I have cut through the air like a falcon. I would have it seem strange to you. But 'tis true. I would not have you to believe it neither. But 'tis miraculous and true. Play of Old Fortunatus. The author possesses the Wishing-Cap of Fortunatus.-Wonderful powers conferred by it, beyond those of which Fortunatus was aware.-Beautiful women of former days.-Reason why scoundrels are often handsome, -Establishment of a marvellous claim.-Description of a rare and real collection of curiosities, personally connected with Milton, Swift, Johnson, Shelley, Keats, Hazlitt, and others.—Original and characteristic remark or two made by Hazlitt. In the Examiner newspaper, about ten years ago, was a brief series of articles under the title of the Wishing-Cap, which it is proposed to continue in Mr. Tait's Magazine, with the convenient understanding of its being a "New Series.' The writer, who was then wishing in Italy, wished very much to be in England, where he came accordingly, and circumstances prevented his going on with his design. He now wishes to renew it, and to be in Scotland; and is therefore, at this present writing, in the best lodgings in Edinburgh, where he shall be happy, for the next two minutes, to see any body who has a mind to do him that honour. He says, " two minutes," because he has observed, that people seldom wish to see any thing with their " mind's eye" for a longer period, and because he may be off again in a twinkling for twenty other places, Bagdad, Buenos-Ayres, Morocco, or Heaven knows where. If we feel chilly, we are in the habit of wishing ourselves back in Italy, and there we are in an instant, sunning ourselves on the slope of Fæsole, or looking through orange-trees on the blue of the Genoese Gulf. If, on the other hand, we feel too hot-presto!-we are on the "frosty Caucasus," or enjoying the evening sea-breeze with the Peruvians, or taking an ice at Naples, or sitting with our naked feet planted on the marble floors of Lucullus, or reclining on a Persian sofa, with a twilight of flowers about us, and a fountain in the middle. Or we are the Sultan-we forget whether of Turkey or Ava-and according to what we heard of him the other day, we have the cheeks of our women iced. By the mention of Lucullus, it will be seen that we are masters of time as well as place, of spiritual as well as local distance, which is an advantage, we believe, which we did not mention in the former series of these papers. The reason of the omission was, that we had not then wished to possess it. For every thing that we wish, we have. Old Fortunatus, whose cap we inherit, did not know what a treasure he possessed, otherwise he could have dispensed with his purse. For instance, we have taken it into our heads to be in Scotland, and to have some of Mr Tait's money,-things that a man of ordinary hat might a good deal more easily wish for than accomplish :-Yet, here we are, with the bank notes flying into our hands. The wish might be thought a superfluous one, seeing it was but the other day that we helped ourselves to an innumerable quantity of coin out of the "Cave of Mammon," and emptied half the Persian Gulf of its pearls; but not to mention, that the more people have, the more they wish for,-the truth is, that although we can have what we like, as far as the realization of the wish depends on ourselves, we cannot command the wishes or co-operation of others; and in Great Britain, the coin which our friend Spenser made us acquainted with, wont pass. Gyges, with his ring, was a fool to us. He could see only contem. poraneously; whereas, there has not existed a beauty, from Eve down to Miss Moffat, whom we have not beheld, when and wheresoever we pleased. We have seen Helen, and Aspasia, and Phryne, and Lais, and Lalage, and Lucretia Borgia, and Laura, and Bianca Capello, and Inez de Castro, and Diana de Poitiers, and Agnes Sorel, and Ninon, and Fair Rosamond, and the Fair Gabrielle, and the Fair Ferroniere, and the Fornerina, and Fanny Murray, and all the other F's, M's, and L's in the list of beauty. The Fornerina, by the by, was not so handsome as she is thought; and Cleopatra, like Sappho, was a little brown woman, not beautiful, but with a prodigious vivacity, and relish in whatsoever she said and did. We have noticed that the mistresses of the poets, and even of the painters, for the most part, were not handsome, particularly the former; nor could we see in any of them any thing to admire at all. The poet's imagination made out the case in the first instance, and habit preserved it. Where they were really charming, they were very charming indeed. The wife of Candaules was very handsome, but she led Gyges a devil of a life, after he had killed her husband for her, and mounted the throne. Her face bore a considerable resemblance to that of Nicholas, Emperor of Russia. This likeness reminds us that nothing can be more idle than the astonishment expressed so often in these days, at the handsome, and mild, and comfortable faces of the most atrocious criminals. What! would you have the marks of suffering where there is no feeling? Of all the great criminals that we have seen, and that the world may still see in busts and pictures, from Alexander down to Prince Metternich, or to the last reckless young ruffian brought up to the Old Bailey, the very worst, to the best of our recollection, were remarkable for the regularity of their features, and a certain kind of what is called handsomeness; just as if they were moulded like statues, and had no little humane irregularity of composition to throw them off the balance of their self-will, and baulk the hardness of their hearts. There is, to be sure, an expression which experienced eyes may see through; and there is apt to be a want or a superabundance of lip, and a predominance of jowl. With age also the rascal grows ugly, because he has had care forced upon him in spite of himself, and his feelings have been roused by exasperation. But for a regular, smooth-faced, well-featured, smirking, or tranquil scoundrel, to take ordinary observers in with his good looks, give us a young Nicholas, or a Cook, or a Ciro Annichini. We make no apology to the reader for indulging in digression. One's style is modified by one's habits, and we are so accustomed to whisk hither and thither by means of our Wishing-cap, that we shall not undertake to stick to any one subject together for a couple of paragraphs. Like a bird, we may be, at one moment, on the top of a palace, and at the next, in the middle of a farm-yard. Volition and Volitation are closely allied. How can consistency or stationariness (we want a word to express exactly what we mean) be expected of one, who, in as many The Wishing-Cap. seconds, can be in as many parts of the world, and of time? who, as fast as he enumerates the instances, can be Smoking with the Turks, Bull-hunting with the South-Americans, Talking with the French, And meanwhile, or in the intervals, Trembling with the Tithes-men, Wondering with the Tax-gatherers, Begging with the Younger Brothers, Wise-acreing with the Magistrates, And occasionally, nevertheless, And at the same time not forget- Prowling with your Wild-beasts, All which occupations being considered, we shall beg the reader to bear them in mind once for all, as so many reasons why we have a right to be as brief, discursive, and miscellaneous, or otherwise, as we please. We cannot possibly attend to so many things, or be liable to so many calls, You might as well atand write in the same plodding way as others. tempt to make Mercury a clerk to a law-stationer. We shall now proceed to do a very marvellous thing; to wit, utterly disclaim, with regard to what we are going to speak of, all those fanciful and metaphorical interpretations which some readers may please to put upon what we have said; and, at the same time, fearlessly announce, that we have had personal acquaintance with people who lived a hundred, two hundred, nay, ten hundred years ago. Reader.-There is some trick, of course, in what you are saying. You do not mean to tell people in their senses, that it is literally so. Writer.-Literally. We have touched the persons we allude to. We touch them now, whensoever we please. Reader.-(After inability to speak from amazement.) In nomine Patris, &c. How do you make that out? Writer.-Magic could not go beyond this, and yet it is true. There is a story of a man, who, by means of necromancy, had the most beauti ful woman of antiquity summoned before him, that he might feast his eyes with seeing what he had read of. But that was illusion. It is no such thing with the case before us. What we pretend to, we literally have done; and what is more, we have the power of making our friends partake of the pleasure; for many estimable persons, Scotch, Irish, and English, can testify it. There are gentlemen in Edinburgh, who can testify it. But we will prove it to the reader. He has read of the beautiful, golden-haired Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander the Sixth, sister of the infamous Cæsar Borgia, and, according to some, as great a "rascal" herself, (as the Copper-Captain would have called her,) but, according to her friend Ariosto, who was an honest poet and a gentleman, and whose word we would take in preference to that of all the tongues of scandal, an example of all that was good and excellent. (See the Orlando Furioso, canto 13, st. 69.) Now what will the reader say to our having touched the golden hair of this beauty? to our seeing it whenever we please? to having a specimen of it in our possession? Reader. The mystery is out; you have a lock of her hair in your possession? Writer. Not a lock; that would be a little too much. A single hair is a treasure. "Beauty draws us with a single hair," quoth the poet; a line which was ingeniously written upon the paper containing the hair, by the acquaintance who gave it us. Reader. And this you call " personal" acquaintance with the fair Lucretia, and "touching her?” Writer.-Unquestionably. The person (originally signifying the mask through which actors spoke) is the surface, or phantasm, or outward appearance of the human being, but has come to mean the body itself, and in either case, hair is a part of what constitutes it, and as we have touched the hair, we have touched the person. It is a clear case. The most delicate conscience could not deny it. The line above mentioned, was a happy quotation, especially as it is from the Rape of the Lock; for the quoter stole the hair out of the Ambrosian Library at Milan, where his memorandum records, that the lock from which it was taken, is preserved, "together with Lucretia's loveletters and poems, (in Italian and Spanish,) to Cardinal Bembo." On referring to the memorandum, however, we are bound to mention, that the writer says he "obtained the hair;" so that we may have had an erroneous recollection as to the stealing. "The wise convey it call." We will copy out the whole of the memorandum, as the reader may like to see the end of it : "And beauty draws us with a single hair." The hair contained in this paper belonged to Lucretia Borgia, and was obtained by me from a lock of it which is preserved in the Ambrosian Library, together with her loveletters and poems (in Italian and Spanish) to Cardinal Bembo. Byron. Milan, Oct. 17th, 1816." The "loveletters to Cardinal Bembo" have an odd sound after what has been said of Ariosto's eulogies of Lucretia ; but before we make up our minds to differ with him we ought to know what sort of letters they are, when written, and what all parties may have had to say on the matter. Ariosto was a friend of Bembo as well as Lucretia. Leaving this point to the curious in ethics, we must observe, that if ever cardinal or saint was drawn by "a single hair," it might have been by such a hair as this. The reader can hardly conceive the beauty of it, without ocular demonstration. It is the only golden hair we ever saw, but answers so completely to that supposed poetical phrase, that if the women of the South of Europe ever had heads of such hair, and were beautiful besides, they must have looked like angels on earth. It is like a subtle thread of superfine, shining, literal gold, and sparkles in the sun as if it had been cut yesterday. There was some account of it, a few years back, in an article entitled a "Criticism on Female Beauty," in the New Monthly Magazine, but the present is not a mere repetition of the account, nor was the memorandum given, nor the name of the writer of it. We notice this out of an excess of the conscientious, and in honour of the original information befitting Mr. Tait's pages. Envy us, then, reader, that we have touched the hair of the divine Lucretia; the very same, perhaps, that caught the sunshine on her head when Ariosto was talking to her, and that was beheld by his diviner eyes. Happy Italy! that preservest in thy Ambrosian Libraries the hairs of beauties and the loveletters of cardinals! and happy he who "obtained" one of the hairs! and happy, and thrice happy we who possess it not shut up with official indifference in some formal department of a room, “No. 14," and seen only on holydays, but at hand, and ever forthcoming: kept like a love-lock; petted as if we had it from her yesterday; a treasure not to be bought; a constant source of delight and amazement to the eyes of ingenuous friends. We have, And this is only the first of a series in our possession. indeed, no such other, at once so old and so young, and so amazingly beautiful; but we have locks more illustrious for their owners, and singularly beautiful too; and the next we will mention will be heard of with reverence: it is Milton's! It was this, and two others, which set us upon the plan of collecting as many as were not unworthy to keep them company; and the reader will see that we have been fortunate. This lock of the great poet is almost as beautiful, in a soberer way, as Lucretia's in a splendid. It is remarkable for its excessive and almost preternatural fineness,-we mean the softness and slenderness of its individual hairs. It furnishes an interesting corroboration of what was said of his delicate looks at the university, where he was called (not much to his liking) the "Lady of his College." Certainly, it is more like the hair of the most delicate girl, than what we should have expected from the tresses of him "Who set the embattled Seraphim in arms." the physician, who This treasure was generously given us by Dr. had it from his father-in-law, who had it from Hoole, the translator, who had it from Johnson. The link of evidence is here lost; but John |
