The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 386, August 22, 1829 · Chapter 4Notes of a Reader
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The celebrity attendant on a royal visit adhered long to places as well as persons. A chamber in the decayed tower of Hoghton, in Lancashire, still bears the name of James the First's room. Elizabeth's apartment, and that of her maids of honour, are still known at Weston House, in Warwickshire; her walk "marked by old thorn-bushes," at Hengrave, in Norfolk; near Harefield, the farm-house where she was welcomed by allegorical personages; at Bisham Abbey, the well in which she bathed; and at Beddington, in Surrey, her favourite oak. She often shot with a cross-bow in the paddock at Oatlands. At Hawsted, in Suffolk, she is reported to have dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat; and an old approach to Kenninghall Place, in Norfolk, is called Queen Bess's Lane, because she was scratched by the brambles in riding through it.—Quarterly Review.
During one of the progresses of James I. on passing the gate of St. John's College, at Oxford, his majesty was saluted by three youths, representing the weird sisters (sibyllae,) who, in Latin hexameters, bade the descendant of Banquo hail, as king of Scotland, king of England, and king of Ireland; and his queen as daughter, sister, wife, and mother of kings. The occasion is memorable in dramatic history, if it be true that this address, or a translation of it, led Shakspeare to write on the story of Macbeth. Much has been said for the probability of this supposition; but surely the legend of Macbeth and Banquo must have been abundantly discoursed of in England between James's accession and the year when this pageant was exhibited; and Shakspeare could find every circumstance alluded to by the Oxford speakers, and many more in Holinshed's Chronicle, which, through a great part of Macbeth, he has undoubtedly taken for his guide.—Ibid.
The Chinese themselves make no technical distinctions between tragedy and comedy in their stage pieces;—the dialogue of which is composed in ordinary prose, while the principal performer now and then chants forth, in unison with music, a species of song or vaudeville, and the name of the tune or air is always inserted at the top of the passage to be sung.— Quarterly Review.
The trunk of an old hawthorn is more gnarled and rough than, perhaps, that of any other tree; and this, with its hoary appearance, and its fragrance, renders it a favourite tree with pastoral and rustic poets, and with those to whom they address their songs. Milton, in his L'Allegro, has not forgotten this favourite of the village:—
"Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."
When Burns, with equal force and delicacy, delineates the pure and unsophisticated affection of young, intelligent, and innocent country people, as the most enchanting of human feelings, he gives additional sweetness to the picture by placing his lovers
"Beneath the milk-white thorn, that scents the evening gale."
There is something about the tree, which one bred in the country cannot soon forget, and which a visiter learns, perhaps, sooner than any association of placid delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in other pursuits, returns to the village of his nativity, the old hawthorn is the only playfellow of his boyhood that has not changed. His seniors are in the grave; his contemporaries are scattered; the hearths at which he found a welcome are in the possession of those who know him not; the roads are altered; the houses rebuilt; and the common trees have grown out of his knowledge: but be it half a century or more, if man spare the old hawthorn, it is just the same—not a limb, hardly a twig, has altered from, the picture that memory traces of his early years.—Library of Entertaining Knowledge.
When the Caliph Haroun el Raschid (who was the friend of the great Charlemagne,) entertained Ebn Oaz at his court in the quality of jester, he desired him one day, in the presence of the Sultana and all her followers, to make an excuse worse than the crime it was intended to extenuate: the Caliph walked about, waiting for a reply. Alter a long pause, Ebn Oaz skulked behind the throne, and pinched his highness in the rear. The rage of the Caliph was unbounded. "I beg a thousand pardons of your Majesty," said Ebn Oaz, "but I thought it was her Highness the Sultana." This was the excuse worse than the crime; and of course the jester was pardoned.
Disappointment at the theatre is a bad thing: but the manager returning admission money is worse. Sheridan, who understood professional feelings on this subject in the most acute degree, was in the habit of saying that he could give words to the chagrin of a conqueror, on seeing the fruit of his victories snatched from him; or the miseries of a broken down minister, turned out in the moment when he thought the cabinet at his mercy; or a felon listening to a long winded sermon from the ordinary; or a debtor just fallen into the claws of a dun; but that he never could find words to express the sensibilities of a manager compelled to disgorge money once taken at his doors. "Fund," says this experienced ornament of the art of living by one's wits, "fund is an excellent word; but re-fund is the very worst in the language."—Monthly Magazine.
Mr. Crawfurd, in his Embassy, describes the following ludicrous scene arising from a misunderstanding between the sovereign of Birmah and his ministers:—"The ministers last night reported to the king the progress of the negotiation. His majesty was highly indignant, said his confidence had been abused, and that now, for the first time, he was made acquainted with the real state of affairs. He accused the ministers of falsehoods, malversations, and all kinds of offences. His displeasure did not end in mere words; he drew his Dà, or sword, and sallied forth in pursuit of the offending courtiers. These took to immediate flight, some leaping over the balustrades which rail in the front of the Hall of Audience, but the greater number escaping by the stair which leads to it; and in the confusion which attended their endeavours, (tumbling head over heels,) one on top of another. Such royal paroxysms are pretty frequent, and, although attended with considerable sacrifices of the kingly dignity, are always bloodless. The late king was less subject to these fits of anger than his present majesty, but he also occasionally forgot himself. Towards the close of his reign, and when on a pilgrimage to the great temple of Mengwan, a circumstance of this description took place, which was described by an European gentleman, himself present, and one of the courtiers. The king had detected something flagitious, which would not have been very difficult. His anger rose; he seized his spear, and attacked the false ministers. These, with the exception of the European, who was not a party to the offence, fled tumultuously. One hapless courtier had his heels tripped up in his flight; the king overtook him, and wounded him slightly in the calf of the leg with his spear, but took no farther vengeance."
SHAKSPEARE, in Titus Andronicus, says,
"Be unto us, as is a nurse's song
Of Lullaby to bring her babe to sleep."
A learned commentator gives us what he facetiously calls a lullaby note on this.
"The verb to lull, means to sing Gently, and it is connected with the Greek λαλεω [Greek: laleo], loquor, or λαλα [Greek: lala], the sound made by the beach of the sea. The Roman nurses used the word lalla, to quiet their children, and they feigned a deity called Lullus, whom they invoked on that occasion; the lullaby, or tune itself was called by the same name."— Douce.
Lullaby is supposed a contraction for Lull-a-baby. The Welsh are celebrated for their Lullaby songs, and a good Welsh nurse, with a pleasing voice, has been sometimes found more soporific in the nursery, than the midwife's anodyne. The contrary effects of Swift's song, "Here we go up, up, up," and the smile-provoking melody of "Hey diddle, diddle," cum multis aliis, are too well known to be enumerated or disputed. "The Good Nurse" give us a chapter on the advantage of employing music in certain stages of protracted illness.
In northern Europe we may, without impropriety, say good night! to departing friends at any hour of darkness; but the Italians utter their Felicissima Notte only once. The arrival of candles marks the division between day and night, and when they are brought in, the Italians thus salute each other. How impossible it is to convey the exact properties of a foreign language by translation! Every word, from the highest to the lowest, has a peculiar significance, determinable only by an accurate knowledge of national and local attributes and peculiarites.
GOETHE.—
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