "To cry quits with him," Dr. W. Tucker, chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, in his Charismate, denied that the kings of France ever originally cured the evil

"but per aliquam propaginem, 'by a sprig of right,' derived from the primitive power of our English kings, under whose jurisdiction most of the French provinces were once subjected."[25 - Fuller, Church History, edit. 1837, i. pp. 227, 228.]

Louis XVI., immediately after his coronation at Rheims, in 1775, went to the Abbey of St. Remi to pay his devotions, and to touch for the evil. The ceremony took place in the Abbey Park, and is thus described in a paper entitled Coronation of the Kings of France prior to the Revolution, by Charles White, Esq.:—

"Two thousand four hundred individuals suffering under this affliction, having been assembled in rows in the park, his majesty, attended by the household physicians, approached the first on the right. The physician-in-chief then placed his hand upon the patient's head, whilst a captain of the guards held the hands of the latter joined before his bosom. The king, with his head uncovered, then touched the patient by making the sign of the cross upon his face, exclaiming, 'May God heal thee! The king touches thee.' The whole two thousand four hundred having been healed in a similar manner, and the grand almoner having distributed alms to each in succession, three attendants, called chefs de goblet, presented themselves with golden salvers, on which were three embroidered napkins. The first, steeped in vinegar, was then offered to the king by Monsieur; the second, dipped in plain water, was presented by the Count d'Artois; and the third, moistened with orange water, was banded by the Duke of Orleans."[26 - New Monthly Magazine, vol. liii. p. 160.]

The power of the seventh son to heal the evil (mentioned in the MS. I have cited) is humourously alluded to in the Tatler (No. 11.). I subjoin the passage, which occurs in a letter signed "D. Distaff."