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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14098 ***
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Archaic spellings in the original text have been
+retained in this version.]
+
+
+
+
+HIEROGLYPHIC TALES.
+
+_Schah Baham ne comprenoit jamais bien que les choses absurdes & hors de
+toute vraisemblance._
+
+Le Sopha, p. 5.
+
+
+
+STRAWBERRY-HILL: PRINTED BY T. KIRGATE, MDCCLXXXV.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+As the invaluable present I am making to the world may not please all
+tastes, from the gravity of the matter, the solidity of the reasoning,
+and the deep learning contained in the ensuing sheets, it is necessary
+to make some apology for producing this work in so trifling an age, when
+nothing will go down but temporary politics, personal satire, and idle
+romances. The true reason then for my surmounting all these objections
+was singly this: I was apprehensive lest the work should be lost to
+posterity; and though it may be condemned at present, I can have no
+doubt but it will be treated with due reverence some hundred ages hence,
+when wisdom and learning shall have gained their proper ascendant over
+mankind, and when men shall only read for instruction and improvement of
+their minds. As I shall print an hundred thousand copies, some, it may
+be hoped, will escape the havoc that is made of moral works, and then
+this jewel will shine forth in its genuine lustre. I was in the greater
+hurry to consign this work to the press, as I foresee that the art of
+printing will ere long be totally lost, like other useful discoveries
+well known to the ancients. Such were the art of dissolving rocks with
+hot vinegar, of teaching elephants to dance on the slack rope, of making
+malleable glass, of writing epic poems that any body would read after
+they had been published a month, and the stupendous invention of new
+religions, a secret of which illiterate Mahomet was the last person
+possessed.
+
+Notwithstanding this my zeal for good letters, and the ardour of my
+universal citizenship, (for I declare I design this present for all
+nations) there are some small difficulties in the way, that prevent my
+conferring this my great benefaction on the world compleatly and all at
+once. I am obliged to produce it in small portions, and therefore beg
+the prayers of all good and wise men that my life may be prolonged to
+me, till I shall be able to publish the whole work, no man else being
+capable of executing the charge so well as myself, for reasons that my
+modesty will not permit me to specify. In the mean time, as it is the
+duty of an editor to acquaint the world with what relates to himself as
+well as his author, I think it right to mention the causes that compel
+me to publish this work in numbers. The common reason of such proceeding
+is to make a book dearer for the ease of the purchasers, it being
+supposed that most people had rather give twenty shillings by sixpence a
+fortnight, than pay ten shillings once for all. Public spirited as this
+proceeding is, I must confess my reasons are more and merely personal.
+As my circumstances are very moderate, and barely sufficient to maintain
+decently a gentleman of my abilities and learning, I cannot afford to
+print at once an hundred thousand copies of two volumes in folio, for
+that will be the whole mass of Hieroglyphic Tales when the work is
+perfected. In the next place, being very asthmatic, and requiring a free
+communication of air, I lodge in the uppermost story of a house in an
+alley not far from St. Mary Axe; and as a great deal of good company
+lodges in the same mansion, it was by a considerable favour that I could
+obtain a single chamber to myself; which chamber is by no means large
+enough to contain the whole impression, for I design to vend the copies
+myself, and, according to the practice of other great men, shall sign
+the first sheet my self with my own hand.
+
+Desirous as I am of acquainting the world with many more circumstances
+relative to myself, some private considerations prevent my indulging
+their curiosity any farther at present; but I shall take care to leave
+so minute an account of myself to some public library, that the future
+commentators and editors of this work shall not be deprived of all
+necessary lights. In the mean time I beg the reader to accept the
+temporary compensation of an account of the author whose work I am
+publishing.
+
+The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the
+creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral
+tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island,
+not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic
+attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them
+repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born.
+We do not trouble the reader with these attestations, as we are sure
+every body will believe them as much as if they had seen them. It is more
+difficult to ascertain the true author. We might ascribe them with great
+probability to Kemanrlegorpikos, son of Quat; but besides that we are
+not certain that any such person ever existed, it is not clear that he
+ever wrote any thing but a book of cookery, and that in heroic verse.
+Others give them to Quat's nurse, and a few to Hermes Trismegistus,
+though there is a passage in the latter's treatise on the harpsichord
+which directly contradicts the account of the first volcano in the
+114th. of the Hieroglyphic Tales. As Trismegistus's work is lost, it
+is impossible to decide now whether the discordance mentioned is so
+positive as has been asserted by many learned men, who only guess at the
+opinion of Hermes from other passages in his writings, and who indeed
+are not sure whether he was speaking of volcanoes or cheesecakes, for
+he drew so ill, that his hieroglyphics may often be taken for the most
+opposite things in nature; and as there is no subject which he has not
+treated, it is not precisely known what he was discussing in any one
+of them.
+
+This is the nearest we can come to any certainty with regard to the
+author. But whether he wrote the Tales six thousand years ago, as we
+believe, or whether they were written for him within these ten years,
+they are incontestably the most ancient work in the world; and though
+there is little imagination, and still less invention in them; yet there
+are so many passages in them exactly resembling Homer, that any man
+living would conclude they were imitated from that great poet, if it was
+not certain that Homer borrowed from them, which I shall prove two ways:
+first, by giving Homer's parallel passages at the bottom of the page;
+and secondly, by translating Homer himself into prose, which shall make
+him so unlike himself, that nobody will think he could be an original
+writer: and when he is become totally lifeless and insipid, it will be
+impossible but these Tales should be preferred to the Iliad; especially
+as I design to put them into a kind of style that shall be neither verse
+nor prose; a diction lately much used in tragedies and heroic poems, the
+former of which are really heroic poems from want of probability, as an
+antico-moderno epic poem is in fact a meer tragedy, having little or no
+change of scene, no incidents but a ghost and a storm, and no events but
+the deaths of the principal actors.
+
+I will not detain the reader longer from the perusal of this invaluable
+work; but I must beseech the public to be expeditious in taking off the
+whole impression, as fast as I can get it printed; because I must inform
+them that I have a more precious work in contemplation; namely, a new
+Roman history, in which I mean to ridicule, detect and expose, all
+ancient virtue, and patriotism, and shew from original papers which
+I am going to write, and which I shall afterwards bury in the ruins of
+Carthage and then dig up, that it appears by the letters of Hanno the
+Punic embassador at Rome, that Scipio was in the pay of Hannibal, and
+that the dilatoriness of Fabius proceeded from his being a pensioner
+of the Same general. I own this discovery will pierce my heart; but as
+morality is best taught by shewing how little effect it had on the best
+of men, I will sacrifice the most virtuous names for the instruction of
+the present wicked generation; and I cannot doubt but when once they
+have learnt to detest the favourite heroes of antiquity, they will
+become good subjects of the most pious king that ever lived since David,
+who expelled the established royal family, and then sung psalms to the
+memory of Jonathan, to whose prejudice he had succeeded to the throne.
+
+
+
+
+TALE 1.
+
+_A new Arabian Night's Entertainment._
+
+
+At the foot of the great mountain Hirgonqúu was anciently situated the
+kingdom of Larbidel. Geographers, who are not apt to make such just
+comparisons, said, it resembled a football just going to be kicked away;
+and so it happened; for the mountain kicked the kingdom into the ocean,
+and it has never been heard of since.
+
+One day a young princess had climbed up to the top of the mountain to
+gather goat's eggs, the whites of which are excellent for taking off
+freckles.--Goat's eggs!--Yes--naturalists hold that all Beings are
+conceived in an egg. The goats of Hirgonqúu might be oviparous, and lay
+their eggs to be hatched by the sun. This is my supposition; no matter
+whether I believe it myself or not. I will write against and abuse any
+man that opposes my hypothesis. It would be fine indeed if learned men
+were obliged to believe what they assert.
+
+The other side of the mountain was inhabited by a nation of whom the
+Larbidellians knew no more than the French nobility do of Great Britain,
+which they think is an island that some how or other may be approached
+by land. The princess had strayed into the confines of Cucurucu, when
+she suddenly found herself seized by the guards of the prince that
+reigned in that country. They told her in few words that she must be
+conveyed to the capital and married to the giant their lord and emperor.
+The giant, it seems, was fond of having a new wife every night, who was
+to tell him a story that would last till morning, and then have her head
+cut off--such odd ways have some folks of passing their wedding-nights!
+The princess modestly asked, why their master loved such long stories?
+The captain of the guard replied, his majesty did not sleep well--Well!
+said she, and if he does not!--not but I believe I can tell as long
+stories as any princess in Asia. Nay, I can repeat Leonidas by heart,
+and your emperor must be wakeful indeed if he can hold out against that.
+
+By this time they were arrived at the palace. To the great surprise of
+the princess, the emperor, so far from being a giant, was but five feet
+one inch in height; but being two inches taller than any of his
+predecessors, the flattery of his courtiers had bestowed the name of
+_giant_ on him; and he affected to look down upon any man above his own
+stature. The princess was immediately undressed and put to bed, his
+majesty being impatient to hear a new story.
+
+Light of my eyes, said the emperor, what is your name? I call myself the
+princess Gronovia, replied she; but my real appellation is the frow
+Gronow. And what is the use of a name, said his majesty, but to be
+called by it? And why do you pretend to be a princess, if you are not?
+My turn is romantic, answered she, and I have ever had an ambition of
+being the heroine of a novel. Now there are but two conditions that
+entitle one to that rank; one must be a shepherdess or a princess. Well,
+content yourself, said the giant, you will die an empress, without
+being either the one or the other! But what sublime reason had you for
+lengthening your name so unaccountably? It is a custom in my family,
+said she: all my ancestors were learned men, who wrote about the Romans.
+It sounded more classic, and gave a higher opinion of their literature,
+to put a Latin termination to their names. All this is Japonese to me,
+said the emperor; but your ancestors seem to have been a parcel of
+mountebanks. Does one understand any thing the better for corrupting
+one's name? Oh, said the princess, but it shewed taste too. There was
+a time when in Italy the learned carried this still farther; and a man
+with a large forehead, who was born on the fifth of January, called
+himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the
+emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a
+great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came
+you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland--The deuce you was, said
+the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess,
+spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea--Indeed, moppet!
+said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any
+country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said she, which I
+cannot resolve on a sudden; but I will step home to my library, and
+consult five or six thousand volumes of modern history, an hundred or
+two dictionaries, and an abridgment of geography in forty volumes in
+folio, and be back in an instant. Not so fast, my life, said the
+emperor, you must not rise till you go to execution; it is now one in
+the morning, and you have not begun your story.
+
+My great grandfather, continued the princess, was a Dutch merchant, who
+passed many years in Japan--On what account? said the emperor. He went
+thither to abjure his religion, said she, that he might get money enough
+to return and defend it against Philip 2d. You are a pleasant family,
+said the emperor; but though I love fables, I hate genealogies. I know
+in all families, by their own account, there never was any thing but
+good and great men from father to son; a sort of fiction that does not
+at all amuse me. In my dominions there is no nobility but flattery.
+Whoever flatters me best is created a great lord, and the titles I
+confer are synonimous to their merits. There is Kiss-my-breech-Can, my
+favourite; Adulation-Can, lord treasurer; Prerogative-Can, head of the
+law; and Blasphemy-Can, high-priest. Whoever speaks truth, corrupts his
+blood, and is ipso facto degraded. In Europe you allow a man to be noble
+because one of his ancestors was a flatterer. But every thing
+degenerates, the farther it is removed from its source. I will not hear
+a word of any of your race before your father: what was he?
+
+It was in the height of the contests about the bull unigenitus--I tell
+you, interrupted the emperor, I will not be plagued with any more of
+those people with Latin names: they were a parcel of coxcombs, and seem
+to have infected you with their folly. I am sorry, replied Gronovia,
+that your sublime highness is so little acquainted with the state of
+Europe, as to take a papal ordinance for a person. Unigenitus is Latin
+for the Jesuits--And who the devil are the Jesuits? said the giant.
+You explain one nonsensical term by another, and wonder I am never the
+wiser. Sir, said the princess, if you will permit me to give you a short
+account of the troubles that have agitated Europe for these last two
+hundred years, on the doctrines of grace, free-will, predestination,
+reprobation, justification, &c. you will be more entertained, and will
+believe less, than if I told your majesty a long story of fairies and
+goblins. You are an eternal prater, said the emperor, and very
+self-sufficient; but talk your fill, and upon what subject you like till
+tomorrow morning; but I swear by the soul of the holy Jirigi, who rode
+to heaven on the tail of a magpie, as soon as the clock strikes eight,
+you are a dead woman. Well, who was the Jesuit Unigenitus?
+
+The novel doctrines that had sprung up in Germany, said Gronovia, made
+it necessary for the church to look about her. The disciples of
+Loyola--Of whom? said the emperor, yawning--Ignatius Loyola, the founder
+of the Jesuits, replied Gronovia, was--A writer of Roman history, I
+suppose, interrupted the emperor: what the devil were the Romans to you,
+that you trouble your head so much about them? The empire of Rome, and
+the church of Rome, are two distinct things, said the princess; and yet,
+as one may say, the one depends upon the other, as the new testament
+does on the old. One destroyed the other, and yet pretends a right to
+its inheritance. The temporalities of the church--What's o'clock, said
+the emperor to the chief eunuch? it cannot sure be far from eight--this
+woman has gossipped at least seven hours. Do you hear, my
+tomorrow-night's wife shall be dumb--cut her tongue out before you bring
+her to our bed. Madam, said the eunuch, his sublime highness, whose
+erudition passes the lands of the sea, is too well acquainted with all
+human sciences to require information. It is therefore that his exalted
+wisdom prefers accounts of what never happened, to any relation either
+in history or divinity--You lie, said the emperor; when I exclude truth,
+I certainly do not mean to forbid divinity--How many divinities have
+you in Europe, woman? The council of Trent, replied Gronovia, has
+decided--the emperor began to snore--I mean, continued Gronovia, that
+notwithstanding all father Paul has asserted, cardinal Palavicini
+affirms that in the three first sessions of that council--the emperor
+was now fast asleep, which the princess and the chief eunuch perceiving,
+clapped several pillows upon his face, and held them there till he
+expired. As soon as they were convinced he was dead, the princess,
+putting on every mark of despair and concern, issued to the divan,
+where she was immediately proclaimed empress. The emperor, it was given
+out, had died of an hermorrhoidal cholic, but to shew her regard for his
+memory, her imperial majesty declared she would strictly adhere to the
+maxims by which he had governed. Accordingly she espoused a new husband
+every night, but dispensed with their telling her stories, and was
+graciously pleased also, upon their good behaviour, to remit the
+subsequent execution. She sent presents to all the learned men in Asia;
+and they in return did not fail to cry her up as a pattern of clemency,
+wisdom, and virtue: and though the panegyrics of the learned are
+generally as clumsy as they are fulsome, they ventured to allure her
+that their writings would be as durable as brass, and that the memory of
+her glorious reign would reach to the latest posterity.
+
+
+
+
+TALE II.
+
+_The King and his three Daughters_.
+
+
+There was formerly a king, who had three daughters--that is, he would
+have had three, if he had had one more, but some how or other the eldest
+never was born. She was extremely handsome, had a great deal of wit, and
+spoke French in perfection, as all the authors of that age affirm, and
+yet none of them pretend that she ever existed. It is very certain that
+the two other princesses were far from beauties; the second had a strong
+Yorkshire dialect, and the youngest had bad teeth and but one leg, which
+occasioned her dancing very ill.
+
+As it was not probable that his majesty would have any more children,
+being eighty-seven years, two months, and thirteen days old when his
+queen died, the states of the kingdom were very anxious to have the
+princesses married. But there was one great obstacle to this settlement,
+though so important to the peace of the kingdom. The king insisted that
+his eldest daughter should be married first, and as there was no such
+person, it was very difficult to fix upon a proper husband for her. The
+courtiers all approved his majesty's resolution; but as under the best
+princes there will always be a number of discontented, the nation was
+torn into different factions, the grumblers or patriots insisting that
+the second princess was the eldest, and ought to be declared heiress
+apparent to the crown. Many pamphlets were written pro and con, but
+the ministerial party pretended that the chancellor's argument was
+unanswerable, who affirmed, that the second princess could not be the
+eldest, as no princess-royal ever had a Yorkshire accent. A few persons
+who were attached to the youngest princess, took advantage of this plea
+for whispering that _her_ royal highness's pretensions to the crown were
+the best of all; for as there was no eldest princess, and as the second
+must be the first, if there was no first, and as she could not be the
+second if she was the first, and as the chancellor had proved that she
+could not be the first, it followed plainly by every idea of law that
+she could be nobody at all; and then the consequence followed of course,
+that the youngest must be the eldest, if she had no elder sister.
+
+It is inconceivable what animosities and mischiefs arose from these
+different titles; and each faction endeavoured to strengthen itself
+by foreign alliances. The court party having no real object for their
+attachment, were the most attached of all, and made up by warmth for
+the want of foundation in their principles. The clergy in general were
+devoted to this, which was styled _the first party_. The physicians
+embraced the second; and the lawyers declared for the third, or the
+faction of the youngest princess, because it seemed best calculated to
+admit of doubts and endless litigation.
+
+While the nation was in this distracted situation, there arrived the
+prince of Quifferiquimini, who would have been the most accomplished
+hero of the age, if he had not been dead, and had spoken any language
+but the Egyptian, and had not had three legs. Notwithstanding these
+blemishes, the eyes of the whole nation were immediately turned upon
+him, and each party wished to see him married to the princess whose
+cause they espoused.
+
+The old king received him with the most distinguished honours; the
+senate made the most fulsome addresses to him; the princesses were so
+taken with him, that they grew more bitter enemies than ever; and the
+court ladies and petit-maitres invented a thousand new fashions upon his
+account--every thing was to be à la Quifferiquimini. Both men and women
+of fashion left off rouge to look the more cadaverous; their cloaths
+were embroidered with hieroglyphics, and all the ugly characters they
+could gather from Egyptian antiquities, with which they were forced to
+be contented, it being impossible to learn a language that is lost; and
+all tables, chairs, stools, cabinets and couches, were made with only
+three legs; the last, howver, soon went out of fashion, as being very
+inconvenient.
+
+The prince, who, ever since his death, had had but a weakly
+constitution, was a little fatigued with this excess of attentions,
+and would often wish himself at home in his coffin. But his greatest
+difficulty of all was to get rid of the youngest princess, who kept
+hopping after him wherever he went, and was so full of admiration
+of his three legs, and so modest about having but one herself, and so
+inquisitive to know how his three legs were set on, that being the best
+natured man in the world, it went to his heart whenever in a fit of
+peevishness he happened to drop an impatient word, which never failed to
+throw her into an agony of tears, and then she looked so ugly that it
+was impossible for him to be tolerably civil to her. He was not much
+more inclined to the second princess--In truth, it was the eldest who
+made the conquest of his affections: and so violently did his passion
+encrease one Tuesday morning, that breaking through all prudential
+considerations (for there were many reasons which ought to have
+determined his choice in favour of either of the other sisters) he
+hurried to the old king, acquainted him with his love, and demanded the
+eldest princess in marriage. Nothing could equal the joy of the good old
+monarch, who wished for nothing but to live to see the consummation of
+this match. Throwing his arms about the prince-skeleton's neck and
+watering his hollow cheeks with warm tears, he granted his request, and
+added, that he would immediately resign his crown to him and his
+favourite daughter.
+
+I am forced for want of room to pass over many circumstances that would
+add greatly to the beauty of this history, and am sorry I must dash the
+reader's impatience by acquainting him, that notwithstanding the
+eagerness of the old king and youthful ardour of the prince, the
+nuptials were obliged to be postponed; the archbishop declaring that it
+was essentially necessary to have a dispensation from the pope, the
+parties being related within the forbidden degrees; a woman that never
+was, and a man that had been, being deemed first cousins in the eye of
+the canon law.
+
+Hence arose a new difficulty. The religion of the Quifferiquiminians was
+totally opposite to that of the papists. The former believed in nothing
+but grace; and they had a high-priest of their own, who pretended that
+he was master of the whole fee-simple of grace, and by that possession
+could cause every thing to have been that never had been, and could
+prevent every thing that had been from ever having been. "We have
+nothing to do, said the prince to the king, but to send a solemn embassy
+to the high-priest of grace, with a present of a hundred thousand
+million of ingots, and he will cause your charming no-daughter to have
+been, and will prevent my having died, and then there will be no
+occasion for a dispensation from your old fool at Rome."--How! thou
+impious, atheistical bag of drybones, cried the old king; dost thou
+profane our holy religion? Thou shalt have no daughter of mine, thou
+three-legged skeleton--Go and be buried and be damned, as thou must be;
+for as thou art dead, thou art past repentance: I would sooner give my
+child to a baboon, who has one leg more than thou hast, than bestow her
+on such a reprobate corpse--You had better give your one-legged infanta
+to the baboon, said the prince, they are fitter for one another--As much
+a corpse as I am, I am preferable to nobody; and who the devil would
+have married your no-daughter, but a dead body! For my religion, I lived
+and died in it, and it is not in my power to change it now if I
+would--but for your part--a great shout interrupted this dialogue, and
+the captain of the guard rushing into the royal closet, acquainted his
+majesty, that the second princess, in revenge of the prince's neglect,
+had given her hand to a drysalter, who was a common-council-man, and
+that the city, in consideration of the match, had proclaimed them king
+and queen, allowing his majesty to retain the title for his life, which
+they had fixed for the term of six months; and ordering, in respect of
+his royal birth, that the prince should immediately lie in state and
+have a pompous funeral.
+
+This revolution was so sudden and so universal, that all parties
+approved, or were forced to seem to approve it. The old king died the
+next day, as the courtiers said, for joy; the prince of Quifferiquimini
+was buried in spite of his appeal to the law of nations; and the
+youngest princess went distracted, and was shut up in a madhouse,
+calling out day and night for a husband with three legs.
+
+
+
+
+TALE III.
+
+_The Dice-Box. A Fairy Tale._
+
+_Translated from the French Translation of the Countess DAUNOIS, for the
+Entertainment of Miss CAROLINE CAMPBELL._ [_Eldest daughter of lord
+William Campbell; she lived with her aunt the countess of Ailesbury._]
+
+
+There was a merchant of Damascus named Aboulcasem, who had an only
+daughter called Pissimissi, which signifies _the waters of Jordan_;
+because a fairy foretold at her birth that she would be one of Solomon's
+concubines. Azaziel, the angel of death, having transported Aboulcasem
+to the regions of bliss, he had no fortune to bequeath to his beloved
+child but the shell of a pistachia-nut drawn by an elephant and a
+ladybird. Pissimissi, who was but nine years old, and who had been been
+kept in great confinement, was impatient to see the world; and no sooner
+was the breath out of her father's body, than she got into the car, and
+whipping her elephant and ladybird, drove out of the yard as fast as
+possible, without knowing whither she was going. Her coursers never
+stopped till they came to the foot of a brazen tower, that had neither
+doors nor windows, in which lived an old enchantress, who had locked
+herself up there with seventeen thousand husbands. It had but one single
+vent for air, which was a small chimney grated over, through which it
+was scarce possible to put one's hand. Pissimissi, who was very
+impatient, ordered her coursers to fly with her up to the top of the
+chimney, which, as they were the most docile creatures in the world,
+they immediately did; but unluckily the fore paw of the elephant
+lighting on the top of the chimney, broke down the grate by its weight,
+but at the same time stopped up the passage so entirely, that all the
+enchantress's husbands were stifled for want of air. As it was a
+collection she had made with great care and cost, it is easy to imagine
+her vexation and rage. She raised a storm of thunder and lightning that
+lasted eight hundred and four years; and having conjured up an army of
+two thousand devils, she ordered them to flay the elephant alive, and
+dress it for her supper with anchovy sauce. Nothing could have saved the
+poor beast, if, struggling to get loose from the chimney, he had not
+happily broken wind, which it seems is a great preservative against
+devils. They all flew a thousand ways, and in their hurry carried away
+half the brazen tower, by which means the elephant, the car, the
+ladybird, and Pissimissi got loose; but in their fall tumbled through
+the roof of an apothecary's shop, and broke all his bottles of physic.
+The elephant, who was very dry with his fatigue, and who had not much
+taste, immediately sucked up all the medicines with his proboscis, which
+occasioned such a variety of effects in his bowels, that it was well
+he had such a strong constitution, or he must have died of it. His
+evacuations were so plentiful, that he not only drowned the tower of
+Babel, near which the apothecary's shop stood, but the current ran
+fourscore leagues till it came to the sea, and there poisoned so many
+whales and leviathans, that a pestilence ensued, and lasted three years,
+nine months and sixteen days. As the elephant was extremely weakened by
+what had happened, it was impossible for him to draw the car for
+eighteen months, which was a cruel delay to Pissimissi's impatience,
+who during all that time could not travel above a hundred miles a day,
+for as she carried the sick animal in her lap, the poor ladybird could
+not make longer stages with no assistance. Besides, Pissimissi bought
+every thing she saw wherever she came; and all was crouded into the car
+and stuffed into the seat. She had purchased ninety-two dolls, seventeen
+baby-houses, six cart-loads of sugar-plumbs, a thousand ells of
+gingerbread, eight dancing dogs, a bear and a monkey, four toy-shops
+with all their contents, and seven dozen of bibs and aprons of the
+newest fashion. They were jogging on with all this cargo over mount
+Caucasus, when an immense humming-bird, who had been struck with the
+beauty of the ladybird's wings, that I had forgot to say were of ruby
+spotted with black pearls, sousing down at once upon her prey, swallowed
+ladybird, Pissimissi, the elephant, and all their commodities. It
+happened that the humming-bird belonged to Solomon; he let it out of its
+cage every morning after breakfast, and it constantly came home by the
+time the council broke up. Nothing could equal the surprise of his
+majesty and the courtiers, when the dear little creature arrived with
+the elephant's proboscis hanging out of its divine little bill.
+However, after the first astonishment was over, his majesty, who to be
+sure was wisdom itself, and who understood natural philosophy that it
+was a charm to hear him discourse of those matters, and who was actually
+making a collection of dried beasts and birds in twelve thousand volumes
+of the best fool's-cap paper, immediately perceived what had happened,
+and taking out of the side-pocket of his breeches a diamond
+toothpick-case of his own turning, with the toothpick made of the only
+unicorn's horn he ever saw, he stuck it into the elephant's snout, and
+began to draw it out: but all his philosophy was confounded, when jammed
+between the elephant's legs he perceived the head of a beautiful girl,
+and between her legs a baby-house, which with the wings extended thirty
+feet, out of the windows of which rained a torrent of sugar-plumbs, that
+had been placed there to make room. Then followed the bear, who had been
+pressed to the bales of gingerbread and was covered all over with it,
+and looked but uncouthly; and the monkey with a doll in every paw, and
+his pouches so crammed with sugar-plumbs that they hung on each side of
+him, and trailed on the ground behind like the duchess of ----'s
+beautiful breasts. Solomon, however, gave small attention to this
+procession, being caught with the charms of the lovely Pissimissi: he
+immediately began the song of songs extempore; and what he had seen--I
+mean, all that came out of the humming-bird's throat had made such a
+jumble in his ideas, that there was nothing so unlike to which he did
+not compare all Pissimissi's beauties. As he sung his canticles too
+to no tune, and god knows had but a bad voice, they were far from
+comforting Pissimissi: the elephant had torn her best bib and apron, and
+she cried and roared, and kept such a squalling, that though Solomon
+carried her in his arms, and showed her all the fine things in the
+temple, there was no pacifying her. The queen of Sheba, who was playing
+at backgammon with the high-priest, and who came every October to
+converse with Solomon, though she did not understand a word of Hebrew,
+hearing the noise, came running out of her dressing-room; and seeing the
+king with a squalling child in his arms, asked him peevishly, if it
+became his reputed wisdom to expose himself with his bastards to all the
+court? Solomon, instead of replying, kept singing, "We have a little
+sister, and she has no breasts;" which so provoked the Sheban princess,
+that happening to have one of the dice-boxes in her hand, she without
+any ceremony threw it at his head. The enchantress, whom I mentioned
+before, and who, though invisible, had followed Pissimissi, and drawn
+her into her train of misfortunes, turned the dice-box aside, and
+directed it to Pissimissi's nose, which being something flat, like
+madame de ----'s, it stuck there, and being of ivory, Solomon ever after
+compared his beloved's nose to the tower that leads to Damascus. The
+queen, though ashamed of her behaviour, was not in her heart sorry for
+the accident; but when she found that it only encreased the monarch's
+passion, her contempt redoubled; and calling him a thousand old fools to
+herself, she ordered her post-chaise and drove away in a fury, without
+leaving sixpence for the servants; and nobody knows what became of her
+or her kingdom, which has never been heard of since.
+
+
+
+
+TALE IV.
+
+_The Peach in Brandy. A Milesian Tale._
+
+
+Fitz Scanlan Mac Giolla l'ha druig,[1] king of Kilkenny, the thousand
+and fifty-seventh descendant in a direct line from Milesius king of
+Spain, had an only daughter called Great A, and by corruption Grata; who
+being arrived at years of discretion, and perfectly initiated by her
+royal parents in the arts of government, the fond monarch determined to
+resign his crown to her: having accordingly assembled the senate, he
+declared his resolution to them, and having delivered his sceptre into
+the princess's hand, he obliged her to ascend the throne; and to set the
+example, was the first to kiss her hand, and vow eternal obedience to
+her. The senators were ready to stifle the new queen with panegyrics and
+addresses; the people, though they adored the old king, were transported
+with having a new sovereign, and the university, according to custom
+immemorial, presented her majesty, three months after every body had
+forgotten the event, with testimonials of the excessive sorrow and
+excessive joy they felt on losing one monarch and getting another.
+
+Her majesty was now in the fifth year of her age, and a prodigy of sense
+and goodness. In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped with
+inimitable grace, she assured them that her [2] heart was entirely
+Irish, and that she did not intend any longer to go in leading-strings,
+as a proof of which she immediately declared her nurse prime-minister.
+The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiums
+than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of
+sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of
+usquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was
+her royal pleasure to play at blindman's-buff, but such a hub-bub arose
+from the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching one
+another, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle her
+majesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as a
+pigeon's egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard her
+to Tipperary. The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the mace
+knocked out the chancellor's brains, who at that time happened not to
+have any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see the
+ceremony, fell into a fit and [3] miscarried of twins, who were killed
+by her majesty's fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of the
+crown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead
+children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the [4] king and
+wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had now
+recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which
+Mr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence
+of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having
+asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present
+most lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata. An impeachment
+was voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition,
+particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name is
+unfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journals
+afterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became first
+lord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata's
+successor. The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whose
+name is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived a
+son before the king's resignation, that son was indubitably heir to the
+crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota
+whether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, when
+it was conceived--here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, the
+queen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who
+entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted
+by the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question for
+which was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed,
+the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go and
+drink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to a
+very long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which he
+contrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, that
+it produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages and
+massacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, and
+which were at last terminated by a lucky accident, well known, says my
+author, to every body, but which he thinks it his duty to relate for the
+sake of those who never may have heard it. These are his words:
+
+     It happened that the archbishop of Tuum (anciently called Meum by
+     the Roman catholic clergy) the great wit of those times, was in the
+     queen-mother's closet, who had the young queen in her lap. [5] His
+     grace was suddenly seized with a violent fit of the cholic, which
+     made him make such wry faces, that the queen-mother thought he was
+     going to die, and ran out of the room to send for a physician, for
+     she was a pattern of goodness, and void of pride. While she was
+     stepped into the servant's hall to call somebody, according to the
+     simplicity of those times, the archbishop's pains encreased, when
+     perceiving something on the mantle-piece, which he took for a peach
+     in brandy, he gulped it all down at once without saying grace, God
+     forgive him, and found great comfort from it. He had not done
+     licking his lips before the queen-mother returned, when queen Grata
+     cried out, "Mama, mama, the gentleman has eat my little brother!"
+     This fortunate event put an end to the contest, the male line
+     entirely failing in the person of the devoured prince. The
+     archbishop, however, who became pope by the name of Innocent the
+     3d. having afterwards a son by his sister, named the child
+     Fitzpatrick, as having some of the royal blood in its veins; and
+     from him are descended all the younger branches of the Fitzpatricks
+     of our time. Now the rest of the acts of Grata and all that she
+     did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
+     kings of Kilkenny?
+
+
+NOTES ON TALE IV.
+
+_This tale was written for Anne Liddel countess of Offory, wife of John
+Fitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject of
+this story._
+
+[Footnote 1: _Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family of
+Fitzpatrick._]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, her
+heart was entirely English._]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Lady Offory had miscarried just then of two sons._]
+
+[Footnote 4: _The housekeeper, as soon as lord Offory came home, wished
+him joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead._]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irish
+author is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having said
+that the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks of
+queen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother's
+lap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of the
+question_. Like a child _does not import that she actually was a child:
+she only sat_ like a child; _and so she might though thirty years old.
+Civilians have declared at what period of his life a king may be of age
+before he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of the
+tribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants after
+they are past their infancy._]
+
+
+
+
+TALE V.
+
+Mi Li. _A Chinese Fairy Tale_.
+
+
+Mi Li, prince of China, was brought up by his godmother the fairy Hih,
+who was famous for telling fortunes with a tea-cup. From that unerring
+oracle she assured him, that he would be the most unhappy man alive
+unless he married a princess whose name was the same with her father's
+dominions. As in all probability there could not be above one person in
+the world to whom that accident had happened, the prince thought there
+would be nothing so easy as to learn who his destined bride was. He had
+been too well educated to put the question to his godmother, for he knew
+when she uttered an oracle, that it was with intention to perplex, not
+to inform; which has made people so fond of consulting all those who do
+not give an explicit answer, such as prophets, lawyers, and any body you
+meet on the road, who, if you ask the way, reply by desiring to know
+whence you came. Mi Li was no sooner returned to his palace than he sent
+for his governor, who was deaf and dumb, qualities for which the fairy
+had selected him, that he might not instil any bad principles into his
+pupil; however, in recompence, he could talk upon his fingers like an
+angel. Mi Li asked him directly who the princess was whose name was the
+same with her father's kingdom? This was a little exaggeration in the
+prince, but nobody ever repeats any thing just as they heard it:
+besides, it was excusable in the heir of a great monarchy, who of all
+things had not been taught to speak truth, and perhaps had never heard
+what it was. Still it was not the mistake of _kingdom_ for _dominions_
+that puzzled the governor. It never helped him to understand any thing
+the better for its being rightly stated. However, as he had great
+presence of mind, which consisted in never giving a direct answer, and
+in looking as if he could, he replied, it was a question of too great
+importance to be resolved on a sudden. How came you to know that? Said
+the prince--This youthful impetuosity told the governor that there was
+something more in the question than he had apprehended; and though he
+could be very solemn about nothing, he was ten times more so when there
+was something he did not comprehend. Yet that unknown something
+occasioning a conflict between his cunning and his ignorance, and the
+latter being the greater, always betrayed itself, for nothing looks so
+silly as a fool acting wisdom. The prince repeated his question; the
+governor demanded why he asked--the prince had not patience to spell the
+question over again on his fingers, but bawled it as loud as he could to
+no purpose. The courtiers ran in, and catching up the prince's words,
+and repeating them imperfectly, it soon flew all over Pekin, and thence
+into the provinces, and thence into Tartary, and thence to Muscovy, and
+so on, that the prince wanted to know who the princess was, whose name
+was the same as her father's. As the Chinese have not the blessing (for
+aught I know) of having family surnames as we have, and as what would be
+their christian-names, if they were so happy as to be christians, are
+quite different for men and women, the Chinese, who think that must be a
+rule all over the world because it is theirs, decided that there could
+not exist upon the square face of the earth a woman whose name was the
+same as her father's. They repeated this so often, and with so much
+deference and so much obstinacy, that the prince, totally forgetting the
+original oracle, believed that he wanted to know who the woman was who
+had the same name as her father. However, remembring there was something
+in the question that he had taken for royal, he always said _the king
+her father_. The prime minister consulted the red book or court-calendar,
+which was _his_ oracle, and could find no such princess. All the
+ministers at foreign courts were instructed to inform themselves if
+there was any such lady; but as it took up a great deal of time to put
+these instructions into cypher, the prince's impatience could not wait
+for the couriers setting out, but he determined to go himself in search
+of the princess. The old king, who, _as is usual_, had left the whole
+management of affairs to his son the moment he was fourteen, was charmed
+with the prince's resolution of seeing the world, which he thought could
+be done in a few days, the facility of which makes so many monarchs
+never stir out of their own palaces till it is too late; and his majesty
+declared, that he should approve of his son's choice, be the lady who
+she would, provided she answered to the divine designation of having the
+same name as her father.
+
+The prince rode post to Canton, intending to embark there on board an
+English man of war. With what infinite transport did he hear the evening
+before he was to embark, that a sailor knew the identic lady in
+question. The prince scalded his mouth with the tea he was drinking,
+broke the old china cup it was in, and which the queen his mother had
+given him at his departure from Pekin, and which had been given to her
+great great great great grandmother queen Fi by Confucius himself, and
+ran down to the vessel and asked for the man who knew his bride. It was
+honest Tom O'Bull, an Irish sailor, who by his interpreter Mr. James
+Hall, the supercargo, informed his highness that Mr. Bob Oliver of Sligo
+had a daughter christened of both his names, the fair miss Bob Oliver.[1]
+The prince by the plenitude of his power declared Tom a mandarin of the
+first class, and at Tom's desire promised to speak to his brother the
+king of Great Ireland, France and Britain, to have him made a peer in
+his own country, Tom saying he should be ashamed to appear there without
+being a lord as well as all his acquaintance.
+
+The prince's passion, which was greatly inflamed by Tom's description of
+her highness Bob's charms, would not let him stay for a proper set of
+ladies from Pekin to carry to wait on his bride, so he took a dozen of
+the wives of the first merchants in Canton, and two dozen virgins as
+maids of honour, who however were disqualified for their employments
+before his highness got to St. Helena. Tom himself married one of them,
+but was so great a favourite with the prince, that she still was
+appointed maid of honour, and with Tom's consent was afterwards married
+to an English duke.
+
+Nothing can paint the agonies of our royal lover, when on his landing at
+Dublin he was informed that princess Bob had quitted Ireland, and was
+married to nobody knew whom. It was well for Tom that he was on Irish
+ground. He would have been chopped as small as rice, for it is death in
+China to mislead the heir of the crown through ignorance. To do it
+knowingly is no crime, any more than in other countries.
+
+As a prince of China cannot marry a woman that has been married before,
+it was necessary for Mi Li to search the world for another lady equally
+qualified with miss Bob, whom he forgot the moment he was told he must
+marry somebody else, and fell equally in love with somebody else, though
+be knew not with whom. In this suspence he dreamt, "_that he would find
+his destined spouse, whose father had lost the dominions which never had
+been his dominions, in a place where there was a bridge over no water, a
+tomb where nobody ever was buried nor ever would be buried, ruins that
+were more than they had ever been, a subterraneous passage in which
+there were dogs with eyes of rubies and emeralds, and a more beautiful
+menagerie of Chinese pheasants than any in his father's extensive
+gardens_." This oracle seemed so impossible to be accomplished, that he
+believed it more than he had done the first, which shewed his great
+piety. He determined to begin his second search, and being told by the
+lord lieutenant that there was in England a Mr. Banks,[2] who was going
+all over the world in search of he did not know what, his highness
+thought he could not have a better conductor, and sailed for England.
+There he learnt that the sage Banks was at Oxford, hunting in the
+Bodleian library for a MS. voyage of a man who had been in the moon,
+which Mr. Banks thought must have been in the western ocean, where the
+moon sets, and which planet if he could discover once more, he would
+take possession of in his majesty's name, upon condition that it should
+never be taxed, and so be lost again to this country like the rest of
+his majesty's dominions in that part of the world.
+
+Mi Li took a hired post-chaise for Oxford, but as it was a little rotten
+it broke on the new road down to Henley. A beggar advised him to walk
+into general Conway's, who was the most courteous person alive, and
+would certainly lend him his own chaise. The prince travelled incog. He
+took the beggar's advice, but going up to the house was told the family
+were in the grounds, but he should be conducted to them. He was led
+through a venerable wood of beeches, to a menagerie[3] commanding a more
+glorious prospect than any in his father's dominions, and full of
+Chinese pheasants. The prince cried out in extasy, Oh! potent Hih! my
+dream begins to be accomplished. The gardiner, who knew no Chinese but
+the names of a few plants, was struck with the similitude of the sounds,
+but discreetly said not a word. Not finding his lady there, as he
+expected, he turned back, and plunging suddenly into the thickest gloom
+of the wood, he descended into a cavern totally dark, the intrepid
+prince following him boldly. After advancing a great way into this
+subterraneous vault, at last they perceived light, when on a sudden they
+were pursued by several small spaniels, and turning to look at them, the
+prince perceived their eyes[4] shone like emeralds and rubies. Instead
+of being amazed, as Fo-Hi, the founder of his race, would have been, the
+prince renewed his exclamations, and cried, I advance! I advance! I
+shall find my bride! great Hih! thou art infallible! Emerging into
+light, the imperturbed[5] gardiner conducted his highness to a heap of
+artificial[6] ruins, beneath which they found a spacious gallery or
+arcade, where his highness was asked if he would not repose himself; but
+instead of answering he capered like one frantic, crying out, I advance!
+I advance! great Hih! I advance!--The gardiner was amazed, and doubted
+whether he was not conducting a madman to his master and lady, and
+hesitated whether he should proceed--but as he understood nothing the
+prince said, and perceiving he must be a foreigner, he concluded he was
+a Frenchman by his dancing. As the stranger too was so nimble and not at
+all tired with his walk, the sage gardiner proceeded down a sloping
+valley, between two mountains cloathed to their summits with cedars,
+firs, and pines, which he took care to tell the prince were all of his
+honour the general's own planting: but though the prince had learnt more
+English in three days in Ireland, than all the French in the world ever
+learnt in three years, he took no notice of the information, to the
+great offence of the gardiner, but kept running on, and increased his
+gambols and exclamations when he perceived the vale was terminated by a
+stupendous bridge, that seemed composed of the rocks which the giants
+threw at Jupiter's head, and had not a drop of water beneath[7]
+it--Where is my bride, my bride? cried Mi Li--I must be near her. The
+prince's shouts and cries drew a matron from a cottage that stood on a
+precipice near the bridge, and hung over the river--My lady is down at
+Ford-house, cried the good[8] woman, who was a little deaf, concluding
+they had called to her to know. The gardiner knew it was in vain to
+explain his distress to her, and thought that if the poor gentleman was
+really mad, his master the general would be the properest person to know
+how to manage him. Accordingly turning to the left, he led the prince
+along the banks of the river, which glittered through the opening
+fallows, while on the other hand a wilderness of shrubs climbed up the
+pendent cliffs of chalk, and contrasted with the verdant meads and
+fields of corn beyond the stream. The prince, insensible to such
+enchanting scenes, galloped wildly along, keeping the poor gardiner on a
+round trot, till they were stopped by a lonely[9] tomb, surrounded by
+cypress, yews, and willows, that seemed the monument of some adventurous
+youth who had been lost in tempting the current, and might have suited
+the gallant and daring Leander. Here Mi Li first had presence of mind to
+recollect the little English he knew, and eagerly asked the gardiner
+whose tomb he beheld before him. It is nobody's--before he could
+proceed, the prince interrupted him, And will it never be any
+body's?--Oh! thought the gardiner, now there is no longer any doubt of
+his phrenzy--and perceiving his master and the family approaching
+towards them, he endeavoured to get the start, but the prince, much
+younger, and borne too on the wings of love, set out full speed the
+moment he saw the company, and particularly a young damsel with them.
+Running almost breathless up to lady Ailesbury, and seizing miss
+Campbell's hand--he cried, _Who she? who she_? Lady Ailesbury screamed,
+the young maiden squalled, the general, cool but offended, rushed
+between them, and if a prince could be collared, would have collared
+him--Mi Li kept fast hold with one arm, but pointing to his prize with
+the other, and with the most eager and supplicating looks intreating for
+an answer, continued to exclaim, _Who she? who she_? The general
+perceiving by his accent and manner that he was a foreigner, and rather
+tempted to laugh than be angry, replied with civil scorn, Why _she_ is
+miss Caroline Campbell, daughter of lord William Campbell, his majesty's
+late governor of Carolina--Oh, Hih! I now recollect thy words! cried Mi
+Li--And so she became princess of China.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON TALE V.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _There really was such a person._.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _The gentleman who discovered Otaheite, in company with Dr.
+Solander._]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Lady Ailesbury's._]
+
+[Footnote 4: _At Park-place there is such a passage cut through a
+chalk-hill: when dogs are in the middle, the light from the mouth makes
+their eyes appear in the manner here described._]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Copeland, the gardiner, a very grave person._]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Consequently they seem to have been larger._]
+
+[Footnote 7: _The rustic bridge at Park-place was built by general
+Conway, to carry the road from Henley, and to leave the communication
+free between his grounds on each side of the road. Vide last page of
+4th. vol. of Anecdotes of Painting._]
+
+[Footnote 8: _The old woman who kept the cottage built by general Conway
+to command a glorious prospect. Ford-house is a farm house at the
+termination of the grounds._]
+
+[Footnote 9: _A fictitious tomb in a beautiful spot by the river, built
+for a point of view: it has a small pyramid on it._]
+
+
+
+
+TALE VI.
+
+_A true Love Story_.
+
+In the height of the animosities between the factions of the Guelfs and
+Ghibellines, a party of Venetians had made an inroad into the
+territories of the Viscontis, sovereigns of Milan, and had carried off
+the young Orondates, then at nurse. His family were at that time under a
+cloud, though they could boast of being descended from Canis Scaliger,
+lord of Verona. The captors sold the beautiful Orondates to a rich widow
+of the noble family of Grimaldi, who having no children, brought him up
+with as much tenderness as if he had been her son. Her fondness
+increased with the growth of his stature and charms, and the violence of
+his passions were augmented by the signora Grimaldi's indulgence. Is it
+necessary to say that love reigned predominantly in the soul of
+Orondates? Or that in a city like Venice a form like that of Orondates
+met with little resistance?
+
+The Cyprian queen, not content with the numerous oblations of Orondates
+on her altars, was not satisfied while his heart remained unengaged.
+Across the canal, overagainst the palace of Grimaldi, stood a convent of
+Carmelite nuns, the abbess of which had a young African slave of the
+most exquisite beauty, called Azora, a year younger than Orondates. Jet
+and japan were tawny and without lustre, when compared to the hue of
+Azora. Afric never produced a female so perfect as Azora; as Europe
+could boast but of one Orondates.
+
+The signora Grimaldi, though no bigot, was pretty regular at her
+devotions, but as lansquenet was more to her taste than praying, she
+hurried over her masses as fast as she could, to allot more of her
+precious time to cards. This made her prefer the church of the
+Carmelites, separated only by a small bridge, though the abbess was of a
+contrary faction. However, as both ladies were of equal quality, and had
+had no altercations that could countenance incivility, reciprocal
+curtsies always passed between them, the coldness of which each
+pretended to lay on their attention to their devotions, though the
+signora Grimaldi attended but little to the priest, and the abbess was
+chiefly employed in watching and criticising the inattention of the
+signora.
+
+Not so Orondates and Azora. Both constantly accompanied their mistresses
+to mass, and the first moment they saw each other was decisive in both
+breasts. Venice ceased to have more than one fair in the eyes of
+Orondates, and Azora had not remarked till then that there could be more
+beautiful beings in the world than some of the Carmelite nuns.
+
+The seclusion of the abbess, and the aversion between the two ladies,
+which was very cordial on the side of the holy one, cut off all hopes
+from the lovers. Azora grew grave and pensive and melancholy; Orondates
+surly and intractable. Even his attachment to his kind patroness
+relaxed. He attended her reluctantly but at the hours of prayer. Often
+did she find him on the steps of the church ere the doors were opened.
+The signora Grimaldi was not apt to make observations. She was content
+with indulging her own passions, seldom restrained those of others; and
+though good offices rarely presented themselves to her imagination, she
+was ready to exert them when applied to, and always talked charitably of
+the unhappy at her cards, if it was not a very unlucky deal.
+
+Still it is probable that she never would have discovered the passion of
+Orondates, had not her woman, who was jealous of his favour, given her a
+hint; at the same time remarking, under affectation of good will, how
+well the circumstances of the lovers were suited, and that as her
+ladyship was in years, and would certainly not think of providing for a
+creature she had bought in the public market, it would be charitable to
+marry the fond couple, and settle them on her farm in the country.
+
+Fortunately madame Grimaldi always was open to good impressions, and
+rarely to bad. Without perceiving the malice of her woman, she was
+struck with the idea of a marriage. She loved the cause, and always
+promoted it when it was honestly in her power. She seldom made
+difficulties, and never apprehended them. Without even examining
+Orondates on the state of his inclinations, without recollecting that
+madame Capello and she were of different parties, without taking any
+precautions to guard against a refusal, she instantly wrote to the
+abbess to propose a marriage between Orondates and Azora.
+
+The latter was in madame Capello's chamber when the note arrived. All
+the fury that authority loves to console itself with for being under
+restraint, all the asperity of a bigot, all the acrimony of party, and
+all the fictitious rage that prudery adopts when the sensual enjoyments
+of others are concerned, burst out on the helpless Azora, who was unable
+to divine how she was concerned in the fatal letter. She was made to
+endure all the calumnies that the abbess would have been glad to have
+hurled at the head of madame Grimaldi, if her own character and the rank
+of that offender would have allowed it. Impotent menaces of revenge were
+repeated with emphasis, and as nobody in the convent dared to contradict
+her, she gratified her anger and love of prating with endless
+tautologies. In fine, Azora was strictly locked up and bread and water
+were ordered as sovereign cures for love. Twenty replies to madame
+Grimaldi were written and torn, as not sufficiently expressive of a
+resentment that was rather vociferous than eloquent, and her confessor
+was at last forced to write one, in which he prevailed to have some holy
+cant inserted, though forced to compound for a heap of irony that
+related to the antiquity of her family, and for many unintelligible
+allusions to vulgar stories which the Ghibelline party had treasured up
+against the Guelfs. The most lucid part of the epistle pronounced a
+sentence of eternal chastity on Azora, not without some sarcastic
+expressions against the promiscuous amours of Orondates, which ought in
+common decorum to have banished him long ago from the mansion of a
+widowed matron.
+
+Just as this fulminatory mandate had been transcribed and signed by the
+lady abbess in full chapter, and had been consigned to the confessor to
+deliver, the portress of the convent came running out of breath, and
+announced to the venerable assembly, that Azora, terrified by the
+abbess's blows and threats, had fallen in labour and miscarried of four
+puppies: for be it known to all posterity, that Orondates was an Italian
+greyhound, and Azora a black spaniel.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+The foregoing Tales are given for no more than they are worth: they are
+mere whimsical trifles, written chiefly for private entertainment, and
+for private amusement half a dozen copies only are printed. They deserve
+at most to be considered as an attempt to vary the stale and beaten
+class of stories and novels, which, though works of invention, are
+almost always devoid of imagination. It would scarcely be credited, were
+it not evident from the Bibliotheque des Romans, which contains the
+fictitious adventures that have been written in all ages and all
+countries, that there should have been so little fancy, so little
+variety, and so little novelty, in writings in which the imagination is
+fettered by no rules, and by no obligation of speaking truth. There is
+infinitely more invention in history, which has no merit if devoid of
+truth, than in romances and novelty which pretend to none.
+
+
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hieroglyphic Tales, by Horace Walpole
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14098 ***
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+    Hieroglyphic Tales,
+    by Horace Walpole.
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14098 ***</div>
+
+<p>
+    [Transcriber's Note: Archaic spellings in the original text have been
+retained in this version.]
+</p>
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br><br><br><br><br><br></div>
+<h1>
+    HIEROGLYPHIC TALES.
+</h1>
+<center>
+<i>Schah Baham ne comprenoit jamais bien que les choses absurdes &amp; hors de
+toute vraisemblance.</i>
+</center>
+<p style="text-align:right;">
+Le Sopha, p. 5.
+</p>
+
+<center><small>
+STRAWBERRY-HILL: PRINTED BY T. KIRGATE, MDCCLXXXV.</small>
+</center>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    PREFACE.
+</h2>
+<p>
+As the invaluable present I am making to the world may not please all
+tastes, from the gravity of the matter, the solidity of the reasoning,
+and the deep learning contained in the ensuing sheets, it is necessary
+to make some apology for producing this work in so trifling an age, when
+nothing will go down but temporary politics, personal satire, and idle
+romances. The true reason then for my surmounting all these objections
+was singly this: I was apprehensive lest the work should be lost to
+posterity; and though it may be condemned at present, I can have no
+doubt but it will be treated with due reverence some hundred ages hence,
+when wisdom and learning shall have gained their proper ascendant over
+mankind, and when men shall only read for instruction and improvement of
+their minds. As I shall print an hundred thousand copies, some, it may
+be hoped, will escape the havoc that is made of moral works, and then
+this jewel will shine forth in its genuine lustre. I was in the greater
+hurry to consign this work to the press, as I foresee that the art of
+printing will ere long be totally lost, like other useful discoveries
+well known to the ancients. Such were the art of dissolving rocks with
+hot vinegar, of teaching elephants to dance on the slack rope, of making
+malleable glass, of writing epic poems that any body would read after
+they had been published a month, and the stupendous invention of new
+religions, a secret of which illiterate Mahomet was the last person
+possessed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Notwithstanding this my zeal for good letters, and the ardour of my
+universal citizenship, (for I declare I design this present for all
+nations) there are some small difficulties in the way, that prevent my
+conferring this my great benefaction on the world compleatly and all at
+once. I am obliged to produce it in small portions, and therefore beg
+the prayers of all good and wise men that my life may be prolonged to
+me, till I shall be able to publish the whole work, no man else being
+capable of executing the charge so well as myself, for reasons that my
+modesty will not permit me to specify. In the mean time, as it is the
+duty of an editor to acquaint the world with what relates to himself as
+well as his author, I think it right to mention the causes that compel
+me to publish this work in numbers. The common reason of such proceeding
+is to make a book dearer for the ease of the purchasers, it being
+supposed that most people had rather give twenty shillings by sixpence a
+fortnight, than pay ten shillings once for all. Public spirited as this
+proceeding is, I must confess my reasons are more and merely personal.
+As my circumstances are very moderate, and barely sufficient to maintain
+decently a gentleman of my abilities and learning, I cannot afford to
+print at once an hundred thousand copies of two volumes in folio, for
+that will be the whole mass of Hieroglyphic Tales when the work is
+perfected. In the next place, being very asthmatic, and requiring a free
+communication of air, I lodge in the uppermost story of a house in an
+alley not far from St. Mary Axe; and as a great deal of good company
+lodges in the same mansion, it was by a considerable favour that I could
+obtain a single chamber to myself; which chamber is by no means large
+enough to contain the whole impression, for I design to vend the copies
+myself, and, according to the practice of other great men, shall sign
+the first sheet my self with my own hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+Desirous as I am of acquainting the world with many more circumstances
+relative to myself, some private considerations prevent my indulging
+their curiosity any farther at present; but I shall take care to leave
+so minute an account of myself to some public library, that the future
+commentators and editors of this work shall not be deprived of all
+necessary lights. In the mean time I beg the reader to accept the
+temporary compensation of an account of the author whose work I am
+publishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the
+creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral
+tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island,
+not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic
+attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them
+repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born.
+We do not trouble the reader with these attestations, as we are sure
+every body will believe them as much as if they had seen them. It is more
+difficult to ascertain the true author. We might ascribe them with great
+probability to Kemanrlegorpikos, son of Quat; but besides that we are
+not certain that any such person ever existed, it is not clear that he
+ever wrote any thing but a book of cookery, and that in heroic verse.
+Others give them to Quat's nurse, and a few to Hermes Trismegistus,
+though there is a passage in the latter's treatise on the harpsichord
+which directly contradicts the account of the first volcano in the
+114th. of the Hieroglyphic Tales. As Trismegistus's work is lost, it
+is impossible to decide now whether the discordance mentioned is so
+positive as has been asserted by many learned men, who only guess at the
+opinion of Hermes from other passages in his writings, and who indeed
+are not sure whether he was speaking of volcanoes or cheesecakes, for
+he drew so ill, that his hieroglyphics may often be taken for the most
+opposite things in nature; and as there is no subject which he has not
+treated, it is not precisely known what he was discussing in any one
+of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+This is the nearest we can come to any certainty with regard to the
+author. But whether he wrote the Tales six thousand years ago, as we
+believe, or whether they were written for him within these ten years,
+they are incontestably the most ancient work in the world; and though
+there is little imagination, and still less invention in them; yet there
+are so many passages in them exactly resembling Homer, that any man
+living would conclude they were imitated from that great poet, if it was
+not certain that Homer borrowed from them, which I shall prove two ways:
+first, by giving Homer's parallel passages at the bottom of the page;
+and secondly, by translating Homer himself into prose, which shall make
+him so unlike himself, that nobody will think he could be an original
+writer: and when he is become totally lifeless and insipid, it will be
+impossible but these Tales should be preferred to the Iliad; especially
+as I design to put them into a kind of style that shall be neither verse
+nor prose; a diction lately much used in tragedies and heroic poems, the
+former of which are really heroic poems from want of probability, as an
+antico-moderno epic poem is in fact a meer tragedy, having little or no
+change of scene, no incidents but a ghost and a storm, and no events but
+the deaths of the principal actors.
+</p>
+<p>
+I will not detain the reader longer from the perusal of this invaluable
+work; but I must beseech the public to be expeditious in taking off the
+whole impression, as fast as I can get it printed; because I must inform
+them that I have a more precious work in contemplation; namely, a new
+Roman history, in which I mean to ridicule, detect and expose, all
+ancient virtue, and patriotism, and shew from original papers which
+I am going to write, and which I shall afterwards bury in the ruins of
+Carthage and then dig up, that it appears by the letters of Hanno the
+Punic embassador at Rome, that Scipio was in the pay of Hannibal, and
+that the dilatoriness of Fabius proceeded from his being a pensioner
+of the Same general. I own this discovery will pierce my heart; but as
+morality is best taught by shewing how little effect it had on the best
+of men, I will sacrifice the most virtuous names for the instruction of
+the present wicked generation; and I cannot doubt but when once they
+have learnt to detest the favourite heroes of antiquity, they will
+become good subjects of the most pious king that ever lived since David,
+who expelled the established royal family, and then sung psalms to the
+memory of Jonathan, to whose prejudice he had succeeded to the throne.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE 1.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>A new Arabian Night's Entertainment.</i>
+</h3>
+<p>
+At the foot of the great mountain Hirgonqúu was anciently situated the
+kingdom of Larbidel. Geographers, who are not apt to make such just
+comparisons, said, it resembled a football just going to be kicked away;
+and so it happened; for the mountain kicked the kingdom into the ocean,
+and it has never been heard of since.
+</p>
+<p>
+One day a young princess had climbed up to the top of the mountain to
+gather goat's eggs, the whites of which are excellent for taking off
+freckles.&mdash;Goat's eggs!&mdash;Yes&mdash;naturalists hold that all Beings are
+conceived in an egg. The goats of Hirgonqúu might be oviparous, and lay
+their eggs to be hatched by the sun. This is my supposition; no matter
+whether I believe it myself or not. I will write against and abuse any
+man that opposes my hypothesis. It would be fine indeed if learned men
+were obliged to believe what they assert.
+</p>
+<p>
+The other side of the mountain was inhabited by a nation of whom the
+Larbidellians knew no more than the French nobility do of Great Britain,
+which they think is an island that some how or other may be approached
+by land. The princess had strayed into the confines of Cucurucu, when
+she suddenly found herself seized by the guards of the prince that
+reigned in that country. They told her in few words that she must be
+conveyed to the capital and married to the giant their lord and emperor.
+The giant, it seems, was fond of having a new wife every night, who was
+to tell him a story that would last till morning, and then have her head
+cut off&mdash;such odd ways have some folks of passing their wedding-nights!
+The princess modestly asked, why their master loved such long stories?
+The captain of the guard replied, his majesty did not sleep well&mdash;Well!
+said she, and if he does not!&mdash;not but I believe I can tell as long
+stories as any princess in Asia. Nay, I can repeat Leonidas by heart,
+and your emperor must be wakeful indeed if he can hold out against that.
+</p>
+<p>
+By this time they were arrived at the palace. To the great surprise of
+the princess, the emperor, so far from being a giant, was but five feet
+one inch in height; but being two inches taller than any of his
+predecessors, the flattery of his courtiers had bestowed the name of
+<i>giant</i> on him; and he affected to look down upon any man above his own
+stature. The princess was immediately undressed and put to bed, his
+majesty being impatient to hear a new story.
+</p>
+<p>
+Light of my eyes, said the emperor, what is your name? I call myself the
+princess Gronovia, replied she; but my real appellation is the frow
+Gronow. And what is the use of a name, said his majesty, but to be
+called by it? And why do you pretend to be a princess, if you are not?
+My turn is romantic, answered she, and I have ever had an ambition of
+being the heroine of a novel. Now there are but two conditions that
+entitle one to that rank; one must be a shepherdess or a princess. Well,
+content yourself, said the giant, you will die an empress, without
+being either the one or the other! But what sublime reason had you for
+lengthening your name so unaccountably? It is a custom in my family,
+said she: all my ancestors were learned men, who wrote about the Romans.
+It sounded more classic, and gave a higher opinion of their literature,
+to put a Latin termination to their names. All this is Japonese to me,
+said the emperor; but your ancestors seem to have been a parcel of
+mountebanks. Does one understand any thing the better for corrupting
+one's name? Oh, said the princess, but it shewed taste too. There was
+a time when in Italy the learned carried this still farther; and a man
+with a large forehead, who was born on the fifth of January, called
+himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the
+emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a
+great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came
+you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland&mdash;The deuce you was, said
+the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess,
+spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea&mdash;Indeed, moppet!
+said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any
+country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said she, which I
+cannot resolve on a sudden; but I will step home to my library, and
+consult five or six thousand volumes of modern history, an hundred or
+two dictionaries, and an abridgment of geography in forty volumes in
+folio, and be back in an instant. Not so fast, my life, said the
+emperor, you must not rise till you go to execution; it is now one in
+the morning, and you have not begun your story.
+</p>
+<p>
+My great grandfather, continued the princess, was a Dutch merchant, who
+passed many years in Japan&mdash;On what account? said the emperor. He went
+thither to abjure his religion, said she, that he might get money enough
+to return and defend it against Philip 2d. You are a pleasant family,
+said the emperor; but though I love fables, I hate genealogies. I know
+in all families, by their own account, there never was any thing but
+good and great men from father to son; a sort of fiction that does not
+at all amuse me. In my dominions there is no nobility but flattery.
+Whoever flatters me best is created a great lord, and the titles I
+confer are synonimous to their merits. There is Kiss-my-breech-Can, my
+favourite; Adulation-Can, lord treasurer; Prerogative-Can, head of the
+law; and Blasphemy-Can, high-priest. Whoever speaks truth, corrupts his
+blood, and is ipso facto degraded. In Europe you allow a man to be noble
+because one of his ancestors was a flatterer. But every thing
+degenerates, the farther it is removed from its source. I will not hear
+a word of any of your race before your father: what was he?
+</p>
+<p>
+It was in the height of the contests about the bull unigenitus&mdash;I tell
+you, interrupted the emperor, I will not be plagued with any more of
+those people with Latin names: they were a parcel of coxcombs, and seem
+to have infected you with their folly. I am sorry, replied Gronovia,
+that your sublime highness is so little acquainted with the state of
+Europe, as to take a papal ordinance for a person. Unigenitus is Latin
+for the Jesuits&mdash;And who the devil are the Jesuits? said the giant.
+You explain one nonsensical term by another, and wonder I am never the
+wiser. Sir, said the princess, if you will permit me to give you a short
+account of the troubles that have agitated Europe for these last two
+hundred years, on the doctrines of grace, free-will, predestination,
+reprobation, justification, &amp;c. you will be more entertained, and will
+believe less, than if I told your majesty a long story of fairies and
+goblins. You are an eternal prater, said the emperor, and very
+self-sufficient; but talk your fill, and upon what subject you like till
+tomorrow morning; but I swear by the soul of the holy Jirigi, who rode
+to heaven on the tail of a magpie, as soon as the clock strikes eight,
+you are a dead woman. Well, who was the Jesuit Unigenitus?
+</p>
+<p>
+The novel doctrines that had sprung up in Germany, said Gronovia, made
+it necessary for the church to look about her. The disciples of
+Loyola&mdash;Of whom? said the emperor, yawning&mdash;Ignatius Loyola, the founder
+of the Jesuits, replied Gronovia, was&mdash;A writer of Roman history, I
+suppose, interrupted the emperor: what the devil were the Romans to you,
+that you trouble your head so much about them? The empire of Rome, and
+the church of Rome, are two distinct things, said the princess; and yet,
+as one may say, the one depends upon the other, as the new testament
+does on the old. One destroyed the other, and yet pretends a right to
+its inheritance. The temporalities of the church&mdash;What's o'clock, said
+the emperor to the chief eunuch? it cannot sure be far from eight&mdash;this
+woman has gossipped at least seven hours. Do you hear, my
+tomorrow-night's wife shall be dumb&mdash;cut her tongue out before you bring
+her to our bed. Madam, said the eunuch, his sublime highness, whose
+erudition passes the lands of the sea, is too well acquainted with all
+human sciences to require information. It is therefore that his exalted
+wisdom prefers accounts of what never happened, to any relation either
+in history or divinity&mdash;You lie, said the emperor; when I exclude truth,
+I certainly do not mean to forbid divinity&mdash;How many divinities have
+you in Europe, woman? The council of Trent, replied Gronovia, has
+decided&mdash;the emperor began to snore&mdash;I mean, continued Gronovia, that
+notwithstanding all father Paul has asserted, cardinal Palavicini
+affirms that in the three first sessions of that council&mdash;the emperor
+was now fast asleep, which the princess and the chief eunuch perceiving,
+clapped several pillows upon his face, and held them there till he
+expired. As soon as they were convinced he was dead, the princess,
+putting on every mark of despair and concern, issued to the divan,
+where she was immediately proclaimed empress. The emperor, it was given
+out, had died of an hermorrhoidal cholic, but to shew her regard for his
+memory, her imperial majesty declared she would strictly adhere to the
+maxims by which he had governed. Accordingly she espoused a new husband
+every night, but dispensed with their telling her stories, and was
+graciously pleased also, upon their good behaviour, to remit the
+subsequent execution. She sent presents to all the learned men in Asia;
+and they in return did not fail to cry her up as a pattern of clemency,
+wisdom, and virtue: and though the panegyrics of the learned are
+generally as clumsy as they are fulsome, they ventured to allure her
+that their writings would be as durable as brass, and that the memory of
+her glorious reign would reach to the latest posterity.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE II.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>The King and his three Daughters</i>.
+</h3>
+<p>
+There was formerly a king, who had three daughters&mdash;that is, he would
+have had three, if he had had one more, but some how or other the eldest
+never was born. She was extremely handsome, had a great deal of wit, and
+spoke French in perfection, as all the authors of that age affirm, and
+yet none of them pretend that she ever existed. It is very certain that
+the two other princesses were far from beauties; the second had a strong
+Yorkshire dialect, and the youngest had bad teeth and but one leg, which
+occasioned her dancing very ill.
+</p>
+<p>
+As it was not probable that his majesty would have any more children,
+being eighty-seven years, two months, and thirteen days old when his
+queen died, the states of the kingdom were very anxious to have the
+princesses married. But there was one great obstacle to this settlement,
+though so important to the peace of the kingdom. The king insisted that
+his eldest daughter should be married first, and as there was no such
+person, it was very difficult to fix upon a proper husband for her. The
+courtiers all approved his majesty's resolution; but as under the best
+princes there will always be a number of discontented, the nation was
+torn into different factions, the grumblers or patriots insisting that
+the second princess was the eldest, and ought to be declared heiress
+apparent to the crown. Many pamphlets were written pro and con, but
+the ministerial party pretended that the chancellor's argument was
+unanswerable, who affirmed, that the second princess could not be the
+eldest, as no princess-royal ever had a Yorkshire accent. A few persons
+who were attached to the youngest princess, took advantage of this plea
+for whispering that <i>her</i> royal highness's pretensions to the crown were
+the best of all; for as there was no eldest princess, and as the second
+must be the first, if there was no first, and as she could not be the
+second if she was the first, and as the chancellor had proved that she
+could not be the first, it followed plainly by every idea of law that
+she could be nobody at all; and then the consequence followed of course,
+that the youngest must be the eldest, if she had no elder sister.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is inconceivable what animosities and mischiefs arose from these
+different titles; and each faction endeavoured to strengthen itself
+by foreign alliances. The court party having no real object for their
+attachment, were the most attached of all, and made up by warmth for
+the want of foundation in their principles. The clergy in general were
+devoted to this, which was styled <i>the first party</i>. The physicians
+embraced the second; and the lawyers declared for the third, or the
+faction of the youngest princess, because it seemed best calculated to
+admit of doubts and endless litigation.
+</p>
+<p>
+While the nation was in this distracted situation, there arrived the
+prince of Quifferiquimini, who would have been the most accomplished
+hero of the age, if he had not been dead, and had spoken any language
+but the Egyptian, and had not had three legs. Notwithstanding these
+blemishes, the eyes of the whole nation were immediately turned upon
+him, and each party wished to see him married to the princess whose
+cause they espoused.
+</p>
+<p>
+The old king received him with the most distinguished honours; the
+senate made the most fulsome addresses to him; the princesses were so
+taken with him, that they grew more bitter enemies than ever; and the
+court ladies and petit-maitres invented a thousand new fashions upon his
+account&mdash;every thing was to be à la Quifferiquimini. Both men and women
+of fashion left off rouge to look the more cadaverous; their cloaths
+were embroidered with hieroglyphics, and all the ugly characters they
+could gather from Egyptian antiquities, with which they were forced to
+be contented, it being impossible to learn a language that is lost; and
+all tables, chairs, stools, cabinets and couches, were made with only
+three legs; the last, howver, soon went out of fashion, as being very
+inconvenient.
+</p>
+<p>
+The prince, who, ever since his death, had had but a weakly
+constitution, was a little fatigued with this excess of attentions,
+and would often wish himself at home in his coffin. But his greatest
+difficulty of all was to get rid of the youngest princess, who kept
+hopping after him wherever he went, and was so full of admiration
+of his three legs, and so modest about having but one herself, and so
+inquisitive to know how his three legs were set on, that being the best
+natured man in the world, it went to his heart whenever in a fit of
+peevishness he happened to drop an impatient word, which never failed to
+throw her into an agony of tears, and then she looked so ugly that it
+was impossible for him to be tolerably civil to her. He was not much
+more inclined to the second princess&mdash;In truth, it was the eldest who
+made the conquest of his affections: and so violently did his passion
+encrease one Tuesday morning, that breaking through all prudential
+considerations (for there were many reasons which ought to have
+determined his choice in favour of either of the other sisters) he
+hurried to the old king, acquainted him with his love, and demanded the
+eldest princess in marriage. Nothing could equal the joy of the good old
+monarch, who wished for nothing but to live to see the consummation of
+this match. Throwing his arms about the prince-skeleton's neck and
+watering his hollow cheeks with warm tears, he granted his request, and
+added, that he would immediately resign his crown to him and his
+favourite daughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+I am forced for want of room to pass over many circumstances that would
+add greatly to the beauty of this history, and am sorry I must dash the
+reader's impatience by acquainting him, that notwithstanding the
+eagerness of the old king and youthful ardour of the prince, the
+nuptials were obliged to be postponed; the archbishop declaring that it
+was essentially necessary to have a dispensation from the pope, the
+parties being related within the forbidden degrees; a woman that never
+was, and a man that had been, being deemed first cousins in the eye of
+the canon law.
+</p>
+<p>
+Hence arose a new difficulty. The religion of the Quifferiquiminians was
+totally opposite to that of the papists. The former believed in nothing
+but grace; and they had a high-priest of their own, who pretended that
+he was master of the whole fee-simple of grace, and by that possession
+could cause every thing to have been that never had been, and could
+prevent every thing that had been from ever having been. "We have
+nothing to do, said the prince to the king, but to send a solemn embassy
+to the high-priest of grace, with a present of a hundred thousand
+million of ingots, and he will cause your charming no-daughter to have
+been, and will prevent my having died, and then there will be no
+occasion for a dispensation from your old fool at Rome."&mdash;How! thou
+impious, atheistical bag of drybones, cried the old king; dost thou
+profane our holy religion? Thou shalt have no daughter of mine, thou
+three-legged skeleton&mdash;Go and be buried and be damned, as thou must be;
+for as thou art dead, thou art past repentance: I would sooner give my
+child to a baboon, who has one leg more than thou hast, than bestow her
+on such a reprobate corpse&mdash;You had better give your one-legged infanta
+to the baboon, said the prince, they are fitter for one another&mdash;As much
+a corpse as I am, I am preferable to nobody; and who the devil would
+have married your no-daughter, but a dead body! For my religion, I lived
+and died in it, and it is not in my power to change it now if I
+would&mdash;but for your part&mdash;a great shout interrupted this dialogue, and
+the captain of the guard rushing into the royal closet, acquainted his
+majesty, that the second princess, in revenge of the prince's neglect,
+had given her hand to a drysalter, who was a common-council-man, and
+that the city, in consideration of the match, had proclaimed them king
+and queen, allowing his majesty to retain the title for his life, which
+they had fixed for the term of six months; and ordering, in respect of
+his royal birth, that the prince should immediately lie in state and
+have a pompous funeral.
+</p>
+<p>
+This revolution was so sudden and so universal, that all parties
+approved, or were forced to seem to approve it. The old king died the
+next day, as the courtiers said, for joy; the prince of Quifferiquimini
+was buried in spite of his appeal to the law of nations; and the
+youngest princess went distracted, and was shut up in a madhouse,
+calling out day and night for a husband with three legs.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE III.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>The Dice-Box. A Fairy Tale.</i>
+</h3>
+<p>
+<i>Translated from the French Translation of the Countess DAUNOIS, for the
+Entertainment of Miss CAROLINE CAMPBELL.</i> [<i>Eldest daughter of lord
+William Campbell; she lived with her aunt the countess of Ailesbury.</i>]
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a merchant of Damascus named Aboulcasem, who had an only
+daughter called Pissimissi, which signifies <i>the waters of Jordan</i>;
+because a fairy foretold at her birth that she would be one of Solomon's
+concubines. Azaziel, the angel of death, having transported Aboulcasem
+to the regions of bliss, he had no fortune to bequeath to his beloved
+child but the shell of a pistachia-nut drawn by an elephant and a
+ladybird. Pissimissi, who was but nine years old, and who had been been
+kept in great confinement, was impatient to see the world; and no sooner
+was the breath out of her father's body, than she got into the car, and
+whipping her elephant and ladybird, drove out of the yard as fast as
+possible, without knowing whither she was going. Her coursers never
+stopped till they came to the foot of a brazen tower, that had neither
+doors nor windows, in which lived an old enchantress, who had locked
+herself up there with seventeen thousand husbands. It had but one single
+vent for air, which was a small chimney grated over, through which it
+was scarce possible to put one's hand. Pissimissi, who was very
+impatient, ordered her coursers to fly with her up to the top of the
+chimney, which, as they were the most docile creatures in the world,
+they immediately did; but unluckily the fore paw of the elephant
+lighting on the top of the chimney, broke down the grate by its weight,
+but at the same time stopped up the passage so entirely, that all the
+enchantress's husbands were stifled for want of air. As it was a
+collection she had made with great care and cost, it is easy to imagine
+her vexation and rage. She raised a storm of thunder and lightning that
+lasted eight hundred and four years; and having conjured up an army of
+two thousand devils, she ordered them to flay the elephant alive, and
+dress it for her supper with anchovy sauce. Nothing could have saved the
+poor beast, if, struggling to get loose from the chimney, he had not
+happily broken wind, which it seems is a great preservative against
+devils. They all flew a thousand ways, and in their hurry carried away
+half the brazen tower, by which means the elephant, the car, the
+ladybird, and Pissimissi got loose; but in their fall tumbled through
+the roof of an apothecary's shop, and broke all his bottles of physic.
+The elephant, who was very dry with his fatigue, and who had not much
+taste, immediately sucked up all the medicines with his proboscis, which
+occasioned such a variety of effects in his bowels, that it was well
+he had such a strong constitution, or he must have died of it. His
+evacuations were so plentiful, that he not only drowned the tower of
+Babel, near which the apothecary's shop stood, but the current ran
+fourscore leagues till it came to the sea, and there poisoned so many
+whales and leviathans, that a pestilence ensued, and lasted three years,
+nine months and sixteen days. As the elephant was extremely weakened by
+what had happened, it was impossible for him to draw the car for
+eighteen months, which was a cruel delay to Pissimissi's impatience,
+who during all that time could not travel above a hundred miles a day,
+for as she carried the sick animal in her lap, the poor ladybird could
+not make longer stages with no assistance. Besides, Pissimissi bought
+every thing she saw wherever she came; and all was crouded into the car
+and stuffed into the seat. She had purchased ninety-two dolls, seventeen
+baby-houses, six cart-loads of sugar-plumbs, a thousand ells of
+gingerbread, eight dancing dogs, a bear and a monkey, four toy-shops
+with all their contents, and seven dozen of bibs and aprons of the
+newest fashion. They were jogging on with all this cargo over mount
+Caucasus, when an immense humming-bird, who had been struck with the
+beauty of the ladybird's wings, that I had forgot to say were of ruby
+spotted with black pearls, sousing down at once upon her prey, swallowed
+ladybird, Pissimissi, the elephant, and all their commodities. It
+happened that the humming-bird belonged to Solomon; he let it out of its
+cage every morning after breakfast, and it constantly came home by the
+time the council broke up. Nothing could equal the surprise of his
+majesty and the courtiers, when the dear little creature arrived with
+the elephant's proboscis hanging out of its divine little bill.
+However, after the first astonishment was over, his majesty, who to be
+sure was wisdom itself, and who understood natural philosophy that it
+was a charm to hear him discourse of those matters, and who was actually
+making a collection of dried beasts and birds in twelve thousand volumes
+of the best fool's-cap paper, immediately perceived what had happened,
+and taking out of the side-pocket of his breeches a diamond
+toothpick-case of his own turning, with the toothpick made of the only
+unicorn's horn he ever saw, he stuck it into the elephant's snout, and
+began to draw it out: but all his philosophy was confounded, when jammed
+between the elephant's legs he perceived the head of a beautiful girl,
+and between her legs a baby-house, which with the wings extended thirty
+feet, out of the windows of which rained a torrent of sugar-plumbs, that
+had been placed there to make room. Then followed the bear, who had been
+pressed to the bales of gingerbread and was covered all over with it,
+and looked but uncouthly; and the monkey with a doll in every paw, and
+his pouches so crammed with sugar-plumbs that they hung on each side of
+him, and trailed on the ground behind like the duchess of &mdash;&mdash;'s
+beautiful breasts. Solomon, however, gave small attention to this
+procession, being caught with the charms of the lovely Pissimissi: he
+immediately began the song of songs extempore; and what he had seen&mdash;I
+mean, all that came out of the humming-bird's throat had made such a
+jumble in his ideas, that there was nothing so unlike to which he did
+not compare all Pissimissi's beauties. As he sung his canticles too
+to no tune, and god knows had but a bad voice, they were far from
+comforting Pissimissi: the elephant had torn her best bib and apron, and
+she cried and roared, and kept such a squalling, that though Solomon
+carried her in his arms, and showed her all the fine things in the
+temple, there was no pacifying her. The queen of Sheba, who was playing
+at backgammon with the high-priest, and who came every October to
+converse with Solomon, though she did not understand a word of Hebrew,
+hearing the noise, came running out of her dressing-room; and seeing the
+king with a squalling child in his arms, asked him peevishly, if it
+became his reputed wisdom to expose himself with his bastards to all the
+court? Solomon, instead of replying, kept singing, "We have a little
+sister, and she has no breasts;" which so provoked the Sheban princess,
+that happening to have one of the dice-boxes in her hand, she without
+any ceremony threw it at his head. The enchantress, whom I mentioned
+before, and who, though invisible, had followed Pissimissi, and drawn
+her into her train of misfortunes, turned the dice-box aside, and
+directed it to Pissimissi's nose, which being something flat, like
+madame de &mdash;&mdash;'s, it stuck there, and being of ivory, Solomon ever after
+compared his beloved's nose to the tower that leads to Damascus. The
+queen, though ashamed of her behaviour, was not in her heart sorry for
+the accident; but when she found that it only encreased the monarch's
+passion, her contempt redoubled; and calling him a thousand old fools to
+herself, she ordered her post-chaise and drove away in a fury, without
+leaving sixpence for the servants; and nobody knows what became of her
+or her kingdom, which has never been heard of since.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE IV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>The Peach in Brandy. A Milesian Tale.</i>
+</h3>
+<p>
+Fitz Scanlan Mac Giolla l'ha druig,<a href="#note-1" name="noteref-1"><small>1</small></a> king of Kilkenny, the thousand
+and fifty-seventh descendant in a direct line from Milesius king of
+Spain, had an only daughter called Great A, and by corruption Grata; who
+being arrived at years of discretion, and perfectly initiated by her
+royal parents in the arts of government, the fond monarch determined to
+resign his crown to her: having accordingly assembled the senate, he
+declared his resolution to them, and having delivered his sceptre into
+the princess's hand, he obliged her to ascend the throne; and to set the
+example, was the first to kiss her hand, and vow eternal obedience to
+her. The senators were ready to stifle the new queen with panegyrics and
+addresses; the people, though they adored the old king, were transported
+with having a new sovereign, and the university, according to custom
+immemorial, presented her majesty, three months after every body had
+forgotten the event, with testimonials of the excessive sorrow and
+excessive joy they felt on losing one monarch and getting another.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her majesty was now in the fifth year of her age, and a prodigy of sense
+and goodness. In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped with
+inimitable grace, she assured them that her <a href="#note-2" name="noteref-2"><small>2</small></a> heart was entirely
+Irish, and that she did not intend any longer to go in leading-strings,
+as a proof of which she immediately declared her nurse prime-minister.
+The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiums
+than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of
+sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of
+usquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was
+her royal pleasure to play at blindman's-buff, but such a hub-bub arose
+from the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching one
+another, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle her
+majesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as a
+pigeon's egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard her
+to Tipperary. The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the mace
+knocked out the chancellor's brains, who at that time happened not to
+have any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see the
+ceremony, fell into a fit and <a href="#note-3" name="noteref-3"><small>3</small></a> miscarried of twins, who were killed
+by her majesty's fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of the
+crown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead
+children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the <a href="#note-4" name="noteref-4"><small>4</small></a> king and
+wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had now
+recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which
+Mr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence
+of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having
+asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present
+most lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata. An impeachment
+was voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition,
+particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name is
+unfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journals
+afterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became first
+lord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata's
+successor. The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whose
+name is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived a
+son before the king's resignation, that son was indubitably heir to the
+crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota
+whether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, when
+it was conceived&mdash;here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, the
+queen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who
+entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted
+by the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question for
+which was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed,
+the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go and
+drink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to a
+very long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which he
+contrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, that
+it produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages and
+massacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, and
+which were at last terminated by a lucky accident, well known, says my
+author, to every body, but which he thinks it his duty to relate for the
+sake of those who never may have heard it. These are his words:
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+     It happened that the archbishop of Tuum (anciently called Meum by
+     the Roman catholic clergy) the great wit of those times, was in the
+     queen-mother's closet, who had the young queen in her lap. <a href="#note-5" name="noteref-5"><small>5</small></a> His
+     grace was suddenly seized with a violent fit of the cholic, which
+     made him make such wry faces, that the queen-mother thought he was
+     going to die, and ran out of the room to send for a physician, for
+     she was a pattern of goodness, and void of pride. While she was
+     stepped into the servant's hall to call somebody, according to the
+     simplicity of those times, the archbishop's pains encreased, when
+     perceiving something on the mantle-piece, which he took for a peach
+     in brandy, he gulped it all down at once without saying grace, God
+     forgive him, and found great comfort from it. He had not done
+     licking his lips before the queen-mother returned, when queen Grata
+     cried out, "Mama, mama, the gentleman has eat my little brother!"
+     This fortunate event put an end to the contest, the male line
+     entirely failing in the person of the devoured prince. The
+     archbishop, however, who became pope by the name of Innocent the
+     3d. having afterwards a son by his sister, named the child
+     Fitzpatrick, as having some of the royal blood in its veins; and
+     from him are descended all the younger branches of the Fitzpatricks
+     of our time. Now the rest of the acts of Grata and all that she
+     did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
+     kings of Kilkenny?
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    NOTES ON TALE IV.
+</h2>
+<p>
+<i>This tale was written for Anne Liddel countess of Offory, wife of John
+Fitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject of
+this story.</i>
+</p>
+<a name="note-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>1</u> (<a href="#noteref-1">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family of
+Fitzpatrick.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>2</u> (<a href="#noteref-2">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, her
+heart was entirely English.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>3</u> (<a href="#noteref-3">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Lady Offory had miscarried just then of two sons.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>4</u> (<a href="#noteref-4">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The housekeeper, as soon as lord Offory came home, wished
+him joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>5</u> (<a href="#noteref-5">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irish
+author is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having said
+that the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks of
+queen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother's
+lap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of the
+question</i>. Like a child <i>does not import that she actually was a child:
+she only sat</i> like a child; <i>and so she might though thirty years old.
+Civilians have declared at what period of his life a king may be of age
+before he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of the
+tribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants after
+they are past their infancy.</i>]
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE V.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Mi Li. <i>A Chinese Fairy Tale</i>.
+</h3>
+<p>
+Mi Li, prince of China, was brought up by his godmother the fairy Hih,
+who was famous for telling fortunes with a tea-cup. From that unerring
+oracle she assured him, that he would be the most unhappy man alive
+unless he married a princess whose name was the same with her father's
+dominions. As in all probability there could not be above one person in
+the world to whom that accident had happened, the prince thought there
+would be nothing so easy as to learn who his destined bride was. He had
+been too well educated to put the question to his godmother, for he knew
+when she uttered an oracle, that it was with intention to perplex, not
+to inform; which has made people so fond of consulting all those who do
+not give an explicit answer, such as prophets, lawyers, and any body you
+meet on the road, who, if you ask the way, reply by desiring to know
+whence you came. Mi Li was no sooner returned to his palace than he sent
+for his governor, who was deaf and dumb, qualities for which the fairy
+had selected him, that he might not instil any bad principles into his
+pupil; however, in recompence, he could talk upon his fingers like an
+angel. Mi Li asked him directly who the princess was whose name was the
+same with her father's kingdom? This was a little exaggeration in the
+prince, but nobody ever repeats any thing just as they heard it:
+besides, it was excusable in the heir of a great monarchy, who of all
+things had not been taught to speak truth, and perhaps had never heard
+what it was. Still it was not the mistake of <i>kingdom</i> for <i>dominions</i>
+that puzzled the governor. It never helped him to understand any thing
+the better for its being rightly stated. However, as he had great
+presence of mind, which consisted in never giving a direct answer, and
+in looking as if he could, he replied, it was a question of too great
+importance to be resolved on a sudden. How came you to know that? Said
+the prince&mdash;This youthful impetuosity told the governor that there was
+something more in the question than he had apprehended; and though he
+could be very solemn about nothing, he was ten times more so when there
+was something he did not comprehend. Yet that unknown something
+occasioning a conflict between his cunning and his ignorance, and the
+latter being the greater, always betrayed itself, for nothing looks so
+silly as a fool acting wisdom. The prince repeated his question; the
+governor demanded why he asked&mdash;the prince had not patience to spell the
+question over again on his fingers, but bawled it as loud as he could to
+no purpose. The courtiers ran in, and catching up the prince's words,
+and repeating them imperfectly, it soon flew all over Pekin, and thence
+into the provinces, and thence into Tartary, and thence to Muscovy, and
+so on, that the prince wanted to know who the princess was, whose name
+was the same as her father's. As the Chinese have not the blessing (for
+aught I know) of having family surnames as we have, and as what would be
+their christian-names, if they were so happy as to be christians, are
+quite different for men and women, the Chinese, who think that must be a
+rule all over the world because it is theirs, decided that there could
+not exist upon the square face of the earth a woman whose name was the
+same as her father's. They repeated this so often, and with so much
+deference and so much obstinacy, that the prince, totally forgetting the
+original oracle, believed that he wanted to know who the woman was who
+had the same name as her father. However, remembring there was something
+in the question that he had taken for royal, he always said <i>the king
+her father</i>. The prime minister consulted the red book or court-calendar,
+which was <i>his</i> oracle, and could find no such princess. All the
+ministers at foreign courts were instructed to inform themselves if
+there was any such lady; but as it took up a great deal of time to put
+these instructions into cypher, the prince's impatience could not wait
+for the couriers setting out, but he determined to go himself in search
+of the princess. The old king, who, <i>as is usual</i>, had left the whole
+management of affairs to his son the moment he was fourteen, was charmed
+with the prince's resolution of seeing the world, which he thought could
+be done in a few days, the facility of which makes so many monarchs
+never stir out of their own palaces till it is too late; and his majesty
+declared, that he should approve of his son's choice, be the lady who
+she would, provided she answered to the divine designation of having the
+same name as her father.
+</p>
+<p>
+The prince rode post to Canton, intending to embark there on board an
+English man of war. With what infinite transport did he hear the evening
+before he was to embark, that a sailor knew the identic lady in
+question. The prince scalded his mouth with the tea he was drinking,
+broke the old china cup it was in, and which the queen his mother had
+given him at his departure from Pekin, and which had been given to her
+great great great great grandmother queen Fi by Confucius himself, and
+ran down to the vessel and asked for the man who knew his bride. It was
+honest Tom O'Bull, an Irish sailor, who by his interpreter Mr. James
+Hall, the supercargo, informed his highness that Mr. Bob Oliver of Sligo
+had a daughter christened of both his names, the fair miss Bob Oliver.<a href="#note-1a" name="noteref-1a"><small>1</small></a>
+The prince by the plenitude of his power declared Tom a mandarin of the
+first class, and at Tom's desire promised to speak to his brother the
+king of Great Ireland, France and Britain, to have him made a peer in
+his own country, Tom saying he should be ashamed to appear there without
+being a lord as well as all his acquaintance.
+</p>
+<p>
+The prince's passion, which was greatly inflamed by Tom's description of
+her highness Bob's charms, would not let him stay for a proper set of
+ladies from Pekin to carry to wait on his bride, so he took a dozen of
+the wives of the first merchants in Canton, and two dozen virgins as
+maids of honour, who however were disqualified for their employments
+before his highness got to St. Helena. Tom himself married one of them,
+but was so great a favourite with the prince, that she still was
+appointed maid of honour, and with Tom's consent was afterwards married
+to an English duke.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nothing can paint the agonies of our royal lover, when on his landing at
+Dublin he was informed that princess Bob had quitted Ireland, and was
+married to nobody knew whom. It was well for Tom that he was on Irish
+ground. He would have been chopped as small as rice, for it is death in
+China to mislead the heir of the crown through ignorance. To do it
+knowingly is no crime, any more than in other countries.
+</p>
+<p>
+As a prince of China cannot marry a woman that has been married before,
+it was necessary for Mi Li to search the world for another lady equally
+qualified with miss Bob, whom he forgot the moment he was told he must
+marry somebody else, and fell equally in love with somebody else, though
+be knew not with whom. In this suspence he dreamt, "<i>that he would find
+his destined spouse, whose father had lost the dominions which never had
+been his dominions, in a place where there was a bridge over no water, a
+tomb where nobody ever was buried nor ever would be buried, ruins that
+were more than they had ever been, a subterraneous passage in which
+there were dogs with eyes of rubies and emeralds, and a more beautiful
+menagerie of Chinese pheasants than any in his father's extensive
+gardens</i>." This oracle seemed so impossible to be accomplished, that he
+believed it more than he had done the first, which shewed his great
+piety. He determined to begin his second search, and being told by the
+lord lieutenant that there was in England a Mr. Banks,<a href="#note-2a" name="noteref-2a"><small>2</small></a> who was going
+all over the world in search of he did not know what, his highness
+thought he could not have a better conductor, and sailed for England.
+There he learnt that the sage Banks was at Oxford, hunting in the
+Bodleian library for a MS. voyage of a man who had been in the moon,
+which Mr. Banks thought must have been in the western ocean, where the
+moon sets, and which planet if he could discover once more, he would
+take possession of in his majesty's name, upon condition that it should
+never be taxed, and so be lost again to this country like the rest of
+his majesty's dominions in that part of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mi Li took a hired post-chaise for Oxford, but as it was a little rotten
+it broke on the new road down to Henley. A beggar advised him to walk
+into general Conway's, who was the most courteous person alive, and
+would certainly lend him his own chaise. The prince travelled incog. He
+took the beggar's advice, but going up to the house was told the family
+were in the grounds, but he should be conducted to them. He was led
+through a venerable wood of beeches, to a menagerie<a href="#note-3a" name="noteref-3a"><small>3</small></a> commanding a more
+glorious prospect than any in his father's dominions, and full of
+Chinese pheasants. The prince cried out in extasy, Oh! potent Hih! my
+dream begins to be accomplished. The gardiner, who knew no Chinese but
+the names of a few plants, was struck with the similitude of the sounds,
+but discreetly said not a word. Not finding his lady there, as he
+expected, he turned back, and plunging suddenly into the thickest gloom
+of the wood, he descended into a cavern totally dark, the intrepid
+prince following him boldly. After advancing a great way into this
+subterraneous vault, at last they perceived light, when on a sudden they
+were pursued by several small spaniels, and turning to look at them, the
+prince perceived their eyes<a href="#note-4a" name="noteref-4a"><small>4</small></a> shone like emeralds and rubies. Instead
+of being amazed, as Fo-Hi, the founder of his race, would have been, the
+prince renewed his exclamations, and cried, I advance! I advance! I
+shall find my bride! great Hih! thou art infallible! Emerging into
+light, the imperturbed<a href="#note-5a" name="noteref-5a"><small>5</small></a> gardiner conducted his highness to a heap of
+artificial<a href="#note-6a" name="noteref-6a"><small>6</small></a> ruins, beneath which they found a spacious gallery or
+arcade, where his highness was asked if he would not repose himself; but
+instead of answering he capered like one frantic, crying out, I advance!
+I advance! great Hih! I advance!&mdash;The gardiner was amazed, and doubted
+whether he was not conducting a madman to his master and lady, and
+hesitated whether he should proceed&mdash;but as he understood nothing the
+prince said, and perceiving he must be a foreigner, he concluded he was
+a Frenchman by his dancing. As the stranger too was so nimble and not at
+all tired with his walk, the sage gardiner proceeded down a sloping
+valley, between two mountains cloathed to their summits with cedars,
+firs, and pines, which he took care to tell the prince were all of his
+honour the general's own planting: but though the prince had learnt more
+English in three days in Ireland, than all the French in the world ever
+learnt in three years, he took no notice of the information, to the
+great offence of the gardiner, but kept running on, and increased his
+gambols and exclamations when he perceived the vale was terminated by a
+stupendous bridge, that seemed composed of the rocks which the giants
+threw at Jupiter's head, and had not a drop of water beneath<a href="#note-7a" name="noteref-7a"><small>7</small></a>
+it&mdash;Where is my bride, my bride? cried Mi Li&mdash;I must be near her. The
+prince's shouts and cries drew a matron from a cottage that stood on a
+precipice near the bridge, and hung over the river&mdash;My lady is down at
+Ford-house, cried the good<a href="#note-8a" name="noteref-8a"><small>8</small></a> woman, who was a little deaf, concluding
+they had called to her to know. The gardiner knew it was in vain to
+explain his distress to her, and thought that if the poor gentleman was
+really mad, his master the general would be the properest person to know
+how to manage him. Accordingly turning to the left, he led the prince
+along the banks of the river, which glittered through the opening
+fallows, while on the other hand a wilderness of shrubs climbed up the
+pendent cliffs of chalk, and contrasted with the verdant meads and
+fields of corn beyond the stream. The prince, insensible to such
+enchanting scenes, galloped wildly along, keeping the poor gardiner on a
+round trot, till they were stopped by a lonely<a href="#note-9a" name="noteref-9a"><small>9</small></a> tomb, surrounded by
+cypress, yews, and willows, that seemed the monument of some adventurous
+youth who had been lost in tempting the current, and might have suited
+the gallant and daring Leander. Here Mi Li first had presence of mind to
+recollect the little English he knew, and eagerly asked the gardiner
+whose tomb he beheld before him. It is nobody's&mdash;before he could
+proceed, the prince interrupted him, And will it never be any
+body's?&mdash;Oh! thought the gardiner, now there is no longer any doubt of
+his phrenzy&mdash;and perceiving his master and the family approaching
+towards them, he endeavoured to get the start, but the prince, much
+younger, and borne too on the wings of love, set out full speed the
+moment he saw the company, and particularly a young damsel with them.
+Running almost breathless up to lady Ailesbury, and seizing miss
+Campbell's hand&mdash;he cried, <i>Who she? who she</i>? Lady Ailesbury screamed,
+the young maiden squalled, the general, cool but offended, rushed
+between them, and if a prince could be collared, would have collared
+him&mdash;Mi Li kept fast hold with one arm, but pointing to his prize with
+the other, and with the most eager and supplicating looks intreating for
+an answer, continued to exclaim, <i>Who she? who she</i>? The general
+perceiving by his accent and manner that he was a foreigner, and rather
+tempted to laugh than be angry, replied with civil scorn, Why <i>she</i> is
+miss Caroline Campbell, daughter of lord William Campbell, his majesty's
+late governor of Carolina&mdash;Oh, Hih! I now recollect thy words! cried Mi
+Li&mdash;And so she became princess of China.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    NOTES ON TALE V.
+</h2>
+<a name="note-1a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>1</u> (<a href="#noteref-1a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>There really was such a person.</i>.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-2a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>2</u> (<a href="#noteref-2a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The gentleman who discovered Otaheite, in company with Dr.
+Solander.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-3a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>3</u> (<a href="#noteref-3a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Lady Ailesbury's.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-4a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>4</u> (<a href="#noteref-4a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>At Park-place there is such a passage cut through a
+chalk-hill: when dogs are in the middle, the light from the mouth makes
+their eyes appear in the manner here described.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-5a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>5</u> (<a href="#noteref-5a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Copeland, the gardiner, a very grave person.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-6a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>6</u> (<a href="#noteref-6a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Consequently they seem to have been larger.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-7a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>7</u> (<a href="#noteref-7a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The rustic bridge at Park-place was built by general
+Conway, to carry the road from Henley, and to leave the communication
+free between his grounds on each side of the road. Vide last page of
+4th. vol. of Anecdotes of Painting.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-8a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>8</u> (<a href="#noteref-8a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The old woman who kept the cottage built by general Conway
+to command a glorious prospect. Ford-house is a farm house at the
+termination of the grounds.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-9a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>9</u> (<a href="#noteref-9a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>A fictitious tomb in a beautiful spot by the river, built
+for a point of view: it has a small pyramid on it.</i>]
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE VI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>A true Love Story</i>.
+</h3>
+<p>
+In the height of the animosities between the factions of the Guelfs and
+Ghibellines, a party of Venetians had made an inroad into the
+territories of the Viscontis, sovereigns of Milan, and had carried off
+the young Orondates, then at nurse. His family were at that time under a
+cloud, though they could boast of being descended from Canis Scaliger,
+lord of Verona. The captors sold the beautiful Orondates to a rich widow
+of the noble family of Grimaldi, who having no children, brought him up
+with as much tenderness as if he had been her son. Her fondness
+increased with the growth of his stature and charms, and the violence of
+his passions were augmented by the signora Grimaldi's indulgence. Is it
+necessary to say that love reigned predominantly in the soul of
+Orondates? Or that in a city like Venice a form like that of Orondates
+met with little resistance?
+</p>
+<p>
+The Cyprian queen, not content with the numerous oblations of Orondates
+on her altars, was not satisfied while his heart remained unengaged.
+Across the canal, overagainst the palace of Grimaldi, stood a convent of
+Carmelite nuns, the abbess of which had a young African slave of the
+most exquisite beauty, called Azora, a year younger than Orondates. Jet
+and japan were tawny and without lustre, when compared to the hue of
+Azora. Afric never produced a female so perfect as Azora; as Europe
+could boast but of one Orondates.
+</p>
+<p>
+The signora Grimaldi, though no bigot, was pretty regular at her
+devotions, but as lansquenet was more to her taste than praying, she
+hurried over her masses as fast as she could, to allot more of her
+precious time to cards. This made her prefer the church of the
+Carmelites, separated only by a small bridge, though the abbess was of a
+contrary faction. However, as both ladies were of equal quality, and had
+had no altercations that could countenance incivility, reciprocal
+curtsies always passed between them, the coldness of which each
+pretended to lay on their attention to their devotions, though the
+signora Grimaldi attended but little to the priest, and the abbess was
+chiefly employed in watching and criticising the inattention of the
+signora.
+</p>
+<p>
+Not so Orondates and Azora. Both constantly accompanied their mistresses
+to mass, and the first moment they saw each other was decisive in both
+breasts. Venice ceased to have more than one fair in the eyes of
+Orondates, and Azora had not remarked till then that there could be more
+beautiful beings in the world than some of the Carmelite nuns.
+</p>
+<p>
+The seclusion of the abbess, and the aversion between the two ladies,
+which was very cordial on the side of the holy one, cut off all hopes
+from the lovers. Azora grew grave and pensive and melancholy; Orondates
+surly and intractable. Even his attachment to his kind patroness
+relaxed. He attended her reluctantly but at the hours of prayer. Often
+did she find him on the steps of the church ere the doors were opened.
+The signora Grimaldi was not apt to make observations. She was content
+with indulging her own passions, seldom restrained those of others; and
+though good offices rarely presented themselves to her imagination, she
+was ready to exert them when applied to, and always talked charitably of
+the unhappy at her cards, if it was not a very unlucky deal.
+</p>
+<p>
+Still it is probable that she never would have discovered the passion of
+Orondates, had not her woman, who was jealous of his favour, given her a
+hint; at the same time remarking, under affectation of good will, how
+well the circumstances of the lovers were suited, and that as her
+ladyship was in years, and would certainly not think of providing for a
+creature she had bought in the public market, it would be charitable to
+marry the fond couple, and settle them on her farm in the country.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fortunately madame Grimaldi always was open to good impressions, and
+rarely to bad. Without perceiving the malice of her woman, she was
+struck with the idea of a marriage. She loved the cause, and always
+promoted it when it was honestly in her power. She seldom made
+difficulties, and never apprehended them. Without even examining
+Orondates on the state of his inclinations, without recollecting that
+madame Capello and she were of different parties, without taking any
+precautions to guard against a refusal, she instantly wrote to the
+abbess to propose a marriage between Orondates and Azora.
+</p>
+<p>
+The latter was in madame Capello's chamber when the note arrived. All
+the fury that authority loves to console itself with for being under
+restraint, all the asperity of a bigot, all the acrimony of party, and
+all the fictitious rage that prudery adopts when the sensual enjoyments
+of others are concerned, burst out on the helpless Azora, who was unable
+to divine how she was concerned in the fatal letter. She was made to
+endure all the calumnies that the abbess would have been glad to have
+hurled at the head of madame Grimaldi, if her own character and the rank
+of that offender would have allowed it. Impotent menaces of revenge were
+repeated with emphasis, and as nobody in the convent dared to contradict
+her, she gratified her anger and love of prating with endless
+tautologies. In fine, Azora was strictly locked up and bread and water
+were ordered as sovereign cures for love. Twenty replies to madame
+Grimaldi were written and torn, as not sufficiently expressive of a
+resentment that was rather vociferous than eloquent, and her confessor
+was at last forced to write one, in which he prevailed to have some holy
+cant inserted, though forced to compound for a heap of irony that
+related to the antiquity of her family, and for many unintelligible
+allusions to vulgar stories which the Ghibelline party had treasured up
+against the Guelfs. The most lucid part of the epistle pronounced a
+sentence of eternal chastity on Azora, not without some sarcastic
+expressions against the promiscuous amours of Orondates, which ought in
+common decorum to have banished him long ago from the mansion of a
+widowed matron.
+</p>
+<p>
+Just as this fulminatory mandate had been transcribed and signed by the
+lady abbess in full chapter, and had been consigned to the confessor to
+deliver, the portress of the convent came running out of breath, and
+announced to the venerable assembly, that Azora, terrified by the
+abbess's blows and threats, had fallen in labour and miscarried of four
+puppies: for be it known to all posterity, that Orondates was an Italian
+greyhound, and Azora a black spaniel.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    POSTSCRIPT.
+</h2>
+<p>
+The foregoing Tales are given for no more than they are worth: they are
+mere whimsical trifles, written chiefly for private entertainment, and
+for private amusement half a dozen copies only are printed. They deserve
+at most to be considered as an attempt to vary the stale and beaten
+class of stories and novels, which, though works of invention, are
+almost always devoid of imagination. It would scarcely be credited, were
+it not evident from the Bibliotheque des Romans, which contains the
+fictitious adventures that have been written in all ages and all
+countries, that there should have been so little fancy, so little
+variety, and so little novelty, in writings in which the imagination is
+fettered by no rules, and by no obligation of speaking truth. There is
+infinitely more invention in history, which has no merit if devoid of
+truth, than in romances and novelty which pretend to none.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    FINIS.
+</h2>
+
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br><br><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14098 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hieroglyphic Tales, by Horace Walpole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hieroglyphic Tales
+
+Author: Horace Walpole
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2004 [EBook #14098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIEROGLYPHIC TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clare Boothby, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
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+
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p>
+    [Transcriber's Note: Archaic spellings in the original text have been
+retained in this version.]
+</p>
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br><br><br><br><br><br></div>
+<h1>
+    HIEROGLYPHIC TALES.
+</h1>
+<center>
+<i>Schah Baham ne comprenoit jamais bien que les choses absurdes &amp; hors de
+toute vraisemblance.</i>
+</center>
+<p style="text-align:right;">
+Le Sopha, p. 5.
+</p>
+
+<center><small>
+STRAWBERRY-HILL: PRINTED BY T. KIRGATE, MDCCLXXXV.</small>
+</center>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    PREFACE.
+</h2>
+<p>
+As the invaluable present I am making to the world may not please all
+tastes, from the gravity of the matter, the solidity of the reasoning,
+and the deep learning contained in the ensuing sheets, it is necessary
+to make some apology for producing this work in so trifling an age, when
+nothing will go down but temporary politics, personal satire, and idle
+romances. The true reason then for my surmounting all these objections
+was singly this: I was apprehensive lest the work should be lost to
+posterity; and though it may be condemned at present, I can have no
+doubt but it will be treated with due reverence some hundred ages hence,
+when wisdom and learning shall have gained their proper ascendant over
+mankind, and when men shall only read for instruction and improvement of
+their minds. As I shall print an hundred thousand copies, some, it may
+be hoped, will escape the havoc that is made of moral works, and then
+this jewel will shine forth in its genuine lustre. I was in the greater
+hurry to consign this work to the press, as I foresee that the art of
+printing will ere long be totally lost, like other useful discoveries
+well known to the ancients. Such were the art of dissolving rocks with
+hot vinegar, of teaching elephants to dance on the slack rope, of making
+malleable glass, of writing epic poems that any body would read after
+they had been published a month, and the stupendous invention of new
+religions, a secret of which illiterate Mahomet was the last person
+possessed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Notwithstanding this my zeal for good letters, and the ardour of my
+universal citizenship, (for I declare I design this present for all
+nations) there are some small difficulties in the way, that prevent my
+conferring this my great benefaction on the world compleatly and all at
+once. I am obliged to produce it in small portions, and therefore beg
+the prayers of all good and wise men that my life may be prolonged to
+me, till I shall be able to publish the whole work, no man else being
+capable of executing the charge so well as myself, for reasons that my
+modesty will not permit me to specify. In the mean time, as it is the
+duty of an editor to acquaint the world with what relates to himself as
+well as his author, I think it right to mention the causes that compel
+me to publish this work in numbers. The common reason of such proceeding
+is to make a book dearer for the ease of the purchasers, it being
+supposed that most people had rather give twenty shillings by sixpence a
+fortnight, than pay ten shillings once for all. Public spirited as this
+proceeding is, I must confess my reasons are more and merely personal.
+As my circumstances are very moderate, and barely sufficient to maintain
+decently a gentleman of my abilities and learning, I cannot afford to
+print at once an hundred thousand copies of two volumes in folio, for
+that will be the whole mass of Hieroglyphic Tales when the work is
+perfected. In the next place, being very asthmatic, and requiring a free
+communication of air, I lodge in the uppermost story of a house in an
+alley not far from St. Mary Axe; and as a great deal of good company
+lodges in the same mansion, it was by a considerable favour that I could
+obtain a single chamber to myself; which chamber is by no means large
+enough to contain the whole impression, for I design to vend the copies
+myself, and, according to the practice of other great men, shall sign
+the first sheet my self with my own hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+Desirous as I am of acquainting the world with many more circumstances
+relative to myself, some private considerations prevent my indulging
+their curiosity any farther at present; but I shall take care to leave
+so minute an account of myself to some public library, that the future
+commentators and editors of this work shall not be deprived of all
+necessary lights. In the mean time I beg the reader to accept the
+temporary compensation of an account of the author whose work I am
+publishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the
+creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral
+tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island,
+not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic
+attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them
+repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born.
+We do not trouble the reader with these attestations, as we are sure
+every body will believe them as much as if they had seen them. It is more
+difficult to ascertain the true author. We might ascribe them with great
+probability to Kemanrlegorpikos, son of Quat; but besides that we are
+not certain that any such person ever existed, it is not clear that he
+ever wrote any thing but a book of cookery, and that in heroic verse.
+Others give them to Quat's nurse, and a few to Hermes Trismegistus,
+though there is a passage in the latter's treatise on the harpsichord
+which directly contradicts the account of the first volcano in the
+114th. of the Hieroglyphic Tales. As Trismegistus's work is lost, it
+is impossible to decide now whether the discordance mentioned is so
+positive as has been asserted by many learned men, who only guess at the
+opinion of Hermes from other passages in his writings, and who indeed
+are not sure whether he was speaking of volcanoes or cheesecakes, for
+he drew so ill, that his hieroglyphics may often be taken for the most
+opposite things in nature; and as there is no subject which he has not
+treated, it is not precisely known what he was discussing in any one
+of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+This is the nearest we can come to any certainty with regard to the
+author. But whether he wrote the Tales six thousand years ago, as we
+believe, or whether they were written for him within these ten years,
+they are incontestably the most ancient work in the world; and though
+there is little imagination, and still less invention in them; yet there
+are so many passages in them exactly resembling Homer, that any man
+living would conclude they were imitated from that great poet, if it was
+not certain that Homer borrowed from them, which I shall prove two ways:
+first, by giving Homer's parallel passages at the bottom of the page;
+and secondly, by translating Homer himself into prose, which shall make
+him so unlike himself, that nobody will think he could be an original
+writer: and when he is become totally lifeless and insipid, it will be
+impossible but these Tales should be preferred to the Iliad; especially
+as I design to put them into a kind of style that shall be neither verse
+nor prose; a diction lately much used in tragedies and heroic poems, the
+former of which are really heroic poems from want of probability, as an
+antico-moderno epic poem is in fact a meer tragedy, having little or no
+change of scene, no incidents but a ghost and a storm, and no events but
+the deaths of the principal actors.
+</p>
+<p>
+I will not detain the reader longer from the perusal of this invaluable
+work; but I must beseech the public to be expeditious in taking off the
+whole impression, as fast as I can get it printed; because I must inform
+them that I have a more precious work in contemplation; namely, a new
+Roman history, in which I mean to ridicule, detect and expose, all
+ancient virtue, and patriotism, and shew from original papers which
+I am going to write, and which I shall afterwards bury in the ruins of
+Carthage and then dig up, that it appears by the letters of Hanno the
+Punic embassador at Rome, that Scipio was in the pay of Hannibal, and
+that the dilatoriness of Fabius proceeded from his being a pensioner
+of the Same general. I own this discovery will pierce my heart; but as
+morality is best taught by shewing how little effect it had on the best
+of men, I will sacrifice the most virtuous names for the instruction of
+the present wicked generation; and I cannot doubt but when once they
+have learnt to detest the favourite heroes of antiquity, they will
+become good subjects of the most pious king that ever lived since David,
+who expelled the established royal family, and then sung psalms to the
+memory of Jonathan, to whose prejudice he had succeeded to the throne.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE 1.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>A new Arabian Night's Entertainment.</i>
+</h3>
+<p>
+At the foot of the great mountain Hirgonqúu was anciently situated the
+kingdom of Larbidel. Geographers, who are not apt to make such just
+comparisons, said, it resembled a football just going to be kicked away;
+and so it happened; for the mountain kicked the kingdom into the ocean,
+and it has never been heard of since.
+</p>
+<p>
+One day a young princess had climbed up to the top of the mountain to
+gather goat's eggs, the whites of which are excellent for taking off
+freckles.&mdash;Goat's eggs!&mdash;Yes&mdash;naturalists hold that all Beings are
+conceived in an egg. The goats of Hirgonqúu might be oviparous, and lay
+their eggs to be hatched by the sun. This is my supposition; no matter
+whether I believe it myself or not. I will write against and abuse any
+man that opposes my hypothesis. It would be fine indeed if learned men
+were obliged to believe what they assert.
+</p>
+<p>
+The other side of the mountain was inhabited by a nation of whom the
+Larbidellians knew no more than the French nobility do of Great Britain,
+which they think is an island that some how or other may be approached
+by land. The princess had strayed into the confines of Cucurucu, when
+she suddenly found herself seized by the guards of the prince that
+reigned in that country. They told her in few words that she must be
+conveyed to the capital and married to the giant their lord and emperor.
+The giant, it seems, was fond of having a new wife every night, who was
+to tell him a story that would last till morning, and then have her head
+cut off&mdash;such odd ways have some folks of passing their wedding-nights!
+The princess modestly asked, why their master loved such long stories?
+The captain of the guard replied, his majesty did not sleep well&mdash;Well!
+said she, and if he does not!&mdash;not but I believe I can tell as long
+stories as any princess in Asia. Nay, I can repeat Leonidas by heart,
+and your emperor must be wakeful indeed if he can hold out against that.
+</p>
+<p>
+By this time they were arrived at the palace. To the great surprise of
+the princess, the emperor, so far from being a giant, was but five feet
+one inch in height; but being two inches taller than any of his
+predecessors, the flattery of his courtiers had bestowed the name of
+<i>giant</i> on him; and he affected to look down upon any man above his own
+stature. The princess was immediately undressed and put to bed, his
+majesty being impatient to hear a new story.
+</p>
+<p>
+Light of my eyes, said the emperor, what is your name? I call myself the
+princess Gronovia, replied she; but my real appellation is the frow
+Gronow. And what is the use of a name, said his majesty, but to be
+called by it? And why do you pretend to be a princess, if you are not?
+My turn is romantic, answered she, and I have ever had an ambition of
+being the heroine of a novel. Now there are but two conditions that
+entitle one to that rank; one must be a shepherdess or a princess. Well,
+content yourself, said the giant, you will die an empress, without
+being either the one or the other! But what sublime reason had you for
+lengthening your name so unaccountably? It is a custom in my family,
+said she: all my ancestors were learned men, who wrote about the Romans.
+It sounded more classic, and gave a higher opinion of their literature,
+to put a Latin termination to their names. All this is Japonese to me,
+said the emperor; but your ancestors seem to have been a parcel of
+mountebanks. Does one understand any thing the better for corrupting
+one's name? Oh, said the princess, but it shewed taste too. There was
+a time when in Italy the learned carried this still farther; and a man
+with a large forehead, who was born on the fifth of January, called
+himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the
+emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a
+great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came
+you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland&mdash;The deuce you was, said
+the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess,
+spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea&mdash;Indeed, moppet!
+said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any
+country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said she, which I
+cannot resolve on a sudden; but I will step home to my library, and
+consult five or six thousand volumes of modern history, an hundred or
+two dictionaries, and an abridgment of geography in forty volumes in
+folio, and be back in an instant. Not so fast, my life, said the
+emperor, you must not rise till you go to execution; it is now one in
+the morning, and you have not begun your story.
+</p>
+<p>
+My great grandfather, continued the princess, was a Dutch merchant, who
+passed many years in Japan&mdash;On what account? said the emperor. He went
+thither to abjure his religion, said she, that he might get money enough
+to return and defend it against Philip 2d. You are a pleasant family,
+said the emperor; but though I love fables, I hate genealogies. I know
+in all families, by their own account, there never was any thing but
+good and great men from father to son; a sort of fiction that does not
+at all amuse me. In my dominions there is no nobility but flattery.
+Whoever flatters me best is created a great lord, and the titles I
+confer are synonimous to their merits. There is Kiss-my-breech-Can, my
+favourite; Adulation-Can, lord treasurer; Prerogative-Can, head of the
+law; and Blasphemy-Can, high-priest. Whoever speaks truth, corrupts his
+blood, and is ipso facto degraded. In Europe you allow a man to be noble
+because one of his ancestors was a flatterer. But every thing
+degenerates, the farther it is removed from its source. I will not hear
+a word of any of your race before your father: what was he?
+</p>
+<p>
+It was in the height of the contests about the bull unigenitus&mdash;I tell
+you, interrupted the emperor, I will not be plagued with any more of
+those people with Latin names: they were a parcel of coxcombs, and seem
+to have infected you with their folly. I am sorry, replied Gronovia,
+that your sublime highness is so little acquainted with the state of
+Europe, as to take a papal ordinance for a person. Unigenitus is Latin
+for the Jesuits&mdash;And who the devil are the Jesuits? said the giant.
+You explain one nonsensical term by another, and wonder I am never the
+wiser. Sir, said the princess, if you will permit me to give you a short
+account of the troubles that have agitated Europe for these last two
+hundred years, on the doctrines of grace, free-will, predestination,
+reprobation, justification, &amp;c. you will be more entertained, and will
+believe less, than if I told your majesty a long story of fairies and
+goblins. You are an eternal prater, said the emperor, and very
+self-sufficient; but talk your fill, and upon what subject you like till
+tomorrow morning; but I swear by the soul of the holy Jirigi, who rode
+to heaven on the tail of a magpie, as soon as the clock strikes eight,
+you are a dead woman. Well, who was the Jesuit Unigenitus?
+</p>
+<p>
+The novel doctrines that had sprung up in Germany, said Gronovia, made
+it necessary for the church to look about her. The disciples of
+Loyola&mdash;Of whom? said the emperor, yawning&mdash;Ignatius Loyola, the founder
+of the Jesuits, replied Gronovia, was&mdash;A writer of Roman history, I
+suppose, interrupted the emperor: what the devil were the Romans to you,
+that you trouble your head so much about them? The empire of Rome, and
+the church of Rome, are two distinct things, said the princess; and yet,
+as one may say, the one depends upon the other, as the new testament
+does on the old. One destroyed the other, and yet pretends a right to
+its inheritance. The temporalities of the church&mdash;What's o'clock, said
+the emperor to the chief eunuch? it cannot sure be far from eight&mdash;this
+woman has gossipped at least seven hours. Do you hear, my
+tomorrow-night's wife shall be dumb&mdash;cut her tongue out before you bring
+her to our bed. Madam, said the eunuch, his sublime highness, whose
+erudition passes the lands of the sea, is too well acquainted with all
+human sciences to require information. It is therefore that his exalted
+wisdom prefers accounts of what never happened, to any relation either
+in history or divinity&mdash;You lie, said the emperor; when I exclude truth,
+I certainly do not mean to forbid divinity&mdash;How many divinities have
+you in Europe, woman? The council of Trent, replied Gronovia, has
+decided&mdash;the emperor began to snore&mdash;I mean, continued Gronovia, that
+notwithstanding all father Paul has asserted, cardinal Palavicini
+affirms that in the three first sessions of that council&mdash;the emperor
+was now fast asleep, which the princess and the chief eunuch perceiving,
+clapped several pillows upon his face, and held them there till he
+expired. As soon as they were convinced he was dead, the princess,
+putting on every mark of despair and concern, issued to the divan,
+where she was immediately proclaimed empress. The emperor, it was given
+out, had died of an hermorrhoidal cholic, but to shew her regard for his
+memory, her imperial majesty declared she would strictly adhere to the
+maxims by which he had governed. Accordingly she espoused a new husband
+every night, but dispensed with their telling her stories, and was
+graciously pleased also, upon their good behaviour, to remit the
+subsequent execution. She sent presents to all the learned men in Asia;
+and they in return did not fail to cry her up as a pattern of clemency,
+wisdom, and virtue: and though the panegyrics of the learned are
+generally as clumsy as they are fulsome, they ventured to allure her
+that their writings would be as durable as brass, and that the memory of
+her glorious reign would reach to the latest posterity.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE II.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>The King and his three Daughters</i>.
+</h3>
+<p>
+There was formerly a king, who had three daughters&mdash;that is, he would
+have had three, if he had had one more, but some how or other the eldest
+never was born. She was extremely handsome, had a great deal of wit, and
+spoke French in perfection, as all the authors of that age affirm, and
+yet none of them pretend that she ever existed. It is very certain that
+the two other princesses were far from beauties; the second had a strong
+Yorkshire dialect, and the youngest had bad teeth and but one leg, which
+occasioned her dancing very ill.
+</p>
+<p>
+As it was not probable that his majesty would have any more children,
+being eighty-seven years, two months, and thirteen days old when his
+queen died, the states of the kingdom were very anxious to have the
+princesses married. But there was one great obstacle to this settlement,
+though so important to the peace of the kingdom. The king insisted that
+his eldest daughter should be married first, and as there was no such
+person, it was very difficult to fix upon a proper husband for her. The
+courtiers all approved his majesty's resolution; but as under the best
+princes there will always be a number of discontented, the nation was
+torn into different factions, the grumblers or patriots insisting that
+the second princess was the eldest, and ought to be declared heiress
+apparent to the crown. Many pamphlets were written pro and con, but
+the ministerial party pretended that the chancellor's argument was
+unanswerable, who affirmed, that the second princess could not be the
+eldest, as no princess-royal ever had a Yorkshire accent. A few persons
+who were attached to the youngest princess, took advantage of this plea
+for whispering that <i>her</i> royal highness's pretensions to the crown were
+the best of all; for as there was no eldest princess, and as the second
+must be the first, if there was no first, and as she could not be the
+second if she was the first, and as the chancellor had proved that she
+could not be the first, it followed plainly by every idea of law that
+she could be nobody at all; and then the consequence followed of course,
+that the youngest must be the eldest, if she had no elder sister.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is inconceivable what animosities and mischiefs arose from these
+different titles; and each faction endeavoured to strengthen itself
+by foreign alliances. The court party having no real object for their
+attachment, were the most attached of all, and made up by warmth for
+the want of foundation in their principles. The clergy in general were
+devoted to this, which was styled <i>the first party</i>. The physicians
+embraced the second; and the lawyers declared for the third, or the
+faction of the youngest princess, because it seemed best calculated to
+admit of doubts and endless litigation.
+</p>
+<p>
+While the nation was in this distracted situation, there arrived the
+prince of Quifferiquimini, who would have been the most accomplished
+hero of the age, if he had not been dead, and had spoken any language
+but the Egyptian, and had not had three legs. Notwithstanding these
+blemishes, the eyes of the whole nation were immediately turned upon
+him, and each party wished to see him married to the princess whose
+cause they espoused.
+</p>
+<p>
+The old king received him with the most distinguished honours; the
+senate made the most fulsome addresses to him; the princesses were so
+taken with him, that they grew more bitter enemies than ever; and the
+court ladies and petit-maitres invented a thousand new fashions upon his
+account&mdash;every thing was to be à la Quifferiquimini. Both men and women
+of fashion left off rouge to look the more cadaverous; their cloaths
+were embroidered with hieroglyphics, and all the ugly characters they
+could gather from Egyptian antiquities, with which they were forced to
+be contented, it being impossible to learn a language that is lost; and
+all tables, chairs, stools, cabinets and couches, were made with only
+three legs; the last, howver, soon went out of fashion, as being very
+inconvenient.
+</p>
+<p>
+The prince, who, ever since his death, had had but a weakly
+constitution, was a little fatigued with this excess of attentions,
+and would often wish himself at home in his coffin. But his greatest
+difficulty of all was to get rid of the youngest princess, who kept
+hopping after him wherever he went, and was so full of admiration
+of his three legs, and so modest about having but one herself, and so
+inquisitive to know how his three legs were set on, that being the best
+natured man in the world, it went to his heart whenever in a fit of
+peevishness he happened to drop an impatient word, which never failed to
+throw her into an agony of tears, and then she looked so ugly that it
+was impossible for him to be tolerably civil to her. He was not much
+more inclined to the second princess&mdash;In truth, it was the eldest who
+made the conquest of his affections: and so violently did his passion
+encrease one Tuesday morning, that breaking through all prudential
+considerations (for there were many reasons which ought to have
+determined his choice in favour of either of the other sisters) he
+hurried to the old king, acquainted him with his love, and demanded the
+eldest princess in marriage. Nothing could equal the joy of the good old
+monarch, who wished for nothing but to live to see the consummation of
+this match. Throwing his arms about the prince-skeleton's neck and
+watering his hollow cheeks with warm tears, he granted his request, and
+added, that he would immediately resign his crown to him and his
+favourite daughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+I am forced for want of room to pass over many circumstances that would
+add greatly to the beauty of this history, and am sorry I must dash the
+reader's impatience by acquainting him, that notwithstanding the
+eagerness of the old king and youthful ardour of the prince, the
+nuptials were obliged to be postponed; the archbishop declaring that it
+was essentially necessary to have a dispensation from the pope, the
+parties being related within the forbidden degrees; a woman that never
+was, and a man that had been, being deemed first cousins in the eye of
+the canon law.
+</p>
+<p>
+Hence arose a new difficulty. The religion of the Quifferiquiminians was
+totally opposite to that of the papists. The former believed in nothing
+but grace; and they had a high-priest of their own, who pretended that
+he was master of the whole fee-simple of grace, and by that possession
+could cause every thing to have been that never had been, and could
+prevent every thing that had been from ever having been. "We have
+nothing to do, said the prince to the king, but to send a solemn embassy
+to the high-priest of grace, with a present of a hundred thousand
+million of ingots, and he will cause your charming no-daughter to have
+been, and will prevent my having died, and then there will be no
+occasion for a dispensation from your old fool at Rome."&mdash;How! thou
+impious, atheistical bag of drybones, cried the old king; dost thou
+profane our holy religion? Thou shalt have no daughter of mine, thou
+three-legged skeleton&mdash;Go and be buried and be damned, as thou must be;
+for as thou art dead, thou art past repentance: I would sooner give my
+child to a baboon, who has one leg more than thou hast, than bestow her
+on such a reprobate corpse&mdash;You had better give your one-legged infanta
+to the baboon, said the prince, they are fitter for one another&mdash;As much
+a corpse as I am, I am preferable to nobody; and who the devil would
+have married your no-daughter, but a dead body! For my religion, I lived
+and died in it, and it is not in my power to change it now if I
+would&mdash;but for your part&mdash;a great shout interrupted this dialogue, and
+the captain of the guard rushing into the royal closet, acquainted his
+majesty, that the second princess, in revenge of the prince's neglect,
+had given her hand to a drysalter, who was a common-council-man, and
+that the city, in consideration of the match, had proclaimed them king
+and queen, allowing his majesty to retain the title for his life, which
+they had fixed for the term of six months; and ordering, in respect of
+his royal birth, that the prince should immediately lie in state and
+have a pompous funeral.
+</p>
+<p>
+This revolution was so sudden and so universal, that all parties
+approved, or were forced to seem to approve it. The old king died the
+next day, as the courtiers said, for joy; the prince of Quifferiquimini
+was buried in spite of his appeal to the law of nations; and the
+youngest princess went distracted, and was shut up in a madhouse,
+calling out day and night for a husband with three legs.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE III.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>The Dice-Box. A Fairy Tale.</i>
+</h3>
+<p>
+<i>Translated from the French Translation of the Countess DAUNOIS, for the
+Entertainment of Miss CAROLINE CAMPBELL.</i> [<i>Eldest daughter of lord
+William Campbell; she lived with her aunt the countess of Ailesbury.</i>]
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a merchant of Damascus named Aboulcasem, who had an only
+daughter called Pissimissi, which signifies <i>the waters of Jordan</i>;
+because a fairy foretold at her birth that she would be one of Solomon's
+concubines. Azaziel, the angel of death, having transported Aboulcasem
+to the regions of bliss, he had no fortune to bequeath to his beloved
+child but the shell of a pistachia-nut drawn by an elephant and a
+ladybird. Pissimissi, who was but nine years old, and who had been been
+kept in great confinement, was impatient to see the world; and no sooner
+was the breath out of her father's body, than she got into the car, and
+whipping her elephant and ladybird, drove out of the yard as fast as
+possible, without knowing whither she was going. Her coursers never
+stopped till they came to the foot of a brazen tower, that had neither
+doors nor windows, in which lived an old enchantress, who had locked
+herself up there with seventeen thousand husbands. It had but one single
+vent for air, which was a small chimney grated over, through which it
+was scarce possible to put one's hand. Pissimissi, who was very
+impatient, ordered her coursers to fly with her up to the top of the
+chimney, which, as they were the most docile creatures in the world,
+they immediately did; but unluckily the fore paw of the elephant
+lighting on the top of the chimney, broke down the grate by its weight,
+but at the same time stopped up the passage so entirely, that all the
+enchantress's husbands were stifled for want of air. As it was a
+collection she had made with great care and cost, it is easy to imagine
+her vexation and rage. She raised a storm of thunder and lightning that
+lasted eight hundred and four years; and having conjured up an army of
+two thousand devils, she ordered them to flay the elephant alive, and
+dress it for her supper with anchovy sauce. Nothing could have saved the
+poor beast, if, struggling to get loose from the chimney, he had not
+happily broken wind, which it seems is a great preservative against
+devils. They all flew a thousand ways, and in their hurry carried away
+half the brazen tower, by which means the elephant, the car, the
+ladybird, and Pissimissi got loose; but in their fall tumbled through
+the roof of an apothecary's shop, and broke all his bottles of physic.
+The elephant, who was very dry with his fatigue, and who had not much
+taste, immediately sucked up all the medicines with his proboscis, which
+occasioned such a variety of effects in his bowels, that it was well
+he had such a strong constitution, or he must have died of it. His
+evacuations were so plentiful, that he not only drowned the tower of
+Babel, near which the apothecary's shop stood, but the current ran
+fourscore leagues till it came to the sea, and there poisoned so many
+whales and leviathans, that a pestilence ensued, and lasted three years,
+nine months and sixteen days. As the elephant was extremely weakened by
+what had happened, it was impossible for him to draw the car for
+eighteen months, which was a cruel delay to Pissimissi's impatience,
+who during all that time could not travel above a hundred miles a day,
+for as she carried the sick animal in her lap, the poor ladybird could
+not make longer stages with no assistance. Besides, Pissimissi bought
+every thing she saw wherever she came; and all was crouded into the car
+and stuffed into the seat. She had purchased ninety-two dolls, seventeen
+baby-houses, six cart-loads of sugar-plumbs, a thousand ells of
+gingerbread, eight dancing dogs, a bear and a monkey, four toy-shops
+with all their contents, and seven dozen of bibs and aprons of the
+newest fashion. They were jogging on with all this cargo over mount
+Caucasus, when an immense humming-bird, who had been struck with the
+beauty of the ladybird's wings, that I had forgot to say were of ruby
+spotted with black pearls, sousing down at once upon her prey, swallowed
+ladybird, Pissimissi, the elephant, and all their commodities. It
+happened that the humming-bird belonged to Solomon; he let it out of its
+cage every morning after breakfast, and it constantly came home by the
+time the council broke up. Nothing could equal the surprise of his
+majesty and the courtiers, when the dear little creature arrived with
+the elephant's proboscis hanging out of its divine little bill.
+However, after the first astonishment was over, his majesty, who to be
+sure was wisdom itself, and who understood natural philosophy that it
+was a charm to hear him discourse of those matters, and who was actually
+making a collection of dried beasts and birds in twelve thousand volumes
+of the best fool's-cap paper, immediately perceived what had happened,
+and taking out of the side-pocket of his breeches a diamond
+toothpick-case of his own turning, with the toothpick made of the only
+unicorn's horn he ever saw, he stuck it into the elephant's snout, and
+began to draw it out: but all his philosophy was confounded, when jammed
+between the elephant's legs he perceived the head of a beautiful girl,
+and between her legs a baby-house, which with the wings extended thirty
+feet, out of the windows of which rained a torrent of sugar-plumbs, that
+had been placed there to make room. Then followed the bear, who had been
+pressed to the bales of gingerbread and was covered all over with it,
+and looked but uncouthly; and the monkey with a doll in every paw, and
+his pouches so crammed with sugar-plumbs that they hung on each side of
+him, and trailed on the ground behind like the duchess of &mdash;&mdash;'s
+beautiful breasts. Solomon, however, gave small attention to this
+procession, being caught with the charms of the lovely Pissimissi: he
+immediately began the song of songs extempore; and what he had seen&mdash;I
+mean, all that came out of the humming-bird's throat had made such a
+jumble in his ideas, that there was nothing so unlike to which he did
+not compare all Pissimissi's beauties. As he sung his canticles too
+to no tune, and god knows had but a bad voice, they were far from
+comforting Pissimissi: the elephant had torn her best bib and apron, and
+she cried and roared, and kept such a squalling, that though Solomon
+carried her in his arms, and showed her all the fine things in the
+temple, there was no pacifying her. The queen of Sheba, who was playing
+at backgammon with the high-priest, and who came every October to
+converse with Solomon, though she did not understand a word of Hebrew,
+hearing the noise, came running out of her dressing-room; and seeing the
+king with a squalling child in his arms, asked him peevishly, if it
+became his reputed wisdom to expose himself with his bastards to all the
+court? Solomon, instead of replying, kept singing, "We have a little
+sister, and she has no breasts;" which so provoked the Sheban princess,
+that happening to have one of the dice-boxes in her hand, she without
+any ceremony threw it at his head. The enchantress, whom I mentioned
+before, and who, though invisible, had followed Pissimissi, and drawn
+her into her train of misfortunes, turned the dice-box aside, and
+directed it to Pissimissi's nose, which being something flat, like
+madame de &mdash;&mdash;'s, it stuck there, and being of ivory, Solomon ever after
+compared his beloved's nose to the tower that leads to Damascus. The
+queen, though ashamed of her behaviour, was not in her heart sorry for
+the accident; but when she found that it only encreased the monarch's
+passion, her contempt redoubled; and calling him a thousand old fools to
+herself, she ordered her post-chaise and drove away in a fury, without
+leaving sixpence for the servants; and nobody knows what became of her
+or her kingdom, which has never been heard of since.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE IV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>The Peach in Brandy. A Milesian Tale.</i>
+</h3>
+<p>
+Fitz Scanlan Mac Giolla l'ha druig,<a href="#note-1" name="noteref-1"><small>1</small></a> king of Kilkenny, the thousand
+and fifty-seventh descendant in a direct line from Milesius king of
+Spain, had an only daughter called Great A, and by corruption Grata; who
+being arrived at years of discretion, and perfectly initiated by her
+royal parents in the arts of government, the fond monarch determined to
+resign his crown to her: having accordingly assembled the senate, he
+declared his resolution to them, and having delivered his sceptre into
+the princess's hand, he obliged her to ascend the throne; and to set the
+example, was the first to kiss her hand, and vow eternal obedience to
+her. The senators were ready to stifle the new queen with panegyrics and
+addresses; the people, though they adored the old king, were transported
+with having a new sovereign, and the university, according to custom
+immemorial, presented her majesty, three months after every body had
+forgotten the event, with testimonials of the excessive sorrow and
+excessive joy they felt on losing one monarch and getting another.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her majesty was now in the fifth year of her age, and a prodigy of sense
+and goodness. In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped with
+inimitable grace, she assured them that her <a href="#note-2" name="noteref-2"><small>2</small></a> heart was entirely
+Irish, and that she did not intend any longer to go in leading-strings,
+as a proof of which she immediately declared her nurse prime-minister.
+The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiums
+than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of
+sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of
+usquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was
+her royal pleasure to play at blindman's-buff, but such a hub-bub arose
+from the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching one
+another, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle her
+majesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as a
+pigeon's egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard her
+to Tipperary. The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the mace
+knocked out the chancellor's brains, who at that time happened not to
+have any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see the
+ceremony, fell into a fit and <a href="#note-3" name="noteref-3"><small>3</small></a> miscarried of twins, who were killed
+by her majesty's fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of the
+crown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead
+children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the <a href="#note-4" name="noteref-4"><small>4</small></a> king and
+wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had now
+recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which
+Mr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence
+of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having
+asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present
+most lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata. An impeachment
+was voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition,
+particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name is
+unfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journals
+afterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became first
+lord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata's
+successor. The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whose
+name is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived a
+son before the king's resignation, that son was indubitably heir to the
+crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota
+whether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, when
+it was conceived&mdash;here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, the
+queen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who
+entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted
+by the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question for
+which was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed,
+the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go and
+drink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to a
+very long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which he
+contrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, that
+it produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages and
+massacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, and
+which were at last terminated by a lucky accident, well known, says my
+author, to every body, but which he thinks it his duty to relate for the
+sake of those who never may have heard it. These are his words:
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+     It happened that the archbishop of Tuum (anciently called Meum by
+     the Roman catholic clergy) the great wit of those times, was in the
+     queen-mother's closet, who had the young queen in her lap. <a href="#note-5" name="noteref-5"><small>5</small></a> His
+     grace was suddenly seized with a violent fit of the cholic, which
+     made him make such wry faces, that the queen-mother thought he was
+     going to die, and ran out of the room to send for a physician, for
+     she was a pattern of goodness, and void of pride. While she was
+     stepped into the servant's hall to call somebody, according to the
+     simplicity of those times, the archbishop's pains encreased, when
+     perceiving something on the mantle-piece, which he took for a peach
+     in brandy, he gulped it all down at once without saying grace, God
+     forgive him, and found great comfort from it. He had not done
+     licking his lips before the queen-mother returned, when queen Grata
+     cried out, "Mama, mama, the gentleman has eat my little brother!"
+     This fortunate event put an end to the contest, the male line
+     entirely failing in the person of the devoured prince. The
+     archbishop, however, who became pope by the name of Innocent the
+     3d. having afterwards a son by his sister, named the child
+     Fitzpatrick, as having some of the royal blood in its veins; and
+     from him are descended all the younger branches of the Fitzpatricks
+     of our time. Now the rest of the acts of Grata and all that she
+     did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
+     kings of Kilkenny?
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    NOTES ON TALE IV.
+</h2>
+<p>
+<i>This tale was written for Anne Liddel countess of Offory, wife of John
+Fitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject of
+this story.</i>
+</p>
+<a name="note-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>1</u> (<a href="#noteref-1">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family of
+Fitzpatrick.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>2</u> (<a href="#noteref-2">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, her
+heart was entirely English.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>3</u> (<a href="#noteref-3">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Lady Offory had miscarried just then of two sons.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>4</u> (<a href="#noteref-4">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The housekeeper, as soon as lord Offory came home, wished
+him joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>5</u> (<a href="#noteref-5">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irish
+author is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having said
+that the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks of
+queen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother's
+lap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of the
+question</i>. Like a child <i>does not import that she actually was a child:
+she only sat</i> like a child; <i>and so she might though thirty years old.
+Civilians have declared at what period of his life a king may be of age
+before he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of the
+tribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants after
+they are past their infancy.</i>]
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE V.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Mi Li. <i>A Chinese Fairy Tale</i>.
+</h3>
+<p>
+Mi Li, prince of China, was brought up by his godmother the fairy Hih,
+who was famous for telling fortunes with a tea-cup. From that unerring
+oracle she assured him, that he would be the most unhappy man alive
+unless he married a princess whose name was the same with her father's
+dominions. As in all probability there could not be above one person in
+the world to whom that accident had happened, the prince thought there
+would be nothing so easy as to learn who his destined bride was. He had
+been too well educated to put the question to his godmother, for he knew
+when she uttered an oracle, that it was with intention to perplex, not
+to inform; which has made people so fond of consulting all those who do
+not give an explicit answer, such as prophets, lawyers, and any body you
+meet on the road, who, if you ask the way, reply by desiring to know
+whence you came. Mi Li was no sooner returned to his palace than he sent
+for his governor, who was deaf and dumb, qualities for which the fairy
+had selected him, that he might not instil any bad principles into his
+pupil; however, in recompence, he could talk upon his fingers like an
+angel. Mi Li asked him directly who the princess was whose name was the
+same with her father's kingdom? This was a little exaggeration in the
+prince, but nobody ever repeats any thing just as they heard it:
+besides, it was excusable in the heir of a great monarchy, who of all
+things had not been taught to speak truth, and perhaps had never heard
+what it was. Still it was not the mistake of <i>kingdom</i> for <i>dominions</i>
+that puzzled the governor. It never helped him to understand any thing
+the better for its being rightly stated. However, as he had great
+presence of mind, which consisted in never giving a direct answer, and
+in looking as if he could, he replied, it was a question of too great
+importance to be resolved on a sudden. How came you to know that? Said
+the prince&mdash;This youthful impetuosity told the governor that there was
+something more in the question than he had apprehended; and though he
+could be very solemn about nothing, he was ten times more so when there
+was something he did not comprehend. Yet that unknown something
+occasioning a conflict between his cunning and his ignorance, and the
+latter being the greater, always betrayed itself, for nothing looks so
+silly as a fool acting wisdom. The prince repeated his question; the
+governor demanded why he asked&mdash;the prince had not patience to spell the
+question over again on his fingers, but bawled it as loud as he could to
+no purpose. The courtiers ran in, and catching up the prince's words,
+and repeating them imperfectly, it soon flew all over Pekin, and thence
+into the provinces, and thence into Tartary, and thence to Muscovy, and
+so on, that the prince wanted to know who the princess was, whose name
+was the same as her father's. As the Chinese have not the blessing (for
+aught I know) of having family surnames as we have, and as what would be
+their christian-names, if they were so happy as to be christians, are
+quite different for men and women, the Chinese, who think that must be a
+rule all over the world because it is theirs, decided that there could
+not exist upon the square face of the earth a woman whose name was the
+same as her father's. They repeated this so often, and with so much
+deference and so much obstinacy, that the prince, totally forgetting the
+original oracle, believed that he wanted to know who the woman was who
+had the same name as her father. However, remembring there was something
+in the question that he had taken for royal, he always said <i>the king
+her father</i>. The prime minister consulted the red book or court-calendar,
+which was <i>his</i> oracle, and could find no such princess. All the
+ministers at foreign courts were instructed to inform themselves if
+there was any such lady; but as it took up a great deal of time to put
+these instructions into cypher, the prince's impatience could not wait
+for the couriers setting out, but he determined to go himself in search
+of the princess. The old king, who, <i>as is usual</i>, had left the whole
+management of affairs to his son the moment he was fourteen, was charmed
+with the prince's resolution of seeing the world, which he thought could
+be done in a few days, the facility of which makes so many monarchs
+never stir out of their own palaces till it is too late; and his majesty
+declared, that he should approve of his son's choice, be the lady who
+she would, provided she answered to the divine designation of having the
+same name as her father.
+</p>
+<p>
+The prince rode post to Canton, intending to embark there on board an
+English man of war. With what infinite transport did he hear the evening
+before he was to embark, that a sailor knew the identic lady in
+question. The prince scalded his mouth with the tea he was drinking,
+broke the old china cup it was in, and which the queen his mother had
+given him at his departure from Pekin, and which had been given to her
+great great great great grandmother queen Fi by Confucius himself, and
+ran down to the vessel and asked for the man who knew his bride. It was
+honest Tom O'Bull, an Irish sailor, who by his interpreter Mr. James
+Hall, the supercargo, informed his highness that Mr. Bob Oliver of Sligo
+had a daughter christened of both his names, the fair miss Bob Oliver.<a href="#note-1a" name="noteref-1a"><small>1</small></a>
+The prince by the plenitude of his power declared Tom a mandarin of the
+first class, and at Tom's desire promised to speak to his brother the
+king of Great Ireland, France and Britain, to have him made a peer in
+his own country, Tom saying he should be ashamed to appear there without
+being a lord as well as all his acquaintance.
+</p>
+<p>
+The prince's passion, which was greatly inflamed by Tom's description of
+her highness Bob's charms, would not let him stay for a proper set of
+ladies from Pekin to carry to wait on his bride, so he took a dozen of
+the wives of the first merchants in Canton, and two dozen virgins as
+maids of honour, who however were disqualified for their employments
+before his highness got to St. Helena. Tom himself married one of them,
+but was so great a favourite with the prince, that she still was
+appointed maid of honour, and with Tom's consent was afterwards married
+to an English duke.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nothing can paint the agonies of our royal lover, when on his landing at
+Dublin he was informed that princess Bob had quitted Ireland, and was
+married to nobody knew whom. It was well for Tom that he was on Irish
+ground. He would have been chopped as small as rice, for it is death in
+China to mislead the heir of the crown through ignorance. To do it
+knowingly is no crime, any more than in other countries.
+</p>
+<p>
+As a prince of China cannot marry a woman that has been married before,
+it was necessary for Mi Li to search the world for another lady equally
+qualified with miss Bob, whom he forgot the moment he was told he must
+marry somebody else, and fell equally in love with somebody else, though
+be knew not with whom. In this suspence he dreamt, "<i>that he would find
+his destined spouse, whose father had lost the dominions which never had
+been his dominions, in a place where there was a bridge over no water, a
+tomb where nobody ever was buried nor ever would be buried, ruins that
+were more than they had ever been, a subterraneous passage in which
+there were dogs with eyes of rubies and emeralds, and a more beautiful
+menagerie of Chinese pheasants than any in his father's extensive
+gardens</i>." This oracle seemed so impossible to be accomplished, that he
+believed it more than he had done the first, which shewed his great
+piety. He determined to begin his second search, and being told by the
+lord lieutenant that there was in England a Mr. Banks,<a href="#note-2a" name="noteref-2a"><small>2</small></a> who was going
+all over the world in search of he did not know what, his highness
+thought he could not have a better conductor, and sailed for England.
+There he learnt that the sage Banks was at Oxford, hunting in the
+Bodleian library for a MS. voyage of a man who had been in the moon,
+which Mr. Banks thought must have been in the western ocean, where the
+moon sets, and which planet if he could discover once more, he would
+take possession of in his majesty's name, upon condition that it should
+never be taxed, and so be lost again to this country like the rest of
+his majesty's dominions in that part of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mi Li took a hired post-chaise for Oxford, but as it was a little rotten
+it broke on the new road down to Henley. A beggar advised him to walk
+into general Conway's, who was the most courteous person alive, and
+would certainly lend him his own chaise. The prince travelled incog. He
+took the beggar's advice, but going up to the house was told the family
+were in the grounds, but he should be conducted to them. He was led
+through a venerable wood of beeches, to a menagerie<a href="#note-3a" name="noteref-3a"><small>3</small></a> commanding a more
+glorious prospect than any in his father's dominions, and full of
+Chinese pheasants. The prince cried out in extasy, Oh! potent Hih! my
+dream begins to be accomplished. The gardiner, who knew no Chinese but
+the names of a few plants, was struck with the similitude of the sounds,
+but discreetly said not a word. Not finding his lady there, as he
+expected, he turned back, and plunging suddenly into the thickest gloom
+of the wood, he descended into a cavern totally dark, the intrepid
+prince following him boldly. After advancing a great way into this
+subterraneous vault, at last they perceived light, when on a sudden they
+were pursued by several small spaniels, and turning to look at them, the
+prince perceived their eyes<a href="#note-4a" name="noteref-4a"><small>4</small></a> shone like emeralds and rubies. Instead
+of being amazed, as Fo-Hi, the founder of his race, would have been, the
+prince renewed his exclamations, and cried, I advance! I advance! I
+shall find my bride! great Hih! thou art infallible! Emerging into
+light, the imperturbed<a href="#note-5a" name="noteref-5a"><small>5</small></a> gardiner conducted his highness to a heap of
+artificial<a href="#note-6a" name="noteref-6a"><small>6</small></a> ruins, beneath which they found a spacious gallery or
+arcade, where his highness was asked if he would not repose himself; but
+instead of answering he capered like one frantic, crying out, I advance!
+I advance! great Hih! I advance!&mdash;The gardiner was amazed, and doubted
+whether he was not conducting a madman to his master and lady, and
+hesitated whether he should proceed&mdash;but as he understood nothing the
+prince said, and perceiving he must be a foreigner, he concluded he was
+a Frenchman by his dancing. As the stranger too was so nimble and not at
+all tired with his walk, the sage gardiner proceeded down a sloping
+valley, between two mountains cloathed to their summits with cedars,
+firs, and pines, which he took care to tell the prince were all of his
+honour the general's own planting: but though the prince had learnt more
+English in three days in Ireland, than all the French in the world ever
+learnt in three years, he took no notice of the information, to the
+great offence of the gardiner, but kept running on, and increased his
+gambols and exclamations when he perceived the vale was terminated by a
+stupendous bridge, that seemed composed of the rocks which the giants
+threw at Jupiter's head, and had not a drop of water beneath<a href="#note-7a" name="noteref-7a"><small>7</small></a>
+it&mdash;Where is my bride, my bride? cried Mi Li&mdash;I must be near her. The
+prince's shouts and cries drew a matron from a cottage that stood on a
+precipice near the bridge, and hung over the river&mdash;My lady is down at
+Ford-house, cried the good<a href="#note-8a" name="noteref-8a"><small>8</small></a> woman, who was a little deaf, concluding
+they had called to her to know. The gardiner knew it was in vain to
+explain his distress to her, and thought that if the poor gentleman was
+really mad, his master the general would be the properest person to know
+how to manage him. Accordingly turning to the left, he led the prince
+along the banks of the river, which glittered through the opening
+fallows, while on the other hand a wilderness of shrubs climbed up the
+pendent cliffs of chalk, and contrasted with the verdant meads and
+fields of corn beyond the stream. The prince, insensible to such
+enchanting scenes, galloped wildly along, keeping the poor gardiner on a
+round trot, till they were stopped by a lonely<a href="#note-9a" name="noteref-9a"><small>9</small></a> tomb, surrounded by
+cypress, yews, and willows, that seemed the monument of some adventurous
+youth who had been lost in tempting the current, and might have suited
+the gallant and daring Leander. Here Mi Li first had presence of mind to
+recollect the little English he knew, and eagerly asked the gardiner
+whose tomb he beheld before him. It is nobody's&mdash;before he could
+proceed, the prince interrupted him, And will it never be any
+body's?&mdash;Oh! thought the gardiner, now there is no longer any doubt of
+his phrenzy&mdash;and perceiving his master and the family approaching
+towards them, he endeavoured to get the start, but the prince, much
+younger, and borne too on the wings of love, set out full speed the
+moment he saw the company, and particularly a young damsel with them.
+Running almost breathless up to lady Ailesbury, and seizing miss
+Campbell's hand&mdash;he cried, <i>Who she? who she</i>? Lady Ailesbury screamed,
+the young maiden squalled, the general, cool but offended, rushed
+between them, and if a prince could be collared, would have collared
+him&mdash;Mi Li kept fast hold with one arm, but pointing to his prize with
+the other, and with the most eager and supplicating looks intreating for
+an answer, continued to exclaim, <i>Who she? who she</i>? The general
+perceiving by his accent and manner that he was a foreigner, and rather
+tempted to laugh than be angry, replied with civil scorn, Why <i>she</i> is
+miss Caroline Campbell, daughter of lord William Campbell, his majesty's
+late governor of Carolina&mdash;Oh, Hih! I now recollect thy words! cried Mi
+Li&mdash;And so she became princess of China.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    NOTES ON TALE V.
+</h2>
+<a name="note-1a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>1</u> (<a href="#noteref-1a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>There really was such a person.</i>.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-2a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>2</u> (<a href="#noteref-2a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The gentleman who discovered Otaheite, in company with Dr.
+Solander.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-3a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>3</u> (<a href="#noteref-3a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Lady Ailesbury's.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-4a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>4</u> (<a href="#noteref-4a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>At Park-place there is such a passage cut through a
+chalk-hill: when dogs are in the middle, the light from the mouth makes
+their eyes appear in the manner here described.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-5a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>5</u> (<a href="#noteref-5a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Copeland, the gardiner, a very grave person.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-6a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>6</u> (<a href="#noteref-6a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>Consequently they seem to have been larger.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-7a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>7</u> (<a href="#noteref-7a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The rustic bridge at Park-place was built by general
+Conway, to carry the road from Henley, and to leave the communication
+free between his grounds on each side of the road. Vide last page of
+4th. vol. of Anecdotes of Painting.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-8a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>8</u> (<a href="#noteref-8a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>The old woman who kept the cottage built by general Conway
+to command a glorious prospect. Ford-house is a farm house at the
+termination of the grounds.</i>]
+</p>
+<a name="note-9a"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>9</u> (<a href="#noteref-9a">return</a>)<br>
+[ <i>A fictitious tomb in a beautiful spot by the river, built
+for a point of view: it has a small pyramid on it.</i>]
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TALE VI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>A true Love Story</i>.
+</h3>
+<p>
+In the height of the animosities between the factions of the Guelfs and
+Ghibellines, a party of Venetians had made an inroad into the
+territories of the Viscontis, sovereigns of Milan, and had carried off
+the young Orondates, then at nurse. His family were at that time under a
+cloud, though they could boast of being descended from Canis Scaliger,
+lord of Verona. The captors sold the beautiful Orondates to a rich widow
+of the noble family of Grimaldi, who having no children, brought him up
+with as much tenderness as if he had been her son. Her fondness
+increased with the growth of his stature and charms, and the violence of
+his passions were augmented by the signora Grimaldi's indulgence. Is it
+necessary to say that love reigned predominantly in the soul of
+Orondates? Or that in a city like Venice a form like that of Orondates
+met with little resistance?
+</p>
+<p>
+The Cyprian queen, not content with the numerous oblations of Orondates
+on her altars, was not satisfied while his heart remained unengaged.
+Across the canal, overagainst the palace of Grimaldi, stood a convent of
+Carmelite nuns, the abbess of which had a young African slave of the
+most exquisite beauty, called Azora, a year younger than Orondates. Jet
+and japan were tawny and without lustre, when compared to the hue of
+Azora. Afric never produced a female so perfect as Azora; as Europe
+could boast but of one Orondates.
+</p>
+<p>
+The signora Grimaldi, though no bigot, was pretty regular at her
+devotions, but as lansquenet was more to her taste than praying, she
+hurried over her masses as fast as she could, to allot more of her
+precious time to cards. This made her prefer the church of the
+Carmelites, separated only by a small bridge, though the abbess was of a
+contrary faction. However, as both ladies were of equal quality, and had
+had no altercations that could countenance incivility, reciprocal
+curtsies always passed between them, the coldness of which each
+pretended to lay on their attention to their devotions, though the
+signora Grimaldi attended but little to the priest, and the abbess was
+chiefly employed in watching and criticising the inattention of the
+signora.
+</p>
+<p>
+Not so Orondates and Azora. Both constantly accompanied their mistresses
+to mass, and the first moment they saw each other was decisive in both
+breasts. Venice ceased to have more than one fair in the eyes of
+Orondates, and Azora had not remarked till then that there could be more
+beautiful beings in the world than some of the Carmelite nuns.
+</p>
+<p>
+The seclusion of the abbess, and the aversion between the two ladies,
+which was very cordial on the side of the holy one, cut off all hopes
+from the lovers. Azora grew grave and pensive and melancholy; Orondates
+surly and intractable. Even his attachment to his kind patroness
+relaxed. He attended her reluctantly but at the hours of prayer. Often
+did she find him on the steps of the church ere the doors were opened.
+The signora Grimaldi was not apt to make observations. She was content
+with indulging her own passions, seldom restrained those of others; and
+though good offices rarely presented themselves to her imagination, she
+was ready to exert them when applied to, and always talked charitably of
+the unhappy at her cards, if it was not a very unlucky deal.
+</p>
+<p>
+Still it is probable that she never would have discovered the passion of
+Orondates, had not her woman, who was jealous of his favour, given her a
+hint; at the same time remarking, under affectation of good will, how
+well the circumstances of the lovers were suited, and that as her
+ladyship was in years, and would certainly not think of providing for a
+creature she had bought in the public market, it would be charitable to
+marry the fond couple, and settle them on her farm in the country.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fortunately madame Grimaldi always was open to good impressions, and
+rarely to bad. Without perceiving the malice of her woman, she was
+struck with the idea of a marriage. She loved the cause, and always
+promoted it when it was honestly in her power. She seldom made
+difficulties, and never apprehended them. Without even examining
+Orondates on the state of his inclinations, without recollecting that
+madame Capello and she were of different parties, without taking any
+precautions to guard against a refusal, she instantly wrote to the
+abbess to propose a marriage between Orondates and Azora.
+</p>
+<p>
+The latter was in madame Capello's chamber when the note arrived. All
+the fury that authority loves to console itself with for being under
+restraint, all the asperity of a bigot, all the acrimony of party, and
+all the fictitious rage that prudery adopts when the sensual enjoyments
+of others are concerned, burst out on the helpless Azora, who was unable
+to divine how she was concerned in the fatal letter. She was made to
+endure all the calumnies that the abbess would have been glad to have
+hurled at the head of madame Grimaldi, if her own character and the rank
+of that offender would have allowed it. Impotent menaces of revenge were
+repeated with emphasis, and as nobody in the convent dared to contradict
+her, she gratified her anger and love of prating with endless
+tautologies. In fine, Azora was strictly locked up and bread and water
+were ordered as sovereign cures for love. Twenty replies to madame
+Grimaldi were written and torn, as not sufficiently expressive of a
+resentment that was rather vociferous than eloquent, and her confessor
+was at last forced to write one, in which he prevailed to have some holy
+cant inserted, though forced to compound for a heap of irony that
+related to the antiquity of her family, and for many unintelligible
+allusions to vulgar stories which the Ghibelline party had treasured up
+against the Guelfs. The most lucid part of the epistle pronounced a
+sentence of eternal chastity on Azora, not without some sarcastic
+expressions against the promiscuous amours of Orondates, which ought in
+common decorum to have banished him long ago from the mansion of a
+widowed matron.
+</p>
+<p>
+Just as this fulminatory mandate had been transcribed and signed by the
+lady abbess in full chapter, and had been consigned to the confessor to
+deliver, the portress of the convent came running out of breath, and
+announced to the venerable assembly, that Azora, terrified by the
+abbess's blows and threats, had fallen in labour and miscarried of four
+puppies: for be it known to all posterity, that Orondates was an Italian
+greyhound, and Azora a black spaniel.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    POSTSCRIPT.
+</h2>
+<p>
+The foregoing Tales are given for no more than they are worth: they are
+mere whimsical trifles, written chiefly for private entertainment, and
+for private amusement half a dozen copies only are printed. They deserve
+at most to be considered as an attempt to vary the stale and beaten
+class of stories and novels, which, though works of invention, are
+almost always devoid of imagination. It would scarcely be credited, were
+it not evident from the Bibliotheque des Romans, which contains the
+fictitious adventures that have been written in all ages and all
+countries, that there should have been so little fancy, so little
+variety, and so little novelty, in writings in which the imagination is
+fettered by no rules, and by no obligation of speaking truth. There is
+infinitely more invention in history, which has no merit if devoid of
+truth, than in romances and novelty which pretend to none.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    FINIS.
+</h2>
+
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br><br><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hieroglyphic Tales, by Horace Walpole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hieroglyphic Tales
+
+Author: Horace Walpole
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2004 [EBook #14098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIEROGLYPHIC TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clare Boothby, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Archaic spellings in the original text have been
+retained in this version.]
+
+
+
+
+HIEROGLYPHIC TALES.
+
+_Schah Baham ne comprenoit jamais bien que les choses absurdes & hors de
+toute vraisemblance._
+
+Le Sopha, p. 5.
+
+
+
+STRAWBERRY-HILL: PRINTED BY T. KIRGATE, MDCCLXXXV.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+As the invaluable present I am making to the world may not please all
+tastes, from the gravity of the matter, the solidity of the reasoning,
+and the deep learning contained in the ensuing sheets, it is necessary
+to make some apology for producing this work in so trifling an age, when
+nothing will go down but temporary politics, personal satire, and idle
+romances. The true reason then for my surmounting all these objections
+was singly this: I was apprehensive lest the work should be lost to
+posterity; and though it may be condemned at present, I can have no
+doubt but it will be treated with due reverence some hundred ages hence,
+when wisdom and learning shall have gained their proper ascendant over
+mankind, and when men shall only read for instruction and improvement of
+their minds. As I shall print an hundred thousand copies, some, it may
+be hoped, will escape the havoc that is made of moral works, and then
+this jewel will shine forth in its genuine lustre. I was in the greater
+hurry to consign this work to the press, as I foresee that the art of
+printing will ere long be totally lost, like other useful discoveries
+well known to the ancients. Such were the art of dissolving rocks with
+hot vinegar, of teaching elephants to dance on the slack rope, of making
+malleable glass, of writing epic poems that any body would read after
+they had been published a month, and the stupendous invention of new
+religions, a secret of which illiterate Mahomet was the last person
+possessed.
+
+Notwithstanding this my zeal for good letters, and the ardour of my
+universal citizenship, (for I declare I design this present for all
+nations) there are some small difficulties in the way, that prevent my
+conferring this my great benefaction on the world compleatly and all at
+once. I am obliged to produce it in small portions, and therefore beg
+the prayers of all good and wise men that my life may be prolonged to
+me, till I shall be able to publish the whole work, no man else being
+capable of executing the charge so well as myself, for reasons that my
+modesty will not permit me to specify. In the mean time, as it is the
+duty of an editor to acquaint the world with what relates to himself as
+well as his author, I think it right to mention the causes that compel
+me to publish this work in numbers. The common reason of such proceeding
+is to make a book dearer for the ease of the purchasers, it being
+supposed that most people had rather give twenty shillings by sixpence a
+fortnight, than pay ten shillings once for all. Public spirited as this
+proceeding is, I must confess my reasons are more and merely personal.
+As my circumstances are very moderate, and barely sufficient to maintain
+decently a gentleman of my abilities and learning, I cannot afford to
+print at once an hundred thousand copies of two volumes in folio, for
+that will be the whole mass of Hieroglyphic Tales when the work is
+perfected. In the next place, being very asthmatic, and requiring a free
+communication of air, I lodge in the uppermost story of a house in an
+alley not far from St. Mary Axe; and as a great deal of good company
+lodges in the same mansion, it was by a considerable favour that I could
+obtain a single chamber to myself; which chamber is by no means large
+enough to contain the whole impression, for I design to vend the copies
+myself, and, according to the practice of other great men, shall sign
+the first sheet my self with my own hand.
+
+Desirous as I am of acquainting the world with many more circumstances
+relative to myself, some private considerations prevent my indulging
+their curiosity any farther at present; but I shall take care to leave
+so minute an account of myself to some public library, that the future
+commentators and editors of this work shall not be deprived of all
+necessary lights. In the mean time I beg the reader to accept the
+temporary compensation of an account of the author whose work I am
+publishing.
+
+The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the
+creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral
+tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island,
+not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic
+attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them
+repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born.
+We do not trouble the reader with these attestations, as we are sure
+every body will believe them as much as if they had seen them. It is more
+difficult to ascertain the true author. We might ascribe them with great
+probability to Kemanrlegorpikos, son of Quat; but besides that we are
+not certain that any such person ever existed, it is not clear that he
+ever wrote any thing but a book of cookery, and that in heroic verse.
+Others give them to Quat's nurse, and a few to Hermes Trismegistus,
+though there is a passage in the latter's treatise on the harpsichord
+which directly contradicts the account of the first volcano in the
+114th. of the Hieroglyphic Tales. As Trismegistus's work is lost, it
+is impossible to decide now whether the discordance mentioned is so
+positive as has been asserted by many learned men, who only guess at the
+opinion of Hermes from other passages in his writings, and who indeed
+are not sure whether he was speaking of volcanoes or cheesecakes, for
+he drew so ill, that his hieroglyphics may often be taken for the most
+opposite things in nature; and as there is no subject which he has not
+treated, it is not precisely known what he was discussing in any one
+of them.
+
+This is the nearest we can come to any certainty with regard to the
+author. But whether he wrote the Tales six thousand years ago, as we
+believe, or whether they were written for him within these ten years,
+they are incontestably the most ancient work in the world; and though
+there is little imagination, and still less invention in them; yet there
+are so many passages in them exactly resembling Homer, that any man
+living would conclude they were imitated from that great poet, if it was
+not certain that Homer borrowed from them, which I shall prove two ways:
+first, by giving Homer's parallel passages at the bottom of the page;
+and secondly, by translating Homer himself into prose, which shall make
+him so unlike himself, that nobody will think he could be an original
+writer: and when he is become totally lifeless and insipid, it will be
+impossible but these Tales should be preferred to the Iliad; especially
+as I design to put them into a kind of style that shall be neither verse
+nor prose; a diction lately much used in tragedies and heroic poems, the
+former of which are really heroic poems from want of probability, as an
+antico-moderno epic poem is in fact a meer tragedy, having little or no
+change of scene, no incidents but a ghost and a storm, and no events but
+the deaths of the principal actors.
+
+I will not detain the reader longer from the perusal of this invaluable
+work; but I must beseech the public to be expeditious in taking off the
+whole impression, as fast as I can get it printed; because I must inform
+them that I have a more precious work in contemplation; namely, a new
+Roman history, in which I mean to ridicule, detect and expose, all
+ancient virtue, and patriotism, and shew from original papers which
+I am going to write, and which I shall afterwards bury in the ruins of
+Carthage and then dig up, that it appears by the letters of Hanno the
+Punic embassador at Rome, that Scipio was in the pay of Hannibal, and
+that the dilatoriness of Fabius proceeded from his being a pensioner
+of the Same general. I own this discovery will pierce my heart; but as
+morality is best taught by shewing how little effect it had on the best
+of men, I will sacrifice the most virtuous names for the instruction of
+the present wicked generation; and I cannot doubt but when once they
+have learnt to detest the favourite heroes of antiquity, they will
+become good subjects of the most pious king that ever lived since David,
+who expelled the established royal family, and then sung psalms to the
+memory of Jonathan, to whose prejudice he had succeeded to the throne.
+
+
+
+
+TALE 1.
+
+_A new Arabian Night's Entertainment._
+
+
+At the foot of the great mountain Hirgonqúu was anciently situated the
+kingdom of Larbidel. Geographers, who are not apt to make such just
+comparisons, said, it resembled a football just going to be kicked away;
+and so it happened; for the mountain kicked the kingdom into the ocean,
+and it has never been heard of since.
+
+One day a young princess had climbed up to the top of the mountain to
+gather goat's eggs, the whites of which are excellent for taking off
+freckles.--Goat's eggs!--Yes--naturalists hold that all Beings are
+conceived in an egg. The goats of Hirgonqúu might be oviparous, and lay
+their eggs to be hatched by the sun. This is my supposition; no matter
+whether I believe it myself or not. I will write against and abuse any
+man that opposes my hypothesis. It would be fine indeed if learned men
+were obliged to believe what they assert.
+
+The other side of the mountain was inhabited by a nation of whom the
+Larbidellians knew no more than the French nobility do of Great Britain,
+which they think is an island that some how or other may be approached
+by land. The princess had strayed into the confines of Cucurucu, when
+she suddenly found herself seized by the guards of the prince that
+reigned in that country. They told her in few words that she must be
+conveyed to the capital and married to the giant their lord and emperor.
+The giant, it seems, was fond of having a new wife every night, who was
+to tell him a story that would last till morning, and then have her head
+cut off--such odd ways have some folks of passing their wedding-nights!
+The princess modestly asked, why their master loved such long stories?
+The captain of the guard replied, his majesty did not sleep well--Well!
+said she, and if he does not!--not but I believe I can tell as long
+stories as any princess in Asia. Nay, I can repeat Leonidas by heart,
+and your emperor must be wakeful indeed if he can hold out against that.
+
+By this time they were arrived at the palace. To the great surprise of
+the princess, the emperor, so far from being a giant, was but five feet
+one inch in height; but being two inches taller than any of his
+predecessors, the flattery of his courtiers had bestowed the name of
+_giant_ on him; and he affected to look down upon any man above his own
+stature. The princess was immediately undressed and put to bed, his
+majesty being impatient to hear a new story.
+
+Light of my eyes, said the emperor, what is your name? I call myself the
+princess Gronovia, replied she; but my real appellation is the frow
+Gronow. And what is the use of a name, said his majesty, but to be
+called by it? And why do you pretend to be a princess, if you are not?
+My turn is romantic, answered she, and I have ever had an ambition of
+being the heroine of a novel. Now there are but two conditions that
+entitle one to that rank; one must be a shepherdess or a princess. Well,
+content yourself, said the giant, you will die an empress, without
+being either the one or the other! But what sublime reason had you for
+lengthening your name so unaccountably? It is a custom in my family,
+said she: all my ancestors were learned men, who wrote about the Romans.
+It sounded more classic, and gave a higher opinion of their literature,
+to put a Latin termination to their names. All this is Japonese to me,
+said the emperor; but your ancestors seem to have been a parcel of
+mountebanks. Does one understand any thing the better for corrupting
+one's name? Oh, said the princess, but it shewed taste too. There was
+a time when in Italy the learned carried this still farther; and a man
+with a large forehead, who was born on the fifth of January, called
+himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the
+emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a
+great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came
+you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland--The deuce you was, said
+the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess,
+spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea--Indeed, moppet!
+said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any
+country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said she, which I
+cannot resolve on a sudden; but I will step home to my library, and
+consult five or six thousand volumes of modern history, an hundred or
+two dictionaries, and an abridgment of geography in forty volumes in
+folio, and be back in an instant. Not so fast, my life, said the
+emperor, you must not rise till you go to execution; it is now one in
+the morning, and you have not begun your story.
+
+My great grandfather, continued the princess, was a Dutch merchant, who
+passed many years in Japan--On what account? said the emperor. He went
+thither to abjure his religion, said she, that he might get money enough
+to return and defend it against Philip 2d. You are a pleasant family,
+said the emperor; but though I love fables, I hate genealogies. I know
+in all families, by their own account, there never was any thing but
+good and great men from father to son; a sort of fiction that does not
+at all amuse me. In my dominions there is no nobility but flattery.
+Whoever flatters me best is created a great lord, and the titles I
+confer are synonimous to their merits. There is Kiss-my-breech-Can, my
+favourite; Adulation-Can, lord treasurer; Prerogative-Can, head of the
+law; and Blasphemy-Can, high-priest. Whoever speaks truth, corrupts his
+blood, and is ipso facto degraded. In Europe you allow a man to be noble
+because one of his ancestors was a flatterer. But every thing
+degenerates, the farther it is removed from its source. I will not hear
+a word of any of your race before your father: what was he?
+
+It was in the height of the contests about the bull unigenitus--I tell
+you, interrupted the emperor, I will not be plagued with any more of
+those people with Latin names: they were a parcel of coxcombs, and seem
+to have infected you with their folly. I am sorry, replied Gronovia,
+that your sublime highness is so little acquainted with the state of
+Europe, as to take a papal ordinance for a person. Unigenitus is Latin
+for the Jesuits--And who the devil are the Jesuits? said the giant.
+You explain one nonsensical term by another, and wonder I am never the
+wiser. Sir, said the princess, if you will permit me to give you a short
+account of the troubles that have agitated Europe for these last two
+hundred years, on the doctrines of grace, free-will, predestination,
+reprobation, justification, &c. you will be more entertained, and will
+believe less, than if I told your majesty a long story of fairies and
+goblins. You are an eternal prater, said the emperor, and very
+self-sufficient; but talk your fill, and upon what subject you like till
+tomorrow morning; but I swear by the soul of the holy Jirigi, who rode
+to heaven on the tail of a magpie, as soon as the clock strikes eight,
+you are a dead woman. Well, who was the Jesuit Unigenitus?
+
+The novel doctrines that had sprung up in Germany, said Gronovia, made
+it necessary for the church to look about her. The disciples of
+Loyola--Of whom? said the emperor, yawning--Ignatius Loyola, the founder
+of the Jesuits, replied Gronovia, was--A writer of Roman history, I
+suppose, interrupted the emperor: what the devil were the Romans to you,
+that you trouble your head so much about them? The empire of Rome, and
+the church of Rome, are two distinct things, said the princess; and yet,
+as one may say, the one depends upon the other, as the new testament
+does on the old. One destroyed the other, and yet pretends a right to
+its inheritance. The temporalities of the church--What's o'clock, said
+the emperor to the chief eunuch? it cannot sure be far from eight--this
+woman has gossipped at least seven hours. Do you hear, my
+tomorrow-night's wife shall be dumb--cut her tongue out before you bring
+her to our bed. Madam, said the eunuch, his sublime highness, whose
+erudition passes the lands of the sea, is too well acquainted with all
+human sciences to require information. It is therefore that his exalted
+wisdom prefers accounts of what never happened, to any relation either
+in history or divinity--You lie, said the emperor; when I exclude truth,
+I certainly do not mean to forbid divinity--How many divinities have
+you in Europe, woman? The council of Trent, replied Gronovia, has
+decided--the emperor began to snore--I mean, continued Gronovia, that
+notwithstanding all father Paul has asserted, cardinal Palavicini
+affirms that in the three first sessions of that council--the emperor
+was now fast asleep, which the princess and the chief eunuch perceiving,
+clapped several pillows upon his face, and held them there till he
+expired. As soon as they were convinced he was dead, the princess,
+putting on every mark of despair and concern, issued to the divan,
+where she was immediately proclaimed empress. The emperor, it was given
+out, had died of an hermorrhoidal cholic, but to shew her regard for his
+memory, her imperial majesty declared she would strictly adhere to the
+maxims by which he had governed. Accordingly she espoused a new husband
+every night, but dispensed with their telling her stories, and was
+graciously pleased also, upon their good behaviour, to remit the
+subsequent execution. She sent presents to all the learned men in Asia;
+and they in return did not fail to cry her up as a pattern of clemency,
+wisdom, and virtue: and though the panegyrics of the learned are
+generally as clumsy as they are fulsome, they ventured to allure her
+that their writings would be as durable as brass, and that the memory of
+her glorious reign would reach to the latest posterity.
+
+
+
+
+TALE II.
+
+_The King and his three Daughters_.
+
+
+There was formerly a king, who had three daughters--that is, he would
+have had three, if he had had one more, but some how or other the eldest
+never was born. She was extremely handsome, had a great deal of wit, and
+spoke French in perfection, as all the authors of that age affirm, and
+yet none of them pretend that she ever existed. It is very certain that
+the two other princesses were far from beauties; the second had a strong
+Yorkshire dialect, and the youngest had bad teeth and but one leg, which
+occasioned her dancing very ill.
+
+As it was not probable that his majesty would have any more children,
+being eighty-seven years, two months, and thirteen days old when his
+queen died, the states of the kingdom were very anxious to have the
+princesses married. But there was one great obstacle to this settlement,
+though so important to the peace of the kingdom. The king insisted that
+his eldest daughter should be married first, and as there was no such
+person, it was very difficult to fix upon a proper husband for her. The
+courtiers all approved his majesty's resolution; but as under the best
+princes there will always be a number of discontented, the nation was
+torn into different factions, the grumblers or patriots insisting that
+the second princess was the eldest, and ought to be declared heiress
+apparent to the crown. Many pamphlets were written pro and con, but
+the ministerial party pretended that the chancellor's argument was
+unanswerable, who affirmed, that the second princess could not be the
+eldest, as no princess-royal ever had a Yorkshire accent. A few persons
+who were attached to the youngest princess, took advantage of this plea
+for whispering that _her_ royal highness's pretensions to the crown were
+the best of all; for as there was no eldest princess, and as the second
+must be the first, if there was no first, and as she could not be the
+second if she was the first, and as the chancellor had proved that she
+could not be the first, it followed plainly by every idea of law that
+she could be nobody at all; and then the consequence followed of course,
+that the youngest must be the eldest, if she had no elder sister.
+
+It is inconceivable what animosities and mischiefs arose from these
+different titles; and each faction endeavoured to strengthen itself
+by foreign alliances. The court party having no real object for their
+attachment, were the most attached of all, and made up by warmth for
+the want of foundation in their principles. The clergy in general were
+devoted to this, which was styled _the first party_. The physicians
+embraced the second; and the lawyers declared for the third, or the
+faction of the youngest princess, because it seemed best calculated to
+admit of doubts and endless litigation.
+
+While the nation was in this distracted situation, there arrived the
+prince of Quifferiquimini, who would have been the most accomplished
+hero of the age, if he had not been dead, and had spoken any language
+but the Egyptian, and had not had three legs. Notwithstanding these
+blemishes, the eyes of the whole nation were immediately turned upon
+him, and each party wished to see him married to the princess whose
+cause they espoused.
+
+The old king received him with the most distinguished honours; the
+senate made the most fulsome addresses to him; the princesses were so
+taken with him, that they grew more bitter enemies than ever; and the
+court ladies and petit-maitres invented a thousand new fashions upon his
+account--every thing was to be à la Quifferiquimini. Both men and women
+of fashion left off rouge to look the more cadaverous; their cloaths
+were embroidered with hieroglyphics, and all the ugly characters they
+could gather from Egyptian antiquities, with which they were forced to
+be contented, it being impossible to learn a language that is lost; and
+all tables, chairs, stools, cabinets and couches, were made with only
+three legs; the last, howver, soon went out of fashion, as being very
+inconvenient.
+
+The prince, who, ever since his death, had had but a weakly
+constitution, was a little fatigued with this excess of attentions,
+and would often wish himself at home in his coffin. But his greatest
+difficulty of all was to get rid of the youngest princess, who kept
+hopping after him wherever he went, and was so full of admiration
+of his three legs, and so modest about having but one herself, and so
+inquisitive to know how his three legs were set on, that being the best
+natured man in the world, it went to his heart whenever in a fit of
+peevishness he happened to drop an impatient word, which never failed to
+throw her into an agony of tears, and then she looked so ugly that it
+was impossible for him to be tolerably civil to her. He was not much
+more inclined to the second princess--In truth, it was the eldest who
+made the conquest of his affections: and so violently did his passion
+encrease one Tuesday morning, that breaking through all prudential
+considerations (for there were many reasons which ought to have
+determined his choice in favour of either of the other sisters) he
+hurried to the old king, acquainted him with his love, and demanded the
+eldest princess in marriage. Nothing could equal the joy of the good old
+monarch, who wished for nothing but to live to see the consummation of
+this match. Throwing his arms about the prince-skeleton's neck and
+watering his hollow cheeks with warm tears, he granted his request, and
+added, that he would immediately resign his crown to him and his
+favourite daughter.
+
+I am forced for want of room to pass over many circumstances that would
+add greatly to the beauty of this history, and am sorry I must dash the
+reader's impatience by acquainting him, that notwithstanding the
+eagerness of the old king and youthful ardour of the prince, the
+nuptials were obliged to be postponed; the archbishop declaring that it
+was essentially necessary to have a dispensation from the pope, the
+parties being related within the forbidden degrees; a woman that never
+was, and a man that had been, being deemed first cousins in the eye of
+the canon law.
+
+Hence arose a new difficulty. The religion of the Quifferiquiminians was
+totally opposite to that of the papists. The former believed in nothing
+but grace; and they had a high-priest of their own, who pretended that
+he was master of the whole fee-simple of grace, and by that possession
+could cause every thing to have been that never had been, and could
+prevent every thing that had been from ever having been. "We have
+nothing to do, said the prince to the king, but to send a solemn embassy
+to the high-priest of grace, with a present of a hundred thousand
+million of ingots, and he will cause your charming no-daughter to have
+been, and will prevent my having died, and then there will be no
+occasion for a dispensation from your old fool at Rome."--How! thou
+impious, atheistical bag of drybones, cried the old king; dost thou
+profane our holy religion? Thou shalt have no daughter of mine, thou
+three-legged skeleton--Go and be buried and be damned, as thou must be;
+for as thou art dead, thou art past repentance: I would sooner give my
+child to a baboon, who has one leg more than thou hast, than bestow her
+on such a reprobate corpse--You had better give your one-legged infanta
+to the baboon, said the prince, they are fitter for one another--As much
+a corpse as I am, I am preferable to nobody; and who the devil would
+have married your no-daughter, but a dead body! For my religion, I lived
+and died in it, and it is not in my power to change it now if I
+would--but for your part--a great shout interrupted this dialogue, and
+the captain of the guard rushing into the royal closet, acquainted his
+majesty, that the second princess, in revenge of the prince's neglect,
+had given her hand to a drysalter, who was a common-council-man, and
+that the city, in consideration of the match, had proclaimed them king
+and queen, allowing his majesty to retain the title for his life, which
+they had fixed for the term of six months; and ordering, in respect of
+his royal birth, that the prince should immediately lie in state and
+have a pompous funeral.
+
+This revolution was so sudden and so universal, that all parties
+approved, or were forced to seem to approve it. The old king died the
+next day, as the courtiers said, for joy; the prince of Quifferiquimini
+was buried in spite of his appeal to the law of nations; and the
+youngest princess went distracted, and was shut up in a madhouse,
+calling out day and night for a husband with three legs.
+
+
+
+
+TALE III.
+
+_The Dice-Box. A Fairy Tale._
+
+_Translated from the French Translation of the Countess DAUNOIS, for the
+Entertainment of Miss CAROLINE CAMPBELL._ [_Eldest daughter of lord
+William Campbell; she lived with her aunt the countess of Ailesbury._]
+
+
+There was a merchant of Damascus named Aboulcasem, who had an only
+daughter called Pissimissi, which signifies _the waters of Jordan_;
+because a fairy foretold at her birth that she would be one of Solomon's
+concubines. Azaziel, the angel of death, having transported Aboulcasem
+to the regions of bliss, he had no fortune to bequeath to his beloved
+child but the shell of a pistachia-nut drawn by an elephant and a
+ladybird. Pissimissi, who was but nine years old, and who had been been
+kept in great confinement, was impatient to see the world; and no sooner
+was the breath out of her father's body, than she got into the car, and
+whipping her elephant and ladybird, drove out of the yard as fast as
+possible, without knowing whither she was going. Her coursers never
+stopped till they came to the foot of a brazen tower, that had neither
+doors nor windows, in which lived an old enchantress, who had locked
+herself up there with seventeen thousand husbands. It had but one single
+vent for air, which was a small chimney grated over, through which it
+was scarce possible to put one's hand. Pissimissi, who was very
+impatient, ordered her coursers to fly with her up to the top of the
+chimney, which, as they were the most docile creatures in the world,
+they immediately did; but unluckily the fore paw of the elephant
+lighting on the top of the chimney, broke down the grate by its weight,
+but at the same time stopped up the passage so entirely, that all the
+enchantress's husbands were stifled for want of air. As it was a
+collection she had made with great care and cost, it is easy to imagine
+her vexation and rage. She raised a storm of thunder and lightning that
+lasted eight hundred and four years; and having conjured up an army of
+two thousand devils, she ordered them to flay the elephant alive, and
+dress it for her supper with anchovy sauce. Nothing could have saved the
+poor beast, if, struggling to get loose from the chimney, he had not
+happily broken wind, which it seems is a great preservative against
+devils. They all flew a thousand ways, and in their hurry carried away
+half the brazen tower, by which means the elephant, the car, the
+ladybird, and Pissimissi got loose; but in their fall tumbled through
+the roof of an apothecary's shop, and broke all his bottles of physic.
+The elephant, who was very dry with his fatigue, and who had not much
+taste, immediately sucked up all the medicines with his proboscis, which
+occasioned such a variety of effects in his bowels, that it was well
+he had such a strong constitution, or he must have died of it. His
+evacuations were so plentiful, that he not only drowned the tower of
+Babel, near which the apothecary's shop stood, but the current ran
+fourscore leagues till it came to the sea, and there poisoned so many
+whales and leviathans, that a pestilence ensued, and lasted three years,
+nine months and sixteen days. As the elephant was extremely weakened by
+what had happened, it was impossible for him to draw the car for
+eighteen months, which was a cruel delay to Pissimissi's impatience,
+who during all that time could not travel above a hundred miles a day,
+for as she carried the sick animal in her lap, the poor ladybird could
+not make longer stages with no assistance. Besides, Pissimissi bought
+every thing she saw wherever she came; and all was crouded into the car
+and stuffed into the seat. She had purchased ninety-two dolls, seventeen
+baby-houses, six cart-loads of sugar-plumbs, a thousand ells of
+gingerbread, eight dancing dogs, a bear and a monkey, four toy-shops
+with all their contents, and seven dozen of bibs and aprons of the
+newest fashion. They were jogging on with all this cargo over mount
+Caucasus, when an immense humming-bird, who had been struck with the
+beauty of the ladybird's wings, that I had forgot to say were of ruby
+spotted with black pearls, sousing down at once upon her prey, swallowed
+ladybird, Pissimissi, the elephant, and all their commodities. It
+happened that the humming-bird belonged to Solomon; he let it out of its
+cage every morning after breakfast, and it constantly came home by the
+time the council broke up. Nothing could equal the surprise of his
+majesty and the courtiers, when the dear little creature arrived with
+the elephant's proboscis hanging out of its divine little bill.
+However, after the first astonishment was over, his majesty, who to be
+sure was wisdom itself, and who understood natural philosophy that it
+was a charm to hear him discourse of those matters, and who was actually
+making a collection of dried beasts and birds in twelve thousand volumes
+of the best fool's-cap paper, immediately perceived what had happened,
+and taking out of the side-pocket of his breeches a diamond
+toothpick-case of his own turning, with the toothpick made of the only
+unicorn's horn he ever saw, he stuck it into the elephant's snout, and
+began to draw it out: but all his philosophy was confounded, when jammed
+between the elephant's legs he perceived the head of a beautiful girl,
+and between her legs a baby-house, which with the wings extended thirty
+feet, out of the windows of which rained a torrent of sugar-plumbs, that
+had been placed there to make room. Then followed the bear, who had been
+pressed to the bales of gingerbread and was covered all over with it,
+and looked but uncouthly; and the monkey with a doll in every paw, and
+his pouches so crammed with sugar-plumbs that they hung on each side of
+him, and trailed on the ground behind like the duchess of ----'s
+beautiful breasts. Solomon, however, gave small attention to this
+procession, being caught with the charms of the lovely Pissimissi: he
+immediately began the song of songs extempore; and what he had seen--I
+mean, all that came out of the humming-bird's throat had made such a
+jumble in his ideas, that there was nothing so unlike to which he did
+not compare all Pissimissi's beauties. As he sung his canticles too
+to no tune, and god knows had but a bad voice, they were far from
+comforting Pissimissi: the elephant had torn her best bib and apron, and
+she cried and roared, and kept such a squalling, that though Solomon
+carried her in his arms, and showed her all the fine things in the
+temple, there was no pacifying her. The queen of Sheba, who was playing
+at backgammon with the high-priest, and who came every October to
+converse with Solomon, though she did not understand a word of Hebrew,
+hearing the noise, came running out of her dressing-room; and seeing the
+king with a squalling child in his arms, asked him peevishly, if it
+became his reputed wisdom to expose himself with his bastards to all the
+court? Solomon, instead of replying, kept singing, "We have a little
+sister, and she has no breasts;" which so provoked the Sheban princess,
+that happening to have one of the dice-boxes in her hand, she without
+any ceremony threw it at his head. The enchantress, whom I mentioned
+before, and who, though invisible, had followed Pissimissi, and drawn
+her into her train of misfortunes, turned the dice-box aside, and
+directed it to Pissimissi's nose, which being something flat, like
+madame de ----'s, it stuck there, and being of ivory, Solomon ever after
+compared his beloved's nose to the tower that leads to Damascus. The
+queen, though ashamed of her behaviour, was not in her heart sorry for
+the accident; but when she found that it only encreased the monarch's
+passion, her contempt redoubled; and calling him a thousand old fools to
+herself, she ordered her post-chaise and drove away in a fury, without
+leaving sixpence for the servants; and nobody knows what became of her
+or her kingdom, which has never been heard of since.
+
+
+
+
+TALE IV.
+
+_The Peach in Brandy. A Milesian Tale._
+
+
+Fitz Scanlan Mac Giolla l'ha druig,[1] king of Kilkenny, the thousand
+and fifty-seventh descendant in a direct line from Milesius king of
+Spain, had an only daughter called Great A, and by corruption Grata; who
+being arrived at years of discretion, and perfectly initiated by her
+royal parents in the arts of government, the fond monarch determined to
+resign his crown to her: having accordingly assembled the senate, he
+declared his resolution to them, and having delivered his sceptre into
+the princess's hand, he obliged her to ascend the throne; and to set the
+example, was the first to kiss her hand, and vow eternal obedience to
+her. The senators were ready to stifle the new queen with panegyrics and
+addresses; the people, though they adored the old king, were transported
+with having a new sovereign, and the university, according to custom
+immemorial, presented her majesty, three months after every body had
+forgotten the event, with testimonials of the excessive sorrow and
+excessive joy they felt on losing one monarch and getting another.
+
+Her majesty was now in the fifth year of her age, and a prodigy of sense
+and goodness. In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped with
+inimitable grace, she assured them that her [2] heart was entirely
+Irish, and that she did not intend any longer to go in leading-strings,
+as a proof of which she immediately declared her nurse prime-minister.
+The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiums
+than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of
+sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of
+usquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was
+her royal pleasure to play at blindman's-buff, but such a hub-bub arose
+from the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching one
+another, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle her
+majesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as a
+pigeon's egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard her
+to Tipperary. The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the mace
+knocked out the chancellor's brains, who at that time happened not to
+have any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see the
+ceremony, fell into a fit and [3] miscarried of twins, who were killed
+by her majesty's fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of the
+crown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead
+children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the [4] king and
+wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had now
+recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which
+Mr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence
+of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having
+asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present
+most lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata. An impeachment
+was voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition,
+particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name is
+unfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journals
+afterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became first
+lord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata's
+successor. The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whose
+name is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived a
+son before the king's resignation, that son was indubitably heir to the
+crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota
+whether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, when
+it was conceived--here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, the
+queen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who
+entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted
+by the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question for
+which was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed,
+the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go and
+drink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to a
+very long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which he
+contrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, that
+it produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages and
+massacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, and
+which were at last terminated by a lucky accident, well known, says my
+author, to every body, but which he thinks it his duty to relate for the
+sake of those who never may have heard it. These are his words:
+
+     It happened that the archbishop of Tuum (anciently called Meum by
+     the Roman catholic clergy) the great wit of those times, was in the
+     queen-mother's closet, who had the young queen in her lap. [5] His
+     grace was suddenly seized with a violent fit of the cholic, which
+     made him make such wry faces, that the queen-mother thought he was
+     going to die, and ran out of the room to send for a physician, for
+     she was a pattern of goodness, and void of pride. While she was
+     stepped into the servant's hall to call somebody, according to the
+     simplicity of those times, the archbishop's pains encreased, when
+     perceiving something on the mantle-piece, which he took for a peach
+     in brandy, he gulped it all down at once without saying grace, God
+     forgive him, and found great comfort from it. He had not done
+     licking his lips before the queen-mother returned, when queen Grata
+     cried out, "Mama, mama, the gentleman has eat my little brother!"
+     This fortunate event put an end to the contest, the male line
+     entirely failing in the person of the devoured prince. The
+     archbishop, however, who became pope by the name of Innocent the
+     3d. having afterwards a son by his sister, named the child
+     Fitzpatrick, as having some of the royal blood in its veins; and
+     from him are descended all the younger branches of the Fitzpatricks
+     of our time. Now the rest of the acts of Grata and all that she
+     did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
+     kings of Kilkenny?
+
+
+NOTES ON TALE IV.
+
+_This tale was written for Anne Liddel countess of Offory, wife of John
+Fitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject of
+this story._
+
+[Footnote 1: _Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family of
+Fitzpatrick._]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, her
+heart was entirely English._]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Lady Offory had miscarried just then of two sons._]
+
+[Footnote 4: _The housekeeper, as soon as lord Offory came home, wished
+him joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead._]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irish
+author is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having said
+that the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks of
+queen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother's
+lap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of the
+question_. Like a child _does not import that she actually was a child:
+she only sat_ like a child; _and so she might though thirty years old.
+Civilians have declared at what period of his life a king may be of age
+before he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of the
+tribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants after
+they are past their infancy._]
+
+
+
+
+TALE V.
+
+Mi Li. _A Chinese Fairy Tale_.
+
+
+Mi Li, prince of China, was brought up by his godmother the fairy Hih,
+who was famous for telling fortunes with a tea-cup. From that unerring
+oracle she assured him, that he would be the most unhappy man alive
+unless he married a princess whose name was the same with her father's
+dominions. As in all probability there could not be above one person in
+the world to whom that accident had happened, the prince thought there
+would be nothing so easy as to learn who his destined bride was. He had
+been too well educated to put the question to his godmother, for he knew
+when she uttered an oracle, that it was with intention to perplex, not
+to inform; which has made people so fond of consulting all those who do
+not give an explicit answer, such as prophets, lawyers, and any body you
+meet on the road, who, if you ask the way, reply by desiring to know
+whence you came. Mi Li was no sooner returned to his palace than he sent
+for his governor, who was deaf and dumb, qualities for which the fairy
+had selected him, that he might not instil any bad principles into his
+pupil; however, in recompence, he could talk upon his fingers like an
+angel. Mi Li asked him directly who the princess was whose name was the
+same with her father's kingdom? This was a little exaggeration in the
+prince, but nobody ever repeats any thing just as they heard it:
+besides, it was excusable in the heir of a great monarchy, who of all
+things had not been taught to speak truth, and perhaps had never heard
+what it was. Still it was not the mistake of _kingdom_ for _dominions_
+that puzzled the governor. It never helped him to understand any thing
+the better for its being rightly stated. However, as he had great
+presence of mind, which consisted in never giving a direct answer, and
+in looking as if he could, he replied, it was a question of too great
+importance to be resolved on a sudden. How came you to know that? Said
+the prince--This youthful impetuosity told the governor that there was
+something more in the question than he had apprehended; and though he
+could be very solemn about nothing, he was ten times more so when there
+was something he did not comprehend. Yet that unknown something
+occasioning a conflict between his cunning and his ignorance, and the
+latter being the greater, always betrayed itself, for nothing looks so
+silly as a fool acting wisdom. The prince repeated his question; the
+governor demanded why he asked--the prince had not patience to spell the
+question over again on his fingers, but bawled it as loud as he could to
+no purpose. The courtiers ran in, and catching up the prince's words,
+and repeating them imperfectly, it soon flew all over Pekin, and thence
+into the provinces, and thence into Tartary, and thence to Muscovy, and
+so on, that the prince wanted to know who the princess was, whose name
+was the same as her father's. As the Chinese have not the blessing (for
+aught I know) of having family surnames as we have, and as what would be
+their christian-names, if they were so happy as to be christians, are
+quite different for men and women, the Chinese, who think that must be a
+rule all over the world because it is theirs, decided that there could
+not exist upon the square face of the earth a woman whose name was the
+same as her father's. They repeated this so often, and with so much
+deference and so much obstinacy, that the prince, totally forgetting the
+original oracle, believed that he wanted to know who the woman was who
+had the same name as her father. However, remembring there was something
+in the question that he had taken for royal, he always said _the king
+her father_. The prime minister consulted the red book or court-calendar,
+which was _his_ oracle, and could find no such princess. All the
+ministers at foreign courts were instructed to inform themselves if
+there was any such lady; but as it took up a great deal of time to put
+these instructions into cypher, the prince's impatience could not wait
+for the couriers setting out, but he determined to go himself in search
+of the princess. The old king, who, _as is usual_, had left the whole
+management of affairs to his son the moment he was fourteen, was charmed
+with the prince's resolution of seeing the world, which he thought could
+be done in a few days, the facility of which makes so many monarchs
+never stir out of their own palaces till it is too late; and his majesty
+declared, that he should approve of his son's choice, be the lady who
+she would, provided she answered to the divine designation of having the
+same name as her father.
+
+The prince rode post to Canton, intending to embark there on board an
+English man of war. With what infinite transport did he hear the evening
+before he was to embark, that a sailor knew the identic lady in
+question. The prince scalded his mouth with the tea he was drinking,
+broke the old china cup it was in, and which the queen his mother had
+given him at his departure from Pekin, and which had been given to her
+great great great great grandmother queen Fi by Confucius himself, and
+ran down to the vessel and asked for the man who knew his bride. It was
+honest Tom O'Bull, an Irish sailor, who by his interpreter Mr. James
+Hall, the supercargo, informed his highness that Mr. Bob Oliver of Sligo
+had a daughter christened of both his names, the fair miss Bob Oliver.[1]
+The prince by the plenitude of his power declared Tom a mandarin of the
+first class, and at Tom's desire promised to speak to his brother the
+king of Great Ireland, France and Britain, to have him made a peer in
+his own country, Tom saying he should be ashamed to appear there without
+being a lord as well as all his acquaintance.
+
+The prince's passion, which was greatly inflamed by Tom's description of
+her highness Bob's charms, would not let him stay for a proper set of
+ladies from Pekin to carry to wait on his bride, so he took a dozen of
+the wives of the first merchants in Canton, and two dozen virgins as
+maids of honour, who however were disqualified for their employments
+before his highness got to St. Helena. Tom himself married one of them,
+but was so great a favourite with the prince, that she still was
+appointed maid of honour, and with Tom's consent was afterwards married
+to an English duke.
+
+Nothing can paint the agonies of our royal lover, when on his landing at
+Dublin he was informed that princess Bob had quitted Ireland, and was
+married to nobody knew whom. It was well for Tom that he was on Irish
+ground. He would have been chopped as small as rice, for it is death in
+China to mislead the heir of the crown through ignorance. To do it
+knowingly is no crime, any more than in other countries.
+
+As a prince of China cannot marry a woman that has been married before,
+it was necessary for Mi Li to search the world for another lady equally
+qualified with miss Bob, whom he forgot the moment he was told he must
+marry somebody else, and fell equally in love with somebody else, though
+be knew not with whom. In this suspence he dreamt, "_that he would find
+his destined spouse, whose father had lost the dominions which never had
+been his dominions, in a place where there was a bridge over no water, a
+tomb where nobody ever was buried nor ever would be buried, ruins that
+were more than they had ever been, a subterraneous passage in which
+there were dogs with eyes of rubies and emeralds, and a more beautiful
+menagerie of Chinese pheasants than any in his father's extensive
+gardens_." This oracle seemed so impossible to be accomplished, that he
+believed it more than he had done the first, which shewed his great
+piety. He determined to begin his second search, and being told by the
+lord lieutenant that there was in England a Mr. Banks,[2] who was going
+all over the world in search of he did not know what, his highness
+thought he could not have a better conductor, and sailed for England.
+There he learnt that the sage Banks was at Oxford, hunting in the
+Bodleian library for a MS. voyage of a man who had been in the moon,
+which Mr. Banks thought must have been in the western ocean, where the
+moon sets, and which planet if he could discover once more, he would
+take possession of in his majesty's name, upon condition that it should
+never be taxed, and so be lost again to this country like the rest of
+his majesty's dominions in that part of the world.
+
+Mi Li took a hired post-chaise for Oxford, but as it was a little rotten
+it broke on the new road down to Henley. A beggar advised him to walk
+into general Conway's, who was the most courteous person alive, and
+would certainly lend him his own chaise. The prince travelled incog. He
+took the beggar's advice, but going up to the house was told the family
+were in the grounds, but he should be conducted to them. He was led
+through a venerable wood of beeches, to a menagerie[3] commanding a more
+glorious prospect than any in his father's dominions, and full of
+Chinese pheasants. The prince cried out in extasy, Oh! potent Hih! my
+dream begins to be accomplished. The gardiner, who knew no Chinese but
+the names of a few plants, was struck with the similitude of the sounds,
+but discreetly said not a word. Not finding his lady there, as he
+expected, he turned back, and plunging suddenly into the thickest gloom
+of the wood, he descended into a cavern totally dark, the intrepid
+prince following him boldly. After advancing a great way into this
+subterraneous vault, at last they perceived light, when on a sudden they
+were pursued by several small spaniels, and turning to look at them, the
+prince perceived their eyes[4] shone like emeralds and rubies. Instead
+of being amazed, as Fo-Hi, the founder of his race, would have been, the
+prince renewed his exclamations, and cried, I advance! I advance! I
+shall find my bride! great Hih! thou art infallible! Emerging into
+light, the imperturbed[5] gardiner conducted his highness to a heap of
+artificial[6] ruins, beneath which they found a spacious gallery or
+arcade, where his highness was asked if he would not repose himself; but
+instead of answering he capered like one frantic, crying out, I advance!
+I advance! great Hih! I advance!--The gardiner was amazed, and doubted
+whether he was not conducting a madman to his master and lady, and
+hesitated whether he should proceed--but as he understood nothing the
+prince said, and perceiving he must be a foreigner, he concluded he was
+a Frenchman by his dancing. As the stranger too was so nimble and not at
+all tired with his walk, the sage gardiner proceeded down a sloping
+valley, between two mountains cloathed to their summits with cedars,
+firs, and pines, which he took care to tell the prince were all of his
+honour the general's own planting: but though the prince had learnt more
+English in three days in Ireland, than all the French in the world ever
+learnt in three years, he took no notice of the information, to the
+great offence of the gardiner, but kept running on, and increased his
+gambols and exclamations when he perceived the vale was terminated by a
+stupendous bridge, that seemed composed of the rocks which the giants
+threw at Jupiter's head, and had not a drop of water beneath[7]
+it--Where is my bride, my bride? cried Mi Li--I must be near her. The
+prince's shouts and cries drew a matron from a cottage that stood on a
+precipice near the bridge, and hung over the river--My lady is down at
+Ford-house, cried the good[8] woman, who was a little deaf, concluding
+they had called to her to know. The gardiner knew it was in vain to
+explain his distress to her, and thought that if the poor gentleman was
+really mad, his master the general would be the properest person to know
+how to manage him. Accordingly turning to the left, he led the prince
+along the banks of the river, which glittered through the opening
+fallows, while on the other hand a wilderness of shrubs climbed up the
+pendent cliffs of chalk, and contrasted with the verdant meads and
+fields of corn beyond the stream. The prince, insensible to such
+enchanting scenes, galloped wildly along, keeping the poor gardiner on a
+round trot, till they were stopped by a lonely[9] tomb, surrounded by
+cypress, yews, and willows, that seemed the monument of some adventurous
+youth who had been lost in tempting the current, and might have suited
+the gallant and daring Leander. Here Mi Li first had presence of mind to
+recollect the little English he knew, and eagerly asked the gardiner
+whose tomb he beheld before him. It is nobody's--before he could
+proceed, the prince interrupted him, And will it never be any
+body's?--Oh! thought the gardiner, now there is no longer any doubt of
+his phrenzy--and perceiving his master and the family approaching
+towards them, he endeavoured to get the start, but the prince, much
+younger, and borne too on the wings of love, set out full speed the
+moment he saw the company, and particularly a young damsel with them.
+Running almost breathless up to lady Ailesbury, and seizing miss
+Campbell's hand--he cried, _Who she? who she_? Lady Ailesbury screamed,
+the young maiden squalled, the general, cool but offended, rushed
+between them, and if a prince could be collared, would have collared
+him--Mi Li kept fast hold with one arm, but pointing to his prize with
+the other, and with the most eager and supplicating looks intreating for
+an answer, continued to exclaim, _Who she? who she_? The general
+perceiving by his accent and manner that he was a foreigner, and rather
+tempted to laugh than be angry, replied with civil scorn, Why _she_ is
+miss Caroline Campbell, daughter of lord William Campbell, his majesty's
+late governor of Carolina--Oh, Hih! I now recollect thy words! cried Mi
+Li--And so she became princess of China.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON TALE V.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _There really was such a person._.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _The gentleman who discovered Otaheite, in company with Dr.
+Solander._]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Lady Ailesbury's._]
+
+[Footnote 4: _At Park-place there is such a passage cut through a
+chalk-hill: when dogs are in the middle, the light from the mouth makes
+their eyes appear in the manner here described._]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Copeland, the gardiner, a very grave person._]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Consequently they seem to have been larger._]
+
+[Footnote 7: _The rustic bridge at Park-place was built by general
+Conway, to carry the road from Henley, and to leave the communication
+free between his grounds on each side of the road. Vide last page of
+4th. vol. of Anecdotes of Painting._]
+
+[Footnote 8: _The old woman who kept the cottage built by general Conway
+to command a glorious prospect. Ford-house is a farm house at the
+termination of the grounds._]
+
+[Footnote 9: _A fictitious tomb in a beautiful spot by the river, built
+for a point of view: it has a small pyramid on it._]
+
+
+
+
+TALE VI.
+
+_A true Love Story_.
+
+In the height of the animosities between the factions of the Guelfs and
+Ghibellines, a party of Venetians had made an inroad into the
+territories of the Viscontis, sovereigns of Milan, and had carried off
+the young Orondates, then at nurse. His family were at that time under a
+cloud, though they could boast of being descended from Canis Scaliger,
+lord of Verona. The captors sold the beautiful Orondates to a rich widow
+of the noble family of Grimaldi, who having no children, brought him up
+with as much tenderness as if he had been her son. Her fondness
+increased with the growth of his stature and charms, and the violence of
+his passions were augmented by the signora Grimaldi's indulgence. Is it
+necessary to say that love reigned predominantly in the soul of
+Orondates? Or that in a city like Venice a form like that of Orondates
+met with little resistance?
+
+The Cyprian queen, not content with the numerous oblations of Orondates
+on her altars, was not satisfied while his heart remained unengaged.
+Across the canal, overagainst the palace of Grimaldi, stood a convent of
+Carmelite nuns, the abbess of which had a young African slave of the
+most exquisite beauty, called Azora, a year younger than Orondates. Jet
+and japan were tawny and without lustre, when compared to the hue of
+Azora. Afric never produced a female so perfect as Azora; as Europe
+could boast but of one Orondates.
+
+The signora Grimaldi, though no bigot, was pretty regular at her
+devotions, but as lansquenet was more to her taste than praying, she
+hurried over her masses as fast as she could, to allot more of her
+precious time to cards. This made her prefer the church of the
+Carmelites, separated only by a small bridge, though the abbess was of a
+contrary faction. However, as both ladies were of equal quality, and had
+had no altercations that could countenance incivility, reciprocal
+curtsies always passed between them, the coldness of which each
+pretended to lay on their attention to their devotions, though the
+signora Grimaldi attended but little to the priest, and the abbess was
+chiefly employed in watching and criticising the inattention of the
+signora.
+
+Not so Orondates and Azora. Both constantly accompanied their mistresses
+to mass, and the first moment they saw each other was decisive in both
+breasts. Venice ceased to have more than one fair in the eyes of
+Orondates, and Azora had not remarked till then that there could be more
+beautiful beings in the world than some of the Carmelite nuns.
+
+The seclusion of the abbess, and the aversion between the two ladies,
+which was very cordial on the side of the holy one, cut off all hopes
+from the lovers. Azora grew grave and pensive and melancholy; Orondates
+surly and intractable. Even his attachment to his kind patroness
+relaxed. He attended her reluctantly but at the hours of prayer. Often
+did she find him on the steps of the church ere the doors were opened.
+The signora Grimaldi was not apt to make observations. She was content
+with indulging her own passions, seldom restrained those of others; and
+though good offices rarely presented themselves to her imagination, she
+was ready to exert them when applied to, and always talked charitably of
+the unhappy at her cards, if it was not a very unlucky deal.
+
+Still it is probable that she never would have discovered the passion of
+Orondates, had not her woman, who was jealous of his favour, given her a
+hint; at the same time remarking, under affectation of good will, how
+well the circumstances of the lovers were suited, and that as her
+ladyship was in years, and would certainly not think of providing for a
+creature she had bought in the public market, it would be charitable to
+marry the fond couple, and settle them on her farm in the country.
+
+Fortunately madame Grimaldi always was open to good impressions, and
+rarely to bad. Without perceiving the malice of her woman, she was
+struck with the idea of a marriage. She loved the cause, and always
+promoted it when it was honestly in her power. She seldom made
+difficulties, and never apprehended them. Without even examining
+Orondates on the state of his inclinations, without recollecting that
+madame Capello and she were of different parties, without taking any
+precautions to guard against a refusal, she instantly wrote to the
+abbess to propose a marriage between Orondates and Azora.
+
+The latter was in madame Capello's chamber when the note arrived. All
+the fury that authority loves to console itself with for being under
+restraint, all the asperity of a bigot, all the acrimony of party, and
+all the fictitious rage that prudery adopts when the sensual enjoyments
+of others are concerned, burst out on the helpless Azora, who was unable
+to divine how she was concerned in the fatal letter. She was made to
+endure all the calumnies that the abbess would have been glad to have
+hurled at the head of madame Grimaldi, if her own character and the rank
+of that offender would have allowed it. Impotent menaces of revenge were
+repeated with emphasis, and as nobody in the convent dared to contradict
+her, she gratified her anger and love of prating with endless
+tautologies. In fine, Azora was strictly locked up and bread and water
+were ordered as sovereign cures for love. Twenty replies to madame
+Grimaldi were written and torn, as not sufficiently expressive of a
+resentment that was rather vociferous than eloquent, and her confessor
+was at last forced to write one, in which he prevailed to have some holy
+cant inserted, though forced to compound for a heap of irony that
+related to the antiquity of her family, and for many unintelligible
+allusions to vulgar stories which the Ghibelline party had treasured up
+against the Guelfs. The most lucid part of the epistle pronounced a
+sentence of eternal chastity on Azora, not without some sarcastic
+expressions against the promiscuous amours of Orondates, which ought in
+common decorum to have banished him long ago from the mansion of a
+widowed matron.
+
+Just as this fulminatory mandate had been transcribed and signed by the
+lady abbess in full chapter, and had been consigned to the confessor to
+deliver, the portress of the convent came running out of breath, and
+announced to the venerable assembly, that Azora, terrified by the
+abbess's blows and threats, had fallen in labour and miscarried of four
+puppies: for be it known to all posterity, that Orondates was an Italian
+greyhound, and Azora a black spaniel.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+The foregoing Tales are given for no more than they are worth: they are
+mere whimsical trifles, written chiefly for private entertainment, and
+for private amusement half a dozen copies only are printed. They deserve
+at most to be considered as an attempt to vary the stale and beaten
+class of stories and novels, which, though works of invention, are
+almost always devoid of imagination. It would scarcely be credited, were
+it not evident from the Bibliotheque des Romans, which contains the
+fictitious adventures that have been written in all ages and all
+countries, that there should have been so little fancy, so little
+variety, and so little novelty, in writings in which the imagination is
+fettered by no rules, and by no obligation of speaking truth. There is
+infinitely more invention in history, which has no merit if devoid of
+truth, than in romances and novelty which pretend to none.
+
+
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hieroglyphic Tales, by Horace Walpole
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