Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843

25

It was a Rosicrucian tenet, that the demon was assimilated to the object of his care; and in this we are confirmed by the authority of the Doctor himself, who treated very largely on the subject of demons in his lecture on Plato's Phædon. The powers of his mind were never more successfully displayed than when he illustrated his positions by the scriptural instance of the two Galilean demoniacs, who abode in the tombs night and day. It was reserved for his ingenuity and learning to discover that those unfortunate Bedlamites were not mortals, but departed spirits.

26

The real friend of collegiate discipline, whose feelings our author would blush to offend, will be pleased to recollect that this deviation from the usual dinner hour took place in the long vacation; that it was introduced for the convenience of study, and that the doctor, could he so far have forgotten his dignity as to have joined the four o'clock party, would have found decorous manners, and more than one brother fellow of the company.

27

Wisely was it ordained by our founders, that, young men being too apt to laugh in their sleeves at the conduct of their superiors, the academical dress of the under-graduates should, as far as possible, obviate that inconvenience. Thus, also, Tully hath it, "Cedant arma togæ."

28

The two founders of Brazenose College.

29

It is necessary to explain to non-academic readers, that it is customary for the tutor of a college to put an X opposite the name of an offending member in the Buttery Book, as it is called, by which he is interdicted from having bread buttered, a kind of excommunication.

30

For the meaning of this expression we refer the reader to the most preposterous imposition ever known in the annals of collegiate punishment; the original MS. of which is preserved in the museum of an eminent collector in Kent. In short, as in Cambridge they sell their butter by the yard, so at Brazenose the cloth measure has been applied with singular success to the works of genius; and perhaps the system may be so far improved upon, that a future under-graduate may have to toil through a furlong of Strabo, or a perch of logic.

31

This alludes to the hobbling gait of the Doctor, in consequence of the defect in his foot.

32

The Rev. B——d P——t.

33

Alluding to a notorious malefactor, executed about this times and hung in chains on Wimbledon Common.

34

Prophetically spoken, as the Doctor was then only a junior fellow.

35

The Doctor, finding that Horace prescribed a nine years' delay for play or poem, inferred that more than twice that time was necessary for the learned labours of the editor of Strabo.

36

For the wonderful answers of the learned cuckoo, at logic lecture, we refer to his (the cuckoo's) equally edified class-fellows.

37

The reader will perhaps be astonished to find, that the Doctor as supposed to flatter himself with the hope that his attentions were not altogether unacceptable to a young lady of singular elegance and personal accomplishments, here alluded to.

38

"Obscœnæque volucres signa dabant."

39

The poet invokes his heroi-comic predecessors, the author of the Lutrin, and Alessandro Tassoni, whose Secchia Rapita, or Rape of the Bucket, is well known to the amateurs of Italian poetry.

40

No classical stranger could ever pass the porter in his lodge at Brazenose, without being sensibly reminded of a favourite passage in Horace, and exclaiming,

41

"Procumbit humi bos." This is not the first time the Doctor has been overcome by port.

42

43

With great practical justice and classical elegance, the words of the assailant are retorted upon himself—

44

The boulevérsement is supposed to have happened on the green adjoining the gravel.

45

Dead deans, broken bottles, dilapidated lantherns, under-graduated ladders, and other lumber, have generally found their level under the pavement of Brazenose cloisters.

46

Like Virgil's nightingale or owl—

47

"Post mediam visus noctem cum somnia vera."

48

We have heard it whispered, but cannot undertake to vouch for the truth of the rumour, that a considerable wager now depends upon the accomplishment of this prophecy within nine calendar months after the Doctor has obtained a bona fide degree.

49

Alluding to the collegiate punishment before explained.

50

The exploits of these and other paladins of the Kaianian dynasty, the heroic age of Persian history, are now known to us principally through the Shah-Nameh of Ferdousi, a poem bearing date only at the beginning of the eleventh century; but both this and its predecessor, the Bostan-Nameh, were founded on ballads and ραψωδιαι of far distant ages, which had escaped the ravages of time and the Mohammedans, and some of which are even now preserved among the ancient tribes of pure Persian descent, in the S.W. provinces of the kingdom. Sir John Malcolm (History of Persia, ii. 444, note, 8vo. ed.,) gives an amusing anecdote of the effect produced among his escort by one of these popular chants.

51

The prototype of the well-known Welsh legend of Beth-Gelert, for instance, is found in the Sanscrit Hitopadosa, as translated by Sir William Jones, with a mere change in the dramatis personæ—the faithful hound Gelert becoming a tame mungoos or ichneumon, the wolf a cabra-capello, and the young heir of the Welsh prince an infant rajah.

52

The principal adventures of Clitophon and Leucippe consist in being twice taken by pirates on the banks of the Nile, as Theagenes and Chariclea are in the Ethiopics.

53

Home was expelled the ministry for this heinous offence, which raised a fearful turmoil at the time among Synods and Presbyteries. The Glasgow Presbytery published a declaration (Feb. 14, 1757) on the "melancholy but notorious fact, that one, who is a minister of the Church of Scotland, did himself write and compose a stage play intitled the Tragedy of Douglas;" and to this declaration various other presbyteries published their adhesion.

54

This sentence might, with more justice, have been visited upon the work of the other bishop, Achilles Tatius, for his not infrequent transgressions against delicacy, a fault never chargeable on Heliodorus.

55

This is usually called the Canopia mouth; but Herodotus (who says that it was dug by artificial means) calls it the Bucolic, perhaps from the haunts above described in its neighbourhood.

56

The hereditary succession of the Egyptian priesthood is stated both by Herodotus and Diodorus; but Sir J.G. Wilkinson (Manners of the Ancient Egyptians, i. 262,) believe that, "though a priest was son of a priest, the peculiar office held by a son may sometimes have been different in point of rank from that of his father."

57

Before setting out on this expedition, he "reduces his hair to a more moderate quantity than that usually worn by robbers." Thus, the Italian bravoes of the middle ages, when they repented their evil ways, were wont to "shave the tuft," which was thrown over the face as a disguise; hence the phrase, radere il ciuffo, still used as synonymous with becoming an honest man. See Manzoni's well-known romance of "I Promessi Sposi."

58

The incidents of the birth of Chariclea have been copied by Tasso in the story of Clorinda, as related to her by Arsete, in the 12th canto of "Gierusalemme Liberata." In the "Shah-Nameh," also, Zal, the father of the Persian hero Rustan, being born with white hair, is exposed by his father Sam on the mountain of Elborz, where he is preserved and brought up by the giant-bird Simorgh.

59

"In the royal character"—"γραμμασιν Αιθιοπικοις ον δημοτικοις, αλλα βασιλικοις." This distinction between the royal and popular system of hieroglyphics, as well as the etiquette, before mentioned, of inscribing the title of the king within a circle or oval, is borrowed, as need hardly be mentioned, from the monuments of Egypt.

60

The capture of the vessel has furnished the subject of a painting by Raffaelle and Giulio Romano.

61

He is called "A merchant of Naucratis," though resident in Chemmis. But Naucratis, as we find from Herodotus, (ii. 179,) "was of old the only free port of Egypt; and, if any trader came to one of the other mouths of the Nile, he was put upon oath that his coming was involuntary, and was then made to sail to the Canopic mouth. But, if contrary winds prevented him from doing this, he was obliged to send his cargo in barges round the Delta to Naucratis, so strict was the regulation." Amasis was the first king who had permitted the trade of the Greeks at this port, [ib. 178,] and the restriction appears to have been continued under the Persian rule.

62

The establishment of household slaves or Mamlukes seems to have been nearly on the same footing with the ancient as with the modern Persians.

63

In all the Greek romances, it seems almost inevitable that all the male characters should fall in love with the heroine, and all the females with the hero; and, this is, in some of them, carried to a ludicrous degree of absurdity.

64

The name of Potiphar's wife, according to the 12th chapter of the Koran. The story of Yusuf and Zuleikha forms the subject of one of the most beautiful poems in the Persian language, by Jami.

65

One of these consists in pursuing a wild bull on horseback, and throwing himself from the horse on the neck of the bull, which he seizes by the horns, and then, by main force wrenching his neck round, hurls him powerless to the ground on his back! Such an achievement appears almost incredible; but it is represented, in all its particulars, in one of the Arundel marbles, (Marmor. Oxon. Selden, xxxviii,) under the name of Ταυροκαθαψια, and is mentioned as a national sport of Thessaly, the native country of Theagenes, both by Pliny (Hist. Nat. viii. 45), and by Suetonius (Claud. cap. 21)—"He exhibited," (says the latter writer,) "Thessalian horsemen who drive wild bulls round and round the circus, and leaping on them when they are weary, bring them to the ground by the horns."

66

Thuc. i. cap. 110. The island of Elbo, according to Herodotus, who gives a curious account of the Egyptian marshes and their inhabitants, had been constructed of cinders, in long past times, by a king who lay concealed for fifty years from the Ethiopians; but no man knew its situation, till it was again brought to light, after having been lost for five hundred years, by Amyrtæus.

67

Of the later editions of the Greek text, the best are those of Coray, Paris, 1804; and Mitscherlisch, Strasburg, 1797.

68

Chronica JOCELINI DE BRAKELONDA, de rebus gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi: nunc primum typis mandata, curante JOHANNE GOGE ROKEWOOD. (Camden Society, London, 1840.)

69

"The Popish religion, we are told, flourishes extremely in these years, and is the most vivacious-looking religion to be met with at present. 'Elle a trois cents ans dans le ventre,' counts M. Jouffroy; 'c'est pourquoi je la respecte!' The old Pope of Rome, finding it laborious to kneel so long while they cart him through the streets to bless the people on Corpus-Christi day, complains of rheumatism; whereupon his cardinals consult—construct him, after some study, a stuffed, cloaked figure, of iron and wood, with wool or baked hair, and place it in a kneeling posture. Stuffed figure, or rump of a figure; to this stuffed rump he, sitting at his ease on a lower level, joins, by the aid of cloaks and drapery, his living head and outspread hands: the rump, with its cloaks, kneels; the Pope looks, and holds his hands spread; and so the two in concert bless the Roman population on Corpus-Christi day, as well as they can.

"I have considered this amphibious Pope, with the wool-and-iron back, with the flesh head and hands, and endeavoured to calculate his horoscope. I reckon him the remarkablest Pontiff that has darkened God's daylight, or painted himself in the human retina, for these several thousand years. Nay, since Chaos first shivered, and 'sneezed,' as the Arabs say, with the first shaft of sunlight shot through it, what stranger product was there of nature and art working together? Here is a supreme priest who believes God to be—what, in the name of God, does he believe God to be?—and discerns that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax candles, organ blasts, Gregorian chants, mass-brayings, purple monsignori, wool-and-iron rumps, artistically spread out, to save the ignorant from worse....

"There is in this poor Pope, and his practice of the scenic theory of worship, a frankness which I rather honour. Not half and half, but with undivided heart, does he set about worshipping by stage machinery; as if there were now, and could again be, in nature no other. He will ask you, What other? Under this my Gregorian chant, and beautiful wax-light phantasmagory, kindly hidden from you is an abyss of black doubts, scepticism, nay, sans-culottic Jacobinism, an orcus that has no bottom. Think of that. 'Groby Pool is thatched with pancakes,' as Jeannie Deans's innkeeper defined it to be! The bottomless of scepticism, atheism, Jacobinism, behold it is thatched over, hidden from your despair, by stage-properties judiciously arranged. This stuffed rump of mine saves not me only from rheumatism, but you also from what other isms!"—P. 187.