SHARPE'S LONDON MAGAZINE. A measured trot is heard. Mr. Perigord affects | do them justice, they were neither slow in finding it They were now put to the test. The day on which their squire had been "sent for," Sir Pigby Lackworth's mercenary soul left its organic vehicle in an apoplexy. No time was lost in moving for a new writ. Mr. Perigord was not prepared with another candidate, or he would undoubtedly have proposed another. Sir Pigby had taken him by surprise. A Chartist-a dissenting teacher-sneaked upon the hustings. The instinctive cunning of the party per It is said that the worlds of space are formed by rapid revolutions of primal fire-mists, narrowing to individual centres. It may be so. It seems as probable as any other guess of physical science. The Perigord planet was developed from a less fervid element. Its process of formation had been similar, its results strikingly different. Instead of grace, perpetual motion, and varied beauty, they were pride, stagnation, and monotonous egotism.ceived that their chance was then, if ever. Mr. PeriThe new Premier perfectly spun round upon his own gord had not received a line from his brother-in-law, axis, in the interval between the command and the neither had his mother nor sister. He was in a If he perplexity. The seat must not be lost. He made a interview. Pass we the ungainly detail. retained any self-respect in his demeanour towards merit of necessity, and got some one to propose his sovereign, it was because of his deep conviction Harry Sumner. The cheering with which the name that his promotion was not disproportionate to his was received spoke pretty clearly the result of the deserts. Still there was a broad difference between election. The Chartist was proposed by the Reverend the loyal reverence of a great soul, and Mr. Perigord's Tinker Toddle, amidst the derision of his audience. exact etiquette. If there was no particular point But when the demagogue began to explain his prinin his manner upon which the objector could lay a ciples of unbridled licence and universal spoliation, in finger, the effort it cost him was at least plainly bad grammar and a detestable nasal drawl, his audience discernible. He was perceptibly striving to reconcile grew mischievous. His eloquence told. A movean erect attitude with the respect due to his queen.ment was perceptible amidst the crowd-a shower of He left the presence charged with the formation of a ministry. This cost him a fortnight's toil. At the expiration of that time he surveyed his own work with complacency. The talents laughed in their sleeves. The Premier cherished it as a fact that the new ministry was a master-stroke of policy. Already he had placed himself on the pinnacle of greatness. What was the tradition of experience to a prime minister of thirty-four? Party should henceforth disappear. Character and talent should be the only party by which he would govern-talent, that is, that would be subordinate to the culminating "I." But then, some people might have held a different definition of talent from Mr. Perigord. He had gleaned from all parties what are commonly called long-headed men; hard, dry, strong, untiring intellects. It was an eminently practical ministry. One post was left open-an under-secretaryshipnot even the newspaper gossips could guess why, or for whom. Meanwhile, the Premier's wife was at Pendlebury, doing her utmost to carry out her husband's wishes. It was labour lost. Without any extraordinary caresses, the electors of Bribeworth, to a man, loved from their inmost heart Mrs. Sumner, and Lucy Perigord, and Harry Sumner. Not all the hospitalities imaginable, however munificent, would have won the same feeling for the lord of the manor. They were a simple and a genuine set, those Bribeworth electors. Scarce a man of them but would have given an unbought honest vote for Harry Sumner, in the teeth of the largest bribe the squire might have tendered them. They well knew that none of the Sumners were fine-day friends; that their neighbours, however poor, had their hearts as well as their purses; and, to hats shot up into the air-the hills echoed a hearty The intelligence quickly reached Mrs. Roakes. Mr. D'Aaroni, who pretty well knew the real state "And you don't know whose they were before you bought them?" pursued Mrs. Roakes. "I am not in the secret, neither do I seek to be. Whoever it was got well rid of them, though perhaps not with the cleanest hands in the world,” replied Mr. Lamb. "I should think not either," chuckled Mrs. Roakes. "Mr. Gribe sold them for Mrs. Sumner! He told me so himself. Doubtless her son's doing. That insufferable young man!" of things, was not, at best, an enthusiastic defender. "If you mean the Huxtable and Bribeworth shares, The only defence of any value against all this calumny I bought them of Mr. Gribe, at the Committee Room was furnished by the chief sufferer in the duel- at St. Stephen's, where the great council of the Mr. Browne. The extensive hemorrhage from his nation sits and talks!" wound, together with the nature of the wound itself, had, as we have seen, so rapidly exhausted his physical powers, that when his antagonist cast himself in anguish by his side, he appeared to be in a state of complete insensibility. Unable to move or articulate, the languid raising of his eyelids and a gentle pressure of his antagonist's hand, were the only signs of conściousness he exhibited throughout. But he had heard every word that Sumner uttered. He knew him well, was not ungenerous himself, and he cordially believed him. When, then, the report which Insufferable-eh! did you say? You do not Col. Flint had originated reached his ears, his indig-like Mr. Sumner ?" muttered Mr. Lamb, half to himnation knew no bounds. As he could not leave his self, half aloud. bed, however, and was scarcely allowed to speak, his denial of the slander only crept slowly and languidly beyond the circle of his attendants. Gratitude impelled Mrs. Roakes to reimburse Mrs. Lamb with the "Hungarian liaison" intelligence, for the important news which she had first learned from her. The good housewife was kind and cordial; and her visitor was half invited and half asked herself to stay dinner. Nothing could exceed the surly morosity of Mr. Lamb at this social meal. Mrs. Roakes did not love him; "Oh, isn't he?" exclaimed Mrs. Roakes. "No but he spoke snappishly of Harry Sumner, and that fault of Mr. Sumner's if he is not. He has thought brought her nearly up to loving point. That gentle-it safest to run off to Vienna: there he has amused man's feelings towards Summer had undergone an himself with ruining a friend's wife.” unhappy change. He was associated, in his sordid and unloving mind, with the blackest event of his life. Perhaps, too, there was a slight instinctive aversion to a disposition so exactly the reverse of his own: but whatever might be the cause, he had altogether ceased to think or speak kindly of him. When the ladies had withdrawn, Mrs. Lamb apologized after a clumsily kind fashion for her husband's brusqueness. "He had just lost a matter of thousands by buying scrip in the Huxtable and Bribeworth railway." "Did he purchase them through Mr. Gribe ?" inquired Mrs. Roakes. "I don't know," replied the hostess; "but I think I heard him say something about buying it of the House of Commons commissary!" What this meant Mrs. Roakes could by no means divine; so she waited impatiently for the entrance of Mr. Lamb. As soon as a dry growl was heard on the stairs, she prepared for the attack. "How sorry I am, Mr. Lamb, to hear of the terrible loss you have suffered!" she began, as soon as he entered the room. "Thank you, madam!" replied the gentleman addressed, in a sardonic tone of voice. "It is indeed good of you to be so sorry for another person's misfortunes. It is consoling to think they are not one's own-is it not-ch, madam ?" "Do you know who you bought the detestable shares of ?" inquired Mrs. Roakes. Mr. Lamb scowled at his wife, and replied, "Me like him, indeed!" Mrs. Roakes ejaculated. They tell me he has shot a man in a duel!” Mr. Lamb proceeded. Mrs. Roakes could not restrain herself from breaking in here, with To be sure he has-he took deliberate aim, and shot him dead." The wounded person 'No, madam; excuse me. is not dead," said Mr. Lamb. Mr. Lamb seemed to pay unwonted attention to Mrs. Roakes's intelligence. His grey eyes twinkled mischievously. Some internal suggestion had tickle: his fancy: and that did not bode well for it, whatever it was. There was a pause. He seemed to be pondering on some matter or other. At length he saidaddressing Mrs. Roakes, "And now what shall be my reward, madam, for the newest intelligence?" Mrs. Roakes protested that she was "one of the least curious persons, and most indifferent to news and gossip living." "I should imagine so," said Mr. Lamb with an uncomfortable emphasis. "What do you think of Mr. Sumner having been yesterday elected for Bribeworth ?" "What! a Member of Parliament that puppy ?” Mrs. Roakes perfectly shrieked. "Oh lor! what horrid creatures-the voters!" "Do you know, I always fancied," observed Mr. Lamb, "that the grief your insufferable friend-——” "Don't call him my friend!" interrupted Mrs. Roakes. "-exhibited about the decease of my poor son, was out of nature in its excess," continued Mr. Lamb. " It was quite unnatural-unnatural—” "To be sure it was!" interrupted Mrs. Roakes. "No one ever bewailed a friend in that way, merely out of friendship," continued Mr. Lamb, not noticing the interruption. "I never could quite make out the circumstances. There always seened TE De Bury. with what veneration should we not gaze at it; the one taken down from his own dictation,—for, as you know, the old man was blind, and compelled to trust his immortal inspirations to the ready, though sometimes peculative,' pens of others; but surely, as he sat by the way-side, his fingers wandering amid the strings of his harp, "raising his sightless balls to heaven," whilst his silver locks floated on the wind, then, as he poured forth his magnificent effusions, whilst his harp accordant rang in tumultuous tones as Achilles rushed with his warriors to the plain, or wailed in silvery warblings with the chaste Andromache's notes of love, or floated in tremulous plaintive murmurs on the air, when telling how the toilworn, weary wanderer returned to his native halls, forgotten, unrecognised by all but his faithful dog,surely, surely, these outpourings would be eagerly recorded by the willing hands and fluent pens of many a ready writer. "WHO wrote Homer?" asked the schoolmaster. Pope,” replied the boy; and scholars affirm that the answer was by no means an injudicious one, considering the wide variations between the English version and Yet, sooth to say, writing was no very easy the original Greek poem. The origin of the Iliad has matter then; it was little practised; and, as in our caused more disputation than the authorship of own country in early timês, the learning of the day, Junius or that of Eikov Baσiliky. Indeed, if gos-enveloped in a poetic garb, was chiefly promulgated sipry be to be relied upon, (and that only do we adventure on here,) the authorship of the latter work has been a mooted point long, long since the troubles of its royal author, and the heart-burnings and fierce dissensions of his time, have become only a tale that is told." If our informant, Madame Gossip, speak sooth, it is comparatively of late days only that a pamphlet, entitled "Who wrote Eikov Baσidikn?" excited as much attention and inquiry as the original work itself. The query was at length thus satisfactorily responded to : « Who wrote 4 Who wrote Εἰκὼν Βασιλικὴ ? "With my little ability, I wrote, Who wrote Εἰκὼν Βασιλική." It needs not to suggest to the reader the celebrated ancient poem by which, if the identity of rhythm be any guide, the idea of this happy reply was certainly suggested: "Who killed Cock Robin ?" However, Who wrote Homer? Was the poem an accumulated mass of the recitations of various early rhapsodists, gathered together, pruned and arranged, and united into one connected whole by some accomplished poets of later days, antecedently to the Persian invasion? Such an idea has been suggested, though it has hardly gained much credence. Or was it indeed entirely the production of the mature years of the blind old schoolmaster, who could hardly earn his daily bread by drubbing Propria quæ maribus (not then written, by the way,) into the noddle, or its antipodes, of the embryo citizens of Phocæa ? which production Lycurgus transcribed with his own hands, and introduced into Greece, though not, eheu! eheu! till its inimitable author had mouldered for two centuries in a nameless grave. -- sidered in itself a miracle, since we hear of no preby wandering rhapsodists. Homer's poem is conceding writers on whose works he might advance to his own height, nor of any for a considerable time after him; therefore he must claim the merit of the whole invention, perfect in all its parts as it is. "As for the poets," says Herodotus in his Euterpe, "who are said to have lived before these men," (Homer and Hesiod,) "I am of opinion they came after them." It has been said that Homer, who travelled much, purloined his Iliad and Odyssey from the library at Memphis, and afterwards published them as his own; but this opinion has been satisfactorily confuted. We read distinctly enough of the gradual though rapid progression of every species of learning, art, and science in Grecce afterwards, to warrant the existence of those mighty Titans of literature, who scaled the very heavens, and made the heights of Parnassus their resting-place, and where they still remain unassailable by the pigmy votaries of these degenerate days: but Homer stands alone in his age. Far from being able to gratify our whim of seeing the original transcript of his work, it may be difficult perhaps to ascertain exactly even what was the material employed,-for at that time various ones were in use,-the original material of all, employed when writing, absolute writing, was in vogue; for we must understand that the earliest mode of communicating ideas was by a sort of rude painting, or representation of the thing referred to, and these figures, or representations, being afterwards, for conciseness, curtailed of some of their proper proportions, formed themselves into a sort of arbitrary hieroglyphics, such (1) At Phocæa, one Thestorides, a schoolmaster, offered to maintain the poet if Homer would suffer him (Thestorides) to transcribe his verses; a measure to which the blind bard consented from necessity. Thestorides withdrew secretly to Chios, and there Could we see the original manuscript of Homer, grew rich, whilst Homer, at Phocæa, scarcely obtained bread. thousand years old, and looks perfect as if engrossed only last week. "Well-but-what has all this to do with the first copy of Homer ?" Good reader! be just to me if you will not be in as are seen in the tombs of Etruria, and on Egyptian relics. The first use of letters is supposed to have been communicated by the Almighty to Moses, on the delivery of the Law, "two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God." Writing was evidently, therefore, at first sculp-dulgent. You engaged to gossip: Heard you ever of a tured, of which we have another instance in the same gossip who "kept to the point ?" Pray let me proceed. book, when we are told, the Israelites made for the There is scarcely any material which has not at high priest "a plate of pure gold, and wrote upon it a some time been not merely written on, but made into writing, like to the engravings on a signet, HOLINESS books or rolls. In 1699, Montfauçon bought at TO THE LORD." Rome a book wholly composed of lead, having six leaves (inscribed with Egyptian gnostic figures and unintelligible writing), backs to them, rings to hold them together, with a rod passed through them, hinges and nails, all of lead. The book did not contain an If the supposition of the learned author we have quoted be correct-viz. that writing was first introduced on the delivery of the Law-it shows that the Egyptians, renowned as they were at that time for art and science, were yet confined to the hiero-atom of any other substance. Probably, the lead glyphic painting. In the Book of Numbers (chap. xvii.) the names of the tribes are ordered to be written on rods. This style of writing was practised by the Greeks-nay, it was customary among the aboriginal Britons. They had sticks, both trilateral and four-sided, on which were inscribed on every side sacred or heroic verses and moral apophthegms. These sticks were so placed, several together in a frame, that each stick might be turned with the utmost facility, so that each side might be consecutively visible. forming the leaves was beaten into exceedingly thin plates. These books must have been obviously inconvenient from their weight, but of their extreme antiquity we may be assured from a reference made by Job: "Oh that my words were now written! that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!" (Job xix. 24.) The Words and Days of Hesiod are also said to have been written on lead, and preserved in the Temple of the Muses. The ancient Chaldæans are said to have written their astronomical observations on brick; and many bricks have of late years been dug up near the site of ancient Babylon, which are covered with curious cha For these substances, of course-for lead, for stone, and indeed for the palm-leaves, which are even yet used in the East-a sharp instrument, a stylus, was used, which made the writing, in fact, a sort of en-racters. graving. These instruments, which were usually carried in the girdle, were sometimes diverted from their legitimate use: we read of a schoolmaster stabbed to death by his pupils, who, in a moment of irritation, attacked him with their styli; and Cæsar, at the moment of assassination, endeavoured to defend himself with his. For writing with fluid on softer materials, a calamus formed of a reed was used; and although quills were introduced in the fifth century, the use of the calamus, which was cut somewhat in the form of a quill, continued until the tenth. The first soft material used for writing was the skin of the calf or goat, tanned soft, and usually dyed red or yellow. These skins were connected in a length (sometimes even of a hundred feet) sufficient to contain the whole of the work that was meant to be written on it. There is in the British Museum a magnificent copy of the Pentateuch, on goat-skin, in beautiful preservation; the letters, probably, are not far short of half an inch in depth. Beneath it, in the same frame, is another beautiful, though less ancient and regal-looking copy of the Pentateuch on vellum, surrounded by the silken robings by which these rolls were generally canopied. Not very far apart from these is a magnificent Bible well worthy of its once magnificent owner, Charles the Great. This is now a (1) The earliest specimens of picture writing now extant are those of the Mexicans. (2) T. Hartwell Horne. Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures, vol. iii. With the custom of engraving or writing on brass every one is acquainted; and we have referred to the inscription of Solon's laws on tablets of wood, called arones, from each stick being constructed so as to turn on an axle, and to the use of the sticks among the ancient Britons; it is said to have prevailed among some of the northern nations even so late as the sixteenth century. It is thought that many of the prophets wrote on tablets of wood, which it is well known were in use long before the time of Homer, who was about contemporary with King Hezekiah. These tablets, or tablebooks, were made of box, ivory, citron, and other materials, and being fastened together in a kind of book, were called coder, or cauder, whence the term codices for MSS. has passed into common use. They were generally covered with wax, though also with other soft substances, as chalk or plaster, and were written on with a stylus, of which the reverse end was always smooth and round, in order to efface the writing when necessary. These table-books, written on with styles, appear to have continued in use on the continent till the fourteenth century; nor were they quite disused in England even in the succeeding one, if we may so infer from Chaucer : "Hir felaw had a staf tipped with horn, The Sompnoure's Tale. No doubt these writing-tables, or table-books, (it | and painful and toilsome degrees, its loss is oftenwill be remembered that Zecharias made signs for a times effected with marvellous rapidity. The rude writing-table, when asked by what name he would Romans did not continue insensible to the charms and have his son the Holy Baptist called :)-no doubt these advantages of literature; and after their conquest of are the primogenitors of all the beautiful variety of Greece, their cultivation of the writings of their anminiature tablets which are now adapted to the calibre cient masters was rapid, persevering, and successful. of a lady's reticule, and bear, I should imagine, some- The age of Augustus is a proverb; and may well be what the same proportion to the aborigines of the tablet so, seeing that it was illumined by such spirits as race that our present generation does to the giants Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Varro, and who formerly peopled the land; for, as some intima- Vitruvius. tion of the carlier glories of the now minute and elegant race of tablets, we are told that Plautus, a school-boy seven years old, broke his master's head with his "table-book." But before this time learning had risen and declined in many an ancient state; and the glory of the Alexandrian library has been the theme of every schoolboy's pen. The first library of Egypt is supposed to have Leaves of all kinds have been, and still are used for been founded by Osymandyas, who lived about the writing on. In India the palmyra is used; the palm-year of the world 2250, or 600 after the Deluge, and leaf has indeed in all ages been common, but the who called it the Medicine of the Soul. This perished Ceylonese prefer the leaf of the talipot-tree, which in the Persian invasion. The library par excellence, they cut into slips for all these substances a stylus the Alexandrian, was founded by Ptolemy Soter is used, and in some instances the characters are about 290 years before Christ: his son, Ptolemy afterwards rubbed over with oil and charcoal. The Philadelphus, was even more eager in this pursuit ; Jews used at one time flags, and reeds, which grew and he it was who, at the suggestion of his librarian, freely in Egypt. The prophet Isaiah alludes to these Demetrius Phalereus, had that translation of the Old very plainly: "The waters shall fail from the sea, and Testament made which is called the Septuagint, from the river shall be wasted and dried up: the reeds and the number of translators employed. Ptolemy Euerflags shall wither: the paper-reeds by the brooks, by getes, a succeeding monarch, was unscrupulous in his the mouth of the brooks shall wither." Isa. xix. 5,6,7. mode of augmenting the royal library. He seized all The bark of trees has at all times been a usual ma- books imported into Egypt by foreigners, had them terial on which to write. I have now before me a carefully transcribed, and returned the copies to the Sumatran book composed of one length of bark, folded, owners, keeping the originals. He borrowed the not over and over, but backwards and forwards, into works of Sophocles, Eschylus, and Euripides, from the a square shape, and closely written on both sides. The Athenians, and served them in the same manner, acbacks are formed in the simplest manner imaginable, companying the return (not of the originals, but of being merely the outer rind of the bark left on at each the copies) with a handsome douceur. At length this end, instead of, as in the interior of the book, being library amounted to 700,000 volumes, and the original entirely removed. building not being capable of containing them, part were placed in the Temple of Serapis. This latter (supplemental) part escaped the fire which destroyed the other in the Alexandrian war, only, at a later period, when its stores had received rich accumulations, to fall a prey to the bigoted Arabs. We have named the early use of goat and sheepskin as a material for writing on; and to convince our readers that our "gossip" has not entirely obliterated Homer from our recollection, we will tell them (on the authority of the Rev. T. Hartwell Horne) that during the fire which happened at Constantinople in the fifth century, the flames consumed the intestines of a serpent on which the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer were written in letters of gold. We learn from the same writer that the library at Dresden contains a Mexican calendar traced on human skin; and that at Vienna is a MS. from the same country full of figures designed and coloured on the same material. Surely this is too horrible even to gossip about! And now, having left Homer enshrined in the skin of a serpent, emblematic of wisdom, and ascending to the skies in a pyre of flame, the type of immortality, surely we need not recall him to the vapid gossipry of this work-a-day world. I have read somewhere that the progress of learning is aptly figured by a curved line, which no sooner attains its extreme altitude, than it gradually descends as it arose; but perhaps this is hardly borne out by fact, for while the acquisition of learning is by slow VOL. VIII. It must be conceded to the Romans, that, wherever they turned their successful arms, they sought to win the conquered nations to their own civilization and refinement. They built baths, porticoes, theatres; introduced their own luxuries, and, above all, their own language; so, when the Goths and Vandals deluged the ancient capital of the world, like a flood of destruction, the learning which they so sedulously destroyed there, was gleaming, with a light tremulous yet sure, in the remotest corners of their empire. It was often overshadowed, often nearly extinguished, but never quite so; it had a principle of vitality within it, and rose again, like a phoenix, from the flame. How very much of this is owing to the universal diffusion of the Roman tongue! Boethius is recorded as the last classical writer, or rather as "the last of the Ancients, and one who forms a link between the classical period of literature and that of the Middle Ages." His principal work, the "Consolations of Philosophy," has a peculiar in C |