pursuits. The boys were standing under a hedge in the rain, and a neighbour reported to the father the conversation he had overheard. John wished it would rain books, for he wished to be a preacher; Bezaleel, wool, to be a clothier, like his father; Samuel, money, to be a merchant; and Edmund, plums, to be a grocer. The father took these wishes as a hint, and we are told in the life of John Angier the elder son, a puritan minister, that he chose for them these different callings, in which it appears that they settled successfully. Whatever a young man at first applies himself to is commonly his delight afterwards.' This is an important principle discovered by Hartley, but it will not supply the parent with any determined regulation how to distinguish a transient from a permanent disposition; or how to get at what we may call the connatural qualities of the mind. A particular opportunity afforded me some close observation on the characters and habits of two youths, brothers in blood and affection, and partners in all things, who even to their very dress shared alike; who were never separated from each other; who were taught by the same masters, lived under the same roof, and were accustomed to the same uninterrupted habits; yet had nature createdthem totally distinct in the qualities of their minds; and similar as their lives had been, their abilities were adapted for very opposite pursuits; either of them could not have been the other. And I observed how the 'predisposition' of the parties was distinctly marked from childhood: the one slow, penetrating and correct; the other quick, irritable, and fanciful: the one persevering in examination; the other rapid in results: the one unexhausted by labour; the other impatient of whatever did not relate to his own pursuit: the one logical, historical, and critical; the other having acquired nothing, decided on all things by his own sensations. We would confidently consult in the one a great legal character, and in the other an artist of genius. If nature had not secretly placed a bias in their distinct minds, how could two similar beings have been so dissimilar? A story recorded of Cecco d'Ascoli and of Dante, on the subject of natural and acquired genius, may illustrate the present topic. Cecco maintained that nature was more potent than art, while Dante asserted the contrary. To prove his principle, the great Italian bard referred to his cat, which, by repeated practice, he had taught to hold a candle in its paw while he supped or read. Cecco desired to witness the experiment, and came not unprepared for his purpose; when Dante's cat was performing its part, Cecco, lifting up the lid of a pot which he had filled with mice, the creature of art instantly showed the weakness of a talent merely acquired, and dropping the candle, flew on the mice with all its instinctive propensity. Dante was himself disconcerted; and it was adjudged that the advocate for the occult principle of native faculties had gained his cause! To tell stories, however, is not to lay down principles, yet principles may sometimes be concealed in stories.* MEDICINE AND MORALS. A stroke of personal ridicule is levelled at Dryden when Bayes informs us of his preparations for a course of study by a course of medicine!" When I have a grand design,' says he, I ever take physic and let blood; for when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part; in fine, you must purge the belly! Such was really the practice of the poet, as La Motte, who was a physician, informs us, and in his medical character did not perceive that ridicule in the subject which the wits and most readers unquestionably have enjoyed. The wits here were as cruel against truth as against Dryden; for we must still consider this practice, to use their own words, as an excellent recipe for writing.' Among other philosophers, one of the most famous disputants of antiquity, Carneades, was accustomed to take copious doses of white hellebore, a great aperient, as a preparation to refute the dogmas of the stoics. Dryden's practice was neither whimsical nor peculiar to the poet; he was of a full habit, and, no doubt, had often found by experience the beneficial effects without being aware of the cause, which is nothing less than the reciprocal influence of mind and body. This simple fact is, indeed, connected with one of the *I have arranged many facts, connected with the present subject, in the fifth chapter of what I have written on The Literary Character' in the third edition, 1822. most important inquiries in the history of man: the laws which regulate the invisible union of the soul with the body: in a word, the inscrutable mystery of our being a secret, but an undoubted intercourse, which probably must ever elude our perceptions. The combination of metaphysics with physics has only been productive of the wildest fairy tales among philosophers: with one party the soul seems to pass away in its last puff of air, while man seems to pe rish in dust to dust;' the other as successfully gets rid of our bodies altogether, by denying the existence of matWe are not certain that mind and matter are dis. tinct existences, since the one may be only a modification of the other; however this great mystery be imagined, we shall find with Dr Gregory, in his lectures on the duties and qualifications of a physician,' that it forts an equally necessary inquiry in the sciences of morals and of medicine. ter. Whether we consider the vulgar distinction of mind and body as an union, or as a modified existence, no philosopher denies that a reciprocal action takes place between our moral and physical condition. Of these sympathies, like many other mysteries of nature, the cause remains occult, while the effects are obvious. This close yet in scrutable association, this concealed correspondence of parts seemingly unconnected, in a word, this reciprocal influence of the mind and the body, has long fixed the attention of medical and metaphysical inquirers; the one having the care of our exterior organization, the other that of the interior. Can we conceive the mysterious inhabi tant as forming a part of its own habitation? The tenant and the house are so inseparable, that in striking at any part of the building, you inevitably reach the dweller. if the mind is disordered, we may often look for its seat in some corporeal derangement. Often are our thoughts dis. turbed by a strange irritability, which we do not even pretend to account for. This state of the body, called the fidgets, is a disorder to which the ladies are particularly liable. A physician of my acquaintance was earnesuv entreated by a female patient to give a name to her unknown complaints; this he found no difficulty to do, as he is a steady asserter of the materiality of our nature; he declared that her disorder was atmospherical. It was the disorder of her frame under damp weather, which was reacting on her mind; and physical means, by operating on her body, might be applied to restore her to her halflost senses. Our imagination is highest when our stomach is not overloaded; in spring than in winter; in solitude than amidst company; and in an obscured light than in the blaze and heat of the noon. In all these cases the body is evidently acted on, and re-acts on the mind. Some times our dreams present us with images of our restlessness, till we recollect that the seat of our brain may perhaps lie in our stomach, rather than on the pineal gland of Descartes; and that the most artificial logic to make us some what reasonable, may be swallowed with the blue pill.' Our domestic happiness often depends on the state of our biliary and digestive organs, and the little disturbances of conjugal life may be more efficaciously cured by the phy sician than by the moralist; for a sermon misapphed will never act so directly as a sharp medicine. The learned Gaubius, an eminent professor of medicine at Leyden, who called himself professor of the passions,' gives the case of a lady of too inflammable a constitution, whom her husband, unknown to herself, had gradually reduced to a model of decorum by phlebotomy. Her complexion, indeed, lost the roses, which some, perhaps, had too wantonly admired for the repose of her conjugal physician. The art of curing moral disorders by coporeal means has not yet been brought into general practice, although it is probable that some quiet sages of medicine have made use of it on some occasions. The Leyden professor we have just alluded to, delivered at the university a discourse on the management and cure of the disorders of the mind by application to the body.' Descartes conjectured, that as the mind seems so dependent on the disposition of the bodily organs, if any means can be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than they have been hither to, such a method might be sought from the assistance of medicine. The science of morals and of medicine will therefore be found to have a more intimate connection than has been suspected. Plato thought that a man must have natural dispositions towards virtue to become virtu ous; that it cannot be educated-you cannot make a bad man a good man; which he ascribes to the evil dispositions of the body, as well as to a bad education. There are unquestionably, constitutional moral disor. ders; some good tempered but passionate persons have acknowledged, that they cannot avoid those temporary fits to which they are hable, and which, they say, they always suffered from a child.' If they arise from too great a fulness of blood, is it not cruel to upbraid rather than to cure them, which might easily be done by taking away their redundant humours, and thus quieting the most passionate man alive? A moral patient, who allows his brain to be disordered by the fumes of liquor, instead of being suffered to be a ridiculous being, might have opiates prescribed; for in laying him asleep as soon as possible, you remove the cause of his sudden madness. There are crimes for which men are hanged, but of which they might easily have been cured by physical means. Persons out of their senses with love, by throwing them-. selves into a river, and being dragged out nearly lifeless, have recovered their senses, and lost their bewildering passion. Submersion was discovered to be a cure for some mental disorders, by altering the state of the body, as Van Helmont notices,' was happily practised in England.' With the circumstance this sages of chemistry alludes to I am unacquainted; but this extraordinary practice was certainly known to the Italians; for in one of the tales of Poggio we find a mad doctor of Milan, who was celebrat ed for curing lunatics and demoniacs in a certain time. His practice consisted in placing them in a great high walled court yard, in the midst of which there was a deep well full of water, cold as ice. When a demoniac was brought to this physician, he had the patient bound to a pillar in the well, till the water ascended to the knees, or higher, and even to the neck, as he deemed their malady required. In their bodily pain they appear to have forgot their me lancholy; thus by the terrors of the repetition of cold water, a man appears to have been frightened into his senses! A physician has informed me of a remarkable case: a lady with a disordered mind, resolved on death, and swallowed much more than half a pint of laudanum ; she closed her curtains in the evening, took a farewell of her attendants, and flattered herself she should never awaken from her sleep. In the morning, however, notwithstanding this incredible dose, she awoke in the agonies of death. By the usual means she was enabled to get rid of the poison she had so largely taken, and not only recovered her life, but what is more extraordinary, her perfect senses! The physician conjectures that it was the influence of her disordered mind over her body which prevented this vast quantity of laudanum from its usual action by terminating in death. Moral vices or infirmities, which originate in the state of the body, may be cured by topical applications. Precepts and ethics in such cases, if they seem to produce a momentary cure, have only mowed the weeds, whose roots lie in the soil. It is only by changing the soil itself that we can eradicate these evils. The senses are five porches for the physician to enter into the mind, to keep it in repair. By altering the state of the body, we are changing that of the mind, whenever the defects of the mind depend on those of the organization. The mind, or soul, however distinct its being from the body, is disturbed or excited, independent of its volition, by the mechanical impulses of the body. A man becomes stupified when the circulation of the blood is impeded in the viscera; he acis more from instinct than reflection; the nervous fibres are too relaxed or too tense, and he finds a difficulty in moving them; if you heighten his sensations, you awaken new ideas in this stupid being; and as we cure the stupid by increasing his sensibility, we may believe that a more vivacious fancy may be promised to those who possess one, when the mind and the body play together in one harmonious accord. Prescribe the bath, frictions, and fomentations, and though it seems a round about way, you get at the brains by his feet. A literary man, from long sedentary habits, could not ovorcome his fits of melancholy, till his physician doubled his daily quantity of wine; and the learned Henry Stephens, after a severe ague, had such a disgust of books, the most beloved objects of his whole life, that the very thought of them excited terror for a considerable time. It is evident that the state of the body often indicates that of the mind. Insanity itself often results from some disorder in the human machine. "What is this raind, of which men appear so vain?' exclaims Flechier. If considered according to its nature, it is a fire which sickness and an accident most sensibly puts out; it is a delicate temperament, which soon grows disordered; a happy conformation of organs, which wear out; a combination and a certain motion of the spirits which exhaust themselves; it is the most lively and the most subtile part of the soul, which seems to grow old with the body.' It is not wonderful that some have attributed such virtues to their system of diet, if it has been found productive of certain effects on the human body. Cornaro perhaps imagined more than he experienced; but Apollonius Tyaneus, when he had the credit of holding an intercourse with the devil, by his presumed gift of prophecy, defended himself from the accusation of attributing his clear and prescient views of things to the light aliments he lived on, never indulging in a variety of food. This mode of life has produced such a perspicuity in my ideas, that I see as in a glass things past and future.' We may, therefore, agree with Bayes, that for a sonnet to Amanda, and the like, stewed prunes only' might be sufficient; but for a grand design,' nothing less than a more formal and formidable dose. Camus, a French physician, who combined literature with science, the author of Abdeker, or the Art of Cosmetics which he discovered in exercise and temperance, produced another fanciful work, written in 1753, 'La Medecine de l'Esprit.' His conjectural cases are at least as numerous as his more positive facts; for he is not wanting in imagination. He assures us, that having reflected on the physical causes, which, by differently modifying the body, varied also, the dispositions of the mind, he was convinced that by employing these different causes, or by imitating their powers by art, we might by means purely mechanical affect the human mind, and correct the infirmities of the understanding and the will. He considered this principle only as the aurora of a brighter day. The great difficulty to overcome was to find out a method to root out the defects, or the diseases of the soul, in the same manner as physicians cure a fluxion from the lungs, a dysentery, a dropsy and all other infirmities, which seem only to attack the body. This indeed, he says, is enlarging the domain of medicine, by showing how the functions of the intellect and the springs of volition are mechanical. The movements and passions of the soul, formerly restricted to abstract reasonings, are by this system reduced to simple ideas. Insisting that material causes force the soul and body to act together, the defects of the intellectual operations depend on those of the organization, which may be altered or destroyed by physical causes; and he properly adds, that we are to consider that the soul is material, while existing in matter, because it is operated on by matter. Such is the theory of La Medecine de l'Esprit,' which, though physicians will never quote, may perhaps contain some facts worth their attention. Camus's two little volumes seem to have been preceded by a medical discourse delivered in the academy of Dijon in 1748, where the moralist compares the infirmities and vices of the mind to parallel diseases of the body. We may safely consider some infirmities and passions of the mind as diseases, and could they be treated as we do the bodily ones, to which they bear an affinity, this would be the great triumph of morals and medicine.' The passion of avarice resembles the thirst of dropsical patients; that of envy is a slow-wasting fever; love is often frenzy, and capricious and sudden restlessness, epileptic fits. There are moral disorders which at times spread like epidemical maladies through towns and countries, and even nations. There are hereditary vices and infirmities transmitted from the parent's mind as there are unquestionably such diseases of the body: the son of a father of a hot and irritable temperament inherits the same quickness and warmth; a daughter is often a counterpart of her mother. Morality, could it be treated medicinally, would require its prescriptions, as all diseases have their specific remedies; the great secret is perhaps discovered by Camus-that of operating on the mind by means of the body A recent writer seems to have been struck by these curious analogies. Mr. Haslam, in his work on Sound Mind,' says, p. 90, There seems to be a considerable similarity between the morbid state of the instruments of voluntary motion (that is the body.) and certain affections of the mental powers, that is, the mind. Thus, paralysis has its counterpart in the defects of recollection, where the utmost endeavour to remember is ineffectually exerted. Tremor may be compared with incapability of fixing the attention, and this involuntary state of muscles ordinarily subjected to the will, also finds a parallel where the mind loses its influence in the train of thought, and becomes subject to spontaneous intrusions; as may be exemplified in reveries, dreaming, and some species of madness.' Thus one philosopher discovers the analogies of the mind with the body, and another of the body with the mind. Can we now hesitate to believe that such analogies existand advancing one step farther, trace in this reciprocal influence that a part of the soul is the body, as the body becomes a part of the soul? The most important truth remains undivulged, and ever will in this mental pharmacy; but none is more clear than that which led to the view of this subject, that in this mutual intercourse of body and mind the superior is often governed by the inferior; others think the mind is more wilfully outrageous than the body. Plutarch, in his essays, has a familiar illustration, which he borrows from some philosopher more ancient than himself: Should the Body sue the Mind before a court of judicature for damages, it would be found that the Mind would prove to have been a ruinous tenant to its landlord.' The sage of Cheronæa did not foresee the hint of Descartes and the discovery of Camus, that by medicine we may alleviate or remove the diseases of the mind; a practice which indeed has not yet been pursued by physicians, though the moralists have been often struck by the close analogies of the Mind with the Body! A work by the learned Dom Pernetty, La connoissance de l'homme moral par celle de l'homme physique, we are told is more fortunate in its title than its execution; probably it is one of the many attempts to develop this imperfect and obscured truth, which hereafter may become more obvious and be universally comprehended. FSALM-SINGING. The history of Psalm singing is a portion of the history of the reformation; of that great religious revolution which separated for ever, into two unequal divisions, the great establishment of Christianity. It has not, perhaps, been remarked, that Psalm singing, or metrical Psalins, degenerated into those scandalous compositions which, under the abused title of hymns, are now used by some sects.* These are evidently the last disorders of that system of Psalm singing which made some religious persons early oppose its practice. Even Sternhold and Hopkins, our first Psalm enditors, says honest Fuller, 'found their work afterwards met with some frowns in the faces of great clergymen.' To this day these opinions are not adjusted. Archbishop Secker observes, that though the first christians (from this passage in James v. 13, "Is any merry? let him sing Psalms!") made singing a constant part of their worship, and the whole congregation joined in it; yet afterwards the singers by profession, who had been prudently appointed to lead and direct them by degrees usurped the whole performance. But at the Reformation the people were restored to their RIGHTS! This revolutionary style is singular: one might infer by the expression of the people being restored to their rights, that a mixed assembly roaring out confused tunes, nasal, guttural, and sibilant, was a more orderly government of Psalmody than when the executive power was consigned to the voices of those whom the archbishop had justly described as having been first prudently appointed to lead and direct them; and who, by their subsequent proceedings, evidently discovered, what they might have safely conjectured, that such an universal suffrage, where every man was to have a voice, must necessarily end in clatter and chaos !† Thomas Warton, however, regards the metrical Psalms of Sternhold as a puritanic invention, and asserts, that notwithstanding it is said in their title page that, they are 'set forth and allowed to be sung in all churches,' they were never admitted by lawful authority. They were first introduced by the Puritans, and afterwards continued by connivance. As a true poetical antiquary, Thomas Warton condemns any modernisation of the venerable text of the old Sternhold and Hopkins, which, by changing obsolete for familiar words, destroys the texture of the original * It would be polluting these pages with ribaldry, obscenity, and blasphemy, were I to give specimens of some hymns of the Moravians and the Methodists, and some of the still lower Such style; and many stanzas, already too naked and weak, like a plain old Gothic edifice stripped of its few signatures of antiquity,have lost that little and almost only strength and support which they derived from ancient phrases. alterations, even if executed with prudence and judgment, only corrupt what they endeavour to explain; and exhibit, a motly performance, belonging to no character of writing, and which contain more improprieties than those which it professes to remove. This forcible criticism is worthy of our poetical antiquary; the same feeling was experi enced by Pasquier, when Marot, in his Refaccimento of the Roman de la Rose, left some of the obsolete phrases, while he got rid of others; cette bigarrure de langage vicus et moderne, was with him writing no language at all. same circumstance occurred abroad when they resolved to retouch and modernise the old French metrical version of the Psalms, which we are about to notice. It produced the same controversy and the same dissatisfaction. The church of Geneva adopted an improved version, but the charm of the old one was wanting. The To trace the history of modern metrical Psalmody, we must have recourse to Bayle, who, as a mere literary historian, has accidentally preserved it. The inventor was a celebrated French poet; and the invention, though perhaps in its very origin inclining towards the abuse to which it was afterwards carried, was unexpectedly adopted by the austere Calvin, and introduced into the Geneva discípline. It is indeed strange, that while he was stripping religion not merely of its pageantry, but even of its decent ceremonies, that this levelling reformer should have introduced this taste for singing Psalms in opposition to reading Psalms. On a parallel principle,' says Thomas Warton, and if any artificial aids to devotion were to be allowed, he might at least have retained the use of pictures in the church.' But it was decreed that statues should be mutilated of their fair proportions,'and painted glass be dashed into pieces while the congregation were to sing! Calvin sought for proselytes among the rabble of a republic, who can have no relish for the more elegant externals.' But to have made men sing in concert, in the streets, or at their work, and merry or sad, on all occasions to tickle the ear with rhymes and touch the heart with emotion, was be traying no deficient knowledge of human nature. It seems, however that this project was adopted accidentally, and was certainly promoted by the fine natural genius of Clement Marot, the favoured bard of Francis the First, that,' Prince of Poets, and that Poet of Princes,' as he was quaintly but expressively dignified by his contemporaries. Marot is still an inimitable and true poet, for he has written in a manner of his own with such marked felicity, that he has left his name to a style of poetry called Maritoque. The original La Fontaine is his imitator. Marot delighted in the very forms of poetry, as well as its subjects and its manner. His life, indeed, took more shapes, and indulged in more poetical licenses, than even his poetry: licentious in morals; often in prisen, or at court, or in the army, or a fugitive, he has left in his numerous little poems many a curious record of his variegat ed existence. He was indeed very far from being devout, when his friend the learned Vatable, the Hebrew profess or, probably to reclaim a perpetual sinner from profane rhymes, as Marot was suspected of heresy, confession and meagre days being his abhorence! suggested the new project of translating the Psalms into French verse, and no doubt assisted the bard; for they are said to, traduits en rithme Français selon la verité Hebraique.' The famous Theodore Beza was also his friend and prompter, and afterwards his continuator. Marot published fifty-two Psalms, written in a variety of measures, with the same style he had done his ballads and rondeaux. He dedicat ed to the king of France, comparing him with the royal Hebrew, and with a French compliment! Dieu le donne aux peuples Hebraiques Dieu te devoit, ce pense-je, aux Galliques. He insinuates that in his version he had received assis tance find another, Aux Dames de France! Warton says of Marot, that He seems anxious to deprecate the raillery which the new tone of his versification was likely to incur, and is embarrassed to find an apology for turning saint.' His embarrassments however, terminate in a highly poetical fancy. When will the golden age be restored, exclaims this lady's Psalmists, 'Quand n'aurons plus de cours ne lieu O vous dames et demoiselles Que Dieu fait pour estre son temple De chansons mondaines ou sales,' &c. Knowing, continues the poet, that songs that are silent about love can never please you, here are some composed by love itself; all here is love, but more than mortal! Sing these at all times, pourra O bien heureux qui voir Faire que rochers et estangs Commencez, dames, commencez Thrice happy they, who may behold, As by the plough the labourer strays, And the Creator's name prolong As rock and stream return their song! Begin then, ladies fair! begin The age renew'd that knows no sin! This holy song-book' for the harpsichord or the voice was a gay novelty, and no book was ever more eagerly received by all classes than Marot's Psalms.' In the fervour of that day, they sold faster than the printers could take them off their presses; but as they were understood to be songs, and yet were not accompanied by music, every one set them to favourite tunes, commonly those of popular ballads. Each of the royal family, and every nobleman, chose a psalm or a song, which expressed his own personal feelings, adapted to his own tune. The Dauphin, afterwards Henry II, a great hunter, when he went to the chase was singing Ainsi qu'on vit le cerf bruyre. 'Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks.' There is a curious portrait of the mistress of Henry, the famous Diane de Poictiers, recently published, on which is inscribed this verse of the Psalm. On a portrait which exhibits Diane in an attitude rather unsuitable to so solemn an application, no reason could be found to account for this discordance: perhaps the painter, or the lady herself, chose to adopt the favourite Psalm of her royal lover, proudly to designate In the curious tract already referred to, the following quotation is remarkable; the scene the fancy of Marot pictured to him had anciently occurred. St Jerome in his seventeenth Epistle to Marcellus thus describes it: In christian villages little else is to be heard but Psalms; for which way soever you turn yourself, either you have the Ploughman at his plough inging Hallelujahe, the weary Brewer refreshing himself with a psalm, or the Vine-dresser chanting forth somewhat of David's,' that is, 'Rebuke me not in thy indignation,' which she sung to a fashionable jig. Antony, king of Navarre, sung Revenge moy prens la querelle, or, Stand up, O Lord, to revenge my quarrel,' to the air of a dance of Poitou.*We may conceive the ardour with which this novelty was received, for Francis sent to Charles the Fifth Marot's collection, who both by promises and presents encouraged the French bard to proceed with his version, and entreating Marot to send him as soon as possible Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus, because it was his favourite Psalm. And the Spanish as well as French composers The hastened to set the Psalms of Marot to music. fashion lasted, for Henry the Second set one to an air of his own composing. Catharine de Medicis had her Psalm, and it seems that every one at court adopted some particular Psalm for themselves, which they often played on lutes and guitars, &c. Singing Psalms in verse was then one of the chief ingredients in the happiness of social life. The universal reception of Marot's Psalms induced Theodore Beza to conclude the collection, and ten thousand copies were immediately dispersed. But these had the advantage of being set to music, for we are told, they were admirably fitted to the violin and other musical instruments.' And who was the man who had thus adroitly taken hold of the public feeling to give it this strong direction? It was the solitary Thaumaturgus, the ascetic Calvin, who, from the depth of his closet at Geneva, had engaged the finest musical composers, who were no doubt warmed by the zeal of propagating his faith, to form these simple and beautiful airs to assist the Psalm singers. At first this was not discovered, and Catholics as well as Hugenots, were solacing themselves on all occasions with this new music. But when Calvin appointed these Psalms, as set to music, to be sung at his meetings, and Marot's formed an appendix to the Catechism of Geneva, this put an end to all Psalm singing for the poor Catholics! Marot himself was forced to fly to Geneva from the fulminations of the Sorbonne, and Psalm singing became an open declaration of what the French called Lutheranism,' when it became with the reformed a regular part of their religious discipline. The Cardinal of Lorraine succeeded in persuading the lovely patroness of the holy song book,' Diana de Poictiers, who at first was a Psalm singer and an heretical reader of the Bible, to discountenance this new fashion. He began by finding fault with the Psalms of David, and revived the amatory elegancies of Horace : at that moment even the reading of the Bible was symptomatic of Lutheranism; Diana, who had given way to these novelties, would have a French Bible, because the queen, Catharine de Medicis, had one, and the Cardinal finding a bible on her table, immediately crossed himself, beat his breast, and otherwise so well acted his part, that, having thrown the Bible down and condemned it, he remonstrated with the fair penitent, that it was a kind of reading not adapted for her sex, containing dangerous matters; if she was uneasy in her mind she should hear two masses instead of one, and rest content with her Paternosters and her Primer, which were not only devotional but ornamented with a variety of elegant forms from the most exquisite pencils of France.' Such is the story drawn from a curious letter, written by a Hugenot, and a former friend of Catharine de Medicis, and by which we may infer that the reformed religion was making considerable progress in the French court,-had the Cardinal of Lorraine not interfered by persuading the mistress, and she the king, and the king his queen, at once to give up Psalm singing and reading the Bible! This infectious frenzy of Psalm-singing,' as Warton describes it, under the Calvinistic preachers had rapidly propagated itself through Germany as well as France. It was admirably calculated to kindle the flame of Fanaticism, and frequently served as the trumpet to rebellion. These energetic hymns of Geneva excited and supported *As Warton has partly drawn from the same source, I have adopted his own words whenever I could. It is not easy to write after Thomas Warton whenever he is pleased with his subject. a variety of popular instructions in the most flourishing cities of the Low Countries, and what our poetical antiquary could never forgive,' fomented the fury which defaced many of the most beautiful and venerable churches of Flanders.' At length it reached our island at that critical moment when it had first embraced the Reformation; and here its domestic history was parallel with its foreign, except, perhaps, in the splendour of its success. Sternhold, an enthusiast for the reformation, was much offended, says Warton, at the lascivious ballads which prevailed among the courtiers, and with a laudable design to check these indecencies, he undertook to be our Marot-without his genius; thinking thereby,' says our cynical literary historian, Antony Wood, that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets but did not, only some few excepted. They were practised by the puritans in the reign of Elizabeth; for Shakespeare notices the puritan of his day singing Psalms to hornpipes,'* and more particularly during the protectorate of Cromwell, on the same plan of accommodating them to popular tunes and jigs, which one of them said 'were too good for the devil.' Psalms were now sung at Lord Mayors' dinners and city feasts; soldiers sang them on their march and at parade; a few houses which had windows fronting the streets, but had their evening psalms; for a story has come down to us, to record that the hypocritical brotherhood did not always care to sing unless they were heard! ON THE RIDICULOUS TITLES ASSUMED BY THE ITALIAN ACADEMIES. The Italians are a fanciful people, who have often mixed a grain or two of pleasantry and even folly with their wisdom. This fanciful character betrays itself in their architecture, in their poetry, in their extemporary comedy, and their Improvisatori; but an instance not yet accounted for of this national levity, appears in those denominations of exquisite absurdity given by themselves to their Academies! I have in vain inquired for any assignable reason why the most ingenious men, and grave and illustrious personages, cardinals and princes, as well as poets, scholars, and artists, in every literary city, should voluntarily choose to burlesque themselves and their serious occupations, by affecting mysterious or ludicrous titles, as if it were carnival time, and they had to support masquerade characters, and accepting such titles as we find in the cant style of our own vulgar clubs, the Society of Odd Fellows,' and of • Eccentrics!' A principle so whimsical but systematic, must surely have originated in some circumstance not hitherto detected. A literary friend, recently in an Italian city, exhausted by the sirocco, entered a house whose open door and circular seats appeared to offer to passengers a refreshing sorbetto; he discovered, however, that he had got into the Academy of the Cameleons,' where they met to delight their brothers, and any spirito gentil' they could nail to a recitation. An invitation to join the academicians alarmed him, for with some impatient prejudices against these little creatures, vocal with prose e rime, and usually with odes and sonnets begged for, or purloined for the occasion. he waived all further curiosity and courtesy, and has returned home without any information how these Cameleons' looked, when changing their colours in an accademia. Such literary institutions, prevalent in Italy, are the spurious remains of those numerous academies which simultaneously started up in that country about the sixteenth century. They assumed the most ridiculous denominations, and a great number is registered by Buadrio and Tiraboschi. Whatever was their design, one cannot fairly reproach them, as Mencken, in his Charlatanaria Eruditorum,' seems to have thought, for pompous quackery; neither can we attribute to their modesty their choice of senseless titles, for to have degraded their own exalted pursuits was but folly! Literary history affords no parallel to this national absurdity of the refined Italians. My friend, Mr Douce, imagines, that this alludes to a common practice at that time among the Puritans of burlesquing the plain chant of the Papists, by adapting vulgar and Iudicrous music to psalins and pious compositions. Illust. of Shakspeare, 1355. Mr Douce does not recollect his authority. My idea differs. May we not conjecture that the intention was the same which induced Sternhold to versify the Psalms, to be sung instead of lascivious ballads; and the most popular tunes came afterwards to be adopted, that the singer might practise his favourite one, as we find it occurred in France. Who could have suspected that the most eminent scholars and men of genius, were associates of the Ozioni, the Fan tastici, the Insensati? Why should Genoa boast of her Sleepy,' Viterbo of her Obstinates,' Sienna of her 'In sipids," her Blockheads,' and her Thunderstruck;' and Naples of her Furioso; while Macerata exuits m her Madmen chained?' Both Quadrio and Tiraboschi can not deny that these fantastical titles have occasioned these Italian academies to appear very ridiculous to the oltramontani; but these valuable historians are no philosophical thinkers. They apologize for this bad taste, by describing the ardour which was kindled throughout Italy at the res toration of letters and the fine arts, so that every one, and even every man of genius, were eager to enroll their names in these academies, and prided theinselves in bearing their emblems, that is, the distinctive aims each academy bad chosen. But why did they mystify themselves? Folly, once become national, is a vigorous plant, which sheds abundant seed. The consequence of having adopt. ed ridiculous titles for these academies, suggested to them many other characteristic fopperies. At Florence every brother of the Unidi' assumed the name of something aquatic, or any quality pertaining to humidity. One was called the Frozen,' another the Damp;' one was the Pike, another the Swan; and Grazzini, the celebrated novelist, is known better by the cognomen of La Lasca, the Roach,' by which he whimsically designates himseif among the 'Humids,' I find among the Insensati, one man of learning taking the name of Stordito Insensato, another Tenebro. so Insensato. The famous Florentine academy of La Crusca amidst theirgrave labours to sift and purify their language, threw themselves headlong into this vortex of foily. The title, the academy of Bran,' was a conceit to indicate their art of sifting; but it required an Italian prodigality of concent to have induced these grave scholars to exhibit themselves in the burlesque scenery of a pamomimical academy, for their furniture consists of a mill and a bake-house; a pulpit for the orator is a hopper, while the learned director sits on a mill-stone; the other seats have the forms of a miller's dossers, or great panniers, and the backs consist of the long shovels used in ovens, The table is a baker's kneading-trough, and the academician who reads has hal his body thrust out of a great bolting sack, with I know not what else for their inkstands and portfolios. But the most celebrated of these academies is that degli Arcadia, at Rome, who are still carrying on their pretensions much higher. Whoever inspires to be aggregated to these Arcadian shepherds, receives a pastoral name and a title, but not the deeds, of a farm, picked out of a map of the ancient Arcadia or its environs; for Arcadia itself soon became too small a possession for these partitioners of moonshine. Their laws, modelled by the twelve tables of the ancient Romans; their language in the venerable majesty of their renowned ancestors; and this erudite democracy dating by the Grecian Olympiads which Crescembini, their first custode, or guardian, most painfully adjusted to the vulgar era, were designed that the sacred erudition of antiquity might for ever be present among these shepherds. * doni, in his Memoirs, has given an amusing account of these honours. He says he was presented with two di plomas; the one was my charter of aggregation to the Arcadi of Rome, under the name of Polissing, the other gave me the investiture of the Phlegean helds. I was on this saluted by the whole assembly in chorus, under the name of Polisseno Phlegeio, and embraced by them as a fellow shepherd and brother. The Arcadians are very rich, as you may perceive, my dear reader: we possess estates in Greece; we water them with our labours for the sake of reaping laurels, and the Turks sow them with grain, plant them with vines, and laugh at both our titles and our songs.' When Fontenelle became an Ar cadian, they baptised him Il Pastor Pigrasto, that is, amiable Fountain! allusive to his name and his delight. ful style and magnificently presented him with the entire Isle of Delos! The late Joseph Walker, an enthusiast for an Italian literature, dedicated his Memoir on Italian Tragedy' to the Countess Spencer: not inscribing it with his christian but his heathen name, and the title of his Arca dian estates, Eubonte Tirinzio! Plain Joseph Walker, in his masquerade dress, with his Arcadian signet of Pan's reeds dangling in his title-page, was performing a charac ter to which however well adapted, not being understood, he got stared at for his affectation! We hav lately * Crescemhini, at the close of La bellazza della Vogar Poesia. Roma, 1700. |