Born: Joseph Justus
Sealiger, eminent critic, 1540, Agen, France; John
Augustus Ernesti, classical editor, 1707, Tennstadt,
in Thuringia; Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet, 1792, Field
Place, near Horsham, Sussex.
Died: Pope Martin III,
946; Henry I of France, 1060, Vitry en Brie; Simon de
Montfort, Earl of Leicester, killed at battle of
Evesham, 1265; Wenceslaus V, king of Bohemia, stabbed
at Olmutz, 1306; Jacques d'Armagnac, Due de Nemours,
beheaded by Louis XI., 1477; William Cecil, Lord
Burleigh, 1598; George Abbot, archbishop of
Canterbury, 1633, Croydon; William Cave, eminent
scholar and divine (Lives of the Apostles), 1713,
Windsor; William Fleetwood, bishop of Ely, 1723, Tottenham; John Bacon,
sculptor, 1799; Viscount Adam
Duncan, admiral and hero of Camperdown, 1804; John
Banim, Irish novelist, 1842, near Kilkenny.
Feast Day: St. Luanus
or Lugid, sometimes called Moles, abbot in Ireland,
622. St. Dominic, confessor, and founder of the Friar
Preachers, 1221.
ST.
DOMINIC
The Romish church has been for
nothing more remarkable than the many revivals of
energy within her pale under the impulse of particular
enthusiasts. One of these took place at the beginning
of the thirteenth century, through the zeal of a
Spanish gentleman, named Dominic de Guzman, born at
Calaruega, in Old Castile, in the year 1170. Had
Dominic chosen an ordinary course of life, he would
have been a man of station and dignity in the eye of
the world. But, being from his infant years of a
religious frame of mind, he was content to resign all
worldly honour, that he might devote himself wholly to
the service of God. Protestants hardly do justice to
such men. Think of their objects as we will, we must
own that, in confining themselves to a diet of pulse
and a bed of boards, in giving away everything they
had to the poor, in chastising themselves out of every
earthly indulgence, and giving nearly their whole time
to religious exercises, they established such a claim
to popular admiration, that the influence they
acquired was not to be wondered at.
As an example of the
self-devotion of Dominic, he offered to go as a slave
into Morocco, that so he might purchase the liberation
of another person. The purpose of all his devotions
was to secure the eternal welfare of others. It was
the 'Waldensian heresy' that first put him into great
activity. His success in restoring many of the Vaudois
to the church seems to have suggested to him that he,
and others associated with him, might greatly advance
the interests of religion by a practice of going about
preaching and praying continually, while at the same
time visibly abstaining in their own persons from
every sort of indulgence. In the course of a few
years, he had thus established a new order of
religious called the Black or Preaching Friars, or
shortly, from his own name, the Dominicans (the term
black referred to the hue of the cloak and hood which
they wore).
This order was sanctioned by
Pope Innocent III in 1215, and very soon it had its
establishments in most European countries. There were
in England, at the Reformation, forty-three
monasteries of Blackfriars, and in Scotland fifteen.
Dominic was unremitting in his exertions to extend,
sustain, and animate his institution. He performed
many journeys, always on foot, and on bare feet. He
braved every sort of danger. He never shewed the
slightest symptom of pride in his success: all with
him was for the glory of God and the saving of men.
The contemporary memoirs which describe his life are
full of miracles attributed to him. He on several
occasions restored to life persons believed to be
dead. Often, in holy raptures at the altar, he
appeared to the bystanders elevated into the air. It
was his ardent desire to shed his blood for the cause
he had espoused; but in this he was not gratified. The
founder of the Dominicans calmly expired of a fever at
Bologna, at the age of fifty-one. He was canonized by
Gregory IX in 1234.
SIMON DE MONTFORT
Simon de Montfort, Earl of
Leicester�the Cromwell of the thirteenth century�was a
French noble possessed of English property and rank
through his mother. We know little of the early years
he spent in France; but, after establishing himself at
the English court, he soon comes into notice. By the
favour of the young king, Henry III, he was united to
the monarch's widowed sister Eleanor, notwithstanding
a difficulty arising from a vow of the lady's never to
wed a second husband. This marriage involved De Montfort in many troubles, and
lost him, for a time,
the friendship of the king. After a temporary absence
from England, he returned to raise the means of going
on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Duly provided, he
journeyed to Syria, where he greatly distinguished
himself by his military talents and achievements, and
became extremely popular with the Christians. He
returned to England in 1241, and appeared to have
recovered all the favour at court which he had
formerly enjoyed.
In 1242, he distinguished
himself in the war against the French. But he had now
become well known as a political reformer, and as a
champion of popular liberties; and it is not
improbable that his known principles had been partly
the means of raising him enemies at court. His name
stood second among the signatures to the bold
remonstrance against papal extortion and oppression in
1246, and in 1248 the king was driven by his
remonstrances into a temporary fit of economy. Earl
Simon had formed a design to return to the Holy Land,
but King Henry, embarrassed at this time by the
turbulence of his subjects in Gascony, persuaded him
to remain and undertake the government of that
country, where he soon reduced the rebels to
submission. In consequence of King Henry's imprudence,
the rebellion broke out with more fury than ever, and
it not only required all the earl's military talents
to suppress it a second time, but he was obliged to
raise money on his own estates to carry on the war, in
consequence of the miserable condition of the royal
treasury.
The rebel leaders now sought
to injure in another way the governor with whom they
could no longer contend openly, and they sent a
deputation to England, to accuse him to the king of
tyranny and extortion in his administration�charges
which seem, if true at all, to have been excessively
exaggerated. Yet the king listened to them eagerly,
and when Earl Simon arrived at court to plead his own
cause, a violent scene took place, which shewed that
the king could lose his dignity as easily as the earl
his temper, and they were only reconciled by the
interference of Prince Richard and the Earls of
Gloucester and Hereford. From this moment the king no
longer disguised his hatred to Simon de Montfort.
Nevertheless, the latter
consented to resume the command in Gascony, where he
found affairs in greater confusion than ever. He was
proceeding to execute his difficult task with his
usual ability, when the king sent directions to his
subjects in Gascony not to obey him, and appointed his
young son, Edward, to govern in his stead. When the
earl became aware of this treacherous conduct, he left
Gascony and repaired to Paris, where he was held in
such esteem that the regency of France, in the absence
of its king, was offered him. But he remained steady
in his duties to his adopted country, declined this
great honour, and soon afterwards, when Gascony was
nearly lost by the misconduct of King Henry's
officers, he voluntarily offered his services in
restoring it, which were gladly accepted. When the
province was by his means reduced to obedience and
order, the earl, now reconciled with the king,
returned to England, where King Henry's misgovernment
had brought the kingdom to the eve of a civil war.
Such were the antecedents of
the great baron who was now to assume a still more
exalted character. The events of
the Barons' War are
given in every history of England, and can only be
told very briefly here. At the parliament of Oxford in
1258, the barons of the popular party overpowered the
court, and compelled the king to consent to statutes
which took the government out of his hands and placed
it in those of twenty-four persons, twelve of whom
were to be chosen by each of the two parties. The
first name on the baronial list was that of Simon de Montfort, whom the barons
now looked upon as their
leader. The insolent and oppressive foreigners, who,
under Henry's favour, had eaten up the land, were now
driven out of England, and the government was carried
on with a degree of justice and vigour which was quite
new.
The king, meanwhile, was
behaving basely and treacherously, and he had taken
steps to induce the pope not only to absolve him from
all oaths he had taken, or might take, but to
interfere in his favour in a more direct manner. The
pope's brief arrived in 1261, when the king, whose
friends had gained over some of the less patriotic of
the barons, ventured to throw off the mask, and
proclaimed all to be null and void which had been done
since the parliament of Oxford. The result of all
this, after two or three years of turbulence and
confusion, was the great battle of Lewes, Wednesday,
May 14, 1264, in which the barons, under the command
of Simon de Montfort, obtained so sanguinary and
decisive a victory, that the king, his son Edward
(afterwards Edward I), and the king's brother,
Richard, King of the Romans, remained among the
prisoners, and the royal cause was for the time
utterly ruined.
The principles now proclaimed
by Earl Simon and the barons, involved principles of
political freedom of the most exalted character; which
we can only understand by supposing that they were
founded partly on older Anglo-Saxon sentiments, and
that they were moulded under the influence of men of
learning who had studied not in vain the writers of
the classic ages. A rather long Latin poem, written by
one on the baronial side soon after the battle of
Lewes, and intended, no doubt, to be recited among the
clergy of that party, who were very numerous, in order
to keep constantly before their minds the principles
which the barons fought for, gives a complete
exposition of the political doctrines of what we may
call the constitutional party of the middle of the
thirteenth century, and they are doctrines of which we
need not be ashamed at the present day.
This curious poem, which is
printed in Mr. Wright's Political Songs
(published by the Camden Society), lays it down very
clearly, that the king derives his power from the
people; that he holds it for the public good; and that
he is under control, and responsible for his actions.
Even feudalism is totally ignored in it, and it was
the plebs plurima, the mass of the people, for whom
Earl Simon and his barons fought, it was salutem
communitatis, the weal of the community, he sought,
and the king's defeat was a just judgment upon him,
because he was 'a transgressor of the laws.' 'For,' we
are here told, 'every king is ruled by the laws.'
The nobles are spoken of as
placed between the people and the king as guardians of
their liberties, to watch over the exercise of the
royal power and prevent its abuse. ' If the king
should adopt measures destructive to the kingdom, or
should nourish the desire of setting his own power
above the laws�if thus or otherwise the kingdom should
be in danger�then the magnates of the kingdom are
bound to look to it, ' that the land be purged of all
errors.' The constraint to which a king is rightly
subjected, is only a just power held over him to
prevent his doing wrong, or choosing bad ministers�it
is not making him a slave. 'He who should be in truth
a king,' the poem says, 'he is truly free if he rule
rightly himself and the people; let him know that all
things are permitted him which are in governing
convenient to the kingdom, but not such as are
injurious to it. It is one thing to rule according to
a king's duty, and another to destroy by resisting the
law.' 'If,' it goes on to say, 'a king is less wise
than he ought to be, what advantage will the kingdom
gain by his reign? If he alone has the right to
choose, he will be easily deceived, since he is not
capable of knowing who will be useful. Therefore, let
the community of the kingdom advise; and let it be
known what the generality thinks, to whom their own
laws are best known ... it concerns the community to
see what sort of men ought justly to be chosen for the
utility of the kingdom It is a thing which concerns
the whole community, to see that miserable wretches be
not made the leaders of the royal dignity, but that
they be good and chosen men, and the most approved
that can be found.'
In accordance with these
sentiments, a summons was issued, dated from
Worcester, on the 14
th
of December 1264, calling a
parliament to meet on the 20
th
of January following,
addressed to the barons, both lay and ecclesiastic,
and two representatives from each county. Ten days
later, on the 24
th
of December, new writs were issued,
calling upon each city and town in the kingdom 'to
choose and send two discreet, loyal, and honest men,'
to represent them in the same parliament. This second
summons was dated from Woodstock, and is the first
instance in which the commons, properly speaking, were
ever called to sit in an English parliament. If there
were nothing else for which we have reason to be
grateful to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, we
certainly have reason to be thankful to him for laying
the foundation of the English House of Commons.
This great revolution was too
advanced for an age in which feudalism, though in a
weakened form, was established in our island, and
physical force was distributed into too few hands to
remain united. Success only made place for personal
jealousies, and selfish motives led many of the barons
to desert the popular cause, while others were
quarrelling among themselves. A succession of
intrigues followed, and new leagues were formed among
the barons, until, on the 4th of August 1265, the
decisive battle of Evesham was fought, in which Simon
de Montfort was slain, and the barons sustained a
ruinous defeat. The joy of the royalists was shewn in
the indignities which they heaped upon the body of the
great statesman, but his work remained, and none of
the substantial advantages of the baronial war of the
middle of the thirteenth century have ever been lost.
The short period of the battles of Lewes and Evesham
stands as a marked division between two periods of
English constitutional history.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
At the hour of eight, on the
morning of Friday, 3rd of August 1492, Columbus, with
his little squadron of three ships, sailed from the
port of Palos, in Spain, with the object of reaching
India by a westerly course. The result of this voyage
was, as is well known, the discovery of the continent
now termed America; and thus the remarkable prediction
of the old pagan philosopher and poet, Seneca, was
almost literally fulfilled:
Venient annis secula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet,
et ingens pateat tellus,
Tethysque novos detegat orbes;
Nee sit terris ultima Thule.'
The life and voyages of
Columbus, being matters of history, are without the
pale of our limited sphere. It is not generally known,
however, that a very obscure point in the history of
his first voyage, has lately been most satisfactorily
cleared up, Captain Becher, of the Royal Navy, aided
by the practical skill of a thorough seaman, and the
scientific acquirements of an accomplished
hydrographer, having clearly proved that Watling's
Island, one of the Bahamas, was the first land, in the
New World, seen by Columbus, and not the Island of
Guanahini, as had previously been generally supposed.
The precise meaning of the
curious form of signature, adopted by the great
navigator, is still a subject for doubtful
speculation; that he himself considered it to be of
weighty importance, is evident from the following
injunction in his will: 'Don Diego, my son, or any
other, who may inherit this estate, on coining into
possession of the inheritance, shall sign with the
signature which I now make use of; which is an S, with
an X under it, and an M, with a Roman A over it, and
over that an S, and a great Y, with an S over it, with
its lines and points as is my custom, as may be seen
by my signature, of which there are many, and it will
be seen by the present one. He shall only write The
Admiral, whatever titles the king may have conferred
upon him. This is to be understood, as respects his
signature; but not the enumeration of his titles,
which he can make at full length if agreeable; only
the signature is to be The Admiral'�El Almirante. The
signature thus specified, is the following:
The Xpo, signifying Christo,
is in Greek letters; and, indeed, it is not unusual at
the present day, in Spain, to find a mixture of Greek
and Roman letters and languages in signatures and
inscriptions. This signature of Columbus exemplifies
the peculiar character of the man, who, considering
himself selected and set apart from all others, by the
will of Providence, for the accomplishment of a great
purpose�great in a temporal, greater still in a
spiritual point of view�adopted a correspondent
formality and solemnity in all his actions. Named
after St. Christopher, whose legendary history is
comprised in his name Christophorus-the bearer of
Christ�being said to have carried the infant Saviour
on his shoulders over an arm of the sea�Columbus felt
that he, too, was destined to carry over the sea the
glad tidings of the gospel, to nations dwelling in the
darkness of paganism.
Spotorno, commencing with the
lower letters of the mysterious signature, and
connecting them with those above, conjectures them to
represent the words Xristus Sancta Maria Josephus.
Captain Becher, however, has given a much simpler,
and, in all probability, the correct solution of the
enigma. It was from Queen Isabella that Columbus,
after many disappointments, first received the welcome
intelligence, that he should be sent on his voyage,
and that his son would be received into the royal
service during his absence. Moved to tears of joy and
gratitude at the prospect of realising the grand
object of his life, and the advancement and protection
offered to his son, the great man, as soon as his
feelings allowed utterance, exclaimed: ' I shall ever
be the servant of your majesty!' We may readily
believe that Columbus would retain this sentiment of
devoted service, and bequeath it as a sacred heir-loom
to his successors; and assuming that the concealed
words are Spanish, and the letters are to be read in
their regular order, they, in all probability,
signify:
SERVIDOR
SUS ALTEZAS SACRAS
JESUS MARIA ISABEL.
Or in English
and in full:
THE SERVANT
OF THEIR SACRED HIGHNESSES
JESUS MARY AND ISABELLA,
CHRIST BEARING.
THE ADMIRAL.
SHELLEY
It would be difficult to point
out a career, as recent and familiar to us as that of
Shelley, involved in so many obscurities. From some
peculiar bias of temperament, or constitutional
irregularity, his imagination stamped much more vivid
impressions on his own mind than most men's
imaginations are wont to do; so that it often happened
to him that old fancies took the form of
reminiscences, and he believed in a past which had
never existed. His personal and familiar friends, Mr.
Hogg and Mr. Peacock, both of whom have written down
their kindly recollections, skew this very clearly.
Mr. Hogg uses strong language. 'He was,' he says,
speaking of Shelley, 'altogether incapable of
rendering an account of any transaction whatsoever,
according to the strict and precise truth, and the
bare naked realities of actual life; not through an
addiction to falsehood, which he cordially detested,
but because he was the creature �the unsuspecting and
unresisting victim�of his irresistible imagination.
Had he written to ten
different individuals the history of some proceeding
in which he was himself a party and an eye-witness,
each of his ten reports would have varied from the
rest in essential and important particulars.' Though
this statement looks somewhat exaggerated, Mr.
Peacock, who quotes it, does not contradict it, and
many of his anecdotes go to shew that it is, in the
main, true; and the result is, that many stories,
confidently reported�many tragic histories of nightly
attempts to assassinate the poet, or mysterious
visitants to his abode, or singular events in his
ordinary life, resting only on his own testimony�will
have to be quietly, though often, doubtless,
reluctantly, passed over by a cautious biographer.
Concerning Shelley, already much error has been
corrected, and probably more remains to correct; even
as many more particulars have still to be revealed.
Strictly speaking, Shelley's life is still unwritten,
and at present it will remain so, though the leading
events are well known.
Percy Bysshe Shelley came of
an aristocratic stock. At the time of his birth, the
4th of August 1792, his grandfather was a baronet, and
before Shelley was many years old, his father
succeeded to the title, as also did. Shelley's son,
Sir Percy, after the poet's death. At ten years old,
he was sent to Zion House Academy, near Brentford, and
in his fifteenth year he went to Eton. Being of a
sensitive nature, he had to pass through many
troubles, and his eccentricities brought him into
more, before he had been at Oxford many terms. He and
Mr. Hogg, a college-friend, concocted a little
pamphlet on religious subjects, and printed it for
private circulation; and the master and fellows of
University College saw good, in a fit of rigid
orthodoxy, to expel both of them. Men who think little
are often severely orthodox, but deep thinkers are
mostly lenient towards the scruples of others.
Nevertheless, we must admit
that Shelley went far enough to startle more than
mediocrity. Even at Zion House Academy he was given to
raising the devil, and throughout his life he
remained, let us say, a philosopher. That earnestness
and love of truth which made comedy repulsive to him,
conspired, with independent and original thinking, to
make him very fearless in expressing and maintaining
his many eccentric opinions. Young thinkers are
generally sanguine and self-important; they seem to
fancy that the world never existed till they
themselves set eyes on it, and deem them-selves
inspired apostles specially raised up to set truth on
its feet again.
Shelley's circumstances, after
his expulsion from Oxford, became straitened. His
father, who was never kind to him, refused supplies,
and he had to live on secret remittances from his
kind-hearted sisters. They sent them to his lodging in
London by the willing hand of a school-fellow,
Harriet
Westbrook, and the sympathy she shewed won the heart
of the grateful youth. The two children, as we may
call them, came to an understanding, and eloped to
Scotland, and their marriage-ceremony was performed at
Edinburgh in August 1811, Shelley being nineteen, and
his wife not so old.
Matters went on pleasantly for
a time, and Harriet Shelley made an affectionate wife;
but she did not prove exactly the partner fully to
correspond to her husband. Love cannot do all the
household-work, but requires some handmaidens. There
was still a void, as the future revealed, ungraciously
enough. Shelley did not allow it to himself, and in
1814, the marriage-ceremony was performed again,
according to the English form; but soon afterwards he
met with Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, and the strong
current of his feelings changed. Mary Godwin was a
woman of great intellectual energy and congenial
tastes; and so, at once�let no man judge him!�he left
his wife without her consent; he left her sister, whom
he disliked intensely; and his children, whom he loved
to carry in his arms, singing a strange lullaby of 'Ya'hmani,
Ya'hmani, Ya'hmani, Ya'hmani;' and went abroad with
the other lady. Harriet drowned herself in the
Serpentine two years later, and Miss Godwin became
Mrs. Shelley.
Shelley's children by his
first wife were taken from him, on the plea that their
father held, and acted upon, opinions with respect to
marriage 'injurious to the best interests of society.'
It is not correct, as usually stated, that this
deprivation was made because of his heterodox
religious opinions. His first wife's tragical end, as
well as the loss of his little ones, affected Shelley
with the most lively grief; although the same
considerations, which will make many readers smile at
the statement, sealed his lips.
Much of the rest of Shelley's
short life was spent in Italy. His father had finally
arranged to allow him a thousand a year, so that
anxiety on that score was taken away. Surrounded with
the grand features and exquisite beauties of prodigal
nature, he fed the unceasing stream of his spiritual
fancy, and filled the world with the luxurious music
of strains, wild as Anion's; all the time drawing
visibly nearer�so say some who knew him, though. not
all�to the evident catastrophe, premature death.
Inevitable as early death was to his failing
constitution, it came before the expected time; for a
squall sank his boat in the bay of Spezzia, and the
waves received him, together with his friend, Captain
Williams. After long search, the bodies were found and
burned�that of Captain Williams on August 15, 1822,
and that of Shelley on the following day�according to
the requirements of quarantine regulations. Byron,
Leigh Hunt, and Trelawny performed the
last obsequies,
and Trelawny and Hunt have left us an account of them.
His ashes were interred in the Protestant cemetery at
Rome.
Shelley had three children by
his second wife; William and Clara, who died before
him, and the one who was afterwards Sir Percy. Mrs.
Shelley survived him many years, and lived to publish
his Memorials. The poet's lines on his little boy are
worthy of a place in this brief sketch:
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY
(With what truth I may
say�
Roma! Roma! Roma!
Non 'e piu come era prima!)
My lost William, thou in
whom
Some bright spirit lived, and did
That decaying robe consume
Which its lustre faintly hid,
Here its ashes find a tomb,
But beneath this pyramid
Thou art not�if a thing divine
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
Is thy mother's grief and mine.
Where art thou, my gentle
child?
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds,
Among these tombs and ruins wild;
Let me think that through low seeds
Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass,
Into their hues and scents may pass A portion'
Let the reader decide why the
verse is left unfinished.
A familiar acquaintance
existed between Shelley and Byron. They made an
excursion together round the Lake of Geneva, and
afterwards saw a great deal of each other in Italy.
Shelley believed implicitly in Byron's genius, yet
their natures were not, in many respects, congenial.
Byron was a problem to Shelley, and sometimes a source
of amusement. We meet with a playful instance of his
quiet sarcasm in a letter to Peacock, written in
August 1821, which will also afford a curious
illustration of their manner of life:
'Lord Byron gets
up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual
custom, but one must sleep or die, like Southey's
sea-snake in Kehama, at twelve. After breakfast, we
sit talking till six. From six till eight we gallop
through the pine-forests which divide Ravenna from the
sea; then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping
till six in the morning. I do not think this will kill
me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it
longer. Lord B.'s establishment consists, besides
servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three
monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon;
and all these, except the horses, walk about the
house, which every now and then resounds with their
unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of
it ....
P.S.�After I have sealed my letter, I find
that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean
palace was defective, and that in a material point. I
have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks,
two guinea-hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who
all these animals were before they were changed into
these shapes.'
A most brotherly and
affectionate friendship existed between Shelley and
Leigh Hunt. Leigh Hunt went to Italy at Shelley's
instigation, to share in the preparation of a
quarterly magazine�The Liberal�which Shelley, Byron,
and Hunt were mainly to support: he lost his friend
soon after his arrival. Leigh Hunt well knew�knew
perhaps better than any one�the generous, kind, and
noble, and loving nature so tragically taken from the
earth.
Shelley was a genius in the
highest sense of the word. His spiritual, impressible
soul was little fitted to be penned up in a
common-place world. Though he lived but a brief
period, his pen was prolific, wild, and musical,
beyond anything written since, if not before. His
poems will maintain a place in the literature of his
country, although, from their subtlety, and their
philosophic tendency, many of them are tiresome to
read, and will remain unread except by a few. His
earliest effort, Queen Mab, was inspired by Southey's
Thalaba, and contains much speculative matter. The
Revolt of Islam is his longest poem: it met with
virulent censure in its first form, and under its
earlier title of Lam and Cythna. The Cenci was one of
the few productions of his pen which were popular in
his own time. A drama, harrowing in its details,
taking for its subject the horrible story of Beatrice
Cenci, it is less mystical than most of Shelley's
writings, and possesses more human interest, though it
cannot be considered in any sense fit for the stage.
The Adonais, or lament for
Keats, is a favourite with
every one; and many of his smaller poems, such as The
Skylark, The Invitation, and others, figure in every
selection of English poetry. Had he lived longer, it
is more than probable he would have acquired a firmer
tone, and a more popular and enduring manner.
We may append, in conclusion,
Shelley's own lines:
Music, when soft voices
die,
Vibrates on the memory
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.'
It would not be right to omit
Robert Browning's beautiful tribute to the memory of
the poet:
Memorabilia.
'Ah, did you once see
Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you?
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!
But you were living before
that,
And you are living after,
And the memory I started at
My starting moves your laughter!
I crossed a moor with a
name of its own,
And a use in the world, no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about
For there I picked up on
the heather,
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle feather�
Well, I forget the rest.'
ARCHBISHOP
ABBOT'S LAST HUNT
On the 4th of August 1621, Mr.
John Chamberlain writing, as he was accustomed to do,
to Sir Dudley Carleton, adverted to a strange accident
which had just fallen out in the hands of the
Archbishop of Canterbury (George Abbot). In those
days, when hunting was the favourite and almost the
only amusement of the English nobility, the gay train
of huntsmen, falconers, verderers, and rangers seldom
left the courtyard without ecclesiastics among them.
The purity of ' the cloth' was not thought to be in
the least stained by partaking in such sport. Even the
Arch-bishop of Canterbury of the time above
indicated�all Calvinist as he was�did not scruple to
join in the pleasures of the chase. He was now on the
borders of sixty, and his declining health made such
recreation the more desirable. Paying a visit to Lord
Zouch, at his seat of Bramshill, in Hampshire, the
archbishop accompanied a hunting party to the field,
furnished with a cross-bow, the weapon then usually
employed against deer.
A buck being started, his
Grace discharged an arrow, which, instead of hitting
the animal, struck the arm of Peter Hawkins, one
of
Lord Zouch's gamekeepers. An artery was divided, and
the poor man bled to death in half an hour, to the
inexpressible grief and distress of the archbishop,
although the bystanders acquitted him of everything
save awkwardness. His Grace made all the reparation in
his power by settling an annuity on the widow and
children of the deceased. He also thenceforth held a
monthly fast on account of the sad event.
Casualty as the act obviously
was, there were not wanting some who urged that the
archbishop should be tried for it as a crime. King
James knew too well the chances of the hunting-field
to allow of any such course being taken. He remarked
that he had once himself shot a keeper's horse under
him; the queen, too, had on another occasion killed
him one of the best braches (hounds) he ever
possessed. It was a mere misfortune which might befall
any man. In this light the accident was viewed by the
inquest held on the body of Hawkins; nay, in their
verdict, they found that the man's death came 'per infortunium su�
propri
�
culp�'
It was, nevertheless, an
accident not easily to be passed over in an
archbishop. Many doubted if, with blood on his hands,
he could henceforth exercise the functions of a
prelate. To settle this point, a mixed commission was
appointed by the king, and this court sat five months
deliberating on the many subtleties connected with the
question, at length pronouncing that the archbishop
required both a royal pardon, and a re-instatement in
his metropolitan authority. After all this was done,
Laud and three other
clergymen, elected to bishoprics,
refused to accept consecration from Abbot, and the
rite was accordingly performed by a congregation of
prelates in the Bishop of London's chapel. There can
be little doubt that dislike for the archbishop's puritanic leanings actuated
these scrupulous divines
fully as much as a horror for the blood of Hawkins.
Archbishop Abbot was of humble
extraction, his father being a cloth-worker at
Guildford, in Surrey. It is told that his mother, a
short while before his birth, dreamed that if she
could have a pike or jack to eat, the baby she was
expecting would rise to greatness. Some time after,
fetching water from the river, a jack came into her
pail, which she immediately cooked and ate. Some
persons of rank hearing of this, offered themselves as
sponsors to the child; and a gentleman one day passing
over Guildford Bridge, noticed George and his brother
Robert playing, and struck with their appearance,
offered to put them to school, and then sent them to
the university. In 1599, George was installed Dean of
Winchester; ten years after, advanced to the see of
Lichfield, thence to London, and the year after to the
Primacy.
He took a leading part in
completing the Reformation; assisted materially in the
translation of the Bible; counselled his king wisely
in many difficult matters; opposing him fearlessly in
his declaration of sports and pastimes on Sunday, and
in the divorce which was granted to the Countess of
Essex. He died on the 4th of August 1633, at the age
of seventy-one, and was buried in the old church at
Guildford: an altar tomb, with a canopy supported by
six black marble pillars, under which is his
full-length figure in his robes, marks the spot: at
the west end is a curious representation of a
sepulchre filled with skulls and bones, and a grating
before it carved in the stone.
DISSOLUTION OF THE PRIORY, WALSINGHAM AUGUST 4, 1538
'Give me my scallop-shell
of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory (hope's true gage),
And then I'll take my pilgrimage.'
Let us hope that these
beautiful lines of
Sir Walter Raleigh were
the sincere
feelings of many a pious soul, on pilgrimage to the
far-famed shrine of our Ladye at Walsingham; a little
spot in Norfolk, lying a few miles distant from the
sea, which was the rival of our Ladye of Loretto, or
St. James of Compostella, in the number of pilgrims
who were yearly attracted to it; indeed, the town was
created and subsisted solely upon these travellers,
being nothing but a collection of inns and hostelries
for their accommodation. Walsingham Chapel was founded
in 1061, by the widow of Ricoldie de Faverches, and
owed its reputation to the fact of its being an exact
facsimile of the Santa Casa, or home of the Virgin
Mary, at Nazareth; which house was, three hundred
years after, said to have been carried by angels to
Loretto.
The Crusaders and pilgrims to
Palestine transferred their affections to the Norfolk
shrine, after the Mohammedans had conquered Nazareth;
believing that the Virgin had deserted her real home,
and established herself in England, when the infidels
desecrated the Holy Land. The splendid priory which
soon arose beside the chapel was founded by Godfrey de Faverches, and granted
to the order of St.
Augustine;
and in 1420, a large and handsome church was built at
the side of the low-roofed shrine of which
Erasmus
speaks in his famous Colloquy upon Pilgrimages. He
says, 'The church is splendid and beautiful, but the
Virgin dwells not in it; that veneration and respect
is only granted to her Son. She has her church so
contrived as to be on the right hand of her Son, but
neither in that cloth she live, the building not being
finished.' The original shrine he describes as being
'built of wood, pilgrims are admitted through a narrow
door at each side.
There is but little or no
light in it, but what proceeds from wax-tapers
yielding a most pleasant and odoriferous smell; but if
you look in, you will say it is the seat of the gods,
so bright and shining as it is all over with jewels,
gold, and silver." That the treasures of the place,
arising from gifts and benefactions, were very great,
we have abundant evidence. Lord Burghersh, K.G., left
in his will, in 1369, that a statue of himself on
horseback should be made in silver, and offered to the
Virgin; Henry VII had the same kind of image made,
above three feet high, of his own effigy, kneeling on
a table, with 'a brode border, and in the same graven
and written with large letters, blake enameled, these
words: " Sancte Thoma, intercede pro me."'
The Plantagenet kings were
great benefactors to it. Henry III, Edwards I and II,
were among those who made the Walsingham pilgrimage.
Charles V, when He came secretly, to gain
Wolsey's
ear, made this pilgrimage his ostensible reason. At no
time was it more popular than just before its
destruction: Henry VIII walked there barefoot, to
present a costly necklace to the Virgin, and made it
his favourite place of devotion, with Catharine of
Aragon, perhaps partly induced by his minister
Wolsey's great affection for the neighbourhood of his
birth: yet the caprice, which is perhaps a truer word
than principle, of this monarch induced him not long
after to order this famous chapel to be desecrated.
The dying tyrant is said to have felt this sin lie
more heavily on his conscience than many others, and,
after all, unable to throw off his early
superstitions, he left his soul in charge of the Lady
of Walsingham: his poor divorced Catharine did the
same with much more sincerity, and ordered two hundred
nobles to be given by a pilgrim in charity on his way
there.
Erasmus gives us a very
amusing account of the wonders of the place, and the
miracle performed there. 'On the north side there is a
gate, which has a very small wicket, so that any one
wanting to enter is obliged first to subject his limbs
to attack, and then must stoop his head. Our reverend
guide related that once a knight, seated on his horse,
escaped by this door from the hands of his enemy, who
was at the time closely pressing upon him. The
wretched man, thinking himself lost, by a sudden
aspiration commended his safety to the Virgin who was
so near; and, lo!�the unheard of occurrence!�on a
sudden the man and horse were together within the
precincts of the church, and the pursuer fruitlessly
storming without.
"And did he make you swallow
such a wonderful story?"
"Unquestionably. He pointed
out a brass-plate nailed to the gate, representing the
scene; the knight had a beard as long as a goat's, and
his dress fitted tightly without a wrinkle."
'It would be wrong to doubt
any longer.
'To the east of this is a
chapel full of wonders. A joint of a man's finger is
exhibited to us: I kiss it, and then ask: " Whose
relics were these?" He says: "St Peter's." Then
observing the size of the joint, which might have been
that of a giant, I remarked: "Peter must have been a
man of very large size." At this one of my companions
burst into a laugh, which I certainly took ill, and
pacified the attendant by offering him a few pence.
Before the chapel was a shed, under which are two
wells full to the brink; the water is wonderfully cold
and efficacious in curing pains in the head.
They affirm that the spring
suddenly burst from the earth at the command of the
most holy Virgin.' (These still exist, and are called
the Wishing-wells, as it was believed that the Virgin
granted to the pilgrims what they desired when
drinking.) 'I asked how many years it might be since
that little house was brought thither. He answered:
"Some centuries." "But the walls," I remarked, "do
not
bear any signs of age." He did not dispute the matter.
"But the wooden posts, the roof, and the thatch are
new, how, then, do you prove that this was the cottage
which was brought from a great distance?" He
immediately shewed us a very old bear's skin fixed to
the rafters, and almost ridiculed our dulness in not
having observed so manifest a proof.' In a more
satirical spirit Erasmus goes on to speak of the
heavenly milk of the blessed Virgin, which had been
brought from the Holy Land through many dangers,
making the canon to look aghast at him as if possessed
by fury and horrified at his blasphemous inquiries. He
next saw the wonderful jewel at the feet of the
Virgin, which the French named toad-stone, because it
so imitates the figure of a toad as no art could do
the like; and what snakes the miracle greater, the
stone is very small, the figure does not project, but
shines as if enclosed in the jewel itself.'
Among
other superstitions belonging to the place, was one
that the Milky-way pointed directly to the home of the
Virgin, in order to guide pilgrims on their road,
hence it was called the Walsingham-Way, which had its
counterpart on earth in the broad road which led
through Norfolk: at every town that it passed through
a cross was erected, pointing out the path to the holy
spot; some of these elegant structures still remain.
Let us now take a glance at
the pilgrims themselves; a class of persons who played
no unimportant part in the social life of the middle
ages. An example of the corps was clad in a long coat
of russet hue, a sort of broad flapped hat, which was
as often thrown back as worn on the head, with a long
staff in his hand, and silver scallop-shells
embroidered on his coat; an armorial bearing,
supposed, in the first instance, to have been assumed,
because these shells were used as drinking cups and
dishes in Palestine. Tin and leaden images were stuck
all over his hat and dress, to mark what holy shrines
he had visited; this is alluded to in a poem ascribed
to Chaucer:
'Then as manere and custom
is, signes there they bought,
For men of contre' should knowe whome they had
sought,
Echo man set his silver in such thing as they liked.
And in the meen while the millar had y-picked
His bosom full of signys of Caunterbury brochis.
They set their signys upon their hedes and some
oppon their capp,
And sith to the dyner ward they gan for to stapp.'
The reader will remember the
hat of Louis XI of France, described in Quentin
Durward as full of these leaden images of the Virgin.
In addition to these, the rosary was always hung over
the arm, that name being given in consequence of the
legend which relates that the Virgin presented her
chaplet of beads to St. Dominic, and that it was
scented with the sweet perfume of roses. It ought to
contain one hundred and fifty beads, in which one
Pater-noster comes after every ten Ave-Marias. It was
often made of jet or wood, but those of Cordova were
exquisitely worked in gold-filigree. A bottle slung at
the back, and a pouch in front, completed the orthodox
costume.
The abuses of these
pilgrimages occupy many a page in the old writers;
they led to lying, idleness, and mendicancy. A sermon
of the year 1407 thus remarks upon them:
'Also I knowe
well that when divers men and women will goe thus
after their own wines and finding out on pilgrimage,
they will ordaine with them before to have with them
both men and women that can well sing wanton songs,
and some other pilgrimes will have with them bagge-pipes;
so that everie town that they come through, what with
the noise of their singing and with the sound of their
piping, and with the jangling of their Canturburie-bells,
and with the barking out of dogges after them, that
they make more noice then if the king came there away
with all his clarions and many other minstrels. And if
these men and women be a moneth out in their
pilgrimage, many of them shall be a halfe yeare after
great janglers, tale-tellers, and liers.'
All which is
borne out by mine Host of the Tabarde:
Ye gon to Caunterbury; God
you spede,
The blisful martir quyte you youre mode!
And wel I wet, as ye gon by the way
Ye sehapen you to talken and to play,
For trewely comfort ne mirthe is non,
To ryden by the way dumb as a ston:
And therefore wold I maken you disport.'
It will be readily imagined
how great was the distress when Henry despoiled this
valuable shrine. The people of Norfolk rose in
insurrection, as they gained so great a profit from
the travellers who passed through the county, and who
would now be prevented coming. 'Indeed,' says one, 'it would have made a heart
of flint to have melted and
wept, to have seen the breaking up of the house, and
the sorrowful departure of the monks, every person
bent himself to filch and spoil what he could.' The
abbey became the property of Thomas Sydney, whose son
married the sister of Sir Francis Walsingliam, and
died very wealthy. In the Bodleian library there is a
poem, entitled a Lament for Walsingham, from which we
take a short specimen.
'Bitter, bitter oh to
behoulde,
The grasse to growe,
Where the walles of Walsingham
So stately did shewe.
Oules doe strike where the
sweetest himmes
Lately wear songe,
Toades and serpents hold their dennes
Where the palmers did throng.
Weepe, weepe, 0 Walsingham,
Whose dayes are nightes,
Blessings turned to blasphemies,
Holy deedes to despites.
Sinne is where our Lady
sate,
Heaven turned is to helle,
Sathan sitte where our
Lord did swaye, Walsingham, 0 farewell!'
But few ruins remain of this
once ' holy laude of blessed Walsingham.' A part of
the east front of the priory church, with a circular
window of flowing tracery, and four windows of the
refectory, are standing in the prettily laid-out
grounds of the present owner of the estate, the Lee-Warners,
by whom it was purchased in 1766.
HARROW
SHOOTINGS AND HARROW SPEECHES
The 4th of August is
associated with a very old custom at Harrow School�now
obsolete, and superseded by a celebration of another
kind. The practice of archery was coeval with the
establishment of this celebrated institution. Indeed,
by the rules laid down by John Lyon, the founder of
the school, the necessary implements for the proper
exercise of this amusement were required to be
furnished by the parents of every boy on his entering
the school. 'You shall allow your child,' said the
ordinances drawn up in 1592, 'at all times bow-shafts,
bow-strings, and a bracer.' The Butts at Harrow was,
in former days, a beautiful spot a little to the west
of the London road, backed by a lofty insulated knoll,
crowned with trees, and having rows of grassy seats,
cut on the slopes, for spectators. In the early ages
of the school, it was customary for the boys to
contend for the prize of a silver arrow; the number of
competitors being at first six, but afterwards
increased to twelve. The competitors were attired in
fancy-dresses, white, green, or red satin, decked with
spangles; with green silk sashes and caps.
In the Harrow Calendar it is
stated that one of these dresses is still preserved in
the school-library, where it has been for nearly a
hundred years. Whoever shot within the three circles
which surrounded the bull's-eye, was saluted with a
concert of French-horns; and he who first shot twelve
times nearest the mark, was proclaimed victor, and
marched back in triumph from the Butts to the town, at
the head of a procession of boys, carrying and waving
the silver arrow. The entertainments of the day were
concluded with a ball, given by the winner, in the
school-room, to which all the neighbouring families
were invited. The late master, the Rev. Dr. Drury,
spoke of an old print or drawing of the Butts on the
day of celebration, in these terms: 'The village
barber is seen walking off, like one of Homer's
heroes, with an arrow in his eye, stooping forward,
and evidently in great pain, with his hand applied to
the wound.
It is perfectly true that this
Tom of Coventry was so punished; and I have somewhere
a ludicrous account of it in Dr. Parr's all but
illegible holograph.' Scattered through the early
volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine are many
notices of the Harrow shootings, with the names of the
successful competitors. The gossip of the school
comprises a story that, in the last century, three
brothers successively carried off three silver arrows,
which their father stuck up in three corners of his
drawing-room; it became a matter of family pride to
fill up the fourth corner; and this was effected by
the success of a fourth brother in 1766.
Another anecdote was
communicated to the Dean of Peter-borough by the Hon.
Archibald Macdonald. On one particular 4th of August,
two boys, Merry and Love, were equal or nearly so, and
both of them decidedly superior to the rest. Love,
having shot his last arrow into the bull's eye, was
greeted by his school-fellows with a shout, 'Omnia
vincit Amor.' 'Not so,' said Merry in an under
voice, 'Nos non cedamus Asnori;' and carefully
adjusting his shaft, shot it into the bull's eye, a
full inch nearer to the centre than his exulting
competitor. So he gained the day.
The Harrow Shootings were
abolished in 1771. Dr. Heath, the head-master at that
time, was dissatisfied with the frequent exemptions
from the regular business of the school, which those
who practised as competitors for the prize claimed as
a privilege not to be infringed upon. He also
observed, as other masters had done before him, that
the contest usually brought down a band of profligate
and disorderly persons from the metropolis, to the
demoralisation of the village. The Harrovians deeply
regretted the ending of their old amusement; and, as a
record of it, they still preserve the silver arrow
made for 1772, but not used. The annual shootings were
succeeded by annual speeches, which, under many
modifications, have continued ever since.
