Rabindranath Tagore - "The Hungry Stones And Other Stories"

Walter Lippmann - "Public Opinion"

Mrs. Inchbald - "Lover's Vows"

Ludwig van Beethoven, edited by Friedrich Kerst - "Beethoven: the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lives of the Necromancers

W >> William Godwin >> Lives of the Necromancers




It is in such a state of the faculties that it is entirely natural and
simple, that one should mistake a mere dumb animal for one's relative
or near connection in disguise. And, the delusion having once begun,
the deluded individual gives to every gesture and motion of limb and
eye an explanation that forwards the deception. It is in the same way
that in ignorant ages the notion of changeling has been produced. The
weak and fascinated mother sees every feature with a turn of
expression unknown before, all the habits of the child appear
different and strange, till the parent herself denies her offspring,
and sees in the object so lately cherished and doated on, a monster
uncouth and horrible of aspect.



DARK AGES OF EUROPE


In Europe we are slenderly supplied with historians, and with
narratives exhibiting the manners and peculiarities of successive
races of men, from the time of Theodosius in the close of the fourth
century of the Christian era to the end of the tenth. Mankind during
that period were in an uncommon degree wrapped up in ignorance and
barbarism. We may be morally sure that this was an interval beyond all
others, in which superstition and an implicit faith in supernatural
phenomena predominated over this portion of the globe. The laws of
nature, and the everlasting chain of antecedents and consequents, were
little recognised. In proportion as illumination and science have
risen on the world, men have become aware that the succession of
events is universally operating, and that the frame of men and animals
is every where the same, modified only by causes not less unchangeable
in their influence than the internal constitution of the frame itself.
We have learned to explain much; we are able to predict and investigate
the course of things; and the contemplative and the wise are not less
intimately and profoundly persuaded that the process of natural events
is sure and simple and void of all just occasion for surprise and the
lifting up of hands in astonishment, where we are not yet familiarly
acquainted with the developement of the elements of things, as where
we are. What we have not yet mastered, we feel confidently persuaded
that the investigators that come after us will reduce to rules not
less obvious, familiar and comprehensible, than is to us the rising of
the sun, or the progress of animal and vegetable life from the first
bud and seed of existence to the last stage of decrepitude and decay.

But in these ages of ignorance, when but few, and those only the most
obvious, laws of nature were acknowledged, every event that was not of
almost daily occurrence, was contemplated with more or less of awe and
alarm. These men "saw God in clouds, and heard him in the wind."
Instead of having regard only to that universal Providence, which acts
not by partial impulses, but by general laws, they beheld, as they
conceived, the immediate hand of the Creator, or rather, upon most
occasions, of some invisible intelligence, sometimes beneficent, but
perhaps oftener malignant and capricious, interfering, to baffle the
foresight of the sage, to humble the pride of the intelligent, and to
place the discernment of the most gifted upon a level with the
drivellings of the idiot, and the ravings of the insane.

And, as in events men saw perpetually the supernatural and miraculous,
so in their fellow-creatures they continually sought, and therefore
frequently imagined that they found, a gifted race, that had command
over the elements, held commerce with the invisible world, and could
produce the most stupendous and terrific effects. In man, as we now
behold him, we can ascertain his nature, the strength and pliability
of his limbs, the accuracy of his eye, the extent of his intellectual
acquisitions, and the subtlety of his powers of thought, and can
therefore in a great measure anticipate what we have to hope or to
fear from him. Every thing is regulated by what we call natural means.
But, in the times I speak of, all was mysterious: the powers of men
were subject to no recognised laws: and therefore nothing that
imagination could suggest, exceeded the bounds of credibility. Some
men were supposed to be so rarely endowed that "a thousand liveried
angels" waited on them invisibly, to execute their behests for the
benefit of those they favoured; while, much oftener, the perverse and
crookedly disposed, who delighted in mischief, would bring on those to
whom, for whatever capricious reason, they were hostile, calamities,
which no sagacity could predict, and no merely human power could
baffle and resist.

After the tenth century enough of credulity remained, to display in
glaring colours the aberrations of the human mind, and to furnish
forth tales which will supply abundant matter for the remainder of
this volume. But previously to this period, we may be morally sure,
reigned most eminently the sabbath of magic and sorcery, when nothing
was too wild, and remote from the reality of things, not to meet with
an eager welcome, when terror and astonishment united themselves with
a nameless delight, and the auditor was alarmed even to a sort of
madness, at the same time that he greedily demanded an ever-fresh
supply of congenial aliment. The more the known laws of the universe
and the natural possibility of things were violated, with the stronger
marks of approbation was the tale received: while the dextrous
impostor, aware of the temper of his age, and knowing how most
completely to blindfold and lead astray his prepared dupes, made a
rich harvest of the folly of his contemporaries. But I am wrong to
call him an impostor. He imposed upon himself, no less than on the
gaping crowd. His discourses, even in the act of being pronounced, won
upon his own ear; and the dexterity with which he baffled the
observation of others, bewildered his ready sense, and filled him with
astonishment at the magnitude of his achievements. The accomplished
adventurer was always ready to regard himself rather as a sublime
being endowed with great and stupendous attributes, than as a pitiful
trickster. He became the God of his own idolatry, and stood astonished,
as the witch of Endor in the English Bible is represented to have done,
at the success of his incantations.

But all these things are passed away, and are buried in the gulf of
oblivion. A thousand tales, each more wonderful than the other, marked
the year as it glided away. Every valley had its fairies; and every
hill its giants. No solitary dwelling, unpeopled with human
inhabitants, was without its ghosts; and no church-yard in the absence
of day-light could be crossed with impunity. The gifted enchanter
"bedimmed

The noon-tide sun, willed forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread, rattling thunder
He gave forth fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt, the strong-based promontory
He made to shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar."

It is but a small remnant of these marvellous adventures that has been
preserved. The greater part of them are swallowed up in that gulf of
oblivion, to which are successively consigned after a brief interval
all events as they occur, except so far as their memory is preserved
through the medium of writing and records. From the eleventh century
commences a stream of historical relation, which since that time never
entirely eludes the search of the diligent enquirer. Before this
period there occasionally appears an historian or miscellaneous writer:
but he seems to start up by chance; the eddy presently closes over him,
and all is again impenetrable darkness.

When this succession of writers began, they were unavoidably induced
to look back upon the ages that had preceded them, and to collect here
and there from tradition any thing that appeared especially worthy of
notice. Of course any information they could glean was wild and
uncertain, deeply stamped with the credulity and wonder of an ignorant
period, and still increasing in marvellousness and absurdity from
every hand it passed through, and from every tongue which repeated it.


MERLIN.

One of the most extraordinary personages whose story is thus delivered
to us, is Merlin. He appears to have been contemporary with the period
of the Saxon invasion of Britain in the latter part of the fifth
century; but probably the earliest mention of his name by any writer
that has come down to us is not previous to the eleventh. We may the
less wonder therefore at the incredible things that are reported of
him. He is first mentioned in connection with the fortune of Vortigern,
who is represented by Geoffrey of Monmouth as at that time king of
England. The Romans having withdrawn their legions from this island,
the unwarlike Britons found themselves incompetent to repel the
invasions of the uncivilised Scots and Picts, and Vortigern perceived
no remedy but in inviting the Saxons from the northern continent to
his aid. The Saxons successfully repelled the invader; but, having
done this, they refused to return home. They determined to settle here,
and, having taken various towns, are represented as at length inviting
Vortigern and his principal nobility to a feast near Salisbury under
pretence of a peace, where they treacherously slew three hundred of
the chief men of the island, and threw Vortigern into chains. Here, by
way of purchasing the restoration of his liberty, they induced him to
order the surrender of London, York, Winchester, and other principal
towns. Having lost all his strong holds, he consulted his magicians as
to how he was to secure himself from this terrible foe. They advised
him to build an impregnable tower, and pointed out the situation where
it was to be erected. But so unfortunately did their advice succeed,
that all the work that his engineers did in the building one day, the
earth swallowed, so that no vestige was to be found on the next. The
magicians were consulted again on this fresh calamity; and they told
the king that that there was no remedying this disaster, other than by
cementing the walls of his edifice with the blood of a human being,
who was born of no human father.

Vortigern sent out his emissaries in every direction in search of this
victim; and at length by strange good fortune they lighted on Merlin
near the town of Caermarthen, who told them that his mother was the
daughter of a king, but that she had been got with child of him by a
being of an angelic nature, and not a man. No sooner had they received
this information, than they seized him, and hurried him away to
Vortigern as the victim required. But in presence of the king he
baffled the magicians; he told the king that the ground they had
chosen for his tower, had underneath it a lake, which being drained,
they would find at the bottom two dragons of inextinguishable
hostility, that under that form figured the Britons and Saxons, all of
which upon the experiment proved to be true.

Vortigern died shortly after, and was succeeded first by Ambrosius,
and then by Uther Pendragon. Merlin was the confident of all these
kings. To Uther he exhibited a very criminal sort of compliance. Uther
became desperately enamoured of Igerna, wife of the duke of Cornwal,
and tried every means to seduce her in vain. Having consulted Merlin,
the magician contrived by an extraordinary unguent to metamorphose
Uther into the form of the duke. The duke had shut up his wife for
safety in a very strong tower; but Uther in his new form gained
unsuspected entrance; and the virtuous Igerna received him to her
embraces, by means of which he begot Arthur, afterwards the most
renowned sovereign of this island. Uther now contrived that the duke,
her husband, should be slain in battle, and immediately married the
fair Igerna, and made her his queen.

The next exploit of Merlin was with the intent to erect a monument
that should last for ever, to the memory of the three hundred British
nobles that were massacred by the Saxons. This design produced the
extraordinary edifice called Stonehenge. These mighty stones, which by
no human power could be placed in the position in which we behold them,
had originally been set up in Africa, and afterwards by means unknown
were transported to Ireland. Merlin commanded that they should be
carried over the sea, and placed where they now are, on Salisbury
Plain. The workmen, having received his directions, exerted all their
power and skill, but could not move one of them. Merlin, having for
some time watched their exertions, at length applied his magic; and to
the amazement of every one, the stones spontaneously quitted the
situation in which they had been placed, rose to a great height in the
air, and then pursued the course which Merlin had prescribed, finally
settling themselves in Wiltshire, precisely in the position in which
we now find them, and which they will for ever retain.

The last adventure recorded of Merlin proceeded from a project he
conceived for surrounding his native town of Caermarthen with a brazen
wall. He committed the execution of this project to a multitude of
fiends, who laboured upon the plan underground in a neighbouring
cavern. [150] In the mean while Merlin had become enamoured of a
supernatural being, called the Lady of the Lake. The lady had long
resisted his importunities, and in fact had no inclination to yield to
his suit. One day however she sent for him in great haste; and Merlin
was of course eager to comply with her invitation. Nevertheless,
before he set out, he gave it strictly in charge to the fiends, that
they should by no means suspend their labours till they saw him return.
The design of the lady was to make sport with him, and elude his
addresses. Merlin on the contrary, with the hope to melt her severity,
undertook to shew her the wonders of his art. Among the rest he
exhibited to her observation a tomb, formed to contain two bodies; at
the same time teaching her a charm, by means of which the sepulchre
would close, and never again be opened. The lady pretended not to
believe that the tomb was wide enough for its purpose, and inveigled
the credulous Merlin to enter it, and place himself as one dead. No
sooner had she so far succeeded, than she closed the lid of the
sepulchre, and pronouncing the charm, rendered it impossible that it
should ever be opened again till the day of judgment. Thus, according
to the story, Merlin was shut in, a corrupted and putrifying body with
a living soul, to which still inhered the faculty of returning in
audible sounds a prophetic answer to such as resorted to it as an
oracle. Meanwhile the fiends, at work in the cavern near Caermarthen,
mindful of the injunction of their taskmaster, not to suspend their
labours till his return, proceed for ever in their office; and the
traveller who passes that way, if he lays his ear close to the mouth
of the cavern, may hear a ghastly noise of iron chains and brazen
caldrons, the loud strokes of the hammer, and the ringing sound of the
anvil, intermixed with the pants and groans of the workmen, enough to
unsettle the brain and confound the faculties of him that for any time
shall listen to the din.

As six hundred years elapsed between the time of Merlin and the
earliest known records of his achievements, it is impossible to
pronounce what he really pretended to perform, and how great were the
additions which successive reporters have annexed to the wonders of
his art, more than the prophet himself perhaps ever dreamed of. In
later times, when the historians were the contemporaries of the
persons by whom the supposed wonders were achieved, or the persons who
have for these causes been celebrated have bequeathed certain literary
productions to posterity, we may be able to form some conjecture as to
the degree in which the heroes of the tale were deluding or deluded,
and may exercise our sagacity in the question by what strange
peculiarity of mind adventures which we now hold to be impossible
obtained so general belief. But in a case like this of Merlin, who
lived in a time so remote from that in which his history is first
known to have been recorded, it is impracticable to determine at what
time the fiction which was afterwards generally received began to be
reported, or whether the person to whom the miracles were imputed ever
heard or dreamed of the extraordinary things he is represented as
having achieved.


ST. DUNSTAN.

An individual scarcely less famous in the dark ages, and who, like
Merlin, lived in confidence with successive kings, was St. Dunstan. He
was born and died in the tenth century. It is not a little instructive
to employ our attention upon the recorded adventures, and incidents
occurring in the lives, of such men, since, though plentifully
interspersed with impossible tales, they serve to discover to us the
tastes and prepossessions of the times in which these men lived, and
the sort of accomplishments which were necessary to their success.

St. Dunstan is said to have been a man of distinguished birth, and to
have spent the early years of his life in much licentiousness. He was
however doubtless a person of the most extraordinary endowments of
nature. Ambition early lighted its fire in his bosom; and he displayed
the greatest facility in acquiring any talent or art on which he fixed
his attention. His career of profligacy was speedily arrested by a
dangerous illness, in which he was given over by his physicians. While
he lay apparently at the point of death, an angel was suddenly seen,
bringing a medicine to him which effected his instant cure. The saint
immediately rose from his bed, and hastened to the nearest church to
give God thanks for his recovery. As he passed along, the devil,
surrounded with a pack of black dogs, interposed himself to obstruct
his way. Dunstan however intrepidly brandished a rod that he held in
his hand, and his opposers took to flight. When he came to the church,
he found the doors closed. But the same angel, who effected his cure,
was at hand, and, taking him up softly by the hair of his head, placed
him before the high altar, where he performed his devotions with
suitable fervour.

That he might expiate the irregularities of his past life, St. Dunstan
now secluded himself entirely from the world, and constructed for his
habitation a cell in the abbey of Glastonbury, so narrow that he could
neither stand upright in it, nor stretch out his limbs in repose. He
took scarcely so much sustenance as would support life, and mortified
his flesh with frequent castigations.

He did not however pass his time during this seclusion in vacuity and
indolence. He pursued his studies with the utmost ardour, and made a
great proficiency in philosophy, divinity, painting, sculpture and
music. Above all, he was an admirable chemist, excelled in manufactures
of gold and other metals, and was distinguished by a wonderful skill
in the art of magic.

During all these mortifications and the severeness of his industry, he
appears to have become a prey to extraordinary visions and
imaginations. Among the rest, the devil visited him in his cell, and,
thrusting his head in at the window, disturbed the saint with obscene
and blasphemous speeches, and the most frightful contortions of the
features of his countenance. Dunstan at length, wearied out with his
perseverance, seized the red-hot tongs with which he was engaged in
some chemical experiment, and, catching the devil by the nose, held
him with the utmost firmness, while Satan filled the whole
neighbourhood for many miles round with his bellowings. Extraordinary
as this may appear, it constitutes one of the most prominent incidents
in the life of the saint; and the representations of it were for ever
repeated in ancient carvings, and in the illuminations of
church-windows.

This was the precise period at which the pope and his adherents were
gaining the greatest ascendancy in the Christian world. The doctrine
of transubstantiation was now in the highest vogue; and along with it
a precept still more essential to the empire of the Catholic church,
the celibacy of the clergy. This was not at first established without
vehement struggles. The secular clergy, who were required at once to
cast off their wives as concubines, and their children as bastards,
found every impulse of nature rising in arms against the mandate. The
regular clergy, or monks, were in obvious rivalship with the seculars,
and engrossed to themselves, as much as possible, all promotions and
dignities, as well ecclesiastical as civil. St. Augustine, who first
planted Christianity in this island, was a Benedictine monk; and the
Benedictines were for a long time in the highest reputation in the
Catholic church. St. Dunstan was also a Benedictine. In his time the
question of the celibacy of the clergy was most vehemently agitated;
and Dunstan was the foremost of the champions of the new institution
in England. The contest was carried on with great vehemence. Many of
the most powerful nobility, impelled either by pity for the sufferers,
or induced by family affinities, supported the cause of the seculars.
Three successive synods were held on the subject; and the cause of
nature it is said would have prevailed, had not Dunstan and his
confederates called in the influence of miracles to their aid. In one
instance, a crucifix, fixed in a conspicuous part of the place of
assembly, uttered a voice at the critical moment, saying, "Be steady!
you have once decreed right; alter not your ordinances." At another
time the floor of the place of meeting partially gave way,
precipitating the ungodly opposers of celibacy into the place beneath,
while Dunstan and his party, who were in another part of the assembly,
were miraculously preserved unhurt.

In these instances Dunstan seemed to be engaged in the cause of
religion, and might be considered as a zealous, though mistaken,
advocate of Christian simplicity and purity. But he was not contented
with figuring merely as a saint. He insinuated himself into the favour
of Edred, the grandson of Alfred, and who, after two or three short
reigns, succeeded to the throne. Edred was an inactive prince, but
greatly under the dominion of religious prejudices; and Dunstan, being
introduced to him, found him an apt subject for his machinations.
Edred first made him abbot of Glastonbury, one of the most powerful
ecclesiastical dignities in England, and then treasurer of the kingdom.
During the reign of this prince, Dunstan disposed of all ecclesiastical
affairs, and even of the treasures of the kingdom, at his pleasure.

But Edred filled the throne only nine years, and was succeeded by Edwy
at the early age of seventeen, who is said to have been endowed with
every grace of form, and the utmost firmness and intrepidity of spirit.
Dunstan immediately conceived a jealousy of these qualities, and took
an early opportunity to endeavour to disarm them. Edwy entertained a
passion for a princess of the royal house, and even proceeded to marry
her, though within the degrees forbidden by the canon law. The rest of
the story exhibits a lively picture of the manners of these barbarous
times. Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, the obedient tool of Dunstan, on
the day of the coronation obtruded himself with his abettor into the
private apartment, to which the king had retired with his queen, only
accompanied by her mother; and here the ambitious abbot, after loading
Edwy with the bitterest reproaches for his shameless sensuality,
thrust him back by main force into the hall, where the nobles of the
kingdom were still engaged at their banquet.

The spirited young prince conceived a deep resentment of this unworthy
treatment, and, seizing an opportunity, called Dunstan to account for
malversation in the treasury during the late king's life-time. The
priest refused to answer; and the issue was that he was banished the
realm.

But he left behind him a faithful and implicit coadjutor in archbishop
Odo. This prelate is said actually to have forced his way with a party
of soldiers into the palace, and, having seized the queen, barbarously
to have seared her cheeks with a red-hot iron, and sent her off a
prisoner to Ireland. He then proceeded to institute all the forms of a
divorce, to which the unhappy king was obliged to submit. Meanwhile
the queen, having recovered her beauty, found means to escape, and,
crossing the Channel, hastened to join her husband. But here again the
priests manifested the same activity as before. They intercepted the
queen in her journey, and by the most cruel means undertook to make
her a cripple for life. The princess however sunk under the experiment,
and ended her existence and her woes together.

A rebellion was now excited against the sacrilegious Edwy; and the
whole north of England, having rebelled, was placed under the dominion
of his brother, a boy of thirteen years of age. In the midst of these
adventures Dunstan returned from the continent, and fearlessly shewed
himself in his native country. His party was every where triumphant;
Odo being dead, he was installed archbishop of Canterbury, and Edwy,
oppressed with calamity on every side, sunk to an untimely grave.