Curiosities of Literature (Vol. 1-3). Disraeli Isaac
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a social relaxation in the amusement of a barge on the Thames, which was well known to the circle of his friends; there, was festive hospitality with musical delight. It was resorted to by men of the most eminent talents and rank. His little voyages to Putney, to Kew, and to Richmond, and the literary intercourse they produced, were singularly happy ones. "The history of his amusements cannot be told without adding to the dignity of his character," observes Prince Hoare, in the life of this great philanthropist.
Some have found amusement in composing treatises on odd subjects. Seneca wrote a burlesque narrative of Claudian's death. Pierius Valerianus has written an eulogium on beards; and we have had a learned one recently, with due gravity and pleasantry, entitled "Eloge de Perruques."
Holstein has written an eulogium on the North Wind; Heinsius, on "the Ass;" Menage, "the Transmigration of the Parasitical Pedant to a Parrot;" and also the "Petition of the Dictionaries."
Erasmus composed, to amuse himself when travelling, his panegyric on Moria, or folly; which, authorised by the pun, he dedicated to Sir Thomas More.
Sallengre, who would amuse himself like Erasmus, wrote, in imitation of his work, a panegyric on Ebriety. He says, that he is willing to be thought as drunken a man as Erasmus was a foolish one. Synesius composed a Greek panegyric on Baldness. These burlesques were brought into great vogue by Erasmus's Moriæ Encomium.
It seems, Johnson observes in his life of Sir Thomas Browne, to have been in all ages the pride of art to show how it could exalt the low and amplify the little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the Frogs of Homer; the Gnat and the Bees of Virgil; the Butterfly of Spenser; the Shadow of Wowerus; and the Quincunx of Browne.
Cardinal de Richelieu, amongst all his great occupations, found a recreation in violent exercises; and he was once discovered jumping with his servant, to try who could reach the highest side of a wall. De Grammont, observing the cardinal to be jealous of his powers, offered to jump with him; and, in the true spirit of a courtier, having made some efforts which nearly reached the cardinal's, confessed the cardinal surpassed him. This was jumping like a politician; and by this means he is said to have ingratiated himself with the minister.
The great Samuel Clarke was fond of robust exercise; and this profound logician has been found leaping over tables and chairs. Once perceiving a pedantic fellow, he said, "Now we must desist, for a fool is coming in!"21
An eminent French lawyer, confined by his business to a Parisian life, amused himself with collecting from the classics all the passages which relate to a country life. The collection was published after his death.
Contemplative men seem to be fond of amusements which accord with their habits. The thoughtful game of chess, and the tranquil delight of angling, have been favourite recreations with the studious. Paley had himself painted with a rod and line in his hand; a strange characteristic for the author of "Natural Theology." Sir Henry Wotton called angling "idle time not idly spent:" we may suppose that his meditations and his amusements were carried on at the same moment.
The amusements of the great d'Aguesseau, chancellor of France, consisted in an interchange of studies; his relaxations were all the varieties of literature. "Le changement de l'étude est mon seul délassement," said this great man; and "in the age of the passions, his only passion was study."
Seneca has observed on amusements proper for literary men, that, in regard to robust exercises, it is not decent to see a man of letters exult in the strength of his arm, or the breadth of his back! Such amusements diminish the activity of the mind. Too much fatigue exhausts the animal spirits, as too much food blunts the finer faculties: but elsewhere he allows his philosopher an occasional slight inebriation; an amusement which was very prevalent among our poets formerly, when they exclaimed:—
"Fetch me Ben Jonson's scull, and fill't with sack,
Rich as the same he drank, when the whole pack
Of jolly sisters pledged, and did agree
It was no sin to be as drunk as he!"
Seneca concludes admirably, "whatever be the amusements you choose, return not slowly from those of the body to the mind; exercise the latter night and day. The mind is nourished at a cheap rate; neither cold nor heat, nor age itself, can interrupt this exercise; give therefore all your cares to a possession which ameliorates even in its old age!"
An ingenious writer has observed, that "a garden just accommodates itself to the perambulations of a scholar, who would perhaps rather wish his walks abridged than extended." There is a good characteristic account of the mode in which the Literati may take exercise, in Pope's Letters. "I, like a poor squirrel, am continually in motion indeed, but it is but a cage of three foot! my little excursions are like those of a shopkeeper, who walks every day a mile or two before his own door, but minds his business all the while." A turn or two in a garden will often very happily close a fine period, mature an unripened thought, and raise up fresh associations, whenever the mind, like the body, becomes rigid by preserving the same posture. Buffon often quitted the old tower he studied in, which was placed in the midst of his garden, for a walk in it. Evelyn loved "books and a garden."
PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS.
With the ancients, it was undoubtedly a custom to place the portraits of authors before their works. Martial's 186th epigram of his fourteenth book is a mere play on words, concerning a little volume containing the works of Virgil, and which had his portrait prefixed to it. The volume and the characters must have been very diminutive.
Quam brevis immensum cepit membrana Maronem! Ipsius Vultus prima tabella gerit.
Martial is not the only writer who takes notice of the ancients prefixing portraits to the works of authors. Seneca, in his ninth chapter on the Tranquillity of the Soul, complains of many of the luxurious great, who, like so many of our own collectors, possessed libraries as they did their estates and equipages. "It is melancholy to observe how the portraits of men of genius, and the works of their divine intelligence, are used only as the luxury and the ornaments of walls."
Pliny has nearly the same observation, lib. xxxv. cap. 2. He remarks, that the custom was rather modern in his time; and attributes to Asinius Pollio the honour of having introduced it into Rome. "In consecrating a library with the portraits of our illustrious authors, he has formed, if I may so express myself, a republic of the intellectual powers of men." To the richness of book-treasures, Asinius Pollio had associated a new source of pleasure, by placing the statues of their authors amidst them, inspiring the minds of the spectators, even by their eyes.
A taste for collecting portraits, or busts, was warmly pursued in the happier periods of Rome; for the celebrated Atticus, in a work he published of illustrious Romans, made it more delightful, by ornamenting it with the portraits of those great men; and the learned Varro, in his biography of Seven Hundred celebrated Men, by giving the world their true features and their physiognomy in some manner, aliquo modo imaginibus is Pliny's expression, showed that even their persons should not entirely be annihilated; they indeed, adds Pliny, form a spectacle which the gods themselves might contemplate; for if the gods sent those heroes to the earth, it is Varro who secured their immortality, and has so multiplied and distributed them in all places, that we may carry them about us, place them wherever we choose, and fix our eyes on them with perpetual admiration. A spectacle that every day becomes more varied and interesting, as new heroes appear, and as works of this kind are spread abroad.
But as printing was unknown, to the ancients (though stamping an impression was daily practised, and, in fact, they possessed the art of printing without being aware of it22), how were these portraits of Varro so easily propagated? If copied with a pen, their correctness was in some danger, and their diffusion must have been very confined and slow; perhaps they were outlines. This passage of Pliny excites curiosity difficult to satisfy; I have in vain inquired of several scholars, particularly of the late Grecian, Dr. Burney.
A collection of the portraits