The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 566, September 15, 1832. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
madam, you've no stockings! your legs are naked, but ornamented, however, with a very pretty ribbon, after the fashion of a sandal.
Tullia.—We knew nothing about stockings, which, as a useful and agreeable invention, I certainly prefer to our sandals.
Mad. da P.—Good heavens, madam, I believe you've no chemise!
Tullia.—No, madam, in my time nobody wore one.
Mad. de P.—And in what time did you live?
Tullia.—In the time of Sylla, Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Cataline; and Cicero, to whom I have the honour of being daughter: of that Cicero, of whom one of your protegés has made mention in barbarous verse.3 I went yesterday to the theatre, where Cataline was represented with all the celebrated people of my time, but I did not recognise one of them; and when my father exhorted me to make advances to Cataline, I was astonished! But, madam, you seem to have some beautiful mirrors; your chamber is full of them; our mirrors were not a sixteenth part so large as yours; are they of steel?
Mad. de P.—No, madam, they are made with sand, and nothing is more common amongst us.
Tullia.—What an admirable art! I confess we had none such! And oh! what a beautiful painting too you have there!
Mad. de P.—It is not a painting, but a print, done merely with lamp-black; a hundred copies of the same design may be struck off in a day, and this secret immortalizes pictures, which time would otherwise destroy.
Tullia.—It is indeed an astonishing secret! we Romans had nothing like it!
Un Savant.—(A literary man there present, taking up the discourse, and producing a book from his pocket, says to Tullia:) You will be astonished, madam, to learn, that this book is not written by hand, but that it is printed almost in a manner similar to engravings; and that this invention also immortalizes works of the mind.
(The Savant presents his book, a collection of verses dedicated to the Marchioness, to Tullia, who reads a page, admires the type, and says to the author:)
Tullia.—Truly, sir, printing is a fine thing; and if it can immortalize such verses as these, it appears to me to be the noblest effort of art. But do you not at least employ this invention in printing the works of my father?
The Savant.—Yes, madam, but nobody reads them; I am truly concerned for your father, but in these days, little is known of him save his name.
(Here are brought in chocolate, tea, coffee, and ices. Tullia is astonished to see, in summer, cream and strawberries4 iced. She is informed that such congealed beverages are obtained in five minutes, by means of the salt-petre with which they are surrounded, and that by continual motion, is produced their firmness and icy coldness. She is speechless with astonishment. The dark colour of the chocolate and coffee, somewhat disgust her, and she asks whether these liquids are extracted from the plants of the country?—A duke who is present, replies:)
Duke.—The fruits of which these beverages are composed, come from another world, and from the Gulf of Arabia.
Tullia.—Arabia I remember; but never heard mention made of what you call coffee; and as for another world, I know only of that from whence I came, and do assure you, we have no chocolate there.
Duke.—The world of which we tell you, madam, is a continent, called America, almost as large as Europe, Asia, and Africa, put together; and of which we have a knowledge less vague, than of the world from whence you came.
Tullia.—What! Did we then, who styled ourselves masters of the world, possess only half of it? The reflection is truly humiliating!
The Savant.—(piqued that Tullia had pronounced his verses bad, replies dryly:) Yes, your countrymen who boasted of having made themselves masters of the world, had scarce conquered the twentieth part of it. We have at this moment, at the further end of Europe, an empire larger in itself than the Roman:5 it is governed, too, by a woman, who excels you in intellect and beauty, and who wears chemises; had she read my verses, I am certain she would have thought them good.
(The Marchioness commands silence on the part of the author, who has treated a Roman lady, the daughter of Cicero, with disrespect. The duke explains the discovery of America, and taking out his watch, to which is appended, by way of trinket, a small mariner's compass, shows her how, by means of a needle, another hemisphere is reached. The amazement of the fair Roman redoubles at every word which she hears, and every thing she beholds; and she at length exclaims:)
Tullia.—I begin to fear that the moderns really do surpass the ancients; on this point I came to satisfy myself, and doubt not I shall have to carry back a melancholy report to my father.
Duke.—Console yourself, madam, no man amongst us equals your illustrious sire; neither does any come near Caesar, with whom you were contemporary, nor the Scipios who preceded him. Nature, it is true creates, even at this day, powerful intellects, but they resemble rare seeds, which cannot arrive at maturity in an uncongenial soil. The simile does not hold good respecting arts and sciences; time, and fortunate chances, have perfected them. It would, for example, be easier for us to produce a Sophocles, or an Euripides, than such individuals as your father, because, theatres we have, but no tribunals for public harangues.6 You have hissed the tragedy of Cataline; when you shall see Phaedrus played, you will probably agree that the part of Phaedrus, in Racine, is infinitely superior to the model you have known in Euripides. I hope, also, that you will agree our Molière surpasses your Terence. By your permission, I shall have the honour of escorting you to the opera, where you will be astonished to hear song in parts; that again is an art unknown to you.7 Here, madam, is a small telescope, have the goodness to apply your eye to this glass, and look at that house which is a league off.
Tullia.—Immortal gods! the house is now at the end of the telescope, and appears much larger than before.
Duke.—Well, madam, it is by means of such a toy that we have discovered new heavens, even as by means of a needle, we have become acquainted with a new earth. Do you see this other varnished instrument, in which is inserted a small glass tube? by this trifle, we are enabled to discover the just proportion of the weight of the atmosphere. After much error and uncertainty, there arose a man who discovered the first principle of nature, the cause of weight, and who has demonstrated that the stars weigh upon the earth, and the earth upon the stars. He has also unthreaded the light of the sun, as ladies unthread a tissue of gold.
Tullia.—What, sir, is it to unthread?
Duke.—Madam, the equivalent of this term will scarcely be found in the orations of Cicero. It is to unweave a stuff, to draw out thread by thread, so as to separate the gold. Thus has Newton done by the rays of the sun, the stars also have submitted to him; and one Locke has accomplished as much by the Human Understanding.
Tullia.—You know a great deal for a duke and a peer of the realm; you seem to me more learned than that literary man who wished me to think his verses good, and you are far more polite.
Duke.—Madam, I have been better brought up; but as to my knowledge it is merely commonplace. Young people now, when they quit school, know much more than all the philosophers of antiquity. It is only a pity that we have, in Europe, substituted half-a-dozen imperfect jargons, for the fine Latin language, of which your father made so noble a use; but with such rude implements we have produced, even in the belles lettres, some very fair works.
Tullia.—The nations who succeeded the Romans must needs have lived in a state of profound peace, and have enjoyed a constant succession of great men, from my father's time until now, to have invented so many new arts, and to have become acquainted so intimately with heaven and earth.
Duke.—By no means, madam, we are ourselves, some of those barbarians, who almost all came from Scythia, and destroyed your empire, and the arts and sciences. We lived for seven
Crébillon, author of Catalina.
Groseilles, literally; gooseberries or currents; but we have taken the liberty here, and elsewhere, slightly to deviate from the original text, in compliment to English customs, tastes, idioms, &c.
Russia: whose Empress, Catherine II, is intended by the succeeding sentence.
The well-known poetic vanity of Voltaire must be taken into full account, when he thus talks of the easiness of producing a (modern) Sophocles, or an Euripides; perhaps he thought his own tragedies equal, or superior to theirs; and for what follows, the French national prejudice in favour of their own dramatic writers, and which is far more laudable than the English indifference to the interests of the drama, should be recollected.
To "astonished" the author might almost have added alarmed, or disgusted. The conversant in music, know that song in parts, i.e. harmonized, is peculiarly distasteful to the ear unaccustomed to it; song, in unison, is the natural music of savage man; harmony is art; to be pleased with it therefore, implies a mind and ear cultivated and refined. The same remark hold good with instrumental music.