SEYMOUR, who was afterwards permitted to return, distinguished himself by his loyalty through three successive reigns, and retained his romantic passion for the lady of his first affections; for he called the daughter he had by his second lady by the ever-beloved name of ARABELLA STUART.

DOMESTIC HISTORY OF SIR EDWARD COKE.

Sir Edward Coke—or Cook, as now pronounced, and occasionally so written in his own times—that lord chief-justice whose name the laws of England will preserve—has shared the fate of his great rival, the Lord Chancellor Bacon; for no hand worthy of their genius has pursued their story. Bacon, busied with nature, forgot himself. Coke who was only the greatest of lawyers, reflected with more complacency on himself; for "among those thirty books which he had written with his own hand, most pleasing to himself was a manual which he called Vade Mecum, from whence, at one view, he took a prospect of his life past." This manuscript, which Lloyd notices, was among the fifty which, on his death, were seized on by an order of council, but some years after were returned to his heir; and this precious memorial may still be disinterred.^[340]

Coke was "the oracle of law," but, like too many great lawyers, he was so completely one as to have been nothing else. Coke has said, "the common law is the absolute perfection of all reason;" a dictum which might admit of some ridicule. Armed with law, he committed acts of injustice; for in how many cases, passion mixing itself with law, summum jus becomes summa injuria. Official violence brutalised, and political ambition extinguished, every spark of nature in this great lawyer, when he struck at his victims, public or domestic. His solitary knowledge, perhaps, had deadened his judgment in other studies; and yet his narrow spirit could shrink with jealousy at the celebrity obtained by more liberal pursuits than his own. The errors of the great are as instructive as their virtues; and the secret history of the outrageous lawyer may have, at least, the merit of novelty although not of panegyric.

Coke, already enriched by his first marriage, combined power with added wealth, in his union with the relict of Sir William Hatton, the sister of Thomas Lord Burleigh. Family alliance was the policy of that prudent age of political interests. Bacon and Cecil married two sisters; Walsingham and Mildmay two others; Knowles, Essex, and Leicester, were linked by family alliances. Elizabeth, who never designed to marry herself, was anxious to intermarry her court dependents, and to dispose of them so as to secure their services by family interests.^[341] Ambition and avarice, which had instigated Coke to form this alliance, punished their creature, by mating him with a spirit haughty and intractable as his own. It is a remarkable fact, connected with the character of Coke, that this great lawyer suffered his second marriage to take place in an illegal manner, and condescended to plead ignorance of the laws! He had been married in a private house, without banns or licence, at a moment when the archbishop was vigilantly prosecuting informal and irregular marriages. Coke, with his habitual pride, imagined that the rank of the parties concerned would have set him above such restrictions. The laws which he administered he appears to have considered had their indulgent exceptions for the great. But Whitgift was a primitive Christian; and the circumstance involved Coke and the whole family in a prosecution in the ecclesiastical court, and nearly in the severest of its penalties. The archbishop appears to have been fully sensible of the overbearing temper of this great lawyer; for when Coke became the attorney-general, we cannot but consider, as an ingenious reprimand, the archbishop's gift of a Greek testament, with this message, that "He had studied the common law long enough, and should henceforward study the law of God."

The atmosphere of a court proved variable with so stirring a genius; and as a constitutional lawyer, Coke, at times, was the stern asserter of the kingly power, or its intrepid impugner; but his personal dispositions led to predominance, and he too often usurped authority and power with the relish of one who loved them too keenly. "You make the laws too much lean to your opinion, whereby you show yourself to be a legal tyrant," said Lord Bacon, in his admonitory letter to Coke.

In 1616 Coke was out of favour for more causes than one, and his great rival, Bacon, was paramount at the council table.^[342] Perhaps Coke felt more humiliated by appearing before his judges, who were every one inferior to him as lawyers, than by the weak triumph of his enemies, who received him with studied insult. The queen informed the king of the treatment the disgraced lord chief-justice had experienced, and, in an angry letter, James declared that "he prosecuted Coke ad correctionem not ad destructionem;" and afterwards at the council spoke of Coke "with so many good words, as if he meant to hang him with a silken halter;" even his rival Bacon made this memorable acknowledgment, in reminding the judges that "such a man was not every day to be found, nor so soon made as marred." When his successor was chosen, the Lord Chancellor Egerton, in administering the oath, accused Coke "of many errors and vanities for his ambitious popularity." Coke, however, lost no friends in this disgrace, nor lost his haughtiness; for when the new chief-justice sent to purchase his Collar of SS., Coke returned for answer, that "he would not part with it, but leave it to his posterity, that they might one day know they had a chief-justice to their ancestor."^[343]

In this temporary alienation of the royal smiles, Coke attempted their renewal by a project, which, involved a domestic sacrifice. When the king was in Scotland, and Lord Bacon, as lord-keeper, sat at the head of affairs, his lordship was on ill terms with Secretary Winwood, whom Coke easily persuaded to resume a former proposal for marrying his only daughter to the favourite's eldest brother, Sir John Villiers. Coke had formerly refused this match from the high demands of these parvenus. Coke, in prosperity, "sticking at ten thousand a year, and resolving to give only ten thousand marks, dropped some idle words, that he would not buy the king's favour too dear;" but now in his adversity, his ambition proved stronger than his avarice, and by this stroke of deep policy the wily lawyer was converting a mere domestic transaction into an affair of state, which it soon became. As such it was evidently perceived by Bacon; he was alarmed at this projected alliance, in which he foresaw that he should lose his hold of the favourite in the inevitable rise once more of his rival Coke. Bacon, the illustrious philosopher, whose eye was only blest in observing nature, and whose mind was only great in recording his own meditations, now sat down to contrive the most subtle suggestions he could put together to prevent this match; but Lord Bacon not only failed in persuading the king to refuse what his majesty much wished, but finally produced the very mischief he sought to avert—a rupture with Buckingham himself, and a copious scolding letter from the king, but a very admirable one;^[344] and where the lord-keeper trembled to find himself called "Mr. Bacon."

There were, however, other personages than his majesty and his favourite more deeply concerned in this business, and who had not hitherto been once consulted—the mother and the daughter! Coke, who, in every-day concerns, issued his commands as he would his law-writs, and at times boldly asserted the rights of the subject, had no other paternal notion of the duties of a wife and a child than their obedience!

Lady Hatton, haughty to insolence, had been often forbidden both the courts of their majesties, where Lady Compton, the mother of Buckingham, was the object of her ladyship's persevering contempt. She retained her personal influence by the numerous estates which she enjoyed in right of her former husband. When Coke fell into disgrace, his lady abandoned him! and, to avoid her husband, frequently moved her residences in town and country. I trace her with malicious activity disfurnishing his house in Holborn, and at Stoke^[345] seizing on all the plate and moveables, and, in fact, leaving the fallen statesman and the late lord chief-justice empty houses and no comforter! The wars between Lady Hatton and her husband were carried on before the council-board, where her ladyship appeared, accompanied by an imposing train of noble friends. With her accustomed haughty airs, and in an imperial style, Lady Hatton declaimed against her tyrannical husband, so that the letter-writer adds, "divers said that Burbage could not have acted better." Burbage's famous character was that of Richard the Third. It is extraordinary that Coke, able to defend any cause, bore himself so simply. It is supposed that he had laid his domestic concerns too open to animadversion in the neglect of his daughter; or that he was aware that he was standing before no friendly bar, at that moment being out of favour; whatever was the cause, our noble virago obtained a signal triumph, and "the oracle of law," with all his gravity, stood before the council-table hen-pecked. In June, 1616, Sir Edward appears to have yielded at discretion to his lady, for in an unpublished letter I find that "his curst heart hath been forced to yield to more than he ever meant; but upon this agreement he flatters himself that she will prove a very good wife."

In the following year, 1617, these domestic affairs totally changed. The political marriage of his daughter with Villiers being now resolved on, the business was to clip the wings of so fierce a bird as Coke had found in Lady Hatton, which led to an extraordinary contest. The mother and daughter hated the upstart Villiers, and Sir John, indeed, promised to be but a sickly bridegroom. They had contrived to make up a written contract of marriage with Lord Oxford, which they opposed against the proposal, or rather the order, of Coke.

The violence to which the towering spirits of the conflicting parties proceeded is a piece of secret history, of which accident has preserved an able memorial. Coke armed with law, and, what was at least equally potent, with the king's favour, entered by force the barricadoed houses of his lady, took possession of his daughter, on whom he appears never to have cast a thought till she became an instrument for his political purposes, confined her from her mother, and at length got the haughty mother herself imprisoned, and brought her to account for all her past misdoings. Quick was the change of scene, and the contrast was as wonderful. Coke, who, in the preceding year, to the world's surprise, proved so simple an advocate in his own cause in the presence of his wife, now, to employ his own words, "got upon his wings again," and went on as Lady Hatton, when safely lodged in prison, describes, with "his high-handed tyrannical courses," till the furious lawyer occasioned a fit of sickness to the proud crest-fallen lady. "Law! Law! Law!" thundered from the lips of "its oracle;" and Lord Bacon, in his apologetical letter to the king for having opposed his "riot or violence," says, "I disliked it the more, because he justified it to be law, which was his old song."

The memorial alluded to appears to have been confidentially composed by the legal friend of Lady Hatton, to furnish her ladyship with answers when brought before the council-table. It opens several domestic scenes in the house of that great lord chief-justice; but the forcible simplicity of the style in domestic details will show, what I have often observed, that our language has not advanced in expression since the age of James the First. I have transcribed it from the original, and its interest must plead for its length.

TO LADY HATTON.

"Seeing these people speak no language but thunder and lightning, accounting this their cheapest and best way to work upon you, I would with patience prepare myself to their extremities, and study to defend the breaches by which to their advantage they suppose to come in upon me, and henceforth quit the ways of pacification and composition, heretofore and unseasonably endeavoured, which, in my opinion, lie most open to trouble, scandal, and danger; wherefore I will briefly set down their objections, and such answers to them as I conceive proper.

"The first is, you conveyed away your daughter from her father. Answer. I had cause to provide for her quiet. Secretary Winwood threatening that she should be married from me in spite of my teeth, and Sir Edward Cook dayly tormenting the girl with discourses tending to bestow her against her liking, which he said she was to submit to his; besides, my daughter daily complained, and sought to me for help; whereupon, as heretofore I had accustomed, I bestowed her apart at my cousin-german's house for a few days, for her health and quiet, till my own business for my estate were ended. Sir Edward Coke never asked me where she was, no more than at other times, when at my placing she had been a quarter of a year from him, as the year before with my sister Burley.

"Second. That you endeavoured to bestow her, and to bind her to my Lord of Oxford without her knowledge and consent.

"Upon this subject a lawyer, by way of invective, may open his mouth wide, and anticipate every hearer's judgment by the rights of a father; this, dangerous in the precedent to others; to which, nevertheless, this answer may be justly returned.

"Answer. My daughter, as aforesaid, terrified with her father's threats and hard usage, and pressing me to find some remedy from this violence intended, I did compassionate her condition, and bethought myself of this contract to my Lord of Oxford, if so she liked, and thereupon I gave it to her to peruse and consider by herself, which she did; she liked it, cheerfully writ it out with her own hand, subscribed it, and returned it to me; wherein I did nothing of my own will, but followed hers, after I saw she was so averse to Sir Thomas Villiers, that she voluntarily and deliberately protested that of all men living she would never have him, nor could ever fancy him for a husband.

"Secondly. By this I put her under no new way, nor into any other than her father had heretofore known and approved; for he saw such letters as my Lady of Oxford had writ to me thereabouts; he never forbad it; he never disliked it; only he said they were then too young, and there was time enough for the treaty.

"Thirdly. He always left his daughter to my disposing and my bringing up; knowing that I purposed her my fortune and whole estate, and as upon these reasons he left her to my cares, so he eased himself absolutely of her, never meddling with her, neglecting her, and caring nothing for her.

"The Third. That you counterfeited a treaty from my Lord of Oxford to yourself.

"Answer. I know it not counterfeit; but be it so, to whose injury? If to my Lord of Oxford's (for no man else is therein interested), it must be either in honour or in free-hold. Read the treaty; it proves neither! for it is only a complement; it is no engagement presently nor futurely; besides the law shows what forgery is; and to counterfeit a private man's hand, nay a magistrate's, makes not the fault but the cause: wherefore,

"Secondly, the end justifies—at the least, excuses the fact; for it was only to hold up my daughter's mind to her own choice and liking: for her eyes only, and for no other's, that she might see some retribution, and thereby with the more constancy endure her imprisonment, having this only antidote to resist the poison of that place, company, and conversation; myself and all her friends barred from her, and no person or speech admitted to her ear, but such as spoke Sir Thomas Villiers's language.

"The fourth. That you plotted to surprise your daughter to take her away by force, to the breach, of the king's peace and particular commandment, and for that purpose had assembled a number of desperate fellows, whereof the consequence might have been dangerous; and the affront to the king was the greater that such a thing was offered, the king being forth of the kingdom, which, by example, might have drawn on other assemblies to more dangerous attempts. This field is large for a plentiful babbler.

"Answer. I know no such matter, neither in any place was there such assembly; true it is I spoke to Turner to provide me some tall fellows for the taking a possession for me, in Lincolnshire, of some lands Sir William Mason had lately dis-seised me; but be it they were assembled and convoked to such an end, what was done? was any such thing attempted? were they upon the place? kept they the heath or the highways by ambuscades? or was any place, any day, appointed for a rendezvous? No, no such matter; but something was intended: and I pray you what says the law of such a single intention, which is not within the view or notice of the law? Beside, who intended this—the mother? and wherefore? because she was unnaturally and barbarously secluded from her daughter, and her daughter forced against her will, contrary to her vow and liking, to the will of him she disliked; nay, the laws of God, of nature, of man, speak for me, and cry out upon them. But they had a warrant from the king's order from the commissioners to keep my daughter in their custody; yet neither this warrant nor the commissioners' did prohibit the mother coming to her, but contrarily allowed her; then by the same authority might she get to her daughter, that Sir Edward Cook had used to keep her from her daughter; the husband having no power, warrant, or permission from God, the king, or the law, to sequester the mother from her own child, she only endeavouring the child's good, with the child's liking, and to her preferment; and he, his private end against the child's liking, without care of her preferment; which differing respects, as they justify the mother in all, so condemn they the father as a transgressor of the rules of nature, and, as a perverter of his rights, as a father and a husband, to the hurt both of child and wife.

"Lastly, if recrimination could lessen the fault, take this in the worst sense, and naked of all the considerable circumstances it hath, what is this, nay, what had the executing of this intention been comparatively with Sir Edward Cook's most notorious riot, committed at my Lord of Arguyl's house, when, without constable or warrant, associated with a dozen fellows well weaponed, without cause being beforehand offered, to have what he would, he took down the doors of the gate-house and of the house itself, and tore the daughter in that barbarous manner from the mother, and would not suffer the mother to come near her; and when he was before the lords of the council to answer this outrage, he justified it to make it good by law, and that he feared the face of no greatness; a dangerous word for the encouragement of all notorious and rebellious malefactors; especially from him that had been the chief justice of the law; and of the people reputed the oracle of the law; and a most dangerous bravado cast in the teeth and face of the state in the king's absence, and therefore most considerable for the maintenance of authority and the quiet of the land; for if it be lawful for him with a dozen to enter any man's house thus outrageously for any right to which he pretends, it is lawful for any man with one hundred, nay, with five hundred, and consequently with as many as he draw together, to do the same, which may endanger the safety of the king's person, and the peace of the kingdom.

"The fifth, that you having certified the king you had received an engagement from my Lord of Oxford, and the king commanding you, upon your allegiance, to come and bring it to him, or to send it him; or not having it, to signify his name who brought it, and where he was; you refused all, by which you doubled and trebled a high contempt to his majesty.

"Answer. I was so sick on the week before, for the most part I kept my bed, and even that instant I was so weak as I was not able to rise from it without help, nor to endure the air; which indisposition and weakness my two physicians, Sir William Paddy and Dr. Atkins, can affirm true; which so being, I hope his majesty will graciously excuse the necessity, and not impose a fault, whereof I am not guilty; and for the sending it, I protest to God I had it not; and for telling the parties, and where he is, I most humbly beseech his sacred majesty, in his great wisdom and honour, to consider how unworthy a part it were in me to bring any man into trouble, from which I am so far from redeeming him as I can no way relieve myself, and therefore humbly crave his majesty, in his princely consideration of my distressed condition, to forgive me this reservedness, proceeding from that just sense, and the rather, for that the law of the land in civil causes, as I am informed, no way tieth me thereunto."

Among the other papers it appears that Coke accused his lady of having "embezzled all his gilt and silver plate and vessell (he having little in any house of mine, but that his marriage with me brought him), and instead thereof foisted in alkumy^[346] of the same sorte, fashion, and use, with the illusion to have cheated him of the other." Coke insists on the inventory by the schedule! Her ladyship says, "I made such plate for matter and form for my own use at Purbeck, that serving well enough in the country; and I was loth to trust such a substance in a place so remote, and in the guard of few; but for the plate and vessell he saith is wanting, they are every ounce within one of my three houses." She complains that Sir Edward Coke and his son Clement had threatened her servants so grievously, that the poor men run away to hide themselves from his fury, and dare not appear abroad. "Sir Edward broke into Hatton House, seased upon my coach and coach-horses, nay, my apparel, which he detains; thrust all my servants out of doors without wages; sent down his men to Corfe to inventory, seize, ship, and carry away all the goods, which being refused him by the castle-keeper, he threats to bring your lordship's warrant for the performance thereof. But your lordship established that he should have the use only of the goods during his life, in such houses as the same appertained, without meaning, I hope, of depriving me of such use, being goods brought at my marriage, or bought with the money I spared from my allowances. Stop, then, his high tyrannical courses; for I have suffered beyond the measure of any wife, mother, nay, of any ordinary woman in this kingdom, without respect to my father, my birth, my fortunes, with which I have so highly-raised him."

What availed the vexation of this sick, mortified, and proud woman, or the more tender feelings of the daughter, in this forced marriage to satisfy the political ambition of the father? When Lord Bacon wrote to the king respecting the strange behaviour of Coke, the king vindicated it, for the purpose of obtaining his daughter, blaming Lord Bacon for some expressions he had used; and Bacon, with the servility of the courtier, when he found the wind in his teeth, tacked round, and promised Buckingham to promote the match he so much abhorred.^[347] Villiers was married to the daughter of Coke at Hampton Court, on Michaelmas Day, 1617—Coke was re-admitted to the council-table—Lady Hatton was reconciled to Lady Compton and the queen, and gave a grand entertainment on the occasion, to which, however, "the good man of the house was neither invited nor spoken of: he dined that day at the Temple; she is still bent to pull down her husband," adds my informant. The moral close remains to be told. Lady Villiers looked on her husband as the hateful object of a forced union, and nearly drove him mad; while she disgraced herself by such loose conduct as to be condemned to stand in a white sheet, and I believe at length obtained a divorce. Thus a marriage, projected by ambition, and prosecuted by violent means, closed with that utter misery to the parties with which it had commenced; and for our present purpose has served to show, that when a lawyer like Coke holds his "high-handed tyrannical courses," the law of nature, as well as the law of which he is "the oracle," will be alike violated under his roof. Wife and daughter were plaintiffs or defendants on whom this lord chief-justice closed his ear: he had blocked up the avenues to his heart with "Law! Law! Law!" his "old song!"

Beyond his eightieth year, in the last parliament of Charles the First, the extraordinary vigour of Coke's intellect flamed clear under the snows of age. No reconciliation ever took place between the parties. On a strong report of his death, her ladyship, accompanied by her brother, Lord Wimbledon, posted down to Stoke-Pogis to take possession of his mansion; but beyond Colebrook they met with one of his physicians coming from him with the mortifying intelligence of Sir Edward's amendment, on which they returned at their leisure. This happened in June, 1634, and on the following September the venerable sage was no more!

OF COKE'S STYLE, AND HIS CONDUCT.

Rawleigh replied, what his dauntless conduct proved—"I am in no case to be angry."^[348]

Coke had used the same style with the unhappy favourite of Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex. It was usual with him; the bitterness was in his own heart as much as in his words; and Lord Bacon has left among his memorandums one entitled, "Of the abuse I received of Mr. Attorney-General publicly in the Exchequer." A specimen will complete our model of his forensic oratory. Coke exclaimed—"Mr. Bacon, if you have any tooth against me, pluck it out; for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your head will do you good." Bacon replied—"The less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it." Coke replied—"I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness towards you, who are less than little, less than the least." Coke was exhibited on the stage for his ill usage of Rawleigh, as was suggested by Theobald in a note on Twelfth Night. This style of railing was long the privilege of the lawyers; it was revived by Judge Jeffreys; but the bench of judges in the reign of William and Anne taught a due respect even to criminals, who were not supposed to be guilty till they were convicted.

When Coke once was himself in disgrace, his high spirit sunk, without a particle of magnanimity to dignify the fall; his big words, and his "tyrannical courses," when he could no longer exult that "he was upon his wings again," sunk with him as he presented himself on his knees to the council-table. Among other assumptions, he had styled himself "Lord Chief-Justice of England," when it was declared that this title was his own invention, since he was no more than of the King's Bench. His disgrace was a thunderbolt, which overthrew the haughty lawyer to the roots. When the supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George Coppin, that gentleman was surprised, on presenting it, to see that lofty "spirit shrunk into a very narrow room, for Coke received it with dejection and tears." The writer from whose letter I have copied these words adds, O tremor et suspiria non cadunt in fortem et constantem. The same writer incloses a punning distich: the name of our lord chief-justice was in his day very provocative of the pun, both in Latin and English; Cicero, indeed, had pre-occupied the miserable trifle.

Six years afterwards, Coke was sent to the Tower, and then they punned against him in English. An unpublished letter of the day has this curious anecdote:—The room in which he was lodged in the Tower had formerly been a kitchen; on his entrance, the lord chief-justice read upon the door, "This room wants a Cook!" They twitched the lion in the toils which held him. Shenstone had some reason in thanking Heaven that his name was not susceptible of a pun. This time, however, Coke was "on his wings;" for when Lord Arundel was sent by the king to the prisoner, to inform him that he would be allowed "Eight of the best learned in the law to advise him for his cause," our great lawyer thanked the king, "but he knew himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as any man in England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the law."

SECRET HISTORY OF AUTHORS WHO HAVE RUINED THEIR BOOKSELLERS.

Prynne seldom dined: every three or four hours he munched a manchet, and refreshed his exhausted spirits with ale brought to him by his servant; and when "he was put into this road of writing," as crabbed Anthony telleth, he fixed on "a long quilted cap, which came an inch over his eyes, serving as an umbrella to defend them from too much light;" and then hunger nor thirst did he experience, save that of his voluminous pages. Prynne has written a library amounting, I think, to nearly two hundred books. Our unlucky author, whose life was involved in authorship, and his happiness, no doubt, in the habitual exuberance of his pen, seems to have considered the being debarred from pen, ink, and books, during his imprisonment, as an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears.^[349] The extraordinary perseverance of Prynne in this fever of the pen appears in the following title of one of his extraordinary volumes. "Comfortable Cordials against discomfortable Fears of Imprisonment; containing some Latin Verses, Sentences, and Texts of Scripture, written by Mr. Wm. Prynne, on his Chamber Walls, in the Tower of London, during his imprisonment there; translated by him into English Verse, 1641." Prynne literally verified Pope's description:

We have also a catalogue of printed books, written by Wm. Prynne, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, in these classes,

with this motto, "Jucundi acti labores," 1643. The secret history of this voluminous author concludes with a characteristic event: a contemporary who saw Prynne in the pillory at Cheapside, informs us that while he stood there they "burnt his huge volumes under his nose, which had almost suffocated him." Yet such was the spirit of party, that a puritanic sister bequeathed a legacy to purchase all the works of Prynne for Sion College, where many still repose; for, by an odd fatality, in the fire which happened in that library these volumes were saved, from the idea that folios were the most valuable!^[350]

The pleasure which authors of this stamp experience is of a nature which, whenever certain unlucky circumstances combine, positively debarring them from publication, will not abate their ardour one jot; and their pen will still luxuriate in the forbidden page which even booksellers refuse to publish. Many instances might be recorded, but a very striking one is the case of Gaspar Barthius, whose "Adversaria," in two volumes folio, are in the collections of the curious.

Barthius was born to literature, for Baillet has placed him among his "Enfans Célèbres." At nine years of age he recited by heart all the comedies of Terence, without missing a line. The learned admired the puerile prodigy, while the prodigy was writing books before he had a beard. He became, unquestionably, a student of very extensive literature, modern as well as ancient. Such was his devotion to a literary life, that he retreated from the busy world. It appears that his early productions were composed more carefully and judiciously than his latter ones, when the passion for voluminous writing broke out, which showed itself by the usual prognostic of this dangerous disease—extreme facility of composition, and a pride and exultation in this unhappy faculty. He studied without using collections or references, trusting to his memory, which was probably an extraordinary one, though it necessarily led him into many errors in that delicate task of animadverting on other authors. Writing a very neat hand, his first copy required no transcript; and he boasts that he rarely made a correction: everything was sent to the press in its first state. He laughs at Statius, who congratulated himself that he employed only two days in composing the epithalamium upon Stella, containing two hundred and seventy-eight hexameters. "This," says Barthius, "did not quite lay him open to Horace's censure of the man who made two hundred verses in an hour, 'stans pede in uno.' Not," adds Barthius, "but that I think the censure of Horace too hyperbolical, for I am not ignorant what it is to make a great number of verses in a short time, and in three days I translated into Latin the three first books of the Iliad, which amount to above two thousand verses." Thus rapidity and volume were the great enjoyments of this learned man's pen, and now we must look to the fruits.

Barthius, on the system he had adopted, seems to have written a whole library; a circumstance which we discover by the continual references he makes in his printed works to his manuscript productions. In the Index Authorum to his Statius, he inserts his own name, to which is appended a long list of unprinted works, which Bayle thinks, by their titles and extracts, conveys a very advantageous notion of them. All these, and many such as these, he generously offered the world, would any bookseller be intrepid or courteous enough to usher them from his press; but their cowardice or incivility was intractable. The truth is now to be revealed, and seems not to have been known to Bayle; the booksellers had been formerly so cajoled and complimented by our learned author, and had heard so much of the celebrated Barthius, that they had caught at the bait, and that the two folio volumes of the much referred-to "Adversaria" of Barthius had thus been published—but from that day no bookseller ever offered himself to publish again!

The "Adversaria" is a collection of critical notes and quotations from ancient authors, with illustrations of their manners, customs, laws, and ceremonies; all these were to be classed into one hundred and eighty books; sixty of which we possess in two volumes folio, with eleven indexes. The plan is vast, as the rapidity with which it was pursued: Bayle finely characterises it by a single stroke—"Its immensity tires even the imagination." But the truth is, this mighty labour turned out to be a complete failure: there was neither order nor judgment in these masses of learning; crude, obscure, and contradictory; such as we might expect from a man who trusted to his memory, and would not throw away his time on any correction. His contradictions are flagrant; but one of his friends would apologise for these by telling us that "He wrote everything which offered itself to his imagination; to-day one thing, to-morrow another, in order that when he should revise it again, this contrariety of opinion might induce him to examine the subject more accurately." The notions of the friends of authors are as extravagant as those of their enemies. Barthius evidently wrote so much, that often he forgot what he had written, as happened to another great book-man, one Didymus, of whom Quintilian records, that on hearing a certain history, he treated it as utterly unworthy of credit; on which the teller called for one of Didymus's own books, and showed where he might read it at full length! That the work failed, we have the evidence of Clement in his "Bibliothèque curieuse de Livres difficiles à trouver," under the article Barthius, where we discover the winding up of the history of this book. Clement mentions more than one edition of the Adversaria; but on a more careful inspection he detected that the old title-pages had been removed for others of a fresher date; the booksellers not being able to sell the book practised this deception. It availed little; they remained with their unsold edition of the two first volumes of the Adversaria, and the author with three thousand folio sheets in manuscript—while both parties complained together, and their heirs could acquire nothing from the works of an author, of whom Bayle says that "his writings rise to such a prodigious bulk, that one can scarce conceive a single man could be capable of executing so great a variety; perhaps no copying clerk, who lived to grow old amidst the dust of an office, ever transcribed as much as this author has written." This was the memorable fate of one of that race of writers who imagine that their capacity extends with their volume. Their land seems covered with fertility, but in shaking their wheat no ears fall.

Another memorable brother of this family of the Scribleri is the Abbé de Marolles, who with great ardour as a man of letters, and in the enjoyment of the leisure and opulence so necessary to carry on his pursuits, from an entire absence of judgment, closed his life with the bitter regrets of a voluminous author; and yet it cannot be denied that he has contributed one precious volume to the public stock of literature; a compliment which cannot be paid to some who have enjoyed a higher reputation than our author. He has left us his very curious "Memoirs." A poor writer indeed, but the frankness and intrepidity of his character enable him, while he is painting himself, to paint man. Gibbon was struck by the honesty of his pen, for he says in his life, "The dulness of Michael de Marolles and Anthony Wood^[351] acquires some value from the faithful representation of men and manners."

I have elsewhere shortly noticed the Abbé de Marolles in the character of "a literary sinner;" but the extent of his sins never struck me so forcibly as when I observed his delinquencies counted up in chronological order in Niceron's "Hommes Illustres." It is extremely amusing to detect the swarming fecundity of his pen; from year to year, with author after author, was this translator wearying others, but remained himself unwearied. Sometimes two or three classical victims in a season were dragged into his slaughter-house. Of about seventy works, fifty were versions of the classical writers of antiquity, accompanied with notes. But some odd circumstances happened to our extraordinary translator in the course of his life. De l'Etang, a critic of that day, in his "Règles de bien traduire," drew all his examples of bad translation from our abbé, who was more angry than usual, and among his circle the cries of our Marsyas resounded. De l'Etang, who had done this not out of malice, but from urgent necessity to illustrate his principles, seemed very sorry, and was desirous of appeasing the angried translator. One day in Easter, finding the abbé in church at prayers, the critic fell on his knees by the side of the translator: it was an extraordinary moment, and a singular situation to terminate a literary quarrel. "You are angry with me," said De l'Etang, "and I think you have reason; but this is a season of mercy, and I now ask your pardon."—"In the manner," replied the abbé, "which you have chosen, I can no longer defend myself. Go, sir! I pardon you." Some days after, the abbé again meeting De l'Etang, reproached him with duping him out of a pardon, which he had no desire to have bestowed on him. The last reply of the critic was caustic: "Do not be so difficult; when one stands in need of a general pardon, one ought surely to grant a particular one." De Marolles was subject to encounter critics who were never so kind as to kneel by him on an Easter Sunday. Besides these fifty translations, of which the notes are often curious, and even the sense may be useful to consult, his love of writing produced many odd works. His volumes were richly bound, and freely distributed, but they found no readers! In a "Discours pour servir de Préface sur les Poëtes, traduits par Michel de Marolles," he has given an imposing list of "illustrious persons and contemporary authors who were his friends," and has preserved many singular facts concerning them. He was indeed for so long a time convinced that he had struck off the true spirit of his fine originals, that I find he at several times printed some critical treatise to back his last, or usher in his new version; giving the world reasons why the versions which had been given of that particular author, "soit en prose, soit en vers, ont été si pen approuvées jusqu'ici." Among these numerous translations he was the first who ventured on the Deipnosophists of Athenæus, which still bears an excessive price. He entitles his work, "Les quinze Livres de Deipnosophists d'Athenée, Ouvrage delicieux, agréablement diversifié et rempli de Narrations, sçavantes sur toutes Sortes de Matières et de Sujets." He has prefixed various preliminary dissertations; yet, not satisfied with having performed this great labour, it was followed by a small quarto of forty pages, which might now be considered curious; "Analyse, en Déscription succincte des Choses conténues dans les quinzes Livres de Deipnosophistes." He wrote, "Quatrains sur les Personnes de la Cour et les Gens de Lettres," which the curious would now be glad to find. After having plundered the classical geniuses of antiquity by his barbarous style, when he had nothing more left to do, he committed sacrilege in translating the Bible; but, in the midst of printing, he was suddenly stopped by authority, for having inserted in his notes the reveries of the Pre-Adamite Isaac Peyrère. He had already revelled on the New Testament, to his version of which he had prefixed so sensible an introduction, that it was afterwards translated into Latin. Translation was the mania of the Abbé de Marolles. I doubt whether he ever fairly awoke out of the heavy dream of the felicity of his translations; for late in life I find him observing, "I have employed much time in study, and I have translated many books; considering this rather as an innocent amusement which I have chosen for my private life, than as things very necessary, although they are not entirely useless. Some have valued them, and others have cared little about them; but however it may be, I see nothing which obliges me to believe that they contain not at least as much good as bad, both for their own matter and the form which I have given to them." The notion he entertained of his translations was their closeness; he was not aware of his own spiritless style; and he imagined that poetry only consisted in the thoughts, not in grace and harmony of verse. He insisted that by giving the public his numerous translations, he was not vainly multiplying books, because he neither diminished nor increased their ideas in his faithful versions. He had a curious notion that some were more scrupulous than they ought to be respecting translations of authors who, living so many ages past, are rarely read from the difficulty of understanding them; and why should they imagine that a translation is injurious to them, or would occasion the utter neglect of the originals? "We do not think so highly of our own works," says the indefatigable and modest abbé; "but neither do I despair that they may he useful even to these scrupulous persons. I will not suppress the truth, while I am noticing these ungrateful labours; if they have given me much pain by my assiduity, they have repaid me by the fine things they have taught me, and by the opinion which I have conceived that posterity, more just than the present times, will award a more favourable judgment." Thus a miserable translator terminates his long labours, by drawing his bill of fame on posterity, which his contemporaries will not pay; but in these cases, as the bill is certainly lost before it reaches acceptance, why should we deprive the drawers of pleasing themselves with the ideal capital?

Let us not, however, imagine that the Abbé de Marolles was nothing but the man he appears in the character of a voluminous translator; though occupied all his life on these miserable labours, he was evidently an ingenious and nobly-minded man, whose days were consecrated to literary pursuits, and who was among the primitive collectors in Europe of fine and curious prints. One of his works is a "Catalogue des Livres d'Estampes et de Figures en Taille-douce." Paris, 1666, in 8vo. In the preface our author declares, that he had collected one hundred and twenty-three thousand four hundred prints, of six thousand masters, in four hundred large volumes, and one hundred and twenty small ones. This magnificent collection, formed by so much care and skill, he presented to the king; whether gratuitously given or otherwise, it was an acquisition which a monarch might have thankfully accepted. Such was the habitual ardour of our author, that afterwards he set about forming another collection, of which he has also given a catalogue in 1672, in 12mo. Both these catalogues of prints are of extreme rarity, and are yet so highly valued by the connoisseurs, that when in France I could never obtain a copy. A long life may be passed without even a sight of the "Catalogue des Livres d'Estampes" of the Abbé de Marolles.^[352]

Such are the lessons drawn from this secret history of voluminous writers. We see one venting his mania in scrawling on his prison walls; another persisting in writing folios, while the booksellers, who were once caught, like Reynard who had lost his tail, and whom no arts could any longer practise on, turn away from the new trap; and a third, who can acquire no readers but by giving his books away, growing grey in scourging the sacred genius of antiquity by his meagre versions, and dying without having made up his mind, whether he were as woful a translator as some of his contemporaries had assured him.

Among these worthies of the Scribleri we may rank the Jesuit, Theophilus Raynaud, once a celebrated name, eulogised by Bayle and Patin. His collected works fill twenty folios; an edition, indeed, which finally sent the bookseller to the poor-house. This enterprising bibliopolist had heard much of the prodigious erudition of the writer; but he had not the sagacity to discover that other literary qualities were also required to make twenty folios at all saleable. Of these "Opera omnia" perhaps not a single copy can be found in England; but they may be a pennyworth on the continent. Raynaud's works are theological; but a system of grace maintained by one work and pulled down by another, has ceased to interest mankind: the literature of the divine is of a less perishable nature. Beading and writing through a life of eighty years, and giving only a quarter of an hour to his dinner, with a vigorous memory, and a whimsical taste for some singular subjects, he could not fail to accumulate a mass of knowledge which may still be useful for the curious; and besides, Raynaud had the Ritsonian characteristic. He was one of those who, exemplary in their own conduct, with a bitter zeal condemn whatever does not agree with their own notions; and, however gentle in their nature, yet will set no limits to the ferocity of their pen. Raynaud was often in trouble with the censors of his books, and much more with his adversaries; so that he frequently had recourse to publishing under a fictitious name. A remarkable evidence of this is the entire twentieth volume of his works. It consists of the numerous writings published anonymously, or to which were prefixed noms de guerre. This volume is described by the whimsical title of Apopompæus; explained to us as the name given by the Jews to the scape-goat, which, when loaded with all their maledictions on its head, was driven away into the desert. These contain all Raynaud's numerous diatribes; for whenever he was refuted, he was always refuting; he did not spare his best friends. The title of a work against Arnauld will show how he treated his adversaries. "Arnauldus redivivus natus Brixiæ seculo xii. renatus in Galliæ ætate nostra." He dexterously applies the name of Arnauld by comparing him with one of the same name in the twelfth century, a scholar of Abelard's, and a turbulent enthusiast, say the Romish writers, who was burnt alive for having written against the luxury and the power of the priesthood, and for having raised a rebellion against the pope. When the learned De Launoi had successfully attacked the legends of saints, and was called the Denicheur de Saints,—the "Unnicher of Saints," every parish priest trembled for his favourite. Raynaud entitled a libel on this new iconoclast, "Hercules Commodianus Joannes Launoius repulsus," &c.; he compares Launoi to the Emperor Commodus, who, though the most cowardly of men, conceived himself formidable when he dressed himself as Hercules. Another of these maledictions is a tract against Calvinism, described as a "religio bestiarum," a religion of beasts, because the Calvinists deny free will; but as he always fired with a double-barrelled gun, under the cloak of attacking Calvinism, he aimed a deadly shot at the Thomists, and particularly at a Dominican friar, whom he considered as bad as Calvin. Raynaud exults that he had driven one of his adversaries to take flight into Scotland, ad pultes Scoticas transgressus—to a Scotch pottage; an expression which Saint Jerome used in speaking of Pelagius. He always rendered an adversary odious by coupling him with some odious name. On one of these controversial books where Casalas refuted Raynaud, Monnoye wrote, "Raynaudus et Casalas inepti; Raynaudo tamen Casalas ineptior." The usual termination of what then passed for sense, and now is the reverse!

I will not quit Raynaud without pointing out some of his more remarkable treatises, as so many curiosities of literature.

In a treatise on the attributes of Christ, he entitles a chapter, Christus, bonus, bona, bonum: in another on the seven-branched candlestick in the Jewish temple, by an allegorical interpretation, he explains the eucharist; and adds an alphabetical list of names and epithets which have been given to this mystery.

The seventh volume bears the title of Mariolia: all the treatises have for their theme the perfections and the worship of the Virgin. Many extraordinary things are here. One is a dictionary of names given to the Virgin, with observations on these names. Another on the devotion of the scapulary, and its wonderful effects, written against De Launoi, and for which the order of the Carmes, when he died, bestowed a solemn service and obsequies on him. Another of these "Mariolia" is mentioned by Gallois in the Journal des Sçavans, 1667, as a proof of his fertility; having to preach on the seven solemn anthems which the Church sings before Christmas, and which begin by an O! he made this letter only the subject of his sermons, and barren as the letter appears, he has struck out "a multitude of beautiful particulars." This literary folly invites our curiosity.

In the eighth volume is a table of saints, classed by their station, condition, employment, and trades: a list of titles and prerogatives, which the councils and the fathers have attributed to the sovereign pontiff.

The thirteenth volume has a subject which seems much in the taste of the sermons on the letter O! it is entitled Laus Brevitatis! in praise of brevity. The maxims are brief, but the commentary long. One of the natural subjects treated on is that of Noses: he reviews a great number of noses, and, as usual, does not forget the Holy Virgin's. According to Raynaud, the nose of the Virgin Mary was long and aquiline, the mark of goodness and dignity; and as Jesus perfectly resembled his mother, he infers that he must have had such a nose.

A treatise entitled Heteroclita spiritualia et anomala Pietatis Cælestium, Terrestrium, et Infernorum, contains many singular practices introduced into devotion, which superstition, ignorance, and remissness, have made a part of religion.

A treatise directed against the new custom of hiring chairs in churches, and being seated during the sacrifice of the mass. Another on the Cæsarean operation, which he stigmatises as an act against nature. Another on eunuchs. Another entitled Hipparchus de Religioso Negotiatore, is an attack on those of his own company; the monk turned merchant; the Jesuits were then accused of commercial traffic with the revenues of their establishment. The rector of a college at Avignon, who thought he was portrayed in this honest work, confined Raynaud in prison for five months.

The most curious work of Raynaud connected with literature, I possess; it is entitled Erotemata de malis ac bonis Libris, deque justa aut injusta eorundem confixione. Lugduni, 1653, 4to, with necessary indexes. One of his works having been condemned at Rome, he drew up these inquiries concerning good and bad books, addressed to the grand inquisitor. He divides his treatise into "bad and nocent books; bad books but not nocent; books not bad, but nocent; books neither bad nor nocent." His immense reading appears here to advantage, and his Ritsonian feature is prominent; for he asserts, that when writing against heretics all mordacity is innoxious; and an alphabetical list of abusive names, which the fathers have given to the heterodox is entitled Alphabetum bestialitatis Hæretici, ex Patrum Symbolis.

After all, Raynaud was a man of vast acquirement, with a great flow of ideas, but tasteless, and void of all judgment. An anecdote may be recorded of him, which puts in a clear light the state of these literary men. Raynaud was one day pressing hard a reluctant bookseller to publish one of his works, who replied—"Write a book like Father Barri's, and I shall be glad to print it." It happened that the work of Barri was pillaged from Raynaud, and was much liked, while the original lay on the shelf. However, this only served to provoke a fresh attack from our redoubtable hero, who vindicated his rights, and emptied his quiver on him who had been ploughing with his heifer.

Such are the writers who, enjoying all the pleasures without the pains of composition, have often apologised for their repeated productions, by declaring that they write only for their own amusement; but such private theatricals should not be brought on the public stage. One Catherinot all his life was printing a countless number of feuilles volantes in history and on antiquities, each consisting of about three or four leaves in quarto: Lenglet du Fresnoy calls him "grand auteur des petits livres." This gentleman liked to live among antiquaries and historians; but with a crooked headpiece, stuck with whims, and hard with knotty combinations, all overloaded with prodigious erudition, he could not ease it at a less rate than by an occasional dissertation of three or four quarto pages. He appears to have published about two hundred pieces of this sort, much sought after by the curious for their rarity: Brunet complains he could never discover a complete collection. But Catherinot may escape "the pains and penalties" of our voluminous writers, for De Bure thinks he generously printed them to distribute among his friends. Such endless writers, provided they do not print themselves into an alms-house, may be allowed to print themselves out; and we would accept the apology which Monsieur Catherinot has framed for himself, which I find preserved in Beyeri Memoriæ Librorum Rariorum. "I must be allowed my freedom in my studies, for I substitute my writings for a game at the tennis-court, or a club at the tavern; I never counted among my honours these opuscula of mine, but merely as harmless amusements. It is my partridge, as with St. John the Evangelist; my cat, as with Pope St. Gregory; my little dog, as with St. Dominick; my lamb, as with St. Francis; my great black mastiff, as with Cornelius Agrippa; and my tame hare, as with Justus Lipsius." I have since discovered in Niceron that this Catherinot could never get a printer, and was rather compelled to study economy in his two hundred quartos of four or eight pages: his paper was of inferior quality; and when he could not get his dissertations into his prescribed number of pages, he used to promise the end at another time, which did not always happen. But his greatest anxiety was to publish and spread his works; in despair he adopted an odd expedient. Whenever Monsieur Catherinot came to Paris, he used to haunt the quaies where books are sold, and while he appeared to be looking over them, he adroitly slided one of his own dissertations among these old books. He began this mode of publication early, and continued it to his last days. He died with a perfect conviction that he had secured his immortality; and in this manner had disposed of more than one edition of his unsaleable works. Niceron has given the titles of 118 of his things, which he had looked over.