James Savage

“ Their empire, by the progress of colonies and conquests, had been diffused from the Adriatic to the Euphrates and the Nile. Asia was covered with Greek cities, and the long reign of the Macedonian kings, had introduced a silent revolution into Syria and Egypt. In their pompous courts, those princes united the elegance of Athens with the luxury of the East, and the example of the court was imitated, at an humble distance, by the higher ranks of their subjects. Such was the general division of the Roman empire into the Latin and Greek languages. ”

“ Robert, Duke of Normandy, one of the chiefs of the first crusade, on his father’s death was deprived of the kingdom of England, by his own indolence and the activity of his brother Rufus. The worth of Robert was degraded by an excessive levity and easiness of temper; his cheerfulness seduced him to the indulgence of pleasure, his profuse liberality impoverished the prince and people; his indiscriminate clemency multiplied the number of offenders; and the amiable qualities of a private man, became the essential defects of a sovereign. ”

“ But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the Empire, that in the case of treason, which included every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from an hostile intention towards the prince or republic, all privileges were suspended and all conditions were reduced to the same ignominious level. As the safety of the Emperor was avowedly preferred to every consideration of justice or humanity, the dignity of age, and the tenderness of youth were alike exposed to the most cruel tortures ”

“ The arched, or close crown, is not of ancient use, except in the empire, and thence, perhaps, called imperial. Some think Edward the third first used it, because he was vicar-general of the empire, and it is said that Henry the fifth had an imperial crown made, but Henry the sixth had certainly the best pretence to it, of any prince in Europe, of his time, being crowned king both of France and England. But why he did not bear it upon his great seal, as well as upon his coin, is not easily resolved any more than that his successor should bear it upon his great seal, and not upon his coins. ”

“ He was not only conspicuous for the nobleness of his birth but also for the extent of his learning. After visiting the courts of France and England, in furtherance of his mission, he was invited to assume the office of a Professor, and Florence had the honour of this invitation, as it had had a few years previously that of the first Greek Professor Leo Pilatus, whose mind was stored with a treasure of Greek learning, with whom history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike familiar, and who first read the Poems of Homer in the Schools of Florence. ”

“ After the accession of Henry the seventh to the throne, the nation began to rest from the scenes of war and blood which for several years had subsisted between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and in the next reign the people turned their attention more to trade and the arts of peace, so that we find the mode of living considerably changed, for luxury being ever the attendant of extended commerce, this brought us acquainted with the produce of foreign countries till then unknown in England. ”

“ Posterity will hardly believe that a Princess of England, grand-daughter of Henry the Great, 140hath wanted a faggot in the month of January, to get out of bed in the Louvre, and in the eyes of a French court. We read in histories, with horror, of baseness less monstrous than this; and the little concern I have met with about it in most people’s minds, has obliged me to make, I believe, a thousand times this reflection—that examples of times past move men beyond comparison more than those of their own times. We accustom ourselves to what we see ”

“ Posterity will ever be indebted to her grace the Duchess Dowager of Portland, for securing this inestimable treasure of learning to the public, by authority of Parliament, under the guardianship of the most distinguished persons of the realm, both for rank and abilities, whose excellent regulations have made this library, as also the Royal, Cottonian, Sloanian, and others, now deposited in the British Museum, easy of access, and consequently of real use to the philosopher, the statesman, the historian, the scholar, and the artist. ”

“ If it be objected that the people of the other kingdoms could not subsist without laws suited to the situation of their affairs, we may observe that the monarchs of those kingdoms received into their states and adopted the laws of the kings already mentioned. The laws of Ina were received by the other kings of the Heptarchy, and in one of the great councils held by Offa, king of Mercia, there were present the king of the East Saxons, the king of the West Saxons, the king of Kent, the king of Northumberland, and three kings of Wales. ”

“ I know those who most deserve can least bear praise, and that your goodness is so great, as even to reject the very thanks of the grateful; like the sun in its splendour, which forbids the eye that offers to admire it. ”

“ The Welsh were not singular in being desirous of tracing their descent from the Trojans, for several European nations were anciently fond of being considered as the offspring of that people. A French historian of the sixth century ascribes the origin of his countrymen to Francio, a son of Priam, and so universal was this humour, and to such an absurd excess of extravagance was it carried, that under the reign of Justinian, even the Greeks themselves were ambitious of being thought to be descended from their ancient enemies the Trojans. ”

“ Pilgrimage and the holy wars, introduced into Europe the specious miracles of Arabian magic. Fairies and giants, flying dragons, and enchanted palaces, were blended with the more simple fictions of the west; and the fate of Britain depended on the art, or the predictions of Merlin. Every nation embraced and adorned the popular romance of Arthur and the knights of the round table: their names were celebrated in Greece and Italy ”

“ The Clock in Exeter Cathedral was erected by Bishop Courtenay in the year 1480. It is on the Ptolemaic system of Astronomy and of a curious construction for the age in which it was put up. The earth is represented by a globe in the centre; the sun by a fleur-de-lys; and the moon by a ball painted half black and half white, which turns on its axis, and shews the different phases of that luminary. ”

“ Education and study insensibly inspired the natives of the countries just mentioned with the sentiments of Romans; and Italy gave fashions, as well as laws, to her latin provincials. They solicited with more ardour, and obtained with more facility, the freedom and honours of the state; supported the national dignity in letters and in arms; and at length in the person of Trajan, produced an Emperor whom the Scipios would not have disowned for their countryman. Spain alone produced Columella, the Senecas, Lucan, Martial, and Quinctilian. ”

“ It should not be forgotten with regard to manuscripts, the productions of these industrious penmen in their Scriptoria, that king Alfred is said by the Saxon writers, to have first received his eagerness for erudition, in an age when he himself complained of the general ignorance even of the clergy, from his mother’s shewing him a book of Saxon poems, beautifully written, and illuminated, and promising to give it to which ever of her sons should soonest learn to read it. ”

“ In the margin of this counter-seal, near the point of the king’s sword, is represented the hand of justice, being an ensign of royalty peculiar only to the kings of France, for though they in common with other princes carry in their right hand a sceptre of gold, yet in the other they bear the hand of justice, being a short rod, and having on the top of it a left hand, wide open, made of ivory, on account of the elephant being the only quadruped observable for his devotion, love of his governors, and for his equity. ”

“ RHYME. Every language has powers, and graces, and music peculiar to itself; and what is becoming in one, would be ridiculous in another. Rhyme was barbarous in Latin and Greek verse, because 71these languages by the sonorousness of their words, by their liberty of transposition and inversion, by their fixed quantities and musical pronunciation, could carry on the melody of verse without its aid; and an attempt to construct English verses after the form of hexameters, and pentameters, and sapphics, is as barbarous among us. It is not true that rhyme is merely a monkish invention. ”

“ The curious reader is referred to the first volume of King’s Munimenta Antiqua, for prints and plans, both of the Welsh houses and fortresses, of which some are yet entire and others in ruins, in every part of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. No book, either in our tongue, or in any of the European languages, is so complete and satisfactory on this interesting and domestic subject: the prints are excellent. ”

“ The king observed that Pope made Warburton a bishop; ‘True, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘but Warburton did more for Pope, he made him a Christian;’ alluding no doubt, to his ingenious comments on the ‘Essay on Man.’ His Majesty then talked of the controversy between Warburton and Lowth, which he seemed to have read, and asked Johnson what he thought of it. Johnson answered, ‘Warburton has most general, most scholastic learning; Lowth is the more correct scholar. ”

“ Tigranes and the kings of Armenia, wear the tiara, a singular kind of cap, but the well known badge of imperial power in the ancient eastern world. Xerxes, a petty prince of Armenia, appears in a coin extant of him in a conical cap, with a diadem around it. Juba, the father, has a singular crown, like a conical cap, all hung with pearls.
The successors of Alexander assumed by way of distinction, different symbols of the Deity, to be observed on the busts of their medals, such as the lion’s skin of Hercules, which surrounds the head of the first Seleucus ”

“ In the reign of king Henry the sixth, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, fourth and youngest 94son of king Henry the fourth, was a singular promoter of literature, just at the dawning of science and learning. However unqualified this eminent personage was for political intrigue, and to contend with his malicious and powerful enemies, among whom the Cardinal Beaufort was the principal, he was nevertheless the common friend and patron of all the scholars of his time. ”

“ Knights and gentlemen might not be represented with their coats of arms, unless they had lost their lives in some battle, single combat or rencontre with the prince himself, or in his service, unless they died and were buried within their own manors and lordships; and then to shew they died a natural death in their beds, they were represented with their coat of armour, ungirded, without a helmet, bareheaded, their eyes closed, their feet resting against the back of a greyhound, and without any sword. ”

“ For the effigies of Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln, on his tomb in Old St. Paul’s, had the head encompassed with a circle only, and that of William de Valence, earl of Pembroke, half brother of king John, who died in 1304, and is buried in St. Edmund’s chapel, in Westminster abbey, has only a circle, enriched and embellished with stones of several colours, but without either points, rays, or leaves. ”

“ But every British name is effaced by the illustrious name of Arthur, the hereditary prince of the Silures, who inhabited South Wales, and the elective king or general of the nation. According to the most rational accounts, he defeated, in twelve successive battles, the Angles of the North, and the Saxons of the West; but the declining age of the hero was embittered by 211popular ingratitude and domestic misfortunes. The events of his life are less interesting, than the singular revolutions of his fame. ”

“ Margaret of France, second wife of king Edward the first, was the first queen of England that bore her arms dimidiated with her husband’s in one escutcheon, that is, both escutcheons being parted by a perpendicular line, or per pale, the dexter side of the husband’s shield, is joined to the sinister side of the wife’s, which kind of bearing is more ancient than the impaling of the entire coats of arms. ”

“ Learning and the arts received a fatal blow by the destruction of the heathen temples, in the reign of Constantine. The devastations then committed, are depicted in the strongest and most lively colours by Mr. Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Many valuable libraries perished by the Barbarians of the north, who invaded Italy in the fourth and fifth centuries. By these rude hands perished the library of Perseus, king of Macedon, which Paulus Æmilius brought to Rome with its captive owner ”

“ He had also a good collection of coins and medals, besides a great variety of extraordinary rarities. Some of the plants which grew in his garden are, if not totally extinct in this country, at least become very uncommon.
This able man, by his great industry, made it manifest, in the very infancy of botany, as a science, that there is scarcely any plant existing in the known world, that will not, with proper care, thrive in this kingdom. The time of his death cannot be ascertained, no mention being made of it in the register of Lambeth church. ”

“ ACCOUNT OF THE SCRIPTORIA, OR WRITING ROOMS IN THE MONASTERIES OF ENGLAND. It would be in vain to attempt to trace the state of learning among the Anglo-Saxons before their conversion to Christianity, sometime after which event, schools and seminaries of learning were established in the kingdom of Kent, and soon after the year 635, in that of the East Angles. Previously to this period of our history, the two principal scholars of the Britons were Gildas and Nennius, the first of whom flourished towards the latter end of the sixth century, and the latter in the beginning of the seventh. ”