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British banking : continuity and change from 1694 to the present 1st Edition
Ranald C. Michie
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Stasis in the Medieval West?: Questioning Change and Continuity 1st Edition Michael D.J. Bintley
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In the Fourteenth century, Eustache Deschampes wrote more than a thousand ballades, virelais and other forms of light verse.
One of his ballades, here given in translation, is of a distinctly modern type of wit.
ADVICE TO A FRIEND ON MARRIAGE
Ope! Who? A friend! What wouldst obtain? Advice! Whereof? Is’t well to wed? I wish to marry. What’s your pain? No wife have I for board and bed, By whom my house is wisely led. One meek and fair I wish to gain, Young, wealthy, too, and nobly bred; You’re crazy batter out your brain!
Consider! Grief can you sustain?
Women have tempers bold and dread; When for a dish of eggs you’re fain, Broth, cheese, you’ll have before you spread: Now free, you’ll be a slave instead— When married, you yourself have slain. Think well. My first resolve is said; You’re crazy batter out your brain!
No wife will be like her you feign; On angry words you shall be fed, So shall you bitterly complain, With woes too hard to bear, bested: Better a life in forest led Than of such beast to bear the strain. No! The sweet fancy fills my head; You’re crazy batter out your brain!
ENVOY
Soon you will long that you were dead When married; seek in street or lane Some love. No! Passion bids me wed; You’re crazy batter out your brain!
Olivier Basselin who flourished in the Fifteenth century, and who was a fuller by trade, is another one of the literary “Fathers,” his title
being, “Le Pere Joyeux du Vaudeville.” Born at Vire, surrounded by valleys, it is held by some, while contradicted by others, that the modern term vaudeville is a corruption of Vaux de Vire. His songs are mostly convivial and his humor broad and rollicking.
TO MY NOSE
Fair Nose! whose rubies red have cost me many a barrel Of claret wine and white, Who wearest in thy rich and sumptuous apparel Such red and purple light!
Great Nose! who looks at thee through some huge glass at revel, More of thy beauty thinks: For thou resemblest not the nose of some poor devil Who only water drinks
The turkey-cock doth wear, resembling thee, his wattles, How many rich men now Have not so rich a nose! To paint thee, many bottles And much time I allow
The glass my pencil is for thine illumination; My color is the wine, With which I’ve painted thee more red than the carnation, By drinking of the fine
’Tis said it hurts the eyes; but shall they be the masters? Wine is the cure for all; Better the windows both should suffer some disasters, Than have the whole house fall.
APOLOGY FOR CIDER
Though Frenchmen at our drink may laugh, And think their taste is wondrous fine, The Norman cider, which we quaff, Is quite the equal of his wine, When down, down, down it freely goes, And charms the palate as it flows
Whene’er a potent draught I take, How dost thou bid me drink again? Yet, pray, for my affection’s sake,
Dear Cider, do not turn my brain. O, down, down, down it freely goes, And charms the palate as it flow
I find I never lose my wits, However freely I carouse, And never try in angry fits
To raise a tempest in the house; Though down, down, down the cider goes, And charms the palate as it flows
To strive for riches in all stuff, Just take the good the gods have sent; A man is sure to have enough
If with his own he is content; As down, down, down, the cider goes, And charms the palate as it flows.
In truth that was a hearty bout; Why, not a drop is left, not one; I feel I’ve put my thirst to rout;
The stubborn foe at last is gone. So down, down, down the cider goes, And charms the palate as it flows.
Francois Villon, born 1431, though not paternally designated, is called, and rightly, the Prince of Ballade Makers.
Two translations are here given of one of his most popular poems, and another witty Ballade is added.
THE BALLADE OF DEAD LADIES
Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Tell me now in what hidden way is Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where’s Hipparchia, and where is Thais, Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere, She whose beauty was more than human? But where are the snows of yester-year?
Where’s Héloïse, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween, Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
(From Love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you, is the Queen Who willed that Buridan should steer Sewed in a sack’s mouth down the Seine? But where are the snows of yester-year?
White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, With a voice like any mermaiden, Bertha Broad-foot, Beatrice, Alice, And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,— And that good Joan whom Englishmen At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
Mother of God, where are they then?...
But where are the snows of yester-year?
Envoi:
Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, Where they are gone, nor yet this year, Except with this for an overword, But where are the snows of yester-year?
A BALLADE OF OLD TIME LADIES
Translated by John Payne
Tell me, where, in what land of shade, Hides fair Flora of Rome? and where Are Thaìs and Archipiade, Cousins-german in beauty rare?
And Echo, more than mortal fair, That when one calls by river flow, Or marish, answers out of the air? But what has become of last year’s snow?
Where did the learn’d Héloïsa vade, For whose sake Abelard did not spare (Such dole for love on him was laid)
Manhood to lose and a cowl to wear?
And where is the queen who will’d whilere That Buridan, tied in a sack, should go Floating down Seine from the turret-stair?
But what has become of last year’s snow?
Blanche, too, the lily-white queen, that made Sweet music as if she a siren were?
Broad-foot Bertha? and Joan, the maid, The good Lorrainer the English bare Captive to Rouen, and burn’d her there? Beatrix, Eremburge, Alys lo!
Where are they, virgins debonair?
But what has become of last year’s snow?
Envoi:
Prince, you may question how they fare, This week, or liefer this year, I trow: Still shall the answer this burden bear
But what has become of last year’s snow?
BALLAD OF THE WOMEN OF PARIS
Albeit the Venice girls get praise
For their sweet speech and tender air, And though the old women have wise ways Of chaffering for amorous ware, Yet at my peril dare I swear, Search Rome, where God’s grace mainly tarries, Florence and Savoy, everywhere, There’s no good girl’s lip out of Paris.
The Naples women, as folk prattle, Are sweetly spoken and subtle enough: German girls are good at tattle, And Prussians make their boast thereof; Take Egypt for the next remove, Or that waste land the Tartar harries, Spain or Greece, for the matter of love, There’s no good girl’s lip out of Paris
Breton and Swiss know nought of the matter, Gascony girls or girls of Toulouse; Two fisherwomen with a half-hour’s chatter Would shut them up by threes and twos; Calais, Lorraine, and all their crews, (Names enow the mad song marries) England and Picardy, search them and choose, There’s no good girl’s lip out of Paris.
Envoi:
Prince, give praise to our French ladies For the sweet sound their speaking carries; ’Twixt Rome and Cadiz many a maid is, But no good girl’s lip out of Paris.
From Clement Marot, a delightful French poet of the Sixteenth century, we give the following two extracts translated by Leigh Hunt.
A LOVE-LESSON
A sweet “No! no!” with a sweet smile beneath Becomes an honest girl,—I’d have you learn it; As for plain “Yes!” it may be said, i’ faith. Too plainly and too oft, pray, well discern it!
Not that I’d have my pleasure incomplete, Or lose the kiss for which my lips beset you; But that in suffering me to take it, Sweet! I’d have you say “No! no! I will not let you.”
MADAME D’ALBRET’S LAUGH
Yes! that fair neck, too beautiful by half, Those eyes, that voice, that bloom, all do her honour; Yet, after all, that little giddy laugh Is what, in my mind, sits the best upon her
Good God! ’twould make the very streets and ways, Through which she passes, burst into a pleasure! Did melancholy come to mar my days And kill me in the lap of too much leisure, No spell were wanting, from the dead to raise me, But only that sweet laugh wherewith she slays me.
About this time appeared the Heptameron, a series of tales of similar form and character to the Decameron of Boccaccio. This work was attributed to Margaret of Navarre, and doubtless was written by the queen with the assistance of some of her people. The tales are too long to quote.
Jehan du Pontalais wrote a clever satirical skit on the love of money.
MONEY
Who money has, well wages the campaign; Who money has, becomes of gentle strain; Who money has, to honor all accord: He is my lord Who money has, the ladies ne’er disdain; Who money has, loud praises will attain; Who money has, in the world’s heart is stored,
The flower adored. O’er all mankind he holds his conquering track They only are condemned who money lack
Who money has, will wisdom’s credit gain; Who money has, all earth is his domain; Who money has, praise is his sure reward, Which all afford Who money has, from nothing need refrain; Who money has, on him is favor poured; And, in a word, Who money has, need never fear attack— They only are condemned who money lack
Who money has, in every heart does reign; Who money has, all to approach are fain; Who money has, of him no fault is told, Nor harm can hold. Who money has, none does his right restrain; Who money has, can whom he will maintain; Who money has, clerk, prior, by his gold, Is straight enrolled. Who money has, all raise, none hold him back They only are condemned who money lack.
Francois Rabelais was born in or about 1495, in Chinon, Touraine. Successively, monk, physician and scientist, he is best known as a master of humor and grotesque invention. His romance of Gargantua and Pantagruel is an extravagant, satirical criticism of the follies and vices of the period, burlesquing the current abuses of government and religion.
Unable to escape a paternal label,
An able writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review speaks of Rabelais as “an author without parallel in the history of literature: an author who is the literary parent of many authors, since without him we should probably have never known a Swift, a Sterne, a Jean Paul, or, in fact, any of the irregular humorists: an author who did not appear as a steadily shining light to the human race, but as a wild, startling meteor, predicting the independence of thought, and the downfall of the authority of ages: an author who for the union of
heavy learning with the most miraculous power of imagination, is perhaps without a competitor.”
The works of Rabelais abound in learning and serious intent, but the riotous humor and flashing wit are presented with an accompaniment of repulsive coarseness intolerable to the modern mind.
This phase, however, was a part of the manners and customs of his time, and to philosophers and students Rabelais will ever be a mine of deep and recondite wisdom and thought.
Indicative of his wildly extravagant fancy are the following extracts.
OF THE ECLIPSES THIS YEAR
This year there will be so many eclipses of the sun and moon, that I fear (not unjustly) our pockets will suffer inanition, be full empty, and our feeling at a loss. Saturn will be retrograde, Venus direct, Mercury as unfixed as quicksilver. And a pack of planets won’t go as you would have them.
For this reason the crabs will go side-long, and the rope-makers backward; the little stools will get upon the benches, and the spits on the racks, and the bands on the hats; fleas will be generally black; bacon will run away from peas in lent; there won’t be a bean left in a twelfth cake, nor an ace in a flush; the dice won’t run as you wish, tho’ you cog them, and the chance that you desire will seldom come; brutes shall speak in several places; Shrovetide will have its day; one part of the world shall disguise itself to gull and chouse the other, and run about the streets like a parcel of addle-pated animals and mad devils; such a hurly-burly was never seen since the devil was a little boy; and there will be above seven and twenty irregular verbs made this year, if Priscian don’t hold them in. If God don’t help us, we shall have our hands and hearts full.
OF THE DISEASES THIS YEAR
This year the stone-blind shall see but very little; the deaf shall hear but scurvily; the dumb shan’t speak very plain; the rich shall be
somewhat in a better case than the poor, and the healthy than the sick. Whole flocks, herds, and droves of sheep, swine and oxen; cocks and hens, ducks and drakes, geese and ganders, shall go to pot; but the mortality will not be altogether so great among apes, monkeys, baboons and dromedaries. As for old age, ’twill be incurable this year, because of the years past. Those who are sick of the pleurisy will feel a plaguy stitch in their sides; catarrhs this year shall distill from the brain on the lower parts; sore eyes will by no means help the sight; ears shall be at least as scarce and short in Gascony, and among knights of the post, as ever; and a most horrid and dreadful, virulent, malignant, catching, perverse and odious malady, shall be almost epidemical, insomuch that many shall run mad upon it, not knowing what nails to drive to keep the wolf from the door, very often plotting, contriving, cudgeling and puzzling their weak shallow brains, and syllogizing and prying up and down for the philosopher’s stone, tho’ they only get Midas’s lugs by the bargain. I quake for very fear when I think on’t; for I assure you, few will escape this disease, which Averroes calls lack of money, and by consequence of the last year’s comet, and Saturn’s retrogradation, there will be a horrid clutter between the cats and the rats, hounds and hares, hawks and ducks, and eke between the monks and eggs.
OF THE FRUITS OF THE EARTH THIS YEAR
I find by the calculations of Albumazar in his book of the great conjunction, and elsewhere, that this will be a plentiful year of all manner of good things to those who have enough; but your hops of Picardy will go near to fare the worse for the cold. As for oats they’ll be a great help to horses. I dare say, there won’t be much more bacon than swine. Pisces having the ascendant, ’twill be a mighty year for muscles, cockles, and periwinkles. Mercury somewhat threatens our parsly-beds, yet parsly will be to be had for money Hemp will grow faster than the children of this age, and some will find there’s but too much on’t. There will be a very few bon-chretiens, but choak-pears in abundance. As for corn, wine, fruit and herbs, there never was such plenty as will be now, if poor folks may have their wish.
RABELAIS IMITATES DIOGENES
(From the Author’s Prologue to Book III )
When Philip, King of Macedon, enterprised the siege and ruin of Corinth, the Corinthians having received certain intelligence by their spies, that he with a numerous army in battle array was coming against them, were all of them, not without cause, most terribly afraid; and, therefore, were not neglective of their duty, in doing their best endeavors to put themselves in a fit posture to resist his hostile approach, and defend their own city. Some from the fields brought into the fortified places their movables, cattle, corn, wine, fruit, victuals and other necessary provisions. Others did fortify and rampire their walls, set up little fortresses, bastions, squared ravelins, digged trenches, cleansed countermines, fenced themselves with gabions, contrived platforms, emptied casemates, barricaded the false brayes, erected the cavalliers, repaired the contrescarpes, plaistered the courtines, lengthened ravelins, stopped parapets, mortised barbacans, new pointed the portcullises with fine steel or good iron, fastened the herses and cataracts, placed their sentries and doubled their patrol.
Every one did watch and ward, and not one was exempted from carrying the basket. Some polished corselets, varnished backs and breasts, cleaned the headpieces, mailcoats, brigandins, salads, helmets, murrions, jacks, gushets, gorgets, hoguines, brassars and cuissars, corselets, haubergeons, shields, bucklers, targets, greves, gauntlets and spurs.
Others made ready bows, slings, cross-bows, pellets, catapults, migraines or fire-balls, firebrands, balists, scorpions, and other such warlike engines, repugnatory, and destructive to the Helepolides.
They sharpened and prepared spears, staves, pikes, brown bills, halberts, long hooks, lances, zagages, quarterstaves, eelspears, partisans, troutstaves, clubs, battle-axes, maces, darts, dartlets, glaves, javelins, javelots, and truncheons.
They set edges upon scimetars, cutlasses, badelairs, backswords, tucks, rapiers, bayonets, arrow-heads, dags, daggers,
mandousians, poniards, whinyards, knives, skenes, chipping knives, and raillons.
Diogenes seeing them all so warm at work, and himself not employed by the magistrates in any business whatsoever, he did very seriously (for many days together, without speaking one word) consider, and contemplate the countenance of his fellow-citizens.
Then on a sudden, as if he had been roused up and inspired by a martial spirit, he girded his cloak, scarf-ways, about his left arm, tucked up his sleeves to the elbow, trussed himself like a clown gathering apples, and giving to one of his old acquaintance his wallet, books, and opistographs, away went he out of town towards a little hill or promontory of Corinth called Craneum; and there on, the strand, a pretty level place, did he roll his jolly tub, which served him for an house to shelter him from the injuries of the weather: there, I say, in a great vehemency of spirit, did he turn it veer it, wheel it, whirl it, frisk it, jumble it, shuffle it, hurdle it, tumble it, hurry it, jolt it, jostle it, overthrow it, evert it, invert it, subvert it, overturn it, beat it, thwack it, bump it, batter it, knock it, thrust it, push it, jerk it, shock it, shake it, toss it, throw it, overthrow it upside down, topsyturvy, tread it, trample it, stamp it, tap it, ting it, ring it, tingle it, towl it, sound it, resound it, stop it, shut it, unbung it, close it, unstopple it. And then again in a mighty bustle he bandied it, slubbered it, hacked it, whittled it, wayed it, darted it, hurled it, staggered it, reeled it, swinged it, brangled it, tottered it, lifted it, heaved it, transformed it, transfigured it, transposed it, transplaced it, reared it, raised it, hoised it, washed it, dighted it, cleansed it, rinsed it, nailed it, settled it, fastened it, shackled it, fettered it, levelled it, blocked it, tugged it, tewed it, carried it, bedashed it, bewrayed it, parched it, mounted it, broached it, nicked it, notched it, bespattered it, decked it, adorned it, trimmed it, garnished it, gaged it, furnished it, bored it, pierced it, tapped it, rumbled it, slid it down the hill, and precipitated it from the very height of the Craneum; then from the foot to the top (like another Sisyphus with his stone) bore it up again, and every way so banged it and belabored it, that it was ten thousand to one he had not struck the bottom of it out.
Which when one of his friends had seen, and asked him why he did so toil his body, perplex his spirit, and torment his tub? the philosopher’s answer was, that not being employed in any other office by the Republic, he thought it expedient to thunder and storm it so tempestuously upon his tub, that amongst a people so fervently busy and earnest at work, he alone might not seem a loitering slug and lazy fellow. To the same purpose may I say to myself,—
Tho’ I be rid from fear, I am not void of care
For perceiving no account to be made of me towards the discharge of a trust of any great concernment, and considering that through all the parts of this most noble kingdom of France, both on this and on the other side of the mountains, every one is most diligently exercised and busied; some in the fortifying of their own native country, for its defence; others, in the repulsing of their enemies by an offensive war; and all this with a policy so excellent, and such admirable order, so manifestly profitable for the future, whereby France shall have its frontiers most magnifically enlarged, and the French assured of a long and well-grounded peace, that very little withholds me from the opinion of good Heraclitus, which affirmeth war to be the parent of all good things; and therefore do I believe that war is in Latin called bellum, not by antiphrasis, as some patchers of old rusty Latin would have us to think, because in war there is little beauty to be seen; but absolutely and simply; for that in war (bellum in Latin) appears all that is good and graceful, bon and bel in French, and that by the wars is purged out all manner of wickedness and deformity. For proof whereof the wise and pacific Solomon could no better represent the unspeakable perfection of the divine wisdom, than by comparing it to the due disposure and ranking of an army in battle array, well provided and ordered.
Therefore by reason of my weakness and inability, being reputed by my compatriots unfit for the offensive part of warfare; and on the other side, being no way employed in matter of the defensive, although it had been but to carry burdens, fill ditches, or break clods, each whereof had been to me indifferent, I held it not a little
disgraceful to be only an idle spectator of so many valorous, eloquent, and warlike persons, who in the view and sight of all Europe act this notable interlude or tragicomedy, and not exert myself, and contribute thereto this nothing, my all; which remained for me to do. For, in my opinion, little honor is due to such as are mere lookers on, liberal of their eyes, and of their strength parsimonious; who conceal their crowns and hide their silver; scratching their head with one finger like grumbling puppies, gaping at the flies like tithe calves; clapping down their ears like Arcadian asses at the melody of musicians, who with their very countenances in the depth of silence express their consent to the prosopopeia.
Having made this choice and election, it seemed to me that my exercise therein would be neither unprofitable nor troublesome to any, whilst I should thus set agoing my Diogenical Tub.
THE LOST HATCHET
There once lived a poor honest country fellow of Gravot, Tom Wellhung by name, a wood-cleaver by trade, who in that low drudgery made shift so to pick up a sorry livelihood. It happened that he lost his hatchet. Now tell me who ever had more cause to be vexed than poor Tom? Alas, his whole estate and life depended on his hatchet; by his hatchet he earned many a fair penny of the best wood-mongers or log-merchants, among whom he went a-jobbing; for want of his hatchet he was like to starve; and had Death but met him six days after without a hatchet, the grim fiend would have mowed him down in the twinkling of a bed-staff. In this sad case he began to be in a heavy taking, and called upon Jupiter with most eloquent prayers (for, you know, necessity was the mother of eloquence), with the whites of his eyes turned up toward heaven, down on his marrow-bones, his arms reared high, his fingers stretched wide, and his head bare, the poor wretch without ceasing was roaring out by way of Litany at every repetition of his supplications, “My hatchet, Lord Jupiter, my hatchet, my hatchet, only my hatchet, oh, Jupiter, or money to buy another, and nothing else; alas, my poor hatchet!”
Jupiter happened then to be holding a grand council about certain urgent affairs, and old Gammer Cybele was just giving her opinion, or, if you had rather have it so, it was young Phœbus the Beau; but, in short, Tom’s outcry and lamentations were so loud that they were heard with no small amazement at the council-board by the whole consistory of the gods. “What a devil have we below,” quoth Jupiter, “that howls so horridly? By the mud of Styx, haven’t we had all along, and haven’t we here still, enough to do to set to rights a world of puzzling businesses of consequence? Let us, however, despatch this howling fellow below; you, Mercury, go see who it is, and discover what he wants.” Mercury looked out at heaven’s trapdoor, through which, as I am told, they hear what’s said here below. By the way, one might well enough mistake it for the scuttle of a ship; though Icaromenippus said it was like the mouth of a well. The lightheeled deity saw that it was honest Tom, who asked for his lost hatchet; and, accordingly, he made his report to the Synod. “Marry,” said Jupiter, “we are finely holped up, as if we had now nothing else to do here but to restore lost hatchets. Well, he must have it for all that, for so ’tis written in the Book of Fate, as well as if it was worth the whole Duchy of Milan. The truth is, the fellow’s hatchet is as much to him as a kingdom to a king. Come, come, let no more words be scattered about it; let him have his hatchet again. Run down immediately, and cast at the poor fellow’s feet three hatchets! his own, another of gold, and a third of massy silver, all of one size; then, having left it to his will to take his choice, if he take his own, and be satisfied with it, give him t’other two. If he take another, chop his head off with his own; and henceforth serve me all those losers of hatchets after that manner.”
Having said this, Jupiter, with an awkward turn of his head, like a jackanapes swallowing pills, made so dreadful a phiz that all the vast Olympus quaked again. Heaven’s foot-messenger, thanks to his lowcrowned, narrow-brimmed hat, and plume of feathers, heel-pieces, and running-stick with pigeon-wings, flings himself out at heaven’s wicket, through the empty deserts of the air, and in a trice nimbly alights on the earth, and throws at friend Tom’s feet the three hatchets, saying to him: “Thou hast bawled long enough to be a-dry;
thy prayers and requests are granted by Jupiter; see which of these three is thy hatchet, and take it away with thee.”
Wellhung lifts up the golden hatchet, peeps upon it, and finds it very heavy; then staring on Mercury cries, “Gadzooks, this is none of mine; I won’t ha’t.” The same he did with the silver one, and said, “’Tis not this either; you may e’en take them again.” At last, he takes up his own hatchet, examines the end of the helve, and finds his mark there; then, ravished with joy, like a fox that meets some straggling poultry, and sneering from the tip of the nose, he cries, “By the Mass, this is my hatchet; Master God, if you will leave it me, I will sacrifice to you a very good and huge pot of milk, brim full, covered with fine strawberries, next Ides, i.e., the 15th of May.”
“Honest fellow,” said Mercury, “I leave it thee; take it; and because thou hast wished and chosen moderately, in point of hatchet, by Jupiter’s command I give thee these two others; thou hast now wherewith to make thyself rich: be honest.”
Honest Tom gave Mercury a whole cart-load of thanks, and paid reverence to the most great Jupiter. His old hatchet he fastened close to his leathern girdle, and girds it about his breech like Martin of Cambray; the two others, being more heavy, he lays on his shoulder Thus he plods on, trudging over the fields, keeping a good countenance among his neighbors and fellow-parishioners, with one merry saying or other, after Patelin’s way.
The next day, having put on a clean white jacket, he takes on his back the two precious hatchets, and comes to Chinon, the famous city, noble city, ancient city, yea, the first city in the world, according to the judgment and assertion of the most learned Massoreths. In Chinon he turned his silver hatchet into fine testons, crown-pieces, and other white cash; his golden hatchet into fine angels, curious ducats, substantial ridders, spankers, and rose nobles. Then with them purchases a good number of farms, barns, houses, outhouses, thatch-houses, stables, meadows, orchards, fields, vineyards, woods, arable lands, pastures, ponds, mills, gardens, nurseries, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, swine, hogs, asses, horses, hens, cocks, capons, chickens, geese, ganders, ducks, drakes, and a world of all
other necessaries, and in a short time became the richest man in all the country. His brother bumpkins, and the yeomen and other country-puts thereabout, perceiving his good fortune, were not a little amazed, insomuch that their former pity of poor Tom was soon changed into an envy of his so great and unexpected rise; and, as they could not for their souls devise how this came about, they made it their business to pry up and down, and lay their heads together, to inquire, seek, and inform themselves by what means, in what place, on what day, what hour, how, why, and wherefore, he had come by this great treasure.
At last, hearing it was by losing his hatchet, “Ha, ha!” said they, “was there no more to do, but to lose a hatchet, to make us rich?” With this they all fairly lost their hatchets out of hand. The devil a one that had a hatchet left; he was not his mother’s son, that did not lose his hatchet. No more was wood felled or cleared in that country through want of hatchets. Nay, the Æsopian apologue even saith, that certain petty country gents, of the lower class, who had sold Wellhung their little mill and little field to have wherewithal to make a figure at the next muster, having been told that this treasure was come to him by that means only, sold the only badge of their gentility, their swords, to purchase hatchets to go to lose them, as the silly clodpates did, in hopes to gain store of coin by that loss.
You would have truly sworn they had been a parcel of your petty spiritual usurers, Rome-bound, selling their all, and borrowing of others to buy store of mandates, a pennyworth of a new-made pope.
Now they cried out and brayed, and prayed and bawled, and lamented and invoked Jupiter, “My hatchet! My hatchet! Jupiter, my hatchet!” On this side, “My hatchet!” On that side, “My hatchet! Ho, ho, ho, ho, Jupiter, my hatchet!” The air round about rung again with the cries and howlings of these rascally losers of hatchets.
Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets; to each offering that which he had lost, as also another of gold, and a third of silver
Everywhere he still was for that of gold, giving thanks in abundance to the great giver Jupiter; but in the very nick of time, that they bowed and stooped to take it from the ground, whip in a trice,
Mercury lopped off their heads, as Jupiter had commanded. And of heads thus cut off, the number was just equal to that of the lost hatchets.
—Gargantua and Pantagruel.
There is an epigram in Martial, and one of the very good ones— for he has all sorts—where he pleasantly tells the story of Cælius, who, to avoid making his court to some great men of Rome, to wait their rising, and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout; and the better to color this, anointed his legs and had them lapped up in a great many swathings, and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and countenance of a gouty person; till in the end, Fortune did him the kindness to make him one indeed.
“Tantum cura potest, et ars doloris! Desit fingere Cælius podagram ”
I think I have read somewhere in Appian, a story like this, of one who to escape the proscriptions of the triumvirs of Rome, and the better to be concealed from the discovery of those who pursued him, having hidden himself in a disguise, would yet add this invention, to counterfeit having but one eye; but when he came to have a little more liberty, and went to take off the plaster he had a great while worn over his eye, he found he had totally lost the sight of it indeed, and that it was absolutely gone. ’Tis possible that the action of sight was dulled from having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired into the other eye for we evidently perceive that the eye we keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it will swell and grow bigger; and so, inaction, with the heat of ligatures and plaster might very well have brought some gouty humor upon this dissembler of Martial.
Reading in Froissart the vow of a troop of young English gallants, to keep their left eyes bound up till they had arrived in France and performed some notable exploit upon us, I have often been tickled with the conceit: suppose it had befallen them as it did the Roman, and they had returned with but one eye apiece to their mistresses, for whose sakes they had made his ridiculous vow.
Mothers have reason to rebuke their children when they counterfeit having but one eye, squinting, lameness, or any other personal defect; for, besides that their bodies being then so tender may be subject to take an ill bent, Fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight in taking us at our word; and I have heard several examples related of people who have become really sick, by only feigning to be so. I have always used, whether on horseback or on foot, to carry a stick in my hand, and even to affect doing it with an elegant air; many have threatened that this fancy would one day be turned into necessity: if so, I should be the first of my family to have the gout.
But let us a little lengthen this chapter, and add another anecdote concerning blindness. Pliny reports of one who, dreaming he was blind, found himself so indeed in the morning without any preceding infirmity in his eyes. The force of imagination might assist in this case, as I have said elsewhere, and Pliny seems to be of the same opinion; but it is more likely that the motions which the body felt within, of which physicians, if they please, may find out the cause, taking away his sight, were the occasion of his dream.
Let us add another story, not very improper for this subject, which Seneca relates in one of his epistles: “You know,” says he, writing to Lucilius, “that Harpaste, my wife’s fool, is thrown upon me as an hereditary charge for I have naturally an aversion to those monsters; and if I have a mind to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far, I can laugh at myself. This fool has suddenly lost her sight: I tell you a strange, but a very true thing; she is not sensible that she is blind, but eternally importunes her keeper to take her abroad, because she says the house is dark. That what we laugh at in her, I pray you to believe, happens to every one of us: no one knows himself to be avaricious or grasping: and again, the blind call for a guide, while we stray of our own accord. I am not ambitious, we say; but a man cannot live otherwise at Rome; I am not wasteful, but the city requires a great outlay; ’tis not my fault if I am choleric—if I have not yet established any certain course of life: ’tis the fault of youth. Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ’tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be
sick, renders us more hard to be cured. If we do not betimes begin to see to ourselves, when shall we have provided for so many wounds and evils wherewith we abound? And yet we have a most sweet and charming medicine in philosophy; for of all the rest we are sensible of no pleasure till after the cure: this pleases and heals at once.” This is what Seneca says, that has carried me from my subject, but there is advantage in the change.
As in England, the French published many jest books containing short anecdotes or epigrams, as well as the ubiquitous noodle stories.
A wife said to her husband, who was much attached to reading, “I wish I were a book, that I might always have your company.” Then, answered he, I should wish you an almanac, that I might change once a year.
It was said of a malicious parasite, that he never opened his mouth but at the expense of others; because he always ate at the tables of others, and spoke ill of everybody.
The Duke of Vivonne, who was a heretic in medicine, being indisposed, his friends sent for a physician. When the Duke was told a physician was below, he said, Tell him I cannot see him, because I am not well. Let him call again at another time.
