by Captain Medwin.
Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.2 #4 (1847).
I have been present at two jubilees, one in Florence—a religious rite—when I had the misfortune to live in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, so called from the splendid church of that name, and to which daily, almost hourly, priests, "black, white, and grey," passed in long procession, chanting in their monotonous, melancholy, deep-toned, drawl, suitable passages from the breviary; the bells—how I wished, with Voltaire, the ropes round the necks of the tormentors—jangling, in horrid discord, an accompaniment to the dismal psalmody; and this not for one week, or one month, but several weeks, and several months. It was too much for mortal endurance. Avoid, reader! as you would a pestilence, a square in catholic countries that contains a church. As to jubilees, they only occur once in fifty years, and neither you nor I are likely to require any warning against them.
The second of these well, or ill-entitled festivals, took place not quite two years ago, and was of an entirely different stamp. It was held in honour of Gütenberg. What a godsend was this to printers, and publishers, and booksellers, and "hoc genus omne," but more especially to the editors of newspapers and periodicals! It was worth half-a-dozen coronations; the fire at Westminster, the burning of the armory in the Tower, was a mere penny line in comparison. Deutchland, from all its great and little states, spawned forth a fry innumerable of "prosers and versers," in all dialects and no dialect. The public was not hypercritical, and gulped good-naturedly down—the Germans have good digestions—Swabian, Doric, Ionic, Hanoverian, and Berlin slang. There was not a petty town—they all have their daily papers—where pockets were to be picked, that did not send forth programmes and prospectuses, and puffs, out-bentleying Bentley, teeming with anecdotes, stale, flat, and unprofitable, raked out of black-letter books, that passed for jewels, though originally paste, and not the better for new setting, till the very name of Gütenberg became as loathsome as crambe repetita; but a double dose is not necessary. Sour crout, without the second edition, will explain what I mean; so loathsome, as almost to make one lament that printing had been discovered—not that Gütenberg discovered it—that the savants here, the followers of Neichbuhr, and Paulus, and Strauss, and Schlosser, who delight in confounding all established notions of men and things, upsetting all that we were taught to consider of authority, pouncing on all that is venerable, have—now that the bubble is burst—proved to be quite a mistake. Thus we poor, simple, credulous mortals, get nothing but mystification for our pains and trouble, our journeyings by land and by water—shaking, almost to dislocation, in rattletrap caleshes, and stewing, almost to suffocation, in overloaded steamers.
It may be supposed that Mayence—the birth-place of Gütenberg, though, like Homer's, even that is contested—was not behind hand in doing honour to his memory. The bill of fare was a catching one; and among not the least of its attractions, Thorlwaldsen's statue, the funds for which, by the way, were collected in begging boxes throughout Europe, our own countrymen being the principal almsgivers. The man with the nose in Tristram Shandy, never raised so much curiosity, or collected such crowds, as thronged to the setting-up of the brazen image of the pseudo-founder of the great art; in July or August, the day of the month I forget, in the year 1840, dampschifffahrt after dampschifffahrt arrived with freight after freight, till not a bed was to be obtained in the place for money, at least so I found. Don't suppose I mean to describe the raree-show. Imagine to yourself, reader, the great square, with the newly-erected ideal of the lion, his beard is like a mane, crammed with 15,000 dwellers on the banks of Rhine, and some thousands more posted at the windows of the houses, or perched on platforms to their very tops, and 1500 young men and maidens, tier above tier, bench upon bench, on rows on rows, mingling their voices in praise of that, which their country never has enjoyed, and is never, in our day at least, likely to enjoy, the liberty of the press; and then fancy me, an insignificant unit in this sum. Painters often stick themselves in the corner of their pictures, and you may form some conception of the scene, but cannot guess what my contemplations were. Not to keep you long in suspense, know then, my thoughts were not occupied by Gütenberg, the chorus, or the multitude—they were directed to quite a different channel. I had no ears for the music; I had no eyes for those, black or blue, that shot their glances from all sides; my own were fixed, riveted on a house opposite to which I was immovably jammed, that formed as complete a contrast to those about it, as I did to the living mass about me. It not only possessed no spectators, but the shutters were completely closed. The style of building, too, was totally distinct from that of its neighbours, whose society it seemed to disown—to avoid all intercourse with them, from a conscious pride of birth, a sense of superior genealogical or heraldic distinction. It reminded me of Lord Bridgewater's old-fashioned hotel, peeping forth in defiance from between the finished and unfinished parts of the Rue Rivoli, and was quite as much out of harmony with the general character. The edifice in question was, if not coeval with the cathedral, of very great antiquity. It was low, and thrown back from the rest of the houses, two of which, of great pretension, several stories high, of glaring whiteness, on either side, seemed disposed to thrust themselves into its notice, force themselves into its company, or, having failed, to elbow it out of its place. Yes, there it stood, that dark, frowning, melancholy little Gothic dwelling, of hewn stone, in its mysterious isolation; and never do I remember an inanimate thing producing any effect at all to be compared with what I experienced from this. Was it, I thought to myself, deserted or occupied?—if the latter, did it belong to some miser?—No; in that case he would not have let slip such an opportunity of profiting by its fortunate locality. To some jealous husband, or crabbed old guardian?—in its distance and retired position there was at least safety;—or was its owner some new Cyprian, a hater, like Calderon's, of galas and jubilees, who had shut himself up in his laboratory to avoid el gran bullicio, the noise and tumult of the day?
Lost in such reveries, I remained gazing on the house after the crowd had separated, with a vague hope of clearing up some of my doubts—seeing some one go in, or come out; and scarcely, indeed, was quiet restored, when I did perceive a bird-like, skinny, wizard hand cautiously remove a shutter, and then an old man hastily put his head out of the window—shake his gray locks with an aspect of unutterable despair at the statue, and as suddenly make his retreat.
That vision haunted me at the table d'hôte, and afterwards at the Frucht Markt, where I could not attend to Staudigl, or the concert. As good luck would have it, I happened to be seated next to an elderly gentleman with a piece of white riband stuck in his button-hole, denoting him to be one of the stewards; and after a trillo was ended, I questioned him about the apparition. He smiled, and said, "That house, sir, belongs to Doctor Crispinus, a very singular character, but a very learned man, who has buried himself there for more than fifty years. He scarcely ever goes abroad, and avoids all intercourse with his countrymen; but if you, as a traveller, introduce yourself to him, you will have no reason to regret your visit."
The first act being now finished, I sallied forth, devoured by impatience; and at length, though not without some misgivings, mustered up resolution enough to rap at the door. It was opened by Crispinus himself, who, after I had in a few words explained what I have taken so many to relate, led the way to his study. Following my guide through a dark passage, I found myself in a small vaulted room on the ground floor, the walls impanelled with larch, rich in mouldings and curious in design, rather than remarkable for the beauty of the execution. The furniture was massive and antique; the chairs of the kind which we see in the Flemish churches, called Prie Dieus, with long, high, narrow backs to rest the arms on, in kneeling and leaning over them; a cabinet and two tables, inlaid with ebony and more precious woods, such as one sees in the old palaces at Florence, were covered with skins of vellum and parchment, some partly unrolled, and dangling on the floor, others fastened round with thongs of the same tough material; most of them seemed mildewed with damp, and discoloured by the hand of time, or man, perhaps both; and I should have been led to suppose that they were the title-deeds of estates, had they not been far too large and bulky for ancient documents of that nature, of which brevity was the soul. The characters, too, as well as a hasty glance would allow me to judge, did not appear German.
Dr. Crispinus had been described as a learned man; but to which of the three learned professions did he belong? The days of magic and necromancy were gone by—alchemist he certainly was not, for none of the apparatus common to laboratories, not a retort or crucible, was to be seen. What was he? As he sate in one of his high cane-backed chairs, I narrowly scrutinized his face and figure:—he was a tall, bony, withered man, of seventy, with a black skull-cap just covering the top of his head, and but little hiding his grey locks; a pointed beard, and sharp features; and had on a pair of green spectacles—the specula round, and of prodigious size—which he had raised over his high and projecting brows, (the seat of verbal memory,) where they rested in a sort of groove. I think I never saw a finer study for Rembrandt, or rather, he was a subject after Albert Durer's own heart, who would have hit him off to a hair. The accessories, too, were in admirable keeping—and the setting sun blazing through a single Gothic window, gorgeous in its dyes "as the tiger moth's," mellowed and softened them into as rich a glow as either of those great masters could have desired. The only part of the picture out of character with the rest was myself; but to omit me, would have been like acting a Greek play without the chorus—or choregus.
"You are one of those—
'Toto remotos orbe Britannos,'"
said the Doctor, enveloping himself more closely in the vast leaves and flowers of his ample dressing-gown; "I neither speak nor wish to speak your composite language, and fear mine is not over-familiar to you. We will, if you please, converse in Latin, or if you prefer it, Greek."
"As to Greek," I replied, "I consider it as a dead language; and my Latin you would find rather of the Macaronic kind, as barbarous as that used in the celebrated play of 'Ignoramus;' you, perhaps, know the comedy to which I allude, which was a great favourite of our James the First, and often performed before that pedant."
"No, sir; my reading is not so modern," said Doctor Crispinus, with a severe and somewhat scornful air.
What can he mean? Is the man mad, thought I;—not so modern!
"You are surprised, I see, at my words," observed the Doctor, finding I made him no reply; "they are a sort of text to what excited your curiosity this morning—my shutting up my house."
"How so, Doctor Crispinus?"
"It was done not to avoid the sight of the inauguration of that statue—for my time is too precious to be thrown away on such mummeries—but to mark my reprobation of the scene, my disgust at the honours paid to that arch-fiend."
"The inventor of --"
"Yes, sir; that abomination—the whore of Babylon was not a greater—that piece of quackery and charlatanism—printing. Instead of considering Gütenberg as my blind and infatuated countrymen do—the glory of my native town, I look upon him as the Abaddon and Antichrist of the Apocalypse; and you and they who have deified him this day, should have burnt him in effigy!"
"Perhaps, Doctor Crispinus, you object to this rite in a religious point of view, deeming it heathenish and profane to pay any mortal man a worship almost allied to idolatry."
"No, sir; it is the object, not the thing, that I abhor."
"You astonish me. I am curious to know what you find to reprobate in the life, or discovery of the great Gütenberg, the benefactor of mankind."
"Benefactor—do you call him? Our ideas of philanthropy differ toto cœlo. We was the greatest enemy the human race ever had to encounter. He has done more to keep back the tide of civilization than a hundred Omars! 'Ex fumo dare lucem,' has been chosen as a motto for the art: 'Ex foco dare fumum,' would have been a much more appropriate device. Printing, sir, will bring back the dark ages!"
I stared at Doctor Crispinus in speechless wonder.
"Bring back the dark ages, I repeat. It is pretended that through the medium of the press education is become generally diffused—daily extending more and more among the masses; but how superficial and worthless is the instruction to be derived from your Lancastrian and ITamiltonian systems, the report of which has reached me—those railroad ways of reaching learning, getting at it by steam; as if any wholesome nourishment for the mind could be derived from the trashy and deleterious drugs compounded for and issuing from the press called 'Grammars,' and 'Hand-books.' The little learnt by those who pretend to know much by studying little, were better unknown. Learning is not to be attained by a short cut; it is only to be acquired by years on years of study and meditation in solitude. It should be confined to a single class, as among the Greek philosophers, and the Hindu gymnosophists, and the fathers of the church. There is only one key to it—Greek. That divine tongue must (what says a Roman poet?--
"Nocturnâ versate manu versate diurnâ,')
be commenced in childhood, and when people arrive at my age, they may have made some progress in it. But what scholiasts do the present times produce! Those learned men had no lexicons or scapulas to resort to. ‘They worked the mine themselves, and freed the ore from the dross which ages had accumulated round it, till it issued from the crucible of their minds pure, bright, and uncontaminated."
"We, too, have had our scholars."
"Scholars, indeed! I have for curiosity looked into the pages of your Pauws and your Porsons, your Bentleys, and Blomfields, and Burgesses; but I know more Greek, sir, in my little finger (in ungue) than all that their five crania contained."
Modest, at least, thought I. "But Germany is not without great names; some ingenious commentators, to say the least of them."
"Commentators! Ingenuity! say rather, mira audacitas, et insolentia. They remind me of mushrooms, that are the more deleterious the brighter they are in colour; the lightning, that is the more fatal from its brilliancy; of vice, that the more seductive its allurements, the surer leads on to perdition. These charlatans of literature pretend that much has been done by their metrical crotchets, in the purging of what they call the corruptions of the text, as if it really was corrupt. Why, I will put almost any passage you select out of Thucydides or Iferodotus into strophe and antistrophe, if I am allowed to divorce the syllables of the words ad libitum, and carry them on line after line. I have no patience with these false emendators; for my part, I find no difficulties, whatever, may seem to common and superficial scholars to exist, in my MS. of Æschylus, and should consider it as great a sacrilege to change an iota of it, as to touch the Hebrew Scriptures."
"But can you construe some of the choruses?"
"Sir, in all my scholias, I have not suggested a single emendation."
"And to which of the classics have your labours been principally directed?"
"The first twenty years of my literary life, after taking my degree in divinity and philosophy at Halle, were spent in laying up food for its after-nourishment, thus:—they were employed in copying the best MSS. which I could procure from the different universities, not only of Germany, but Spain and Italy. I pride myself on calligraphy; nor is this all. Look at this MS."—(here he handed me a roll of vellum)—"you would find in it neither erasure nor interlineation; it contains tie same number of skins, the same quantity of lines, as the original; even the words and capital letters tally, and the character is so precisely similar, that now I have by artificial processes given it a semblance of age, by staining, and even patching it in sundry places, it would be almost impossible for the most cunning antiquarian to distinguish whether it be not the work of a Greek amanuensis."
"And what may be the author's name, Doctor?"
"Longus the Sophist. It is his celebrated novel—(that far surpasses all compositions of that description, even in your prolific country, though Gott bewaar that I should ever have read any of them)—Daphnis and Chloe; and I must here remark to you, that it was taken from the only MS. that exists in the Ambrosian Library, long before Courier discovered that it contained the second part, supposed to be lost. Much has been said about that French scholar's defacing the MS. purposely, to enhance the value of his work; but whether the blots were accidental or not, my MS. is rendered much more precious from the circumstance of further collation being rendered out of the question. And speaking of novels, I have heard somewhere that one Rousseau, who seems to have been aware of the superiority of writing to types, after the publication of his Nouvelle Heloise, copied it with his own hand, and presented it to a lady."
"A gallant act, indeed, that ought to have softened her heart! but it did not."
"No, sir; a penitential act—an offering and a sacrifice to the outraged genius, antiquity. But to return whence I set out. At the commencement of my career as a student, I was convinced that vellum is the only material to which works should be committed, and have since had no reason to change my belief. Would the classics have come down to us?—would the Herculaneum rolls have escaped the volcano, had they been entrusted to such ignitible and perishable materials as are in vogue at the present day? Paper of all kinds is my abhorrence. A single sheet of it is never allowed to enter my doors, for even my letters I write on parchment—my rough notes on ass's skin. You were, doubtless, surprised, in looking round the study of a scholar, to perceive no books—I have not one in my possession; as soon would a medalist admit a false coin into his cabinet, or a picture-collector a copy into his gallery. The system of binding and backing them is also one of the trumpery and shewy wigwams of the moderns; still more do I object to the divisions of words and sentences, paging, punctuation, and all such, if not useless expedients, yet helps to indolence or ignorance. But, sir, I will produce to you a still stronger ground for my preference of vellum to paper:"—thus saying, he opened his cabinet, and brought forth a Palampsest, which he had restored with as much nicety as a painter removes the daubs on a Raphael, that, however carefully retouched, are still easily detected. "This MS.," observed Dr. Crispinus, with an air of conscious pride and gratified vanity, "had fallen into the hands of a falsely pious monk, the original writing, by some chemical process, been obliterated, and a homily substituted for it. Fortune, fate, or necessity, whichever you may choose to call it, decreed that I should recreate it."
"And what may be the subject of this Palampsest?"
"Like those as yet collected at Portici, this is of no great value to the general reader—it is a treatise on Divination."
"Do you comprehend it?"
"Do you comprehend God?"
That question had been put and answered by another question in the same manner years before, and only proves how falsely great thinkers are often accused of plagiarism. The Doctor continued:—
"It was said of a philosopher, by one of the wisest of men, that, where he understood his works, he found them sublime; and where he did not, he gave him credit for their being so."
"I have heard it pretended that Lycophron is obscure—to my mind, the sublimest of all the Greek poets."
"Yes, if the great characteristic of the sublime is obscurity."
"There are some people who labour under a disease called a cataract," said the Doctor, somewhat sharply.
"Perhaps, Dr. Crispinus, your lucubrations may assist in my cure—aid in removing the film from my eyes. You have accounted for twenty years of your life—pray how have you employed the remainder of it?"
"My studies will one day appear in some more enlightened age, to a wiser generation, not without their uses."
"That I cannot for a moment doubt. And to what may they have tended—may I inquire?"
"You shall hear; for a prophet has no honour in his own country. My longest and greatest work is a commentary on Apuleius's 'Golden Ass,' which has employed me nine hours a day for the last nine years, and is not yet completed. In confidence, I confess that the only person I have ever been in love with, was one of those Thessalian sorceresses. But not to enter into this story of my imaginary amours, which would occupy—so voluminous is the MS—many weeks to read, I take no small credit to myself in having effectually rescued the race of that patient, abstemious, philosophical, I may say classical animal, from the unjust aspersions that have made him a byword among nations. In the progress of my investigations, I made a discovery that ought to give me great κνδοε. I need scarcely tell you that the chapters of the Koran were mostly hung at the gates of the Holy Temple on bones. In order to satisfy myself of the comparative merits of those of different animals, I, in imitation of the Arabian prophet, have committed several MSS. to that medium; and finding, that for closeness of grain, hardness, and weight, the asinine, if not far surpassing any other osseous substance, approaches nearest to ivory, I selected, as most appropriate, the jaw-bones of asses for my work."
Crispinus resorted a second time to his sanctum, and no lover could have been prouder to exhibit a lock of his mistress's hair, than the learned Doctor was to display his bones; the writing being only decipherable by very strong glasses, and in the true classic character, I am unable to give any opinion as to the composition itself.
"Your discovery," I observed, having with much difficulty refrained from bursting out into a horse-laugh, "is an important one, and may lead to incalculable results; but under what other obligations have you laid posterity, Doctor Crispinus?"
"My works are curious and erudite," he replied. "I will briefly enumerate them:—A disquisition on the Hyperboreans—that favoured people who enjoyed a terrestrial Paradise, perpetual spring, and immortal youth, and lived without laws or religion—clearing up the mystery as to who they were, and what part of the globe they inhabited; the Natural History of the Arimaspians and Griffins, the notes containing authentic accounts of the most remarkable dragons, especially the Python and Hydra; a dissertation on the Wanderings of Io, substantiating the correctness of Prometheus as a geographer; Proofs that Homer's Iliad is a translation from the Egyptian, principally based on the name of the great Leader of the Expedition, being Aga Memnon; a treatise on the Astronomy of the Ancients, as laid down in Pliny the Elder's Natural History; together with some few observations, running through fourteen skins, on the Lost Star of the Pleiades; my views on the Digamma, of still greater length; some account of the Lives and Sorrows of the Graim—the Grays—those three interesting old maids who had only one eye and one tooth between them, each in her turn for separate use; Glossary on the Χρῆστος Ηυοχων, establishing as an incontestable fact, that it was a plagiarism from Euripides, the sacrilegious cheat who passes for its author having destroyed several of that tragedian's plays, especially one-third of the Baccæ, in order to perpetuate the fraud. These, sir, are my chief claims on posterity. My—"
"Your range of studies has been indeed extensive," I said, interrupting him, and in dread of his continuing the catalogue, "but your library seems a very limited one."
"It contains, sir," replied Crispinus, "all the Greek classics; as to the Latin ones, I hold them in supreme contempt, looking upon that language (like the French) as poor and conventional; that very felicitas verborum, of which they boasted, proves what I say. Then, sir, I possess a MS. Bible, the very same from which Gütenberg and Fust, or Faust—(hence the word fustian, to denote the futility of the art of printing )—the latter of whom, if he was not the principal in that nefarious practice, was hardly used by fortune—took their text. It cost my ancestor 5000 florins, in those early days; and I owe it to those agents of Satan, that my property is become so much deteriorated in value; that this unique volume would not now fetch one-fifth part of that sum, cheaper than any Bible ought to be sold at."
"And is this your whole collection?"
"Of what use are your libraries, with their thousands and thousands of books, which no one has read, and of the contents of which all must be ignorant, unless life were extended to thrice its span?—what more can the utmost craving of the intellect require, than has been handed down to us from the ancients, whether it be in history, in poetry, in morals, in --"
"You forget science, mechanics, chemistry, anatomy, &c."
"Archimedes was a far greater mechanician than any since his day; nor is there a single discovery of modern times that may not be traced to Homer. What but walking automatons and chattering parrots are the so-called learned of this degenerate age? Talk of sciences—of what use is it to an anatomist to be able to point out and name every little perforation, every cavity, or protuberance in a bone?—or your botanist?—what benefits it to load the memory with the minutiæ of plants?—will that assist in the cure of diseases? Do men, in spite of all our boasted discoveries in chemistry, live longer than they did formerly? Then, as to mineralogy, geology—what do they teach us of the structure of the world? A man who had never seen an egg broken, might as well pretend to judge of what it contained by examining some dust upon its shell."
Whilst we were thus talking, twilight had begun to yield to the darkness; and having gratified my utmost curiosity, gained all the information I desired, reaped all the profit there was to reap from this monomaniac, I prepared to depart. To say the truth, I had for some time felt the company of this singular old man, with whom I had no one idea in common, who, whilst all his fellow-beings were in a state of transition, had been stationary or rather retrograde, irksome and oppressives. Nor less so was the atmosphere of that vaulted room, with its antiquated furniture, and panels blackened by smoke and time, that weighed on me with a sense of heaviness, and made me long to breathe the pure air of the summer heavens, and commune with my own thoughts. I therefore took my leave, and the following morning reembarked for Manheim. Happening, a twelvemonth after, to pass again through Mayence, I naturally bethought me of the learned Doctor, and on landing, proceeded to the square with the intention of paying him a second visit; but to my infinite surprise and disappointment, I found his house had vanished—one precisely similar to those that had excited my spleen at the fête usurping its place, with all the airs of an insolent parvenu. On inquiry I learnt, that shortly after the Jubilee, the last of the Grecians had discontinued his studies—abandoned his usual occupations—those labours which were to render him immortal—that the proximity of the image of Gütenberg acted upon him like a maleficent charm; and, as the statue, unlike that in Don Juan, did not talk to him in its justification, he from his window talked to it, holding daily longer and longer discourses, and finding that they were as powerless as those of the musical reprobate had been on the Commendator, he grew more and more loud in his execrations, till the neighbours, as they passed, held up their hands, and cried "Poor Dr. Crispinus!" and the boys followed, and hooted and pelted him when he appeared in public.
But the worst remains behind: in an excess of rage and indignation, he at length, at one fatal swoop, laid violent hands, not on himself, but on things dearer to him than himself, his invaluable MSS., a deed worse than suicidal, and only to be equalled by Saturn's, who devoured his own children.
His relations—most relations, when a man is rich, are ever ready to act in the same affectionate manner—voted him crazed, and had him conveyed to the Toll-haus, where he still is, and is likely to remain, for they have divided his substance among them, and demolished his mansion, in the vain pretext of completing the symmetry of the square, now called after Gütenberg, but which would, to my mind, be much more appropriately termed—"Plas Crispinus."