66 Un à pied et l'autre à cheval, This veil of gaiety in the old canon of Ambrun covers deeper and more philosophical thoughts than the singular mode of treating so solemn a theme. He has introduced many scenes of human life which still interest, and he addresses the "teste à triple couronne," as well as the 'forçat de galère," who exclaims, "Laissez-moi vivre dans mes fers," "le gueux," the "bourgeois," the "chanoine,” the " pauvre soldat," the "médecin;" in a word, all ranks in life are exhibited, as in all the "Dances of Death." But our object in noticing these burlesque paintings and poems is to show that after the monkish Goths had opened one general scene of melancholy and tribulation over Europe, and given birth to that dismal skeleton of death, which still terrifies the imagination of many, a reaction of feeling was experienced by the populace, who at length came to laugh at the gloomy spectre which had so long terrified them! THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN. PETER HEYLIN was one of the popular writers of his times, like Fuller and Howell, who, devoting their amusing pens to subjects which deeply interested their own busy age, will not be slighted by the curious.* We have nearly outlived their divinity, but not their politics. Metaphysical absurdities are * Dr. Heylin's principal work, "Ecclesia Restaurata; or, the History of the Reformation of the Church of England," was reprinted at the Cambridge University press, for "the Ecclesiastical History Society," in 2 vols. 8vo, 1849, under the able editorship of J. C. Robertson, M.A., Vicar of Bekesbourne, Kent. The introductory account of Heylin has enabled us to correct the present article in some particulars, and add a few usefu notes. luxuriant weeds which must be cut down by the scythe of Time; but the great passions branching from the tree of life are still "growing with our growth." There are two biographies of our Heylin, which led to a literary quarrel of an extraordinary nature; and, in the progress of its secret history, all the feelings of rival authorship were called out. Heylin died in 1662. Dr. Barnard, his son-in-law, and a scholar, communicated a sketch of the author's life to be prefixed to a posthumous folio, of which Heylin's son was the editor. This Life was given by the son, but anonymously, which may not have gratified the author, the son-in-law.* Twenty years had elapsed when, in 1682, appeared "The Life of Dr. Peter Heylin, by George Vernon." The writer, alluding to the prior Life prefixed to the posthumous folio, asserts that, in borrowing something from Barnard, Barnard had also "Excerpted passages out of my papers, the very words as well as matter, when he had them in his custody, as any reader may discern who will be at the pains of comparing the Life now published with what is extant before the Keimalea Ecclesiastica;" the quaint, pedantic title, after the fashion of the day, of the posthumous folio. This This strong accusation seemed countenanced by a dedication to the son and the nephew of Heylin. Roused now into action, the indignant Barnard soon produced a more complete Life, to which he prefixed " A necessary Vindication." is an unsparing castigation of Vernon, the literary pet whom the Heylins had fondled in preference to their learned relative. The long-smothered family grudge, the suppressed mortifications of literary pride, after the subterraneous grumblings of twenty years, now burst out, and the volcanic particles flew * Dr. John Barnard married the daughter of Heylin, when he lived at Abingdon, near Oxford. He afterwards became rector of the rich living of Waddington, near Lincoln, of which he purchased the perpetual advowson, holding also the sinecure of Gedney, in the same county. He was ultimately made Prebendary of Asgarby, in the church of Lincoln, and died at Newark, on a journey, in August, 1683. His rich and indolent life would naturally hold out few inducements for literary labour. Mr. George Vernon, according to Wood (Athen. Oxon. iv. 606), was made Chaplain of All Souls' College, afterwards Rector of Sarsden, near Churchill, in Oxfordshire, of Bourton-on-the-Water, in Gloucestershire, and of St. John and St. Michael, in the city of Gloucester. Wood enumerates several works by him, so that he was evidently more of a "literary man" than Barnard, who enjoyed "learned ease" to a great degree, and was evidently only to be aroused by something flagitious. about in caustic pleasantries and sharp invectives; all the lava of an author's vengeance, mortified by the choice of an inferior rival. It appears that Vernon had been selected by the son of Heylin, in preference to his brother-in-law, Dr. Barnard, from some family disagreement. Barnard tells us, in describing Vernon, that "No man, except himself, who was totally ignorant of the doctor, and all the circumstances of his life, would have engaged in such a work, which was primarily laid out for him, but by reason of some unhappy differences, as usually fall out in families; and he, who loves to put his oar in troubled waters, instead of closing them up, hath made them wider." never Barnard tells his story plainly. Heylin the son, intending to have a more elaborate Life of his father prefixed to his works, Dr. Barnard, from the high reverence in which he held the memory of his father-in-law, offered to contribute it. Many conferences were held, and the son entrusted him with several papers. But suddenly his caprice, more than his judgment, fancied that George Vernon was worth John Barnard. The doctor affects to describe his rejection with the most stoical indifference. He tells us "I was satisfied, and did patiently expect the coming forth of the work, not only term after term, but year after year-a very considerable time for such a tract. But at last, instead of the Life, came a letter to me from a bookseller in London, who lived at the sign of the Black Boy, in Fleet-street."* Now, it seems that he who lived at the Black Boy had combined with another who lived at the Fleur de Luce, and that the Fleur de Luce had assured the Black Boy that Dr. Barnard was concerned in writing the Life of Heylin-this was a strong recommendation. But lo! it appeared that one Mr. Vernon, of Gloucester," was to be the man! a gentle, thin-skinned authorling, who bleated like a lamb, and was so fearful to trip out of its shelter, that it allows the Black Boy and the Fleur de Luce to communicate its papers to any one they choose, and erase or add at their pleasure.† * This was Harper, a bookseller, who had undertaken a republication of the Ecclesia Vindicata, and other tracts by Heylin, to which the Life was to be prefixed. The author had "desired Mr. Harper to communicate the papers to whom he pleases, and cross out or add what is thought convenient." A leave very few literary men would give! It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism, that the work required addition, subtraction, and division; that the fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the work, was our Dr. Barnard; and he sent the package to the doctor, who resided near Lincoln. The doctor, it appears, had no appetite for a dish dressed by another, while he himself was in the very act of the cookery; and it was suffered to lie cold for three weeks at the carrier's. But entreated and overcome, the good doctor at length sent to the carrier's for the life of his father-in-law. "I found it, according to the bookseller's description, most lame and imperfect; ill begun, worse carried on, and abruptly concluded." The learned doctor exercised that plenitude of power with which the Black Boy had invested him-he very obligingly showed the author in what a confused state his materials lay together, and how to put them in order— Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo. If his rejections were copious, to show his good-will as well as his severity, his additions were generous, though he used the precaution of carefully distinguishing by "distinct paragraphs" his own insertions amidst Vernon's mass, with a gentle hint that "He knew more of Heylin than any man now living, and ought therefore to have been the biographer." He returned the MS. to the gentleman with great civility, but none he received back! When Vernon pretended to ask for improvements, he did not imagine that the work was to be improved by being nearly destroyed; and when he asked for correction, he probably expected all might end in a compliment. The narrative may now proceed in Dr. Barnard's details of his doleful mortifications, in being "altered and mangled" by Mr. Vernon. "Instead of thanks from him (Vernon), and the return of common civility, he disfigured my papers, that no sooner came into his hands, but he fell upon them as a lion rampant, or the cat upon the poor cock in the fable, saying, Tu hodie mihi discerperis-so my papers came home miserably clawed, blotted, and blurred; whole sentences dismembered, and pages scratched out; several leaves omitted which ought to be printed, shamefully he used my copy; so that before it was carried to the press, he swooped away the second part of the Life wholly from it-in the room of which he shuffled in a preposterous conclusion at the last page, which he printed in a different character, yet could not keep himself honest, as the poet saith, Dicitque tua pagina, fur es. MARTIAL. For he took out of my copy Dr. Heylin's dream, his sickness, his last words before his death, and left out the burning of his surplice. He so mangled and metamorphosed the whole Life I composed, that I may say as Sosia did, Egomet mihi non credo, ille alter Sosia me malis mulcavit modisPLAUT." Dr. Barnard would have "patiently endured these wrongs;" but the accusation Vernon ventured on, that Barnard was the plagiary, required the doctor "to return the poisoned chalice to his own lips," that "himself was the plagiary both of words and matter." The fact is, that this reciprocal accusation was owing to Barnard having had a prior perusal of Heylin's papers, which afterwards came into the hands of Vernon: they both drew their water from the same source. These papers Heylin himself had left for " a rule to guide the writer of his life." Barnard keenly retorts on Vernon for his surreptitious use of whole pages from Heylin's works, which he has appropriated to himself without any marks of quotation. "I am no such excerptor (as he calls me); he is of the humour of the man who took all the ships in the Attic haven for his own, and yet was himself not master of any one vessel." Again: But all this while I misunderstand him, for possibly he meaneth his own dear words I have excerpted. Why doth he not speak in plain, downright English, that the world may see my faults? For every one doth not know what is excerpting. If I have been so bold to pick or snap a word from him, I hope I may have the benefit of the clergy. What words have I robbed him of ?-and how have I become the richer for them? I was never so taken with him as to be once tempted to break the commandments, because I love plain speaking, plain writing, and plain dealing, which he does not: I hate the word excerpted, and the action imported in it. However, he is a fanciful man, and thinks there is no |