Page images
PDF
EPUB

seems to have had leisure enough. As to the acceptation of Vortigern, it may be said that its way had been prepared by a number of comparatively insignificant documents, which having been received with too ready a credulity, the believers probably had not courage to suspect or perhaps even to scrutinize this fresh miracle which emanted from the same source. Faith, like Fame, acquires strength by progress. Possibly had Vortigern been produced as one of the earliest papers, it would have been rejected as summarily as it was when submitted to the judgment of the Drury-lane pit.

There is no evidence to counterbalance William Henry's positive and repeated assurance that he received no assistance from any quarter. If there were any one towards whom suspicion might be directed, it would be to Mr. Montague Talbot, the intimate friend and confident of young Ireland, and to some extent his aider and abettor in the fraud. Talbot to adopt W. H. Ireland's to the mortgage and the three signatures to the will; but they are all much larger than the originals, and are obviously not original tracings. There is an anecdote recorded in the Gentleman's Magazine (1838), that W. H. Ireland, having once inspected the De Burgum Pedigree, one of Chatterton's carliest forgeries, then in the possession of Mr. Josh Cottle, wrote on a piece of paper fac-similes of various autographs of Queen Elizabeth and Shak

[blocks in formation]

phrase, was "a friend of the Muses; "he undoubtedly offered to assist in the fabrication of Vortigern, and it was agreed that the plan of some of the scenes should be sent to him in Dublin; but William Henry says this plan was never carried into execution, and that he completed the play without any aid from him.

On this part of the case, therefore, the conclusion seems inevitable either that Dr. Ingleby's informant is in error, or that he derives his knowledge from some sources which have never been open to the public. From the evidence before them, Mr. Ireland, senior, must be acquitted from all share of the knavery of the transaction, and be convicted only of an egregious amount of folly; and the charitable will not be sorry to think that the young gentleman is not so black as he has been painted.

T. J. A.

his word. He seems to have been a young gentle-
man who, to use the words of one of our living wits,
was wont "to postpone truth to the purposes of
the moment." He not only became the voucher to
Mr. Ireland, senior, for the story about " Mr. H.,”
but when the explosion was imminent, expressed
his readiness to make an affidavit to the same effect,
if his friend William Henry would join in it.
the latter, it seems, had some weak scruples on the
subject, and did not care to commit a perjury which
might have been detected.

But

Since this article was in type, the writer has received a communication from a literary gentleman, who was on terms of intimacy with the late W. H. Ireland. This gentleman, who describes him as an intelligent and well-conducted person, says he was very communicative as to his Shaksperian fabrications; he never said in plain terms that his father was privy to his imposture, but somewhat suspiciously hinted doubts as to his total ignorance of what was so mysteriously going on.

RIDE V. DRIVE.-I have been amused by the discussion which has been carried on as to the propriety of the expression "riding in a carriage." If those who object to it had read the Bible carefully, or even listened to it when read in the church, they would scarcely have spoken of the phrase so contemptuously, one of them even calling it a vulgarism. I would refer them in particular to Kings ix. 16., “So Jehu rode in a chariot;" and x. 16, "So they made him ride in his chariot." Several other passages might be quoted from that "well of English undefiled," the authorized version of the Bible, but your readers will probably think these sufficient. -Notes and Queries. SENESCENS.

T. J. Mathias, author of The Pursuits of Literature, dated August 9, 1782, sends to him the following lines, most probably his own composition. He says:-

:

"By the by, Shaver Hodson swears these six
lines are an incomparable parody:-
"If 'tis joy to wound a pigeon,

How much more to eat him broiled?
Sweetest bird in all the kitchen;

Sweetest, if he is not spoiled.

I swear, my transports, when I've got him,
Are ten times more than when I shot him.'

"He says, there is not a word hooked in, and that it is a model for parodying."

Whose lines are here parodied? LINES ON A PIGEON.-Dr. Wm. Lort Mansell, afterwards bishop of Bristol, in a letter to-Notes and Queries.

J. Y.

From The Saturday Review. TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF DR. WOLFF.*

-for which he was well laughed at by Sir Charles James Napier and others. "And Wolff deeply regrets," he now says, penDR. WOLFF enjoys a deserved reputation, itently, "that he ever fell into the errors beyond the circle which is called the "re- here alluded to." But he still seems to cling ligious world," for the courage and address to the belief that there is to be a personal with which, when no longer a young man, millennial reign of our Lord upon earth, and he penetrated into Bokhara in order to dis- he often says that he found this a powerful cover the fate of the murdered English en- argument with the Jews to whom he preached. voys, Conolly and Stoddart. The present To do him justice, he never failed to urge instalment of the earlier travels and adven- upon them the truth that the Messiah had tures of this celebrated missionary may be once come; but he very much conciliated safely recommended as a very striking and them by the assurance that another coming entertaining narrative. Parts of it would not to judgment, but to a millennial reign seem from occasional remarks of the writer, was to be expected. Whether any good to have been anticipated in various religious was ever effected by Dr. Wolff's erratic propublications. But the general reader will ceedings among the Oriental Jews and Mufind it all very novel and amusing, while the hammadans may perhaps be reasonably quaint style in which it is written adds no doubted. But this is not the place to disinconsiderable charm to the story. The au- cuss that question. We may safely say that tobiographer always speaks of himself in the his motives were good, and that his peculiar third person, and as often as not in the pres- gifts of language and his singular restlessent tense, and long dialogues are constant-ness of temperament qualified him for some ly interspersed in a very graphic manner. such vocation; while any more fixed and There is not a scruple of what is called rete- ordered mode of life would have been to nue in Dr. Wolff's composition. He is for-him simply intolerable. From several hints ever confiding publicly to his readers his dropped in the present volume, he seems to sense of his moral faults and deficiencies. have been forever in hot water with the Perhaps this is meant to disarm hostile crit- London Society for Promoting Christianity icism. Any how, under cover of this vol- among the Jews, whose agent in the East he untary confession, he indulges in a most ostensibly was. In some cases, he frankly pleasant naïveté and egotistical vanity, and acknowledges himself to have been in the portrays all his weaknesses very agreeably wrong. But a gentler temper than his might to his readers. He is evidently a clever, well have rebelled against the narrow-mindrestless, and impulsive man, whose enthusi-ed dictation of a London committee; and his asm upon any subject has a tendency to run sarcasm is bitterness itself when he contrasts into credulity and exaggeration. But he is with the freedom allowed to St. Francis Xathoroughly in earnest, and we cannot help vier-his own self-chosen example - the sincerely respecting him even when our judg- petty tyranny exercised by certain missionment is inclined to question his sanity. How ary societies at home over their unfortunate far a man with such pronounced crotchets, agents abroad. Indeed, it is much to be reand such singular views of prophecy, as Dr. gretted that he has not pruned the exuberWolff seems to have had, was fit for a Chris-ance of the epithets which he applies to some tian missionary may perhaps be doubted. of the religionists of whom he most disapThus we find him in one place avowing his proves. Filthy Calvinist," "some longbelief that "Isaiah was a dervish and walked nosed, snuff-taking lady of the so-called about naked, and that the prophets and the Evangelical party," "a long-face-pulling dervishes of the present day symbolize by lady with a whining voice," "nasty Atheist this nakedness events which are to take and infidel," and the like, are rather indecorplace upon this earth." ous expressions. Even when religion is not concerned, Dr. Wolff is a good hater. He never mentions a certain Frenchman, with whom he travelled in Mesopotamia, but as "Digeon the scoundrel." Perhaps this want of reserve makes the book all the more amusing. It is no wonder that so plain-spoken a traveller got called names in return. Thus, on a visit to Ireland, he seems to have made himself peculiarly offensive to the Roman Catholics; and Mr. Sheil revenged them by calling him "Baron von Münchausen, Katerfelto, Mendez, the old clothesman of

Many of his speculations as to the interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy he has in later years wisely abandoned. But he seems to have taught at one time, that the year 1847 would be the exact epoch of the "renovation of the world and the restoration of the Jews, at the coming of Messiah in glory"

Travels and Adventures of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, D.D., L.L.D., Vicar of lle Brewers, near Taunton, and late Missionary to the Jews and Muhommadans in Persia, Bokhara, Cashmeer, Etc. Vol. 1. London: Saunders, Otley, and Co. 1860.

66

Monmouth Street," etc. "And Wolff, in anger-certainly not in the true spirit of Christ-called him a liar in return."

It is time, however, to give a brief sketch of Dr. Wolff's singular history and adventures. Few men have had a wider and more unusual experience of men and things than the subject of this autobiography. He was born in 1795, at Weilersbach, near Bamberg, being the eldest son of the Jewish rabbi of that place. Fifteen days after his birth, the terrors of the French invasion drove the Wolffs to Kissingen; and, in 1802, Rabbi David settled at Ullfeld, in Bavaria. Joseph Wolff's earliest recollections give a curious insight into the habits of thought prevailing among the German Jews of that time. The follies and superstitions of the Talmud seem to have been accepted unhesitatingly, and miracles in favor of Judaism were supposed to be of frequent occurrence. A barber-surgeon, named Spiess, gave Wolff the first glimpse of Christianity, and bade him read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which made him resolve to abandon Judaism at the earliest opportunity. He went at once to the Lutheran minister of the place; but he, unlike Canon Dalton of Norwich, finding that the young inquirer was only seven years old, declined to receive him, as he was still under the legal tutelage of his parents. The lad was sent by his father, four years later, to the Protestant Lyceum at Stuttgart, and afterwards by an uncle, who was "a Jew of the modern style, rather leaning to infidelity," to the Roman Catholic Lyceum at Bamberg. Turned out of doors, at last, by his friends, for his wish to become a Christian, he wandered to Frankfort, Prague, and Vienna, and nearly every other city in South Germany, supporting himself by teaching Hebrew. He seems to have been received kindly by all sorts of religionists in turn, and to have picked up some instruction from them all. He says that he found most of the Jews and of the Protestants infidels or freethinkers, and maintained his own preference for Roman Catholicism. Accordingly, he was baptized into that communion at Prague, in 1812, being then seventeen years old.

chosen by lot on each Good Friday. The first victim, a poor girl, was thus murdered. But next year the lot "fell on a fat Roman Catholic priest, who did not relish the thought at all, and so he gave notice to the police, who took the Mystics into custody, and Wolff himself saw Peschel in prison." Hoffbauer, the head of the Vienna Ultramontanes was only a degree less fanatical. Wolff himself preferred the more moderate -or what we should call the Gallican-opinions of Sailer, whom he calls the Fenélon of Germany, and was still more influenced by the celebrated Count Stolberg, who became his patron, and entertained him for many months in his castle. In 1815, Wolff made the acquaintance of Prince Hohenlohe, afterwards famous for his alleged miraculous powers though the Pope himself said of him sneeringly to Niebuhr-"Questo far dei miracoli." Wolff accuses this enthusiast of something like theft, of deliberate falschood, and of profligate conversation. Continuing his Oriental studies at Tübingen, under the famous Arabic scholar Schnurrer, Wolff was warned by the Protestant professors there that his moderate opinions would not be tolerated when he came to the Propaganda. From Tübingen, in 1816, he started on foot for Rome. At Aarau, on his way, he had an interview with Madame de Krudener, the pietist, who had the credit of converting the Emperor Alexander and Jung Stilling, the mystic tailor. At Fribourg his Hebrew Bible was taken away from him by the head of the Redemptorists there, because it was printed in so heretical a town as Amsterdam. Further on, at Vevay, he got another one from a Lutheran pastor. But this, in its turn, was confiscated by the Redemptorists at Valais, because it was printed at Leipsic. However, Wolff recovered it by stealth, and ran away. Afterwards he showed it to the pope, and told him its history, "on which Pius VII. laughed, and said, 'There are hot-headed people to be found everywhere."" The Bible's adventures were not over yet. In 1818, Wolff was expelled from the Propaganda, and left the book behind him; but years afterwards it was restored to him at Philadelphia, by Kenrick, a fellow-student, He had already made the acquaintance of who had become one of the Roman Catholic Falk, Goethe, and Voss. Now he was ma- bishops of the United States. One of the triculated at Vienna, and got to know the best-told anecdotes of Wolff's journey to Orientalists, Jahn and Von Hammer, besides Rome describes his reception as un Ebreo Friedrich von Schlegel, Körner, the poet, convertito by a convent of Salesian nuns at and the celebrated Redemptorist, Hoffbauer. Novara. He had to recite the Pater Noster The description of the five religious parties and Ave Maria and Salve Regina amidst then existing in Vienna, is most curious. the enthusiastic ladies. "They all exclaimed But it seems scarcely credible that the Mys-How this blessed, blessed young man makes tics-who were disciples of one Peschel- the cross.'Amabile giovane,' said they, in could have proceeded, as he asserts, to the the midst of their prayers, 'God bless him!"" length of crucifying one of their number At Turin, Wolff met Madame de Stael, and

made his first English acquaintance in the further most amusing detail, that the flagelperson of Mr. David Baillie. He went by lants used to take care in the dark to flog sea from Genoa to Leghorn, and so to Rome, each other. As might be expected he soon partly on foot. On his way, he meets two abandoned the monastic life. He wandered Spanish Franciscans. "The old one was an | to Lausanne, where, by a curious chance, he ignorant jackass; but the young one was a fell in with an English lady, a Miss Greaves, man of the highest talent, who gave Wolff a friend of Mr. Drummond, who paid his an insight into the cruelty of the Inquisition expenses to London. in Spain." At Faezna he met Professor Orioli, who gave him a friendly but unheeded warning. Look out at Rome, Wolff. Con Dio é perdono, un prete non perdona mai. With God there is a pardon-a priest never pardons."

ers.

This was in 1819. Mr. Drummond immediately took his protégé to a Baptist's chapel and a Quaker's meeting, and then to a Methodist congregation. But Wolff was dissatisfied with them all. At last he went to the Episcopal Jewish Chapel in PalestineAmong his Roman friends figure Over- place, where "Wolff was enchanted with the beck the painter, the Abbate Ostini, and devotion and beauty of the ritual" of the Cardinal Litta. Of the latter he draws a Church of England, and at once attached most amiable picture. He was exceedingly himself to that communion. He was soon well received as a Jewish convert; and the introduced to the Rev. Lewis Way, an amispecial kindness shown him by Pius VII., able enthusiast, who, in spite of all discourwho placed him in the Propaganda, is always agements, devoted his life and an immense mentioned with becoming gratitude. We fortune to the attempt to convert Jews to have a curious and not unpleasant picture of Christianity, and was sent to Cambridge, at the life of the Propaganda students, which the cost of the London Society for Promotmay be compared with that of the Irish Col-ing Christianity among the Jews, to comlege, described by Cardinal Wiseman in his plete his studies of the Oriental languages Personal Recollections. Wolff soon rebelled under the celebrated Prof. Lee. At Camagainst the extreme principles of his teach- bridge, his chief patron was Charles Simeon, He questioned the infallibility of the whom Dr. Wolff emphatically declares to pope; he resented the election to the cardi- have been in heart a High Churchman, and nalate, for political reasons, of the immoral whose vain attempts to teach Wolff to shave and sceptical Von Häffelin; he quarrelled himself, or to sharpen a razor, are very huwith Cardinal della Somaglia, who argued morously told. There are other curious anwith him that the pope could override the au- ecdotes of his Cambridge life. thority of the Hebrew original of the Scrip- At last, in 1821, Wolff set out on his fortures; and he gradually became more intem- eign travels, as an accredited missionary of perate and unguarded in his speech as he the Jews' Society, though we observe no was, with justice, more and more suspected. mention of any formal ordination to the ofAbout this time Mr. Henry Drummond, then fice. At Gibraltar he had long discussions in Rome, made his acquaintance, and began with many of his nation, not forgetting a to urge him to "come out of Babylon." It collateral controversy with Roman Catholics. was too late for a voluntary escape. He was At Malta he met the impostor Clement expelled from Rome, and sent, under the Naudi, who not only deceived several of the charge of a familiar of the Inquisition, to English religious Societics, but the Roman Vienna. There, however, his old friend Catholics also. This man's wife was repreHoffbauer received him kindly, and got him sented to the latter as a convert from Protesadmitted into the Redemptorist monastery tantism, and was in the habit of communicaof Val-sainte, in Switzerland. Here we ting at mass every Sunday morning, while have an absurd anecdote of monastic life. at the same time the Protestants thought her "Every Friday evening they assembled in a a convert from Romanism on the strength of dark room, put out the candles, and then her "experiences," as detailed in a Wesleyan every one flagellated himself. Wolff at-class meeting" which she attended every temped to join in this self-discipline, but he evening. Thence to Alexandria, where Wolf gave himself only one stroke, and then ad- preached to English, Italians, Greeks, Turks, minstered all the other blows to his leather trousers, which were pushed down to his knees, and it made a loud sound. The others, observing this device, laughed very heartily, and several of them afterwards followed Wolff's example, especially one, who stood near the wall, and gave it also the benefit of the lash." When Dr. Wolff tells this good story viva voce, we believe he adds the

and Jews indifferently. He seems, however, to have succeeded in reconverting an American naval officer who "had been made a Muhammadan by reading Eichhorn's Commentaries, Bishop Marsh's translation of Michaelis, and Warburton's Discrepancies of Scripture." On the other hand, one Caviglia seems to have persuaded Wolff of the truth of magic, and our autobiographer

gives an account of a remarkable experiment Bagdad, to Sheeraz, to Ispahan, to Tiflis, which he witnessed. In company with and in Armenia and Circassia and the CriMessrs. Clarke and Carne-the latter of mea, resemble all other Eastern travels with whom was travelling for the express purpose the difference of his colloquies with the Jewof marrying an Eastern beauty, and who ish teachers wherever he found them. In was all but persuaded into a most imprudent Kurdistan he was seized by some marauders match at Damascus by his dragoman-Wolff and bastinadoed with two hundred stripes. went to Mount Sinai laden with Bibles. After capture by the Arabs, the party was brought back to Cairo. Thence, however, he started again for Jaffa and Beyrout and Jerusalem. In every place he seems to have visited the Jews, and to have discussed 'Christianity with their Rabbis. But no lasting effect was produced. Apropos of Lady Hester Stanhope, Dr. Wolff tells an anecdote of a prediction by that lady's prophet M. Lustaneau, of the earthquake which destroyed Aleppo. Wolff declares he heard this prophecy before the event, and that he was a witness of its fulfilment.

Dr. Wolff's journeys in Mesopotamia, to

Returning to England in 1826, Dr. Wolff married during his stay here Lady Georgiana Walpole, and became a naturalized Englishman. In his second great missionary journey his wife accompanied him as far as the Mediterranean. But after visiting every part of the Levant, he set out for Persia and Bokhara alone. After many remarkable adventures, in the course of which he was stripped and made a slave, but providentially rescued, he arrived at the gates of Bokhara, where the present volume leaves him. We hope that at an early day wo may have the pleasure of continuing these spirited and entertaining records of travel.

[ocr errors]

A CURIOUS JEWISH CUSTOM.-I remember it at New Perlican, as instructed by the board, to have seen some time ago in one of the papers we regret having to report that, although we of the day an extract from the Jewish Chronicle, have on many occasions been able to raise the containing some account of a custom, periodi- bight, and so get on board at different times cally observed by certain continental Jews, of pieces of cable, in all amounting to about seven burying defective and otherwise unserviceable miles, we have invariably found it broken again copies of the Law. On the occasion referred to, a few miles off." Mr. Varley proceeds with a the sale of the ground selected for this purpose detailed account of the different voyages that having been arranged, with other preliminaries, have been made, in the hope of recovering the and the sacred MSS. safely deposited in sewn cable. Writing afterwards of the bottom near or sealed bags, the party repaired with all due Newfoundland, he says: Although mud is solemnity to the cemetery, carrying the con- shown on the charts, there are most unquestiondemned scrolls. The sale of the ground alone ably rocks also, as was too plainly indicated by realized a considerable sum, added to which, the state of the cable, rock weed and sea anicertain fees which obtained for the highest bid- malcules adhering to and surrounding it in many ders the office of grave-diggers on the occasion, places, showing that it had been suspended clear and the honor of this last consignment, amount-of the bottom. The cable was invariably hauled ing in all to several hundred florins, were de- in by hand to avoid unnecessary strain. The voted to educational purposes, the erection of recovered cable varied in condition very much, schools, and other objects of charity. Perhaps and what is most important is, that even those some correspondent of "N. & Q." better ac- portions which came out of the black mud were quainted with modern Hebrew usages, may be so perished in numerous patches that the outer able to furnish a more detailed and accurate ac- covering parted on board during the process of count of so interesting a ceremony, and to in-hauling in, and but for the dexterity and courform me whether the above custom prevails throughout the Hebrew community, or is only confided to certain continental localities. -Notes and Queries.

F. PHILLOTT.

THE ATLANTIC CABLE.-After numerous fruitless efforts to recover the debris of the Atlantic cable, the attempt has finally been abandoned. Mr. Varley, the electrician of the company, reports: "After repeated attempts to raise the cable by grapnelling, in order to test its electrical condition, and with a view to land

Those

age of the men in seizing hold of it beyond the
break, where the iron wire stuck out like bunches
of highly-sharpened needle points, we should not
have known so much of its condition.
portions of the recovered cable that were wrapped
with tarred yarn were sound, the tar and lemp
having preserved the iron wires bright and free
from rust. This will be further reported on
when the pieces of recovered cable have been
more closely examined. It is with deep regret
that we have to inform you that it has been nec-
essary to abandon the cable."

« PreviousContinue »