2<«« S. VI. 133., July 17. -58.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 



41 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 17. 1858. . 



EPISTOJ-^ OBSCUEORDM VIBOKTJM. 



(2"'^ S. vi. 22.) 



The first volume appeared about the beginning 

 of 1516; the second quickly followed it. There 

 v,-as a third volume which is hardly mentioned, 

 ;iud seems to be a stupid catchpenny, with which 

 the authors of the first and second probably had 

 nothing to do. It is given in the Frankfort edi- 

 tion of 1757, now before me, of which it fills only 

 thirty-two pages. As if to introduce a novelty, it 

 niiikes the Anti-Reuchlinist schoolmasters conju- 

 gate their verbs wrongly, and show themselves 

 unable to detect the breach of rule in an illogical 

 consequence ; things with which their genuine op- 

 ponents certainly did not charge them. 



Very shortly after tlie second volume of the 

 Ep. Ohs. Vir. appeared the answer of Ortuinus 

 Gratius himself, under the title of Lamentationes 

 Obscurorum Viroruni. Hamilton says that it has 

 been doubted whether this silly rejoinder really 

 were the work of Ortuinus, but that he could 

 establish the affirmative, by citations from Hutten 

 and Erasmus hitherto overlooked. This, he adds, 

 is not worth while : but I hold it to be a pity 

 that he did not give at least the references. For 

 these Lamentations may be divided into two 

 ])art8, of which one might easily be taken for more 

 wicked wit of the Reuchlinists, if it had stood 

 alone. 



AVhat I call the first part consists of satirical 

 letters, in which Reuchlinists are shown up as 

 wincing under the condemnation which the Pope 

 had bestowed upon the satire. But these Reuch- 

 linists are made to be the very Anti-Reuchli- 

 ni.sts who had been the objects of the satire. To 

 take a more familiar case. Tom Moore published 

 a feigned letter of the Prince Regent, beginning, 

 " We missed you last night at the hoary old sin- 

 ner's." Suppose that a rule had been made ab- 

 solute against the writer for a libel, and that a 

 wag, wishing to mortify Tom Moore, had written 

 a letter full of ludicrous terror, but purportinj; to 

 proceed, not from Tom Moore nor from one of his 

 set, but from the Regent himself: this would be 

 a perfect parallel to the retort made by Ortuinus. 

 For example, Bernhard Plumilegius is one of the 

 dog-latin anti-classics of the Epixtolce, who writes 

 " Kt ego dixi, tumet es asitius in cute tua, ego 

 vidi bene plures Poctas quam tu." But this same 

 j'lumilegius, in the LamenttUionc.i, is a decent 

 L;ttinist, half dead with fear of the Pope's decla- 

 ration iigainst the satire n|)on himself: " Nam 

 I'go (ut ingenue tibi fatear) ita sum auimo con- 

 »t<jrnatuH, ut me fortasse vivunx posthac visurus 

 sis nuncjuan)." If this hail been all, we might 



easily have supposed that Hutten and his col- 

 leagues finished the fun by forging an answer 

 from Ortuinus, ami making him exhibit this con- 

 fusion of ideas. But the second part seems to 

 render such a supposition out of the question. It 

 contains the Pope's censure, the letter of disap- 

 probation of Erasmus, and a modest and dignified 

 letter from Ortuinus himself, taking the satirists 

 to task for obscenity, impiety, and slander. But 

 this letter pi-eserves the confusion of ideas above 

 noticed. For example, the allegorical explana- 

 tions of Ovid, some of which I have quoted, and 

 which are satirically fastened u|)on the Anti- 

 Reuchlinists by Hutten, are set down as Reuch- 

 linist opinions. If the associates of Ortuinus had 

 been anything like himself, the letter would have 

 been very effective. But, coming from a scholar 

 who had voluntarily joined associates who did not 

 know they were satirised when the Epistolce 

 were attributed to them, it has little more effect 

 now than then. It is the ease of the solitary 

 crane netted among the geese. 



The confusion of sides made by Ortuinus sug- 

 gests a remark. All persons who are used to 

 mediajval fun must have noticed the very fre- 

 quent occurrence, in good stories and jokes, of 

 explanatory allusions, of amplifications of point, 

 and other contrivances for keeping the weaker 

 brethren from stumbling. Any one who has read 

 Gammer Gurtoiis Needle must have been amused 

 with the side-note on the woman's search for the 

 bacon, " which Diccon had stolen, as hath baen 

 before rehearsed." To this may be added the 

 very small amount of matter which went to a joke. 

 Here is the whole of a good thing recorded of 

 Cardinal Dii Perron, and entered under Carme, 

 which would now be spelt rane, in the alphabet- 

 icid digest which is cited as the Perroniaiia, 



" Canne. Un jour voyant aBagnolet (les Cannes qui se 

 battoient daas le vivier, il dit, c'est la bataille de Cannes." 



That such a man as Ortuinus couhl so entangle 

 the pattern of a satire, must greatly enforce the 

 suspicion that these explanations and amplifica- 

 tions were really needed, and that our ancestors 

 took more time than we do to see a joke, and 

 managed to see very little ones. If boys of 

 eighteen now read the Principia of Newton, which 

 not ^dozen men in Europe could read at its first 

 appearance, it is not beyond credibility that as 

 much improvement may have taken place on 

 easier ground. 



The Epistolce attack the parentage of Ortuinus, 

 and hint that he was the son of a priest. It does 

 not say much for the clergy ihut this imputation 

 was a common resource of the orthodox : Eras- 

 mus, as is well-known, had to bear tiie same re- . 

 proach. ILimiltun observes that Ortuinus, in 

 disproving his sacerdotal filiation, which he does 

 more than once, always preserves ii sus|iicious 

 silence touching his mother. The silence, how- 



