“I never learnt the Memoria Technica, but if ever I have a son he shall. Where is the earliest mention of the mariner’s compass? I have no better reference than a chronological table at the end of a worn-out dictionary, which says, invented or improved by Gioia of Naples, A.D. 1302. Now, I have just found it mentioned in the Laws of Alonso the Wise, which Laws were begun a.d. 1251, and finished in seven years; and it is not mentioned as anything new, but made use of as an illustration. You can understand the Spanish:
“‘Assi como les marineros sequian en le nocte, escura por el aguja que les es mediamera entre la piedra e la estrella, e les muestra por lo vayar.’
|
* My father used to pride himself upon his title-pages, and upon his knowledge of typography in general; being, as one of his printers said, the only person he ever knew who could tell how a page would look before it was set up. |
| 318 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 30. |
“I suspect that this implies a belief in some specific virtue in the north star, as if the magnetic influence flowed from it. This, however, is matter for more inquiry, and I will one day look into it in Raymond Lully and Albertus Magnus,—likely authors. The passage certainly carries the use of the needle half a century further back than the poor chronology; but whether I have made what antiquarians call a discovery, is more than I can tell. Robertson ought to have found it; for to write his Introduction to Charles V., without reading these Laws, is one of the thousand and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue, as long as his volumes last.
“These Partidas, as they are called, are very amusing; I am about a quarter through them some way, as they fill three folios by help of a commentary. They are divided into seven parts, for about seven times seven such reasons as would have delighted Dr. Slop; and King Alfonzo has ingeniously settled the orthography of his name, by beginning each of the seven parts with one of the seven letters which compose it, in succession. His Majesty gives directions that no young princes should dip their fingers into the dish in an unmannerly way, so as to grease themselves; and expatiates on the advantages to be derived from reading and writing,—if they are able to learn those arts. He was himself an extraordinary man; too fond of study to be a good king in a barbarous age,—but therefore not only a more interesting character to posterity, but a more useful one in the long run.
“You will see in the Madociana a story, how
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 319 |
“The abuses, or main abuses, of printing, spring from
one evil,—it almost immediately makes authorship a trade. Per-sheeting
was in use as early as Martin
Luther’s time, who mentions the price—a curious
fact. The Reformation did one great mischief; in destroying the monastic
orders, it deprived us of the only bodies of men who could not possibly
| 320 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 30. |
“You know I am no friend to Popery or to Monochism; but if the Irish Catholics are to be emancipated, I would let them found convents, only restricting them from taking the vows till after a certain age, as Catherine did in Russia; though perhaps it may be as well to encourage anything to diminish the true Patric-ian breed. The good would be, that they would get the country cultivated, and serve as good inns, and gradually civilise it. As the island unluckily is theirs, and there is no getting the Devil to remove it anywhere else, we had better employ the Pope to set it to rights.
“. . . . . William
Taylor has forsaken the Critical, because it has fallen into the hands of ——,
an orthodox, conceited, preferment-hunting, Cambridge fellow; such is the character he gives of him. My
book will suffer by the change. The Annual is probably delayed by the insurrection among the printers.
Authors
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 321 |
