Category Archives: Vol.1

101 The Carpenter Bird

Posted on 21 April 2013 by | Leave a comment

Herrera (10,4.11) describes a curious bird in the province of Chiapa, a sort of tardus which they called the Carpenter. This bird fed solely upon acorns, which it used to hoard in the trunk of the pine trees, boring with its beak a separate hole for every acorn; many trees were full of these holes in the nicest order, and they were so well fitted that the acorn could not be pulled out by the fingers, or otherwise than by some pointed instrument. The bird got them out by standing like a woodpecker with its feet on the trunk. It was black with a little red on the head and breast. This was a troublesome mode of hoarding, but the only secure one, as nothing could get at the hoards.

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100 Parchment Book-covers

Posted on 18 April 2013 by | Leave a comment

Labat was told in Italy that books in carta pecora as they call it, were better preserved than in leather-binding. Il me semble qu’ils se trompent, he says, mais cette relieure est â beaucoup meilleur marckè et pese moins, . . ils ont raison par ces deux endroits. But the Italians were right; books in parchment are not so liable to be worm eaten: ——I am not sure that they suffer at all from these insects which make such ravages upon leather bound books in a hot country, and sometimes even in our own. Perhaps the reason is, because those in parchment are usually without pasteboard.——On the other hand they are far more susceptible of damp. I have found some of them with their covers black and rotten after a voyage, though packed in the midst of a chest, where the books around them were perfectly uninjured by the sea.

Books which have these covers should never have them stiffened with any kind of boards, they cannot otherwise be read near the fire without inconvenience or injury. In the old fashion parchment is the lightest, cheapest, cleanest, and most durable form of binding, and if vellum be substituted, the most beautiful.

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99 Meditation, and Contemplation

Posted on 13 April 2013 by | 1 Comment

The Jesuit Richeome distinguishes between Meditation and Contemplation in a manner worthy of being quoted in any book which should treat upon English synonimes, the distinction though applied in a religious sense, being general. “Contemplation, he says, is a regard of the eyes of the Soul fastened attentively upon some object, as if after having meditated of the creation, she should set the eye of her understanding fast affixed upon the greatness of God, upon the beauty of the Heavens; or having discoursed of the passion of our Saviour, she beholdeth him present, and seeth him crucified, and without any other discourse, persevereth constantly in this spectacle. Then the Soul doth contemplate upon her meditation: so that contemplation is more than meditation, and as it were the end thereof: and it groweth and springeth upon it many times, as the branch doth upon the body of the tree, or the flower upon the branch. For the understanding having attentively and with many reasons to and fro meditated the mystery, and gathered divers lights together, doth frame unto herself a clear knowledge, whereof, without further discourse one way or other, she enjoyeth (as I may say) a vision, which approacheth to the knowledge of Angels. Hereof we learn the difference betwixt these two actions: for meditation is less clear, less sweet, and more painful than Contemplation: it is as the reading of a book, which must be done sentence after sentence; but Contemplation is like casting the eyes upon a picture discerning all at once. Meditation is like eating: Contemplation is like drinking,.. a work more sweet, cooling, and more delicate,..less labour and more pleasure than eating is. For he that meditateth taketh an antecedent, doth behold, weigh, and consider it, as it were chewing the meat with some pain; and afterward doth gather conclusions one after another, as it were swallowing down of morsels, and taketh his pleasure by pieces: but he that contemplateth receiveth his object without pain, swiftly and as it were altogether, as if he took a draught of some delicate wine. Such is Meditation, and such is Contemplation.
Pilgrim of Loretto. p. 49.

Philosophical as this is, the consequences which must result from applying it to acts of devotion are apparent, and of this no doubt the Jesuit and the other teachers of this doctrine were well aware. Let but an enthusiast be once taught to keep the understanding passive, and the imagination awake, and dreams, apparitions, rapts, ecstasies, with all the other symptoms of hagiomania, will follow in the natural course of the disease.

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98. Météorolithes

Posted on 9 April 2013 by | 1 Comment

The largest specimen of these substances which has ever been described, has escaped the notice of all the philosophers who have written upon the subject.

Walckenaer in a note to Azara‘s Travels, upon the mass of iron and nickel found in the Chaco, says that two other such masses have been discovered; one which Pallas has described, and one which was dug up at Aken near Magdebourg. Gaspar de Villagra, in his Historia de la Nueva Mexico, mentions a fourth, evidently of the same nature as these, and considerably larger than the largest of them. The tradition of the natives concerning it supports the most probable theory of it’s origin. A demon in the form of an old woman, appeared to two brothers, who were leading a horde or swarm of the ancient Mexicans, in search of a new country; she told them to separate, and threw down this block of iron which she carried on her head to be the boundary between them.

Villagra describes it as something like the back of a tortoise in shape, and in weight about eight hundred quintales;* He calls it massy iron, “hierro bien mazizo y amasado;” it was smooth without the slightest rust, and there was neither mine near it, nor vein of metal, nor any kind of stone any way resembling it.

Y como quien de vista es buen testigo,
Digo que es un metal tan puro y liso,
Y tan limpio de orin como si fuera,
Una refina plata de Capella.
Y lo que mas admira nuestro casa
Es que no vemos genero de veta,
Horrumbra, quemazon, alguno piedrra.
Con cuia fuerça muestre y nos paresca
Averse el gran mojon alli criado.
Canto 2. ff. 10.

The latitude where this was found is 27 N. The history of the expedition which Villagra accompanied, furnishes some clue for seeking the spot, and it might probably be discovered with little expence of time or labour, by a party travelling from Mexico to Monterrey.

* The quintal is 1321b. English. This estimate is of course given by guess; its size however is in some degree proved by this circumstance, that the priest who attended the army, consecrated it as an altar, and performed service upon it. The Chaco mass contains at present 624 cubic palms, of nine Spanish inches, but large pieces had been broken off before it was measured. The Siberian one 1680 Russian lbs. that in Germany from 15 to 17 milliers.

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97 Picturesque Words

Posted on 8 April 2013 by | 1 Comment

Who is ignorant of Homer’s Πηλιον εινοσι ευλλον? Yet in some Greek Hexameters (MSS) we have met with a compound epithet, which may compete with it for the prize of excellence in “flashing on the mental eye” a complete image——It is an epithet of the brutified archangel (see p.12) and forms the latter half of the Hexameter.

——————————Κεϱϰοϰεϱώνυχα Σᾶταν

Ye youthful bards! compare this word with it’s literal translation, “Tail-horn-hoofed Satan,” and be shy of compound epithets, the component parts of which are indebted for their union exclusively to the printer’s hyphen. Henry More indeed would have naturalized the word without hesitation, and CERCOCERONYCHOUS would have shared the astonishment of the English reader in the glossary to his Song of the Soul, with Achronycul, Anaisthæsie, &c. &c.

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96 Tostatus

Posted on 7 April 2013 by | Leave a comment

The works or this voluminous commentator had a luckier resurrection from the deep than even Frith’s Treatises. Cardinal Ximenes, or rather Cisneros (as he should more properly be called) sent the manuscript to Venice to be printed; the ship in which they were embarked, encountered a violent storm in the Gulph of Lyons; all the lading was thrown overboard to lighten her, and the bishop’s works among the rest. The passengers with great difficulty got to shore; and the next day they saw the chest which contained these papers come floating safely to the beach. The fact was proved at Rome by the deposition of sixteen eye-witnesses, and their legal attestations are probably at this time to be seen at Salamanca. It is not to be wondered at, that the Catholics were disposed to believe this circumstance miraculous, considering the specific gravity of the contents of the chest.

Nicholas Antonio relates this fact as well as Gil Gonzalez, who has recorded it in their different works. This useful historian was never weary of praising Tostado, because all his praises redounded to the honour and glory of Avila, the bishop’s see, and the historians birth place. No mention of this singular circumstance is made by Hernando de Pulgar, his earliest biographer but this does not invalidate the story, because that author probably died before it occurred.

Gil Gonzalez in his His. del Rey. D. Henrique 3, has preserved the bishop’s epitaph.

Aqui yaze sepultado
   quien virgen vivio y murio;
   en ciencias mas esmerado,
   el nuestro Obispo Tostado,
   que nuestro nation honró.
Es mui cierto que escrivio
   para cada dia tres pliegos
   de lot dias que vivio:
   su dotrina assi alumbro,
   que haze ver a los ciegos.

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95 Frith the Martyr

Posted on 5 April 2013 by | 2 Comments

Some of the writings of this venerable father of the English church were republished in consequence of a remarkable accident: “Upon Midsummer Eve, 1626, a codfish was brought to the market in Cambridge, and there cut up for sale, and in the maw thereof there was found a book in twelves, bound up in canvas containing several treatises of Mr. John Friths; this fish was caught upon the coasts of Lin, called Lindress, by one William Skinner; the fish being cut open the garbage was thrown by, which a woman looking upon, espied the canvas, and taking it out, found the book wrapped up in it, which was much soiled, and covered over with a kind of slime, and congealed matter, this was looked upon with great admiration, and by Benjamin Prime, the bachelors beadle, who was present at the opening of the fish, was carried to the vice chancellor, who took special notice of it, examining the particulars before mentioned, the leaves of the book were carefully opened and cleansed, the treatises contained in it were, a Preparation for the Cross; a Preparation for Death; the Treasure of Knowledge; a Mirrour or Looking-glass to know themselves by; a Brief Instruction to teach one willingly to Die, and not to fear Death: they were all reprinted, and how useful the reviving of these treatises by such a special providence hath been, may be easily discerned, by such as have lived since those times.”
R. B. Admirable Curiosities.

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94. Blackguard

Posted on 24 March 2013 by | Leave a comment

Johnson derives this cant term, as he calls it, from black and guard, without attempting to explain their combination. Cant-words, above all others, have their origin in some strong figure of speech, or striking metaphor, and I believe the etymology of this is accidentally given by that strangest of all strange writers Stanihurst, in his explanation of an analogeous word among his own countrymen. “Kerne, he says, signifieth (as noble men. of deep judgement informed me) a shower of hell, because they are taken for no better than for rakehells, or the devil’s black guard, by reason of the stinking stir they keep, wheresoever they be.”
Holinshed, vol. 6, p. 68.

As Chaucer has been called the well of English undefiled, so might Stanihurst be denominated the common sewer of the language. He is, however, a very entertaining, and to a philologist, a very instructive writer. His version of the four first books of the Æneid, is exceedingly rare, and deserves to be reprinted for its incomparable oddity. It seems impossible that a man could have written in such a style without intending to burlesque what he was about, and yet it is certain that Stanihurst seriously meant to write heroic poetry.

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93 Tractors

Posted on 23 March 2013 by | 1 Comment

The Tractors are no new mode of quackery,—witness this extract from one of the rogues of the days of old:

“How famous is that martial ring, which carried in some fit place, or rubbed on some such part, will allay and cure the pains of the teeth and head, the cramp, quartain ague, falling sickness, vertigo, apoplexy, plague, and other diseases! insomuch that the great captain of Hetruria commanded the inventor thereof (a brother of St. Augustine’s order) to sell none to any but himself for some years. If this same were formed of some long horse shoe nail, pulled out of a horse’s hoof on purpose, in the hour Mars reigns, it would be ready to contract itself to fit the least, and amplify itself for the greatest finger as you would.
Tentzelius, 93.

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92 Public Instruction

Posted on 21 March 2013 by | 1 Comment

Our statesmen, who survey with jealous dread all plans for the education of the lower orders, may be thought to proceed on the system of antagonist muscles; and in the belief, that the closer a nation shuts its eyes, the wider it will open its hands. Or do they act on the principle, that the status belli is the natural relation between the people and the government, and that it is prudent to secure the result of the contest by gouging the adversary in the first instance. Alas! the policy of the maxim is on a par with its honesty. The Philistines had put out the eyes of Sampson, and thus, as they thought, fitted him to drudge and grind

“Among the slaves and asses, his comrades,
As good for nothing else, no better service.”

But his darkness added to his fury without diminishing his strength, and the very pillars of the Temple of Oppression——

” With horrible convulsion, to and fro,
He tugged, he shook — till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder,
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,
Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests,
Their choice nobility!”
Sam. Agonistes.

The error might be less unpardonable with the statesmen of the continent,…but with Englishmen, who have Ireland in one direction, and Scotland in another; in the one ignorance, sloth, and rebellion, in the other general information, industry, and loyalty; verily it is not error merely, but infatuation.

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