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Book-Worm. No. XXVII.

abroad at this time, but that the creatures of France have made it their business in all the considerable courts and cities of Europe, to magnify the opulence of that kingdom, the happy state of its subjects, the grandeur and puissance of its monarch, and the excellency of that kind of polity and government their stupendous master hath set up. To obviate such parasitical encomiums, this small piece is made public, wherein may be seen the unsoundness of those maxims, by which the more than inhumane Jesuits have led that ambitious tyrant; and would influence other crowned heads if their interest could compass it."

Our traveller, smitten with "the desire of novelty," which if you would suppress "you might as well go about to stop the rapid floods of Nilus," determined "to take a tour into France, to see what proportion there was between the representations that noisy strumpet Fame had made concerning that so-much-talked-of country, and the reality, as demonstrated by matter of fact" (p. 2). He arrives on "the fatal sands of Calais," the arena chosen for their affairs of honour by the duellists of the 17th century, where the last sand of many a bully's glass hath run out, and a French pass hath past their souls into another world." On this subject the traveller thus enlarges, assailing with well-merited ridicule what should rather be abominated as a crime of no trivial magnitude.

"The justs and tournaments of old have not been more famous for exerting youthful vigour and a profusion of enamoured blood; nor the celebrated fields where the Olympic Games were kept, never reeked with more exasperated gore, when the fierce combatants lay weltering under the wheels of each other's chariot. But the sands of Calais have been oftener

stained with the purple jelly of an irritated Monsieur, or a distrustful gallant. Hardly can a Monsieur be chouced of a suuff-box, or have his emblematic mushroom picked out of his pocket, which was to have been grilleed or ragusted for supper, but out comes the tilter, and away to the sands, where the fortune de guerre must decide the title.

"As for our cullies on this side, their falling out is often about matters more frivolous and contemptible: for if Miss does but look askew, or cast a glance on another gallant, away goes footboy with the challenge, the yatch is presently hired for Calais, and there is fop decently run through the lungs; and there's an end

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of a painted, essenced, all-to-be-spruced thing, that has treated half the jilts in town, made two or three broils at Bartholomew Fair, and afterwards went to expire on the shore of that country whose modes he aped and whose follies he was so fond of."

His "business," however, "being an affair of another kind than that of

the poniard," our traveller proceeds
to describe Calais.
opinion of some, that the Gallic and
Against "the
Kentish shores made one entire conti-
nent in ancient time," (p. 5,) he al-
leges the "vast disproportion in the
figure and disposition of the natives on
that side and this," and thus are in-
troduced "the rattling of the wooden
shoes about the streets: the mean and
dejected aspect of the inhabitants" and
"their contemptible and sordid way of
living in their houses;" which, in a
detail rather disgusting, is, no doubt,
exaggerated by no small portion of
Antigallican prejudice.

was opportunity enough to observe what
"From hence, travelling to Paris, there
a prodigious state of poverty the ambition
and absoluteness of a tyrant can, in a
few years, reduce an opulent and fertile
country to; there were visible all the
marks and signs of a growing misfortune,
all the dismal indications of an over-
cultivated, the villages unpeopled, the
whelming calamity. The fields were un-
houses dropping to decay, the inhabitants
that remained peeped out at doors and
crevices, as if the King's booted apostles
had been coming to plant the faith
amongst them, by plundering the little
that was left. The country looked no
more like what it was represented to be
in Louis XIII.'s time, than an apple is
like an oyster.” (Pp. 8, 9.)

ler forms an acquaintance with a genOn his journey to Paris, our traveltleman who endeavours to assign "the reasons why this great calamity is come upon France," (p. 18,) attributing a large share of the evil to the clergy. This stranger is indeed so little disposed to Church and King in a holy alliance, that he cannot "think of a national clergy, without reflecting heard over all the empire, that day on that voice which was said to be when Constantine endowed the Church with temporal patrimonies and profits, Hac die venenum infunditur in ecclesia, of which every age since has been more and more sensible." (P. 20.) The ecclesiastical state of France is

thus given from "Boterus, a famous historian." It is said to contain the following particulars:

"12 Archbishopricks, 104 Bishopricks, 540 Arch-Priories, 1450 Abbies, 12,320 Priories, 567 Nunneries, 130,000 Parish Priests, 700 Convents of Friars, 259 Commendams of the Knights of Malta. Another historian, named the Cabinet du Roy, gives account that no less than three millions of people live upon the Church revenues of France; that their revenues are 80 millions of crowns, (which makes 20 millions sterling,) besides their Baisemain, [Eastern-offering,] which he reckons as much more, and that, over and above all this, they have incredible reserves of provisions, which are annually laid into their stores, besides their rents." (P. 22.) From considering the French noblesse, our traveller discovers, that "there may be noble peasants, and peasantly nobles, whilst many times a person meanly descended shall be ennobled with the ornaments of virtue, temperance and courage; and another derived, perhaps, from royal blood, shall have nothing to boast of but his pedigree." (P. 49.) The 4th chapter, "Of Tax-Gatherers, Court-Officers and the Army," opens with the following tragi-comedy:

By this time we came to a village where were divers carts, loaden with lui

ber, and a miserable parcel of householdstuff of divers sorts, as if some hospital had been to be removed; and we imagined the people had been about to transplant their habitations: but at length, perceiving amongst them some files of fuziliers, we then concluded that it was some seizure made for the King's gabels or taxes: and it was no otherwise. There were a parcel of old and decrepit people, and many children, making a dreadful clamour for the poor remainder of their goods. Some of the men had their sons, and the women their husbands in the army; those that brought them in their daily bread, were either killed, or daily hazarding their lives in the King's service, and yet his tax-gatherers were come to strip these to be-pitied wretches of that little that remained. I heard divers of them say, they had nothing left to make a little broth in for their children; others, that they had not a bed to lie on, nor a blanket to cover them. This lamentable object moved us to compassion, and we could not but have some sensible impressions of the great hardship they laboured under; but the soldiers and collectors, being accustomed to actions of cruelty, laughed, and mocked them,

"One of the officers brought a fiddle out of a certain house, and was followed by a lame fellow, who used many intreaties, and made sad remonstrances of the pitiful condition he should be in, if that were carried away: it was his whole estate, all he had to live upon in the world. The other wretches, though they saw almost all the necessaries they had carrying away from them, yet besought the officer more in behalf of the fiddler than themselves; alleging, if that instrument were taken away, they should then have nothing left to divert and solace themselves amidst their sorrows, but must at once be stripped of all the comfort of their lives. Perceiving the profound stupidity and ignorance of those poor people, we joined our intercessions in behalf of the minstrel; whereupon the officer, after some sage remarks on the necessity of paying the King's dues, consented, on condition that they should give

him three or four dances for his favour.
The fiddler, overjoyed with the re-pos-
session of his tenement, tickled up his
minstrel to some tune, and the Monsieurs
and Madams danced like so many pup-
pets acted by wires or springs. Some
with their feet stuffed in wooden boxes
with hay or straw; others shaked off
their timber-slippers, and tript it on their
primitive trotters; the old and young,
matron and infant, all moved as natu-
rally to the notes of the fiddle, as Virgi-
nal Jacks caper to the motion of your
finger.

like fairies, then acting the haye, like
Sometimes they were in a ring
furies in a play: but by the halting of
some, hopping and shrugging of others,
I could not but think of our play of the
Merry Beggars, and in all my life never
saw that dance so naturally acted; some-
times casting a look at the carts, you
would see the hands wrung, or the breast
thumped, and a sigh or two uttered,
but still the dance went on, and all signs
of sorrow were suppressed, as if it had
been no less than treason to groan in the
hearing of their oppressors.” (Pp. 61-65.)

"Arrived at the great Metropolis, who, though she boasts to be as large as old Rome, hath neither the privileges nor the bravery of that heroic people," (p. 83,) our traveller found

the kitchen" of his inn sending forth "so powerfully" the odour "of onions and garlic, as if he had been in Egypt." Fond of this happy allusion, he thus expatiates :

"For my share, I thought it resembled the house of bondage in so many respects, that if some of the old Israelites were to leave their sepulchres for a time, and take a turn or two here, they would

Book-Worm.

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dread their old tyrants and task-masters, and their cry would be as in the days of Pharaoh. The palace of their king croaked with priests worse than frogs the Hugonots, like bond-slaves, were to make brick without straw; and the dragoons, like task-masters, insulted and cudgelled them to their drudgery: the tax-gatherers and gabellers, like locusts, covered the earth. Their temples too were filled with idols, like those of Memphis. England and Holland were the Goshen for the poor refugees to retire to; and who knows but their Pharaoh and his host may one day be overwhelmed in that red sea of blood, which by their means hath overflown those parts of Europe?" (Pp. 84, 85.)

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quoted, says, (II. 4,) that there "the sciences flourish more than in any other part of Europe, and are taught with much success and profit." On the contrary, our English censor of France makes the following unfavourable comparison:

"You have a confusion of colleges and grammar schools, writing-boys and mathematicians, doctors and pedagogues, all sorts of literature shuffled together, from the Primmer to the Talmud; from the whipping school to the Convocationhouse. You see not here those regular buildings and economies as in Oxford or Cambridge; no Bodley's Libraries, no Sheldon's Theatres: not that pomp and

order, not that discipline and uniformity, the universities of England, which, for nobleness and beauty of foundation, besides the foregoing excellencies, justly claim the precedence of all other academies of the world" (Pp. 88, 89.)

not that neatness and convenience as in

On mentioning "Pont N. Dame, or Our Lady's Bridge," the traveller, loses half its grossness," complains, as if ignorant that vice in the great in uncourtly phrase, that "a whore hath lately got the upper hand of our Lady: for that, to the perpetual infamy of Charles II., he loaded his Jade Portsmouth with English treasure enough to build the best street in Paris, which is called by her name." (P. 92.) of "the great Louis," designed On "a triumphal statue" insinuate the notion of victory into the heads of his poor deluded subjects," it is observed,

to

After a description, not very flattering, of the houses, streets, and especially the shops of Paris, this true-born Englishman gratifies his nationality by adding, " you shall see here the finer sort of people flaunting it in tawdery gauze, or colbertine with a parcel of coarse, staring ribbons; but ten of their holiday habits shall not amount to what a citizen's wife of London wears on her head every day." (P.86.) Though there are several great piles of building about the city, which look noble and ornamental; as the gates of St. Anthony, St. Michael, St. Jaques, and others;" yet "there is too an old castelet, said to be built by Julian the Apostate, which presents no more like the tower of London, than a toothdrawer to Alexander the Great." (P. 88.) Also "their great church of Notre Dame, said to be the finest in all France, falls short of many of ours." (P. 89.) Here our traveller might have paid a deserved respect to the enlightened liberality of " M. Joli, Chanter," and one of the canons of this church, of whom it is mentioned in "A New Description of Paris," (1687, II. 159,) that he had a numerous library" which he gave away "in 1685," on condition that it be public, and that all sorts of people may have liberty to come and study in it freely." At "the Town-House, or Guildhall," our traveller found "inscribed over the gate S. P. Q. P.," which reminded him of "the gaol at Newgate, where the emblem of liberty is set over the Our traveller "had the curiosity to arch, and the poor wretches are in go to one of their churches upon a fetters within." (P. 90.) Of " 'the very solemn occasion." It was the University, founded by Charlemaine," day sacred to St. Anthony, to whom The New Description, which I lately the church was dedicated.

"The Roman Emperors used to set up the marks of their conquests in the country, or city conquered, as the many reGaul, Spain, Britain and Flanders witness. maining monuments and inscriptions in They had not their trophies confined to the wall of their own city, but the mighty Louis hath a more modern way of publishing his victories in the streets of his own Paris.-These are pretty artifices to set the credulous and admiring vulgar at gaze, and to raise in them an opinion of the great prowess of their daring monarch, who valiantly keeps himself entrenched within the walls of his Versailles." (Pp. 101, 102.)

There

"the saint" has "his usual residence in a niche," around which was a hog cut in stone," because "this holy man, in the time of his mortality, kept a herd of swine-out of pure charity, to keep the devils out of them, who have always had a great hankering after swine's flesh." "Now, however, "the holy saint, which was a piece of timber painted and drest up like a Bartholomew-Baby" was on a progress, during which our traveller witnessed the following scene:

"Some thumped their breasts and wrung their hands, imploring the saint's intercession for themselves, others for their husbands and relations in the wars. The women held up their infants to receive his benediction. Before him marched several troops of friars of all orders, some with ropes and beads, some with crosses of divers sorts; they sang ballads and catches in praise of the saint, and between each order were people carrying torches and flambeaux.-In the rear of them came two pontificals, with perfuming pots in their hands, whose incense cast a cloud of aromatic through the street, and after them a pair of friars which sprinkled the holy-water amongst the crowd; then came a parcel of doctors in their formalities, and after them the saint, carried in a chair under a canopy supported by many people; these were followed by more torches, and another canopy, under which was the host, carried by a prelate in great pomp." (Pp. 109, 110.)

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Our traveller learned, in conversation with a friar, that the priests were this day to implore" Saint Anthony's "favour for the Dolphin, in his expedition into Germany," and thus discovered that "the same saint" might "serve for pigs and princes." He found also "abundance of other saints, both male and female, about the church. There was Saint Winnifrid, in a commode, with a laced scarf on, and a visor in her hand, as if she was going to confession. Saint Denis, with a laced hat buttoned up on one side, an embroidered coat, and a gold and silver fringed sash, like a captain of the Guards." (P. 114.)

Seeing Louis dine in public at Versailles, which he allows to be "very splendid," our Antigallican exclaims, who could imagine that a soul so barbarous, false and cruel, could inhabit in a body graced with a mien and

presence so lovely and full of attrac tion?” (P. 125.) "This once glorious country" France, he finally contrasts with another then lately risen into importance, remarking, "that as Holland is a bog fertilitated and enriched, France is a garden destroyed and laid common." Referring to the wars of that period, the observations conclude by describing "the mighty Louis" as "untiling his own house to break his neighbour's windows."

It is remarkable that this Observer does not appear to have been once attracted to the Bastille, of which I well remember to have heard Burke, when eloquently earning his pension in 1792, regret the fall, under the respectful appellation of "the King's Castle," but of which the indignant and uncourtly muse of Cowper had invoked the destruction as

"the abode of broken hearts, In dungeons and in cages of despair That monarchs have supplied from age to

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February, 1822.

Devine Legation of Moses," sup

R. WARBURTON, in his "Di

poses, that the Book of Job must have been written at some time between the approach of the Babylonish captivity, and the complete re-establishment of the Jews in their own land. No other possible period, he says, can be assigned, when the grand question handled in this book could ever come into dispute, viz.,

Whether God administers his government over men here with an equal providence, so that the good are always prosperous and the bad unhappy; or whether, on the contrary, there is not such an apparent inequality, that prosperity and adversity

Mr. Hincks on "the Author of the Book of Job."

often happen indifferently to the good and the bad.

As I have not access to the work, I can only observe, from recollection, that Dr. W. enters much at large on the principles of the Divine government in the Jewish theocracy. Under the Mosaic law, provision was made for the recompence of the good, and the punishment of the wicked, and historical facts prove that virtue and vice were followed by temporal rewards or privations. But in later periods, when men's minds were gradually opening to ideas on a future state of rewards and punishments, this peculiarity of Providence was withdrawn, and difficulties on the subject must naturally have arisen in the minds of reflecting and pious Jews. Dr. W. supposes the book to have been written by Ezra, with these circumstances in view, and remarks, that the number of indirect allusions to the Jewish laws and history, introduced in the narrative, prove it to be the production of a much later period than that of Moses.

Dr. Warburton's argument on the "grand question" may perhaps be controverted, but certainly, with respect to the age of the book, it is a remarkable fact, that it abounds with ideas and expressions which present images of actions past, long subsequent to the age of the Jewish lawgiver.

Your much respected correspondent Mr. Butcher's remarks [p. 11] on the introduction of the term Satan appear very conclusive. I cordially join with him in hoping that some of your contributors will endeavour to throw light on this very interesting, though, in some respects, difficult book.

SIR,

H. M. H.

Exeter,
February 7, 1822.

ITH your leave, I will state

agree with my respected friend Mr. Butcher, [p. 10,] in his views of the book of Job; but must continue to rank that admirable poem as the oldest portion (at least if we except some fragments contained in the book of Genesis) of the Bible.

205

the same kind with that of the other books, and that the difference is greater than can be accounted for from peculiarity of style and individual circumstances. This fact is differently applied by the opposite parties. On the one hand, we are told that "the many Chaldaisms, Syriasms and Arabisms, with which this book abounds, are a very certain mark of its being of later date than most of the other books of the Old Testament."* On the other, we find the peculiarity of the language attributed to its hav ing been written in an age when the Mosaical Hebrew had not yet been distinctly separated from the Arabic, and in the country of Idumæa lying between Palestine and Arabia. Čertain it is, that the peculiarities of the book of Job, or any similar to them, do not occur in what are acknowledged to be the latest Hebrew writings, and it is, perhaps, not too much to affirm that the more the subject has been investigated, the more the profoundest scholars and acutest critics have been led to adopt the last-mentioned explanation of a phenomenon which has deservedly engaged much attention. Some persons have imagined that they have observed in the poem allusions to the Jewish law, and even to a late period of the Jewish history; but a large proportion of the most careful and intelligent inquirers have been unable to discover any trace of these allusions, and I confess they appear to me fanciful and visionary in the extreme. With much more justice the want of all bistorical notices later than the destruction of Sodom, has been brought forward as an argument for the great antiquity of the book. And when we add to this the beautiful description of patriarchal manners, and the proof incidentally afforded that idolatry had not yet proceeded farther than paying homage to the heavenly bodies, one of its earliest stages, we

think, incline to

that the book of Job is the production of an age previous to the establishment of the Mosaic law.

That Moses was the author seems to be mere conjecture, and to have been hastily believed, to avoid acknowledging our entire ignorance. An exa

Its date has been fixed by all critics either very early or very late; all agree that there is no middle courseall perceive that its language is not of ton's Div. Leg.

*Heath's Preface. See also Warbur

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