For man's sake it should seeme that Nature made and produced all other creatures besides; though this great favour of hers, so bountifull and beneficiall in that respect, hath cost them full deere. Insomuch as it is hard to judge, whether in so doing she hath done the part of a kind mother, or a hard and cruell stepdame. For first and foremost, of all other living creatures, man she hath brought forth all naked, and cloathed him with the good and riches of others. To all the rest she hath given sufficient to clad them everie one according to their kind: as namely shells, cods, hard hides, prickes, shagge, bristles, haire, downe, feathers, quils, skailes, and fleeces of wool. The verie trunkes and stemmes of trees and plants, shee hath defended with bark and rind, yea, and the same sometime double against the injuries both of heat and cold man alone, poore wretch, she hath laid all naked upon the bare earth, even on his birth-day, to cry and wraule presently from the very first houre that he is borne into this world: in suche sort as, among so many living creatures, there is none subject to shed teares and weepe like him. And verily to no babe or infant is it given once to laugh before he be fortie daies old, and that is counted verie early and with the soonest. The child of man thus untowardly borne, and who another day is to rule and command all other, loe how he lyeth bound hand and foot, weeping and crying, and beginning his life with miserie, as if he were to make amends and satisfaction by his punishment unto Nature, for this onely fault and tresspass, that he is borne alive.-Plinie's Naturall Historie, by Phil. Holland, Lond. 1601, fol., intr. to b. vii. The following queries are extracted from Sir Thomas Browne's "Common-place Books," Aristotle, Lib. Animal. :— Whether till after forty days children, though they cry, weep not; or, as Scaliger expresseth it, "Vagiunt sed oculis siccis." Whether they laugh not upon tickling? Why, though some children have been heard to cry in the womb, yet so few cry at their birth, though their heads be out of the womb ?-Bohn's ed. iii. 358. Thomson follows Pliny, and says that man is "taught alone to weep" ("Spring," 350); but-not to speak of the Cruel, crafty crocodile, Which, in false grief hiding his harmful guile, Doth weep full sore and sheddeth tender tears, as Spenser sings-the camel weeps when overloaded, and the deer when chased sobs piteously. Thomson himself, in a passage he has stolen from Shakspeare, makes the stag weep : -he stands at bay; The big round tears run down his dappled face; He groans in anguish.-Autumn, 452. Steller relates this of the Phoca Ursina, Pallas of the camel, and Humboldt of a small American monkey.-Laurence On Man, Lond. 1844, p. 161. Risibility, and a sense of the ridiculous, is generally considered to be the property of man, though Le Cat states that he has seen a chimpanzee laugh. Grose (quoted in Brand) tells us there is a superstition that a child who does not cry when sprinkled in baptism will not live; and the same is recorded in Hone's Year-Book. EPIGRAMS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. The following epigrams are transferred from the letters of Mr. Martyn, a littérateur of temporary fame in the first half of the eighteenth century, addressed to Dr. Birch, which are among the Birch MSS. in the British Museum. Mr. Martyn, if I remember right, gives them as not his own. EPITAPH ON ARCHBISHOP POTTER. Alack and well-a-day, Potter himself is turned to clay. Two epigrams on the coffins of Dr. Sacheverel and Sally Salisbury, being found together in the vault of St. Andrew's: Lo! to one grave consigned, of rival fame, A fit companion for a high-church priest; CINDERELLA. Two centuries ago furs were so rare, and therefore so highly valued, that the wearing of them was restricted by several sumptuary laws to kings and princes. Sable, in those laws called vair, was the subject of countless regulations: the exact quality permitted to be worn by persons of different grades, and the articles of dress to which it might be applied, were defined most strictly. Perrault's tale of Cinderella originally marked the dignity conferred on her by the fairy, by her wearing a slipper of vair, a privilege then confined to the highest rank of princesses. An error of the press, now become inveterate, changed vair into verre, and the slipper of sable was suddenly converted into a glass slipper. A story somewhat similar to that of Cinderella has been handed down from the Greek. It is reported of Rhodopis, "that one day when she was in the bath, an eagle snatched one of her slippers from an attendant, and carried it to Memphis. The King was then sitting on his tribunal; the eagle, settling above his head, let fall the slipper into his bosom; the prince, astonished at this singular event, and at the smallness of the slipper, ordered search to be made through the country for the woman to whom it belonged. Having found her at Naucratis, she was presented to the King, who made her his wife." CORNELIS DREBBEL. In a very curious little book, entitled Kronycke van Alcmaer, and published in that town anno 1645, are the following particulars about Cornelis Drebbel, a native of the same city. Being justly renowned as a natural philosopher, and having made great progress in mechanics, our Drebbel was named tutor of the young Prince of Austria, by the Emperor Ferdinandus II., an office which he fulfilled so well, that he was afterwards chosen councillor to His Majesty, and honored with a rich pension for past services. But, alas! in the year 1620, Prague, the place he dwelt in, was taken by Frederick, then King of Bohemia, several members of the imperial council were imprisoned, and some of them even put to death. Bereft of every thing he possessed, a prisoner as well as the others, poor Drebbel would perhaps have undergone the same lot if the High Mighty States of the United Provinces had not sent a message to the King of England, asking him to interfere in their countryman's favor. They succeeded in their benevolent request; for his English Majesty obtained at last from his sonin-law, the Dutch philosopher's liberation, who (I don't exaggerate) was made a present of to the British King; maybe a sort of lion, which the King of Morocco had never yet thought of bestowing upon the monarch as a regal offering. Drebbel, however, did not forget how much he owed to the intercession of King James, and, to show his gratitude, presented him with an object of very peculiar make. I will try to give you an exact version of its not very clear description in the Dutch book. A glass or crystal globe, wherein he blew or made a perpetual motion by the power of the four elements. For every thing which (by the force of the elements) passes, in a year, on the surface of the earth (sic!) could be seen to pass in this cylindrical wonder in the shorter lapse of twenty-four hours. Thus were marked by it, all years, months, days, hours; the course of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, &c. It made you understand what cold is, what the cause of the primum mobile, what the first principle of the sun, how it moves; the firmament, all stars, the moon, the sea, the surface of the earth, what occasions the ebb, flood, thunder, lightning, rain, wind, and how all things wax and multiply, &c.—as every one can be informed of by Drebbel's own works; we refer the curious to his book, entitled Eeuwige Beweginghe (Perpetual Motion). Can this instrument have been a kind of Orrery? He built a ship, in which one could row and navigate under water, from Westminster to Greenwich, the distance of two Dutch miles; even five or six miles, as far as one pleased. In this boat, a person could see under the surface of the water, and without candlelight, as much as he needed to read in the Bible or any other book. Not long ago, this remarkable ship was yet to be seen lying on the Thames or London river. Aided by some instruments of his own manufacture, Drebbel could make it rain, lighten, and thunder at every time of the year, so that you would have sworn it came in a natural way from heaven. By means of other instruments, he could, in the midst of summer, so much refrigerate the atmosphere of certain places, that you would have thought yourself in the very midst of winter. This experiment he did once on His Majesty's request, in the great Hall of Westminster; and although a hot summer day had been chosen by the King, it became so cold in the Hall, that James and his followers took to their heels in hasty flight. With a certain instrument, he could draw an incredible quantity of water out of a well or river. By his peculiar ingenuity, he could, at all times of the year, even in the midst of winter, hatch chickens and ducklings without using hens or ducks. He made instruments, by means of which were seen pictures and portraits; for instance, he could show you kings, princes, nobles, although residing at that moment in foreign countries. And there was no paint nor painter's work to be seen, so that you saw a picture in appearance, but not in reality. Perhaps a magic lantern? He could make a glass, that placed in the dark near him or another, drew the light of a candle, standing at the other end of a long room, with such force, that the glass near him reflected so much light as to enable him to see to read perfectly. Was this done by parallel parabolical mirrors? He could make a plane glass, without grinding it on either side, in which people saw themselves reflected seven times. He invented all these and many other curiosities, too long to relate, without the aid of the black art; but by natural philosophy alone, if we may believe the tongues, whose eyes saw it. By these experiments, he so gained the King's favor, His Majesty granted him a pension of 2,000 guilders. He died in London, anno 1634, the sixtieth year of his age. |