Imatges de pàgina
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business. By telegram! that must have been the message, a copy of which Rose forwarded to me, and which I have here." She drew the paper from her pocket, opened it, and held it out before her. The addresses, both of sender and receiver, were plain and legible, but the rest of the text was in cipher, a hopeless mass of letters, jumbled together, and broken up into short impossible words.

"I feel certain that there is something of importance herein," said Madge. "I cannot tell why, but I am certain of it. If I could only find a key to this cipher! must, and I will."

BOOKS WRITTEN IN PRISON.

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THIS title suggests a somewhat remarkable group of literary productions. There are many prison books," compositions wrought out by the brains of luckless persons shut away from the usages and faci- | lities of every-day life, and seeking some mode of occupying the mind that may avert melancholy madness. Isaac D'Israeli collected many examples of books written while the authors were in prison; Mr. Langford has since given fuller details of some of the men who wrote them; while other instances are only waiting for bookish people to ferret them out.

The great Boethius was a shining light among these writers. He was a Roman philosopher, in the days when the once great Roman Empire had begun to fall to pieces, and was rapidly going into extinction. He was learned among the learned at Rome and at Athens; he was thrice consul under Theodoric the Goth; but his rigorous impartiality as a judge raised him up enemies among the intriguers at court, who falsely accused him of maintaining a treasonable correspondence with the Byzantine or Greek government at Constantinople. He was cast into prison, and there kept until an executioner did his fell work. While in captivity, Boethius wrote a work which afterwards became renowned throughout Europe, the Consolations of a Philosopher. It is a noble, lofty-minded production, which was some four centuries or so later translated into English by Alfred the Great.

One of the examples is singular, because we know the name of the book, although ignorant of the name of the man. This is Fleta. It consists of a treatise or commentary on law, supposed to have been written during the days of the Plantagenets

by a prisoner in the Fleet. It suggested an imitation and an imitator. When Sir John Pettus was incarcerated in that same prison in 1683, he translated from the German a work on metals and metallurgy, and gave it the fanciful title of Fleta Minor.

During the sixteenth century, when there was a plentiful crop of distinguished prisoners and imprisonments in most European countries, books written by the captives were rather numerous. Maggi, an Italian scholar, mathematician, and military archeologist, rendered himself famous by his defence of Famagusta against the Turks, during which he invented ingenious machines which destroyed their works; but when the Turks afterwards succeeded in capturing the city, they took revenge on him by carrying him off in chains to slavery. Working hard as a slave during the day, he bravely conquered despondency at night by writing De Tintinnabulis, a treatise on bells. Our own Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a gallant and chivalrous soldier, but a little wild withal, got himself into prison on more than one occasion for satirical hints at persons in power, and infractions of the civic rules of government in London. While in the Fleet Prison he wrote some of the sweetest songs and sonnets in the language. When afterwards imprisoned in Windsor Castle, for daring (as was alleged) to aspire to the hand of the Princess Mary, he wrote his Prisoned in Windsor Castle, which contains a charming reminiscence of days when he played at that same castle with a king's son for his companion, ending with two lines which have often been quoted for their deep meaning:

With remembrance of their greater grief,
To banish the less I find the chief relief.

A widely different man was Father Thomas, member of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine. He was imprisoned by the Moors in Africa, and wrote in Portuguese on the Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He had no books, and could write only for a short time in the middle of each day, by a gleam of light that entered his. dungeon through an air-hole. A different man, again, was George Buchanan, poet and historian, who seems to have been always at war with monks, and getting into trouble for abusing them. He was imprisoned in Portugal, about the middle of the century, for one of these attacks, and while in captivity wrote his Paraphrase on the Psalms of David. On the other hand, there was the Jesuit missionary, Robert Southwell, who, during about ten years of Elizabeth's reign, was imprisoned

over and over again. During the last imprisonment which preceded his execution, he wrote his Saint Peter's Complaint, and other impassioned religious poems.

there was George Withers, farmer, lawyer, poet, satirist, and soldier in turn. He wrote Abuses Stript and Whipt, a satire which earned for him an imprisonment; and in later years, after having fought for and with the Puritans, he was subjected to a still longer imprisonment by the Royalists. He complained bitterly afterwards of his treatment in prison. "I was shut up from the society of mankind, and, as one un

Knowing what we do of the state of England during the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, we shall not be surprised at finding that most of the men who wrote books in English prisons during the first half of the seventeenth century were incarcerated either on religious or poli-worthy the compassion vouchsafed to thieves tical grounds. There was James Howell, a writer and politician, who had a long imprisonment, during which he wrote Familiar Letters and other works, by the proceeds of which he supported himself. There was Richard Lovelace, the cavalier and poet. He was first a Charter-house boy, then an Oxford collegian, then a courtier, then a colonel in the service of Charles the First. He spent all his patrimony in support of the Stuarts, and formed a regiment at his own expense. Committing the unpardonable offence of presenting a petition to the House of Commons praying for the restoration of the king's rights, he was committed to prison at the Westminster Gatehouse, where he wrote his Althea. This is the poem that contains the famous lines:

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty!

Again, some few years afterwards, he
was imprisoned, and during his incarcera-
tion wrote a collection of sonnets and
songs, including the beautiful Address to
Lucasta, which contains the often-quoted
lines:

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Lov'd I not honour more.

Poor Lovelace! Wood describes him as
being "accounted the most amiable and
beautiful person that eyes ever beheld;" but
his imprisonments and loss of fortune made
the closing years of his life years of penury.
There was Thomas Lydiat, a learned
clergyman and historian, who was thrown
into the King's Bench as a means of
curing him of his loyalty to Charles the
First, and who, while there, wrote his An-
notations on the Persian Chronicle. There
was Sir William Davenant, who, similarly
offensive to the parliament on account of
his loyalty to the king, was thrown into
Carisbrook Castle, where he wrote some of
his plays and poems.
On the other hand, |

and murderers, was neither permitted the use of my pen, the access or sight of my acquaintances, the allowance usually afforded to other close prisoners, nor means to send for necessaries befitting my present condition; by which means I was for many days compelled to feed on nothing but the coarsest bread, and sometimes locked up for twenty-four hours together, without so much as a drop of water to cool my tongue; and being at the same time in one of the grossest extremities of dulness that ever was inflicted upon anybody, the help both of physician and apothecary was denied me." Nevertheless, in his Shepherd's Hunting, written during one of his captivities, there are some of the finest lines known on the consolation which poetry afforded him in time of trouble. There was John Selden, too, the learned jurist, antiquary, and historian, who got into trouble with Charles the First for writing against the divine rights and prerogatives of kings; he had frequent and stern reason for knowing what the inside of a prison was like, and wrote one of his erudite histories while incarcerated.

But the two most celebrated men who come into the list of writers of books in prison in the first half of the seventeenth century are Raleigh and Cervantes. The gallant Sir Walter, after serving when young as a gentleman-volunteer, went with Sir Humphry Gilbert to America, returned and was knighted, raised a volunteer squadron against the Spanish Armada, and became a courtier. Something he did or said gave offence at court, and he resided abroad for some years. When Elizabeth died, and James the First succeeded to the throne, Raleigh returned to England; but he was arrested, and found guilty of treason by a packed jury. Twelve years of his life were passed continuously in prison; and here he wrote his History of the World, a marvellous work to execute under such circumstances. In order really to begin at the beginning, he begins with the Creation, and gravely discusses the opinions expressed by the learned, as to whether Paradise was as high

up as the moon, or only as high as mid-air, or under the equinoctial line. But still the History of the World is a noble fragment, which could only have been written by one who had read much, thought much, and travelled much. Hapless Raleigh! King James hated him with all the hatred which a narrow mind feels towards an intellectual superior, and sent him to the scaffold. The other great man, whose name we have coupled with Raleigh, was the Spanish novelist Cervantes, the author of the worldrenowned Don Quixote. He was first a student, then chamberlain to a cardinal, and then a soldier. He was thrice wounded at the battle of Lepanto, was taken prisoner by the corsairs, kept five years in captivity, and ransomed by his friends. Returning to Spain, he married, entered upon civil employments, traversed wide regions of his native country, and watched well the habits and peculiarities of his countrymen. Monetary embarrassments, rather than political or religious discord, threw him more than once into prison; but this imprisonment was a great thing for the world, since it was occupied by the planning and commencement of Don Quixote.

Open the portals wide: let us admit the greatest prison-writer of the second half of the seventeenth century, John Bunyan, tinker, preacher, and author of a religious allegory which is said to have been translated into a greater number of languages than any other book in the world, with two exceptions, the Bible and the Imitation of Christ. He was thrown into Bedford Jail because he would not renounce dissent; and there he supported himself for twelve years by making tagged boot-laces. He wrote many controversial tracts, preached to his fellow-prisoners, and read to them the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs. It was a fine answer that he gave to the clerk of the peace, who advised him to gain his liberation by recanting. "Sir, the law hath provided two ways of obeying; the one, to do that which I in my conscience believe I am bound to do actively; and when I cannot by activity, then I am willing to lie down, and to suffer whatever they shall do unto me." And it showed a vein of humour in his character when he replied to a Quaker who had come to visit him, and who declared that the Lord had ordered him to search for Bunyan in half the prisons in England, "If the Lord had sent you, you need not have taken so much trouble to find me out; for the Lord knows that I have been a prisoner in Bedford Jail for the last twelve years.' He wrote

the first part of the Pilgrim's Progress while in prison, a fact that ought to endear his imprisonment to us.

It is a singular coincidence that the authors of two of the most extensively read books ever written were living in the same country and at the same time, and wrote some of their works while in captivity. Daniel Defoe lived at the same time as John Bunyan; but the latter had reached middle age while the former was still a boy. Defoe, as a Whig and a dissenter, was often in trouble, and on one occasion suffered the pillory as well as imprisonment. While in prison he wrote his Hymn to the Pillory, and commenced a political periodical which he continued to several volumes. His immortal Robinson Crusoe, however, was not written during imprisonment. Over in France, Abraham Wicquefort, a Dutch diplomatist and writer, was for thirty years representative of the court of Brandenburg at Paris; he was then thrown into the Bastille by Cardinal Mazarin, on suspicion of being a spy; and while in the gloomy fortress prison wrote his Mémoires touchant les Ambassadeurs, and l'Ambassadeur et ses Functions. Then there was Voltaire, who had a year's incarceration for a satirical poem on Louis the Fourteenth; and another of less length for an unseemly quarrel at the Duc de Sully's house; during this second captivity he planned and wrote the greater part of his epic poem Le Henriade. Next was Nicholas Fréret, a French historian, who in his first work, on the Origin of the French, so offended the vanity of his countrymen that he was sent to the Bastille, where he planned many of his later works. Cardinal Polignac, another Frenchman, instead of being sent to the Bastille, was placed in a kind of semi-imprisonment in his own abbey, for some offence during the regency of Louis the Fifteenth; there he wrote his Latin poem Anti-Lucretius, which a century later was translated into English by George Canning.

There was one book written in prison which brought but little credit to the author; namely, the Thoughts in Prison. Doctor William Dodd, a clergyman, a popular preacher, a chaplain to George the Third, and a welcome guest in high society, lived so extravagantly that he was always in debt. In an evil hour he offered a bribe of three thousand pounds to the wife of the Lord Chancellor if she would procure for him the rich living of St. George's, Hanoversquare; this caused him a mortifying exposure, and the loss of his chaplaincy. In a still more evil hour, he forged the sig

nature of his patron and former pupil, the Earl of Chesterfield, to a bond for four thousand two hundred pounds. He intended, like many other forgers before and since, to take up and cancel the bond in good time, but failed; and his end was tragical indeed. The Thoughts, which he wrote while in prison, have been characterised as "the spasmodic, hysterical, and insincere utterances of a weak man under affliction."

A triad of writers will exhaust the remaining space at our disposal; they were men who, in more recent times, owed their imprisonment to political circumstances, and who solaced themselves in captivity by writing books. One of these was the late James Montgomery. When a poor shop-boy he wrote poems, and gradually worked himself up to the position of helper, writer, and editor of a Sheffield newspaper. His writings as a liberal brought him into trouble during the exciting period of the great French Revolution; and during two imprisonments which he underwent he wrote his Ode to the Evening Star, Pleasures of Imprisonment, Verses to a Robin Redbreast, and other poems. The opening of the address to Robin adverts to his imprisonment:

Welcome, pretty little stranger,
Welcome to my lone retreat;
Here, secure from ev'ry danger,
Hop about, and chirp, and eat!
Robin, how I envy thee,
Happy child of liberty!

The late charming writer, Leigh Hunt, was in early life connected with newspaper editing; and, at a time when speaking the truth was often an offence against the law of libel, he penned some words which brought on him a two years' imprisonment. To that captivity we owe the Descent of Liberty and the Story of Rimini. One name more is that of Thomas Cooper, who, becoming involved in the Chartist troubles of the last generation, suffered two years' incarceration, during which he wrote a remarkable poem, the Purgatory of Suicides.

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and Cachita persist in following the inclinations of her heart, the period for her incarceration will be protracted another six months, when, in accordance with conventual discipline, she will be required to commence her duties as novice.

Desirous of ascertaining how far monastic confinement has affected my lover's sentiments, I propose to sound her on the subject by private communication. This is not easily accomplished. The convent is a strong building. At fixed hours the outward doors are thrown open, and disclose a small stone ante-chamber, furnished with wooden benches like a prison. Here may a pilgrim enter, but no further. There is another and a stronger door communicating with the interior, and accessible only to a favoured few.

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Near it is a panelled or

blind window, forming part of a torno or turnstile - a mechanical contrivance by means of which articles for the convent use are secretly admitted.

On more than one occasion have I visited the torno in the vain hope of persuading the invisible door-keeper behind to receive some love-tokens for my captive mistress. Tapping three times on the hollow window I pause until a voice murmurs, "Ave Maria!" to which I respond, being well versed in conventual watchwords, "Por mio pecados!" The voice inquires my pleasure. If it be my pleasure to have a missive conveyed to an immured "sister," and I can satisfy my unseen interlocutor by representing myself as a relative of the captive lady in whom I am interested, the turnstile rotates with magic velocity, the flat panel vanishes, and, behold, a species of cupboard with many shelves, upon which anything of a moderate size may be placed. Having deposited my letter on one of the shelves, it disappears, with the cupboard, like a pantomime trick, and the panelled window resumes its original dull aspect. But whether my document will reach the rightful owner I can never ascertain, for days elapse, and no reply is forthcoming. Varying my proceedings at the torno I sometimes express a desire to exchange a few greetings with my cloistered sister by meeting her in a certain chamber appointed for such a purpose, and conversing with her through a double grating. But the door-keeper informs me that such a privilege is accorded only to parents of the immured, who can prove their identity; so my effort in that direction is a failure.

Every Sunday morning I visit the convent chapel which is attached to the building itself, and is open to the public at prescribed

"Perhaps you will receive a parting word from me" (the present document occupies exactly eight pages of closely written convent paper), "which will put an end to this unfortunate story. You must, then, forget me entirely. Look upon the past as a dream, an illusion, a flash of happiness which is no more. Never must the name

of Cachita escape your lips. I shall remember you only in my prayers" (the word "only" is erased with pencil). "Fail not to send the letters. And adios! till we meet in heaven.-CARIDAD."

hours. The chapel is a bare-looking sanctuary of small dimensions, and easily crowded by a score or two of ladies with white veils, who come to pay their devotions from the neighbouring houses. At one extremity of the whitewashed chamber is an altar-piece, before which a priest, assisted by a boy, officiates, and to the left is a strongly barred window connected with the interior of the convent. Behind this window, which is heavily curtained as well as railed, stand the nuns and other inmates of the cloister, who have come to take part in the ceremonies. The responses are chanted by this invisible congregation in a subdued tone. During a certain portion of the ceremonies the curtain is partially drawn, and the outline of a thickly veiled nun is discerned as she bends forward to kiss the priest's hand and to receive his blessing. I envy the ecclesiastic, and gaze with eager interest as figure after figure approaches in turn; but my sight cannot penetrate the dark re-veying by this opportunity something concesses of the curtain, and the lady whom I seek comes and disappears unrecognised.

I am aroused early one morning by a black messenger, who delivers me a thick letter, which I open nervously, for I find it comes from the "Convento de la Ensenanza." The writing, though the contents savour strongly of monastic diction, is certainly in Cachita's hand, and is signed by herself.

"My dream of happiness," the letter begins, "can no longer be realised. My conscience, my teachers, and my father-confessor all persuade me that I have sinned in the outer world, and that if I desire to be absolved I must repent without delay. Exhorted by the worthy nuns, I am daily becoming more alive to a sense of my unworthiness, and convinced of the urgent necessity for beginning a new life of holiness and virtue. Guided to this blessed convent by the finger of Providence, I have been enabled, with the assistance of the best of counsel, to reflect seriously over what has happened, and I have now taken a vow never again to act from the impulse of my young and inexperienced heart."

After dwelling upon the enormity of the offence of making love without the approval of a parent, the writer exhorts me, by my "mother," and by other people whom I "hold dear," to return her letters, and all other evidence of the past, with the assurance that by so doing I shall accomplish one important step towards the "termination of the sad story of this ill-begotten wooing." The letter concludes as follows:

The bearer of this letter is Guadalupe, a slave of Cachita's father, Don Severiano, and she is intrusted with messages to and from the convent. Twice a week she visits the torno cupboard, charged with changes of linen and other articles for her young mistress's use. Everything is carefully examined by a nun before being consigned to its owner; so my ingenious notion of con

traband to my lover, cannot be entertained.

Having bribed Guadalupe with a bundle of cigars and a coloured handkerchief for a turban, I obtain from her in return some intelligence of her young mistress.

"Have you heard how La Niña Cachita fares ?" I inquire. "Badly," says the negress. "The monastic life does not agree with her lively disposition, and she yearns for freedom again, la pobre!"

"Then the nuns have not succeeded in converting her ?"

"I think not, miamo. In a letter to her mother, Doña Belen, who has still a good opinion of your worship, mi amita Cachita ridicules the Monjas (nuns), and describes their strange ways."

"Has Don Severiano expressed his intention to release La Niña at the expiration of her allotted six months ?"

"I believe so, and in that case La Cachita will be with us again in less than four weeks."

The most important information which I draw from the communicative black is, that my friend, Don Ignacio, the dentist, is attending my lover for professional purposes. I resolved to call upon Don Ignacio, and when Guadalupe has taken her departure with a packet containing a selection from Cachita's letters, and one of my own, which I have carefully worded, in case it should fall into wrong hands, I repair at once to the house of my dentist friend.

Don Ignacio sympathises with me, and promises to aid me in a plan which I have conceived for communicating by letter with

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