Curiosities of Literature (Vol. 1-3). Disraeli Isaac

      At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil, at his apartments at Windsor, a number of ingenious men were invited. Secretary Cecil communicated the news of the morning, that several scholars at Eton had run away on account of their master's severity, which he condemned as a great error in the education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the contrary; severe in his own temper, he pleaded warmly in defence of hard flogging. Dr. Wootton, in softer tones, sided with the secretary. Sir John Mason, adopting no side, bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded the hard-hearted Sir William Petre, and adduced, as an evidence, that the best schoolmaster then in England was the hardest flogger. Then was it that Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed, that if such a master had an able scholar it was owing to the boy's genius, and not the preceptor's rod. Secretary Cecil and others were pleased with Ascham's notions. Sir Richard Sackville was silent, but when Ascham after dinner went to the queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he took him aside, and frankly told him that, though he had taken no part in the debate, he would not have been absent from that conversation for a great deal; that he knew to his cost the truth that Ascham had supported; for it was the perpetual flogging of such a schoolmaster that had given him an unconquerable aversion to study. And as he wished to remedy this defect in his own children, he earnestly exhorted Ascham to write his observations on so interesting a topic. Such was the circumstance which produced the admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.

      INEQUALITIES OF GENIUS.

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      Singular inequalities are observable in the labours of genius; and particularly in those which admit great enthusiasm, as in poetry, in painting, and in music. Faultless mediocrity industry can preserve in one continued degree; but excellence, the daring and the happy, can only be attained, by human faculties, by starts.

      Our poets who possess the greatest genius, with perhaps the least industry, have at the same time the most splendid and the worst passages of poetry. Shakspeare and Dryden are at once the greatest and the least of our poets. With some, their great fault consists in having none.

      Carraccio sarcastically said of Tintoret—Ho veduto il Tintoretto hora eguale a Titiano, hora minore del Tintoretto—"I have seen Tintoret now equal to Titian, and now less than Tintoret."

      Trublet justly observes—The more there are beauties and great beauties in a work, I am the less surprised to find faults and great faults. When you say of a work that it has many faults, that decides nothing: and I do not know by this, whether it is execrable or excellent. You tell me of another, that it is without any faults: if your account be just, it is certain the work cannot be excellent.

      It was observed of one pleader, that he knew more than he said; and of another, that he said more than he knew.

      Lucian happily describes the works of those who abound with the most luxuriant language, void of ideas. He calls their unmeaning verbosity "anemone-words;" for anemonies are flowers, which, however brilliant, only please the eye, leaving no fragrance. Pratt, who was a writer of flowing but nugatory verses, was compared to the daisy; a flower indeed common enough, and without odour.

      GEOGRAPHICAL STYLE.

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      There are many sciences, says Menage, on which we cannot indeed compose in a florid or elegant diction, such as geography, music, algebra, geometry, &c. When Atticus requested Cicero to write on geography, the latter excused himself, observing that its scenes were more adapted to please the eye, than susceptible of the embellishments of style. However, in these kind of sciences, we may lend an ornament to their dryness by introducing occasionally some elegant allusion, or noticing some incident suggested by the object.

      Thus when we notice some inconsiderable place, for instance Woodstock, we may recall attention to the residence of Chaucer, the parent of our poetry, or the romantic labyrinth of Rosamond; or as in "an Autumn on the Rhine," at Ingelheim, at the view of an old palace built by Charlemagne, the traveller adds, with "a hundred columns brought from Rome," and further it was "the scene of the romantic amours of that monarch's fair daughter, Ibertha, with Eginhard, his secretary:" and viewing the Gothic ruins on the banks of the Rhine, he noticed them as having been the haunts of those illustrious chevaliers voleurs whose chivalry consisted in pillaging the merchants and towns, till, in the thirteenth century, a citizen of Mayence persuaded the merchants of more than a hundred towns to form a league against these little princes and counts; the origin of the famous Rhenish league, which contributed so much to the commerce of Europe. This kind of erudition gives an interest to topography, by associating in our memory great events and personages with the localities.

      The same principle of composition may be carried with the happiest effect into some dry investigations, though the profound antiquary may not approve of these sports of wit or fancy. Dr. Arbuthnot, in his Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures, a topic extremely barren of amusement, takes every opportunity of enlivening the dulness of his task; even in these mathematical calculations he betrays his wit; and observes that "the polite Augustus, the emperor of the world, had neither any glass in his windows, nor a shirt to his back!" Those uses of glass and linen indeed were not known in his time. Our physician is not less curious and facetious in the account of the fees which the Roman physicians received.

      LEGENDS.

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      Those ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends are said to have originated in the following circumstance.

      Before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, the professors in rhetoric frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at amplification. The students, at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents to be found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet, when James de Voragine, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought for their materials in the libraries of the monasteries; and, awakening from the dust these manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all imaginable simplicity, and as these are adorned by a number of cuts, the miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Tillemont, Fleury, Baillet, Launoi, and Bollandus, cleared away much of the rubbish; the enviable title of Golden Legend, by which James de Voragine called his work, has been disputed; iron or lead might more aptly describe its character.

      When the world began to be more critical in their reading, the monks gave a graver turn to their narratives; and became penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends, that the line of tradition has been preserved unbroken; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came down in a most imperfect state.

      Baronius has given the lives of many apocryphal saints; for instance, of a Saint Xinoris, whom he calls a martyr of Antioch; but it appears that Baronius having read in Chrysostom this word, which signifies a couple or pair, he mistook it for the name of a saint, and contrived to give the most authentic biography of a saint who never existed!39 The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it is only fools who laugh! As a specimen of the happier inventions, one is given, embellished by the diction of Gibbon—

      "Among