Chapter XVIII: Appendix: Referred to at p. 178 (1)

The genuine and spurious portraits of Cromwell are numerous to such a degree, that they may almost be called innumerable; for they can never be counted, as no one man can get at them all to reckon them up. Their main authority is said to depend upon the works of four artists, Lely, Cooper, Walker, Faithorne. Samuel Butler, the author of the ever-marvellous “Hudibras,” is thought to have painted a likeness, but it counts for nothing, as it is not now to be identified as existing in any collection. The first-named three are painters, the fourth is a great engraver.

In all these, Mr. Frederic Harrison professes to discover “singular resemblance” [“Cromwell,” p. 32,] but considers that Cooper’s is the most successful of them all. I find the first to be a most misleading statement, and one that may be disproved by anybody who will compare Cooper’s likeness, as given in Carlyle’s “Cromwell Letters” with the picture by Walker in the National Portrait Gallery. They differ in every particular,—in character, feature, temperament, and conformation. Scarcely do they agree even in the wart. There is nothing to identify them as representing the same individual. Either Lely copied Cooper, or Cooper copied Lely, and they accordingly, of course, correspond with each other; but truth is too much sacrificed to flattery by both these courtly painters, for us to suppose that their work corresponds very accurately with the sitter. Such examples of Faithorne as are readily accessible in the Print Room at the Museum convey no adequate idea of the man. Neither do they resemble Cooper, Lely, nor Walker’s work. There is a profile print by Houbraken, an excellent performance, which is interesting as showing that both the chin and forehead receded greatly. There is also a very peculiar engraving of Thomas Simon’s medal, which is very beautiful as a work of art. But here again the facial angle is simply villainous, with very mean diminutive eyes, and the dress almost clerical. The engraving from the Cooper at Sidney College gives the wart on the left brow instead of the right.

From such discrepant things it seems to me next to impossible to derive any correct notion regarding the face of Cromwell, except that the facial angle of the side face must have been unusually bad. Yet Mr. Harrison is able to express himself as follows:—

“No human countenance recorded is more familiar to us than that broad, solid face with the thick and prominent red nose; the heavy gnarled brow, with its historic wart; eyes firm, penetrating, sad; square jaw, and close-set mouth; scanty tufts of hair on lip and chin; long loose brown locks flowing down in waves on to the shoulder. His whole air breathing energy, firmness, passion, pity, and sorrow.” Carlyle’s fancy version is given below.[454]

This being derived from a falsity, must itself be false. But is it not somewhat curious that friends and foes of Cromwell should alike sit down contentedly before this admirably executed miniature of Cooper’s without devoting a second thought to its representative value as a portrait of the man in question? Its artistic felicity should be as nothing to the historical inquirer. Taken as a mere portrait, this Cooper is as valueless as Veronese’s presentment of Alexander the Great; or as any fancy portrait of Oliver would be, if sent in by some skilled modern hand to the next May show at Burlington House.

Our sense of surprise increases, when we come to remember that we possess an authentic original to go by, in the shape of a mask still extant that was taken at death. Historians draw up rigmarole pen-and-ink portraits of their own, but are all silent about this, or make only casual mention of it as “the mask at the Statuaries,” just as though it corresponded in every particular with Samuel Cooper’s exquisite pigment-figment. Romancists delight in coloured detail gathered from history; and historians revel in romance when it saves them from searching into dry detail. In this case historical gossip slips in to illustrate the stringent veracity of Cromwell. When Lely was to take his portrait, he is said to have ordered him to be faithful in representing every blemish and defect, to paint warts and all, or he would not be paid. Lely knew what this meant, and acted accordingly. All portrait-painters flatter, they must to secure a practice; but, they ought to select the best aspect possible, for so far it is what it professes to be, a likeness. Now the strong point with your court painter is, to throw in skillfully what is not there. In this Lely and Cooper have succeeded to admiration.

Walker, in his several portraits, gives us another set of varieties. His picture in the Portrait Gallery [Granger, “Biog. Hist.,” iii. p. 290.] with Cromwell’s son Richard as page tying on the father’s scarf, has been finely engraved by Pierre Lombart. In this picture, which is a little wooden, we get an average-looking gentleman going to battle. A man we should have to look at three or four times before we should individualize him at all in the memory. Mr. Nobody riding to nowhere particular is the impression derived. Of the engraving, however, Evelyn says, and he knew Cromwell perfectly well, “that it gives the strongest resemblance of him.” He therein physiognomically discovers “characters of the greatest dissimulation, boldness, cruelty, and ambition, in every stroke and touch.” I can say nothing of this, for I have not seen the Lombart engraving. The picture does not convey the idea.

How pliantly subservient art was in those days, is well illustrated in another Cromwell engraving by the same Lombart. This artist had done, after Vandyke, a “Charles on horseback,” from which he erased the face, and substituted that of Cromwell. The slender figure of the king had to do duty for the heavy-built brewer of Huntingdon. But times change, and we with them. So Peter reinstated the king. There must be impressions of this turn-face print in its three states; for no doubt copies were sold at every stage. The King is dead. God save the Protector! The Protector is dead. God save the King! The dead lion is never so good for the crowd as the live ass; irrespective of the latter creature being far more representative. A quality much sought after in modern governors.

There is a portrait of Cromwell affixed to Isaac Kimber’s “Life of Oliver Cromwell,” which he published anonymously [Granger, iii. 297]. This is pronounced in the “Letters of Mr. Hughes” to be most like the authentic family pictures of Cromwell. Vertue engraved it in 1724 for Rapin’s “History of England,” and when Granger wrote the picture was in the possession of Sir Thomas Frankland of Old Bond Street. I suppose this to be still in the hands of the Frankland-Russells of Chequers Court, who also possess a plaster cast of Cromwell’s face. By the courtesy of the family I have been permitted to examine this; but it seems to me of no value, and it has no history.

We come now to the terra-cotta bust by Edward Pierce, which is in the National Portrait Gallery, said to be taken from life. Pierce was an artist in the second generation. His father, of the same christian name, was a painter, and assistant of Vandyke. Our Edward was trained for a statuary, and became the pupil of Edward Bird: he also acted as assistant to Sir Christopher Wren, and is said to have built St. Clement Danes under him. He did a bust of Wren, for the theatre at Oxford, and also one of Newton. He died at Surrey street in the Strand, and was buried at the old Savoy. This bust of Cromwell was, to all appearance, modelled by him from a cast taken from life, and must therefore, as to measurement and bulk, be of life size.

I was kindly permitted by Mr. George Scharf, of the National Portrait Gallery, to take the dimensions of this bust by measurement, but practically they are not very useful, inasmuch as the head has a great abundance of short curly hair, which of course in terra-cotta becomes perfectly solid, and thereby increases the circumference of the head by many inches.

The circumference, hair and all, at his brow is 28²⁄₈ inches.
Nape of neck to frontal bone, where it unites
with nose 15⁴⁄₈ ”
Breadth from ear to ear at level of the central
hole of each ear as near as can be approximated 6²⁄₈ ”

This last measurement is, I believe, correct, but it is a dimension that only a large forceps could take with perfect certainty. It is so small, however, that I feel sure that the other two dimensions must be very far from giving the true osseous formation, so that several inches will have to be allowed off them for the hair. Again, the measurement between the tip of nose and back of head (9⅝ inches) would also require that deductions be made for a wad of hair at the back. This measurement when reduced, and coupled with the third measurement given, indicates an undersized skull for a broad-built man of five feet eleven in stature.

As for the physiognomy, the nose, though far from fine, is somewhat aquiline, and the best of all the features of the face. The forehead is low, ill-formed, and mean. The mouth firm, cruel, deceitful. The jowl and chin sensual and gross almost to brutality. It is the face of a man of low passions, possibly ambitious, but of great duplicity, of a low-bred type, the type as of one sprung from a lower stratum of society than his history indicates him to have sprung from; and you may readily suppose that in exchanges of course buffoonery with the roughest trooper of his corps, he would have been quite within his own province and at home. His mother’s portrait shows her also to have been a very masculine coarse-featured woman.

It is well perhaps to mention here a bust that Grose in a letter to Granger in 1774, calls “a masterly and spirited bust of Oliver Cromwell by one Bannier.” It was then in Mr. Gostling’s collection. He says it is like that engraving given in Rapin’s “History.” I imagine it therefore to be a fancy rendering, and of very small historic value.

The expert historians, and of course the general public together with them, are perfectly satisfied with the Cromwell presented to them by Samuel Cooper. I confess that I think it a most laughable presentment, and of quite impossible credence. I do not think Pierce’s bust to be satisfactory, but I most certainly consider that it is the only likeness I have had the opportunity of examining that conveys even a hint of what can be supposed to be the real appearance of the man. There is but one way now remaining to settle this question. It is very much to be regretted that, with so much pretence of a desire for historical accuracy, we should have allowed two hundred and fifty years to elapse without making the least attempt to settle this question.

We learn from Breval’s “Travels” that at the Old Palace at Florence there is a cast preserved of Oliver Cromwell. The mould was obtained from Cromwell’s face _a few minutes after his decease_, “through the dexterous management of the Tuscan resident in London.” This, or a cast from it, ought immediately to be secured for our National Portrait Gallery. A copy of it would cost very little in either time, money, or trouble to secure; and when secured three or four should be cast in bronze, and placed in different museums so that one fire could not destroy all of them at once.

I feel almost sure that it will be found to confirm the bust of Pierce, as being more like Cromwell than anything else that we possess. And further, as Pierce’s work is by no means a grand achievement in the sculptor’s art, I should hope to find in the Florence cast characteristic indications that are absent from Pierce’s work. Grandeur of soul is incompatible with such a face as Pierce gives us. But I confess that I see no grandeur whatever that could be expressed by a man whose history is that of Oliver. His base success the world may worship if it will. I despise success if it must be obtained by Cromwell’s methods. I observe that the great in history are always mean in fact; and I well know that you must say to all the men who have been triumphant, let no probing moralist come near you. Pitiable and contemptible is the man who can envy the great in the greatness of their crimes. I do not expect that the cast, if procured, will make the reading any better for Cromwell; but, if it should, I am quite ready to give him all the advantage of it. At present I hold that the face is villainous, like the man.

“... ducitur unco,
Spectandus: gaudent omnes. Quæ labra? Quis illi
Vultus erat? Nunquam, si quid mihi credis, amavi
Hunc hominem.”

JUVENAL, x. 66.

Still, love or no love, we have reached the end; and if we should confirm Pierce, the flesh and bones of the man thus revived will also confirm the epithets of Nostradamus, which first induced me to enter upon this investigation.

“Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.”—_John_ iv. 19.

“Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: cœli scrutantur
plagas.”—CIC., _Divin._, ii. 13.

This granted, a pig is nearest wisdom.

Μάντις ἄριστος, ὄστις εἰκάζει καλῶς.—WITSIUS, _Miscel._, p. 14.

The best analogist is the best prophet.

“L’observation des analogies universelles a été negligée, et
c’est pour cela qu’on ne croit plus à la divination.”—LEVI,
_Clef des Mystères_, p. 216.

Μαντεῖον, ἐπὶ χείλεσι βασιλέως, ἐν δὲ κρίσει οὐ μὴ πλανηθῇ τὸ
στόμα αὐτοῦ.—_Prov._ xvi. 10, LXX.

There is divination on a king’s lips, and judgment fails not in
his mouth.

FOOTNOTES

[1] This noble and enlarged thought is worthy of Coleridge, who is the greatest thinker of our century, whether you take him as poet or philosopher. Nobody has yet claimed for him the pre-eminence which, I believe, to be his. The peculiar, nay, unique frailties of the man have blinded the men of his own time to the super-eminent, intellectual, _practical_, and imaginative endowments with which he was so affluently furnished. By the middle of next century, some hundred or so years from his death, the fact will have dawned upon the world, if not before. It will then be recognized that such a personality as his, was “a great birth of time,” and to be registered as such in the deathless calendar of genius. Saint, seer, and sage was that man. Not “spoilt in the making,” as the witty Lamb put it, with all the lambent malice of a friend jocose. We must admit, of course, some damage that hindered general currency, as also the attainment of such now worthless cash-results as fell to beings distinctly inferior to himself, such as Byron, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, great as some estimate them to be; and this failure shut Coleridge out from social success,—that success which most of us so ignorantly and greedily covet here, because it makes the present comfortable. But the chief reason, of any shortcoming hurtful to success, that may be observable in Coleridge, no doubt arose from his being far too great to be adequately measured by any of his fellow-men. Many of them were, it is true, highly capable men as the world goes. Even Carlyle, however, who has disparaged him, when placed beside him, dwarfs to a man of Lilliput. We have to bear in mind always that excellent remark of La Bruyère, “Celui qui ne prévoit rien, est souvent dupe; celui qui prévoit trop, est toujours malheureux.” This is true of all prophets, and especially true of Coleridge.

But, another thing there is that helps to diminish Coleridge in the general estimation. He has not completed work enough, in well set and fixed form, for posterity to be quite able to render him adequate, that is to say, resplendent justice. His unexampled conversational gifts have somewhat barred the way to a due appreciation of his equally unexampled literary potentialities. His conversational aptitudes have perished in the moment of their triumphant display. Being without record in this respect, he suffers precisely as the greatest actor does. Triumphs of the table and the salon are like the triumphs of the stage, we can only revive them in spirit, on the basis of some felicitously appreciative sentence, chance embalmed in print, that some competent contemporary has ejaculated. I, for instance, know the overwhelming power of Kean only through my mother, and the burning phrases left behind by Byron and Coleridge. But the next generation can have no cognizance of him beyond those phrases. It is for this precise reason I indite so long a note as this on Coleridge, out of the pure respect I bear him for his stupendous intelligence and incommensurable soul. I have, indeed, tried to put on record elsewhere my impression of his poetry; but, I have not yet been able to get it printed. Should it ever be so, it would at least acquire some value from the fact of its representing, in a limited and qualified degree, Coleridge’s vivid influence upon one who may partially stand on the footing of a contemporary. Coleridge is a spirituality in the world, and his modes of revealing himself are such as lead the run of mankind to esteem him visionary; but it will be found that it is they, not he, that must be reckoned “such stuff as dreams are made of.”

[2] Touching this curse to fall on Napoleon, a somewhat singular analogy arises in comparing with it the axiom laid down by Thomasius, quoted in Bruncker’s “Hist. Crit. Philos.,” v. 488. He says that the spirit is, as it were, resident in the centre of all bodies, and thence emits rays, so extending matter. But where it draws back the rays from the circumference of the material to the centre, it soon dissolves and corrupts the body. _Si vero radios ex circumferentia materiæ spiritus attrahat ad centrum, resolvitur corpus et corrumpitur._ If we suppose this to have taken place at the epileptic seizure of Napoleon, the mental attack becomes an image or antitype of the battle of Leipsic, when the swarm of birds beat back the eagle. An interpreter, such as Joseph, could have told him the meaning of the dream or swoon. The defeat was first of all rehearsed in the soldier’s own brain.

[3]

Οἱ δὲ τὰ ἄτομα καὶ αἰσθητὰ δημιουργοῦσι
Καὶ σωματοειδῆ καὶ κατατεταγμένα εἰς ὕλην.

STANLEY’S “Hist. Chald. Phil.,” p. 43.

[4] To get one thing, one must always forego some other. Jupiter did not give prescience to Tiresias till Juno had struck him blind. And for our own great Milton it was necessary he should have wisdom at one entrance quite shut out, before, in “Paradise Lost,” he could make men’s memory a prisoner to his name for ever, in a willing though perpetual serfdom.

[5] The facts for this life are taken, where no other reference is given, from a scarce work, entitled, “La première face du Janus François, par Jean Aimes de Chavigny Beaunois, 1594.” It is found in the Library at Paris; but not in the British Museum. Fortunately M. le Pelletier gives an almost literal transcript of this “Brief discours sur la vie de M. Michel de Nostredame.”

[6] “Archives du Magnetisme Animal,” vol. viii. “Tous deux” (_i.e._ father and mother) “appartenaient à une famille Juive,” converted in the sixteenth century, and of the tribe of Issachar (“Nouvelle Biog. Générale” [Le Pelletier, i. 16 n.]).

[7] His grandfather, Moreri tells us.

[8] Moreri assigns this to the year 1525.

[9] He calls Scaliger in the heyday of friendship “a Virgil in poetry, a Cicero in eloquence, a Galen in medicine,” and declares that to him he is indebted for his scientific attainments (“Penny Cyclopædia,” s.v. _Nostradamus_).

[10] “That the great bulk of French society of his day was impressed by his effusions there can be no doubt” (Chambers’ “Book of Days,” vol. ii., p. 13).

[11] Moreri says that nobody knows what his report was.

[12] Garencières, as we have shown, says Nostradamus dedicated the “Luminary Epistle” to Henri II. in 1557. M. le Pelletier holds (i. 10) that Henri II. never knew of the dedicatory epistle written to him by name, and that, as the events referred to do not concern the House of Valois, they could have had no interest for him had he known of the epistle. M. le Pelletier adds a most singular note to this remark, that the epistle is dedicated “_A l’invictissime, très puissant, et très chrestien Henry Roy de France Second_.” This epigraph he maintains not to be addressed to Henri II., for he remarks that he was no longer alive when it made its appearance. Now, this is not so; for the dedicatory letter was dated in print June 27, 1558, and the king’s death only took place in 1559, so that the document was even in print before his death. But, had it not been so, there is no reason whatever why Nostradamus should not have supplied the king with a copy of the letter and quatrains in manuscript long before either of them had been committed to type. Jean de Roux, Curé de Louvicamp, wrongly suggests that it was intended as a prophetical dedication to Louis le Grand or XIV. M. le Pelletier thinks it was not even dedicated to the great Henri Quatre, but to a “_Henry, Roy de France Second_”—_second_ being the Latin _secundus_, or prosperous, _i.e._ some king not less illustrious than Henri Quatre, whose reign is to arise in the future. This it is which furnishes to the reader the secret purpose of Le Pelletier’s book, which is to set forth the claims of the Duc de Bordeaux, who would have ascended the French throne as Henri Cinq. Accordingly, in the body of the book, he has interpreted five quatrains and one sixain of the prophecies of Nostradamus as referring to this glorious King _Henri Second_, who has never arrived, and who, being now some years dead, never can. We have seen that the Curé de Louvicamp could even suppose that Louis XIV. could stand for “Henry, Roy de France Second.” M. F. Buget, in his “Étude sur Nostradamus,” has the same idea, that he does not address Henri II., because he was not of a character sufficiently great to merit the attribution of such spiritual authority to him by our prophet, as if the flattery of a dedication was to be interpreted _au pied de la lettre_. It could only be addressed, he thinks, to a really great man, a saint. M. Buget, in his book of 1862, evidently was another of those who made the fatal error of interpreting Nostradamus out of the future, instead of carefully following the enigmas thrown out by him to find their fulfilment in the past. These gentlemen, if they had assiduously read the Epistle itself, instead of consulting their imaginative faculties, would have perceived plainly enough that Nostradamus was writing to the only king he knew, before whom he had personally presented himself, and whom, as he says, he had highly reverenced from “_iceluy jour que premierement devant icelle je me presentay_.” The concluding words of the Dedication are equally plain, and show that he is addressing a king whom he has individually seen with his own eyes: “_depuis que mes yeux furent si proches de vostre splendeur solaire_.” All the rest is to be set down to the strain of courtly flattery that was customarily addressed to kings, then and down to a period full two hundred years later, especially on occasion of penning royal dedications. The purpose of this long note is to establish, once and for all, I trust, that “_Henry, Roy de France Second_,” stands, without any subtlety at all, simply for King Henri II., and nothing more. It is vain to endeavour to make millstones transparent that we may shoot unexpected rays of light through them. They will answer their purpose by being left in the dark, and will grind grain the better for it. Transparency will in such cases represent frangibility.

[13] Aulus Gellius, “Noctes Atticæ,” xv. 7.

[14] It was really in the sixth month of his sixty-third year that he died.

[15] _Temple Bar_, xli. p. 87, authority for the term of years.

[16] How any could have been written in 1567, I know not, as Nostradamus died in 1566. But, however this may be, there are twelve _Presages_, or one for each month throughout the year 1567. The last one is that which we have already given, as relating to his own death.

[17] The book was entitled, “Les vies des plus célèbres et anciens poëtes provensaux, qui ont floury du tems des comtes de Provence” (Lyon, 1575); a book still sought for, and rather rare.

[18] “In 1566 died that trifler, so famous throughout the world, Michael Nostradamus, who boasted while he lived that he knew and could foretell future events by the influence of the stars, in whose name afterwards many ingenious men have put forth their imaginings, justifying him who said so aptly, ‘Nostra damus,’ etc.”

[19] Bouys does the same for Napoleon I.

[20] See the ban he utters in Century VI., at the close—“_Barbari procul sunto._” He shows a quite Horatian and heathen antipathy to the _profanum vulgus_.

[21] Cæsar Nostradamus was born at the beginning of 1555, so he was but a few weeks old when his father dedicated to him the first four “Centuries,” published for the first time in 1555, by Macé Bonhomme, the printer at Lyons. In the name of this son the epistle is really a dedication to his spiritual sons; that is, to his interpreters and students in all future ages.

[22] Lymphatics, Garencières (p. 16) tells, were anciently those who were mad for love; and he absurdly adds that the sign of it was, that such persons threw themselves into the water,—_lympha_ meaning water. Varro says that in Greece those who were mad were called νυμφολήπτους, which means caught by nymphs. Festus, to fit this, thinks that men went mad by seeing the image of nymphs in the water fountains. Others have it that they were afraid of water, as if it were hydrophobia that possessed them. But _nympha_ and _lympha_ approach each other so nearly, that when a man is once caught by a nymph he is, for the time being, mad to all intents and purposes,—“it is not given to a man to love and to be wise.” Leaving all this to be settled as it may, there is no question but in the medical technology of Nostradamus a deep melancholy is what was understood by the Lymphatic motion,—melancholy being the temperament most apt for study, poetry, and vaticination. Garencières invents a word for the occasion, or uses one that has since grown obsolete. He employs the verb _lymphatize_.

[23] “Such alone as are inspired by the divine power can predict particular events in a spirit of prophecy.”

[24] “Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, _i.e._ from the powerful and from kings, and hast revealed them to the small and weak.” This is Nostradamus’s gloss upon Matt. xi. 25.

[25] Acts i. 7.

[26] Nostradamus seems, whenever he alludes to this appearance of flame as preceding vaticination, to have in his mind the descent of tongues of fire at Pentecost (Acts ii. 3), διαμεριζόμεναι γλῶσσαι ὡσεὶ πυρός. A flame of fire, be it observed, conveys a double symbol: it resembles a tongue in form. Its luminousness and its purifying tendency express the celestial nature of spirit, as contrasted with matter, and also inspiration. So that intrinsically and extrinsically it represents prophetic utterance. Grotius contributes an unusually good note upon this passage, pointing out that as in Genesis (xi. 9), confusion of tongues scattered mankind, so here (Acts ii. 3) the gift of tongues was to bring men again into one brotherhood.

[27] This passage is very difficult to bring to a clear sense in translation. Garencières has simply evaded it. It seems to mean that God operates all the great effects in the universe; that, as He is the Maker, so is He the perpetual operator in the world,—its cause and life; but that the guardian angels are good and bad, and are charged with some sort of duty and office, not as affecting the mechanic frame of the world, but in respect of mankind. This is in conformity with the Cabala and Hermetical teaching; but what he precisely means cannot, I think, be quite absolutely stated.

[28] “He who is called prophet now, once was called seer.”

[29] “For all things are naked and open.”

[30] “I am able not to err, fail, or be deceived.”

[31] “Whence it shall not deviate from age to age.”

[32] “I will visit their iniquities with a rod of iron, and with blows will strike them.” This somewhat resembles a passage in the Psalms (ii. 7), but it is not a quotation.

[33] “I will trample them and break them, and not show pity.” This resembles Isai. lxiii. 3.

[34] In prose, and not in verse, as the quatrains are. These prose forecastings have, I am afraid, been altogether lost.

[35] “When the time arrives for the removal of ignorance.”

[36] “When Minerva was free and favourable.”

[37] “There can be no truth entirely determined for certain which concerns the future.”

[38] See Joel ii. 28.

[39] Which proceeds from fate, but from God, and nature.

[40] “Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee, to release the children of death” (Ps. lxxviii. 11).

[41] “The sea blushed red with the blood of naval fights.”

[42] “Many things, O most potent king of all, of the most remarkable kind are shortly to happen, that I neither could nor would interweave them all into this epistle; but in order to comprehend certain facts, a few horrible destinies must be set down in extract, although your amplitude and humanity towards all men is so great, and your piety to the gods, and that you alone seem worthy of the grand title of the most Christian King, and to whom the highest authority in all religion should be deferred.”

[43] Romance tongue, _sele_ for _selle_, tripod seat, _tripode æneo_, such as the priestess of Apollo or Pythia sat on to deliver oracles.

[44] Latin, _prosperare_, to succeed, or realize an experience.

[45] _Qui_ for _ce qui_.

[46] Latin, _virga_, branch or wand.

[47] Latin, _limbus_, hem, border, fringe.

[48] Latin, _per_, in, or through.

[49] Ex Michaele Psello, _de Dæmonibus_. Works of Marsilius Ficinus, ii. 884, ed. 1641, folio.

[50] This refers to some Good Friday evening on the 10th Calend of April Old Style, as set forth in the first line of this quatrain.

[51] This is exhibited in the third line of the quatrain: _Le feu estainct, assemblée diabolique_.

[52] Æneid, iii. 92 and vi. 347.

[53] Old word for _jamais_, never.

[54] Latin, _a_, by.

[55] Bouys [_Oracles_, p. 103] says that the King alone had the right to a visor of pure gold. I believe this to be pure nonsense. It would be little stronger than lead. It merely means a gilt casque, and I think some of the accounts say so in as many words. If Bouys were right, the King courted death.

[56] Greek, κλάσις, breaking or lopping.

[57] Latin, _una_, the one or first.

[58] See also Brantôme, _Vie des hommes illustres de son temps_.

[59] _Qu’en_, for _qui en_.

[60] Romance, for _lutte_.

[61] _Porté_, pour _remporté_.

[62] Latin, _subito_, suddenly.

[63] Romance, _surprins_ for surpris.

[64] Romance, _surprins_ = _surpris_.

[65] Latin, _exspoliare_, totally despoiled.

[66] Romance, for _pris_.

[67] Romance, _hostaige_, maison, house, palace.

[68] Romance, _tiers_, third.

[69] Latin, _trucidare_, cut the throat.

[70] Latin, _inconditus_, dispersed.

[71] Greek, σάρπος, wooden case, coffin.

[72] _Sortiront bas_, for _d’en bas_.

[73] Latin, _infernus_, subterranean.

[74] Romance, _vefve_, veuve. The word is made here to apply to the wife, Mary Stuart, whom he leaves a widow without children. The grammatical effort is somewhat violent; but _vef_ or _veuf_ is the masculine form, so there is very little choice given.

[75] In the quatrain this ought to be written _eage_, as it stands in the _texte-type_, or the line will not scan.

[76] _Près_, for après.

[77] This is how M. le Pelletier renders the last line.

[78] Italian, _piloto_, pilot.

[79] Latin, _mandatus_, appointed to a charge.

[80] Latin, _classis_, fleet.

[81] Romance, _contrebandé_, marching in a contrary band.

[82] _Ordo_ is, _Venise craindra une armée de barbares qui viendra_.

[83] This line is a foot short. Garencières reads:

Le coup volant luy crevera un œil.

[84] _Noir_, anagram of roi, cutting off _n_.

[85] _Arcs tendus_, arquebus.

[86] Latin, _tantum_, much.

[87] The family name of Pope Gregory XIII. was Hugo Buon-Compagni. On May 13, 1572, he was made Pope. He assumed the name of Gregory out of respect to St. Gregory Nazianzen. He caused the Church to encourage the murder of refractory kings; he promoted the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, which Sir Paul Rycaut, the historian of the Popes, does not so much as mention in the life of Gregory. He only says towards the end that “he may be numbered amongst the good Popes.” As Buon-Compagni was a good lawyer before he became a good Pope, he was pre-qualified for a virtuous career in any line of life. He re-confirmed the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth; he rectified the Calendar which goes by his name,—the Gregorian. The Jesuits’ College was finished by him at Rome, dedicated so oddly—

Religioni et bonis Artibus.

In his day Japan was, by Jesuit missionary effort, brought within the pale of the Church: on which a wit remarked that Japan varnish was introduced into Europe, and Christian varnish into Japan. He died at eighty-three, and to the last could almost mount on horseback without the help of his servants. His place of retirement, Rycaut says, was Frescati, about ten miles distant from Rome, where the Borghese Palace now is, and was then called _Monte Dragone_—a most fit name for the residence of the _Old Worm_ of St. Bartholomew’s massacre.—_V._ Paul Rycaut, “Lives of the Popes,” ed. 1688, vol. ii. p. 163.

[88] Will sound in full volley.

[89] These letters are interpreted by the old commentators and Guynaud (p. 107) as meaning the peace concluded with Philip II. of Spain: V., cinq, S., sucesseur, C., Charles—_i.e._, Successor to Charles Quint.

[90] Romance, _vefve_ = veuve, widow.

[91] Latin, _qui_, celui qui.

[92] Latin, _ductus_, led.

[93] _Appaiser_, for pour apaiser.

[94] _Pourchas_, old word, pursuit, active intrigue (_proquassatio_).

[95] Razes, tonsured priests and monks (_têtes rasées_).

[96] Greek, πεσσικός, draught-playing, or gambling. The word was applied to gaming by the Greeks, as we find a story in Plutarch [Liddell and Scott, Lex.], exhibiting Hermes as playing draughts (on the πεσσευτήριον) with Selene, and winning five days, which he adds to the year. Guynaud (p. 119) reads _poche_, which I take to be an abscess, wolf, or devouring ulcer; both he and Le Pelletier interpret it as meaning Poland.

[97] _Plaindre_, for se plaindre.

[98] _Guiere._ Nobody explains this word, and yet it seems to stand much in need of it. It is given by Roquefort, as from _gubernator_, a general. Leader, or we may say _dux_, for the Duc d’Alençon. It is really _guides_ or guide. _Guber_, _govern_, _guide_, being all three cognate.

[99] Latin, _decisus_, cut off, severed.

[100] This term is applied to Poland by Nostradamus in allusion to its elective throne, which became purely venal—a thing at last coming to be played for as a hazard at dice. But, curiously enough, the less authentic reading _poche_ is almost equally descriptive—a burning ulcer eating into the body politic till it destroys it.

[101] Latin, _virtuosus_; according to M. le Pelletier “vigorous.” Classical Latin has no such word, and the lower Latin means _probus_, _bonis moribus et virtute præditus_. Nostradamus probably meant _vertueux_, in old French, to be equivalent to _robuste_.

[102] _Aloi_, the quality of the substance of a metal. The battle of French etymologists is very instructive over this word, as may be seen in Littré. Of course, however, it comes from _à loi_, conformable to law. But I think there is a misprint, and that we ought to read _toute loi_ = _toute la loi_. Guynaud (p. 122) reads _loi_ in the second line for _foy_. We might suppose that that variant had been introduced to correct the fourth line, and was only by a “devil” carried to the second instead, by which that imp of mischief contrived to leave two errors in place of one. In confirmation somewhat of this, the _texte-type_ reads _tout à loy_.

[103] Latin, _ira_, anger.

[104] Ordo, deux mourront par ire, etc.

[105] Romance, _prins_, pris.

[106] Romance, _joyne_, jeune homme.

[107] Romance, _cultre_, couteau.

[108] Latin, _perpetratio_.

[109] _Husne_, a small tower, or belvidere.

[110] Romance, _murtre_, meurtre.

[111] Latin, _pernicies_, destruction.

[112] Romance, _esmues_, émus, seditious.

[113] _Tien_, for _tienne_.

[114] Latin, _Lætitia_, joy, pleasure, and play on _Lutetia_, Paris.

[115] Romance, _cavilleux_, cavillers.

[116] _Mendosus_, anagram of _Vendosme_ (the _u_ standing for _v_ of course). The _texte-type_ reads _Mandosus_; but as _Mendosus_ is the perfect anagram of Vendosme, and makes also the Latin word’s meaning _full of faults_, it is best to read _Mendosus_.

[117] _Norlaris_, anagram for Lorrains the patronymic of the Guise family.

[118] Romance, _esleu_, _élu_, chosen.

[119] _Cape_, for _Capet_, a descendant of Hugh Capet.

[120] Latin, _tacite_, silently.

[121] _Norlarin_, anagram for _Lorrain_; here it represents the Duc de Mayenne.

[122] _Qu’à_ for _qui à_.

[123] Romance, _si_ for _très_, very.

[124] Latin, _traditor_, traitor.

[125] His body shall be dragged through the streets in the mud of the gutters.

[126] _Robin_, anagram for _Biron_.

[127] Romance, _sceu_ for _su_, known.

[128] _Lafin_ was the name of the secretary, the accomplice of Biron.

[129] The ordo here is _dans l’Espagne amye_ which means, then at peace with Henri IV.

[130] Romance, _poste_, messenger, postillion.

[131] _La plume au vent_ is supposed by le Pelletier to stand for _currente calamo_. I should rather think it means the feather (wing) to the wind. It was written with a quill, and started on its way as a bird flies; but _irrevocabile semel emissum_. We are to understand this line to relate to l’Oste’s treasonable complicity with Spain, of which an account will be given further on. Also, _l’escrivain_, in the closing line stands for the same individual.

[132] We shall see that the two Spanish couriers were arrested at the post office in Paris. Le Pelletier confuses all this from not happening to know that l’Oste is the scrivener, so he applies it to the affair of Lafin, whose messenger, when carrying Spanish despatches, had thrown them into the river when he found himself pursued. Unfortunately, when he finds himself in the difficulty which this involves him in, he glozes till he has forced the words to fit his erroneous view. He had far better have stated the difficulty, and said that he could not harmonize the text. But he very rarely trips thus.

[133] _Le Grand Chyren_ is the anagram of _Henri le Grand_. Before mounting the throne, he bore the name of Vendosme, from his father Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme and King of Navarre. In the first Quatrain of the series, _Henri Quatre_, _Vendosme_ was anagrammatically given as Mendosus; as to _Chiren_ it is the precise anagram of _Henri_, as spelt in the old language _Henric_, from the Latin _Henricus_. Numerous etymologies have been assigned to Henry. Camden derived it from _honore_, Verstegan from the Teutonic _Han_, a haven, and _Rice_, Saxon for rich. Killian writes it _Heynrick_, or _Heymrick_, rich home. This is very nearly right, but now it is generally considered that _rick_ stands for powerful; so chief of a house or district.

[134] _Los_, old word for glory. Latin, _laus_.

“A la sainte divinité,
Soit _los_, honeur, et potesté.”

_Le Mystère des Actes des Apôtres._

[135] Latin, _victor_, conqueror.

[136] _Dauffois_, for _Dauphinois_ synonym, for _Dauphin_.

[137] _Portera_, for supportera, says Le Pelletier. For my part, it seems best to leave it to its natural rendering, that he will carry his colours into Nancy.

[138] Latin, _obturare_, to shut up in.

[139] _Prouvés_ is for approuvés.

[140] _Delivré_, is for livré.

[141] This is a play upon words, unrecognized by Garencières, as he did not know that _Clerepeyne_ was the name of the man who cut off Montmorency’s head, although, of course, Garencières is quite alive to the fact that the quatrain refers to Louis XIII. and the great Montmorency. In Latin _clara pœna_ means celebrated punishment. Here is another instance of the mention of a name of an obscure individual that history for a moment flashes light upon, and then drops him back into the mud of oblivious ooze for ever,—emblem apt of Fame! This was written, if not printed, a good eighty years before Clerepeyne became the midge-mote of a sunbeam upon that late autumnal day in history, when the night struck chilly on high roofs in Dauphiny.

[142] Latin, _decisus_, suppressed cut off.

[143] _Ne monstres._ I think there is a printer’s error here in the _texte-type_, and that we should read _le monstre_.

[144] _Double_, diploma, or duplicate of a treaty.

[145] Latin, _ille aquâ ductus_, he that is taken by water.

[146] Richelieu, if you examine him by Philippe de Champagne’s splendid triple portrait of him, hanging in our Gallery, may be read as if in life by any physiognomist who pleases to devote the time to it. I have gazed many a time, through long years, with gifted friends and others, and oftener still alone, into those heartless eyes, attracted irresistibly (I only now see why) by the vast discrepancy between the world-wide renown of this French Minister, and his cynically petty face—sly, vulpine, unfeeling, unprincipled, spiteful, a coxcomb of feminine manners, of an egotism and paltry vanity inordinate, but of a refinement, showing the highest social culture, a tongue that could gloze with ladies; he might, by _lettre de cachet_, have shut up a French Walsingham in the Bastille to prevent his own overthrow; but as to coping with him or a Burleigh as a statesman, as an equal in any powerful cabinet in Europe, by force of character, he could not have done it. Artifice, backed by the force of France, then rising into unity of action, or helped by circumstances that tied the hands of his antagonist, he might even throw a giant unawares. Richelieu was an artificial contriver, not a born ruler, if a mature face of fifty be any index to the volume or memoir of a man’s life.

[147] Arrange these words, _l’animal domestique à l’homme_, i.e. _the dog_.

[148] Latinism, _fulmen à virgâ_, saltpetre; that is, the powder and ram-rod.

[149] Romance, _si_, synonym of _très_, very.

[150] Romance, _prinse_, _prise_, taken, brought.

[151] The _chien_ is the cock or hammer of the lock.

[152] Added to the text in the edition of 1605.

[153] _Paux_, plural of _pal_, _pieu_, a term of blazonry, stake.

[154] Read _cors_, horns.

[155] Æmathien, or Emathion, Le Pelletier says, son of Cephalus and Aurora, who opened the gates of the morning to the sun. I do not find this account of him anywhere. Cephalus is the chaste Joseph of mythology, tempted by Aurora. But Hesiod makes him father of Phaeton by her. Possibly M. le Pelletier has mistaken Æmathion for Phaeton. Generally, Emathion is reckoned as son of Titan and Aurora, and a king of Macedonia. His connection in some way however with the sun is certain, and this suffices for the use made of his name by Nostradamus. Ἠμαθίων is given by Suidas as a proper name. Now, Ἠμάθιος is _daily_, with but the change of one letter. Further than this Ἠμάθιος is Macedonian, and Alexander is called _Emathius dux_, as in Milton, “the Emathian conqueror bid spare;” implying that Louis le Grand should be a counterpart to Alexander the Great, an impostor who also pretended birth from Apollo. By which flight of ambition he bastardized himself by choice, dishonoured his mother, and put his father outside the door. Shakespeare says, “By this sin fell the angels;” but a too prosperous fool seems equally ready to annihilate himself by it, and all belonging to him, of his own act.

[156] Latin, _per_, through.

[157] Romance, _emmy_, entre, between.

[158] _Phi_, for Philip.

[159] Latin, _classis_, fleet.

[160] _Corseque_, Romance for Corsica.

[161] Romance, _esgrongné_, or _esgruné_, pulverised.

[162] Turn this; when Æmathion shall build Hercules.

[163] Latin, _felinus_, like a cat.

[164] _La barque_ of St. Peter, the Holy Seat, Rome.

[165] Latin, _tentare_, to assail.

[166] _Phocen_ is another reading. Marseilles, founded by the Phocians, A.C. 660.

[167] Old word for west, or sundown.

[168] Latin, _per_, because of.

[169] _Voiles_, for vessels.

[170] Latin, _classis_, fleet.

[171] Latin, _Narbo Martius_, Narbonne, in the department de l’Aude, said to be so called from its founder _Martius_. [See p. 160, IX. 38.]

[172] Romance, _si_, very.

[173] _Cap_, for Capet.

[174] Ordo. He who shall succeed to the great monarch dead.

[175] _Faudra_, future tense of _faillir_, fail, or disappear.

[176] Latin, _gens_, nation.

[177] _Franche_, for _gent Franche_, French nation.

[178] Latin, _per_, by reason of.

[179] Latin: _Aries_ sign of the Ram.

[180] _Bastarnie_, corresponding to ancient Poland.

[181] Romance, _nay_, _né_, born.

[182] _Lonole_, anagram for Ὀλλύων, destroying, from the verb ὀλλύειν, to destroy. Destroyer.

[183] _Donra_, for donnera, will give.

[184] _Topique_, flowers of rhetoric, oratory.

[185]

When hempe is sponne,
England’s done.

When Elizabeth was in the flower of her age, Bacon remembered well to have heard the above; hempe standing for Henry, Edward, Mary and Philip, and Elizabeth. “Which,” says he, “thanks be to God, is verified only in the change of name; for that the King’s style is now no more of England but of Britain.” Observe the wonderful propriety of the words used by Nostradamus. He noted at the right spot and instant a national change of name; a point of precision that nine out of ten lettered Englishmen would fail to reply to correctly, in answer to the sudden question, When was England first called Great Britain? It would be interesting to know the history of this “trivial prophecy” as his lordship calls it, for it has a good deal of the true spirit of forecast in it. It certainly was genuine, as it evidently was known to the narrator as being in circulation before it was accomplished.

[186] Romance, _dechassé_, simply _chassé_.

[187] Latin, _per_, by reason of.

[188] Latin, _ira_, anger.

[189] Romance, _tracer_, follow a road, track.

[190] _Contre_, à côté de, opposite, or near to.

[191] Italian, _macellaio_, butcher, from Latin _macellum_.

[192] Romance, _nay_, né, born.

[193] _Pempotam_, a shocking word made out of Greek and Latin πᾶν—_potens_, all powerful.

[194] Latin, _Copia_, military forces.

[195] Latin, _Lusitani_, Portuguese.

[196] The full title runs: “The Prophecies of Nostradamus concerning the fate of all the Kings and Queens of Great Britain since the Reformation, and the succession of his present Majesty King George, and the continuation of the British Crown in his most serene Royal House to the last day of the world. Collected and explained by D. D., 1715.” This book is in the British Museum. I do not know whether it is scarce or not. It is not common, for I never meet with it in booksellers catalogues.

[197] Hume has very ably handled this important question in his Seventh Essay (Hume’s “Philosophical Works,” iii. 373, Edinburgh, 1826). He there sets out that it is no modern invention as some have maintained, for the Asiatics combined against the Medes and Persians, as Xenophon shows in his “Institutions of Cyrus.” Likewise Thucydides exhibits the league formed against Athens, which led to the Peloponnesian war, as being grounded on this principle. Afterwards, when Thebes and Lacedæmon disputed the supremacy, Athens always threw her strength into the lighter scale to preserve the balance. She was for Thebes against Sparta till Epaminondas won at Leuctra, and then she immediately changed sides, as of generosity, but really jealous to preserve the balance. If you will read Demosthenes, he says, in the Oration for the Megapolitans you may “see the utmost refinements on this principle that ever entered into the head of a Venetian or English speculatist.” On the rise of the crafty Macedonian he again bugled the alarm to Greece, which brought the banners together that fell at Chæronea. The principle was right, but the too great delay had knit Fate’s smile into a frown. Envy (if you like to call it so, but I call it a jealous prudence) must in a community of States prevent any one from overtopping, as Athenian ostracism expelled the citizen who grew too lush and vigorous for a communion in equality. Hume points out with perspicuous beauty how England went too far. Her emulous antagonism to France made her so alert to defend her allies that they could count upon her as a force of their own. The expenses consequent upon this imprudent course led to funding, _i.e._ the _National Debt_; and that has led us into an absurd meekness, a dread of war, and the peace barkings of the Quaker Bright; so that England dares not fire a howitzer when Russia, contrary to her most solemn pledges, annexes Merv, Bokara, and Khiva, and cannot find one word to say when Germany has her foot on the throat of France. Blunders in extravagant advocacy, blunders in parsimonious neglect of a principle, do not diminish its importance; they only emphasize it. With a prophecy out of dry reason Hume says it will become “more prejudicial another way, by begetting, as is usual, the opposite extreme, and rendering us totally careless and supine with regard to the fate of Europe.” That is how we now stand. In a very recent French cyclopædia, _l’équilibre Européen_ is said to be quite a modern idea, with nothing corresponding to it in antiquity. The writer pretends that it originated with the Church, and that Podichad the King of Bohemia sent Marini to Louis XI. to point out the necessity there was for a _Parliament of Kings_ to adjust matters between the Church and people. This may be the first form of a Congress. Francis I. carried on the same policy, and Henri IV. extended it to an idea of a Christian republic of federated nations, as against a universal monarchy. This idea enabled Cromwell to meddle as European arbiter, whereas he ought only to have acted as moderator and equalizer of parties. Leibnitz called the House of Hapsburgh a continual conspiracy against the rights of the people, and Richelieu got the _equilibrium_ established and introduced at the Treaty of Westphalia, as a principle of the law of nations, though with the concomitant of _Congresses_. The princes so assembled plotted against Poland, as might have been anticipated, and in the course of seventy years they were enabled entirely to break up the Balance of Power in Europe. Cromwell, Richelieu, Napoleon, and Bismark, by force, finesse, chicane, and brutal bluntness, have overturned the very groundwork of the principle. The English, having at first stirred up war by means of subventions, have now tumbled, only too laxly, into the stupid doctrine of non-intervention. Congresses should never have been allowed. These “Parliaments of Kings” can only do mischief, as they have no controlling power to refer to. They lack a _King_ above the Parliaments, and as that is _impossible_, Congresses can only meet for evil. The strongest are irresistible in such congregations. The weaker can get no justice and no sympathy. If they take the field, everybody is against them; if they submit, they are despoiled without hope of a remedy: whereas, formerly, a wrong done might excite a feeling of justice in a neighbour, and so induce him to help; or, where justice was weak, fear of similar treatment might opportunely bring forth the required aid.

[198] _Si_, for très.

[199] Read, _Qui mettra les Anglois en déconfiture_.

[200] Observe here how very different is Clarendon’s estimate of James I. from the trash that Sir Walter Scott indulges in at the King’s expense, in those romances of his from which half the world draw their notions of history.

[201] Latin, _per_, during.

[202] Variant, _le tertre_, the knoll or rising ground.

[203] D. D. reads here _ne dira t-on qu’ouy_, and I think the sense requires it.