6 times an antapodosis, a paying off,' and expresses his intention of requiting friends and enemies according to their works. It may be imagined how the Emperor Nicephorus would fare at his hands. He would also wish to stand well with his own sovereign, and we may well doubt whether his resistance to the Greek Emperor's pretensions was always quite so sturdy as he makes it appear. He consistently supports the character of that loyal servant of a later day who so triumphantly vindicated his master's fitness to carry victuals to a bear; nor need we doubt that he went as far in this direction as he could venture, but it seems equally indubitable that many of his resolute harangues were but l'esprit de l'escalier. Luitprand had not been long recruiting himself in his diocese when a great mutation occurred in Byzantine affairs. At the end of 969 Nicephorus Phocas was murdered by his Armenian general John Zimisces at the instigation of his wife Theophano. Zimisces was to have taken the Empress along with the Empire, but, reluctant to give her an opportunity of making away with yet another husband, he is suspected of having arranged a comedy with the Patriarch Polyeuctus. Whether by a preconcerted understanding or otherwise, about a week after the disappearance of Nicephorus the new Emperor received an epistle from the Patriarch, pointing out that, although usurpation and murder might be overlooked, the sin of marrying a predecessor's widow was inexpiable. Zimisces bowed in all dutifulness and consigned Theophano to a monastery on an island in the Aegean Sea. Her daughter's presence in the Court circle may have been found embarrassing; at all events, a marriage was soon arranged between the younger Theophano and the son of Otto, who waived his demand for the cession of Apulia and Calabria as dower in consideration of the claim he was acquiring to those provinces. To this the Greeks were so sensitive as to have subsequently asserted that Otto was imposed upon by a false Theophano, but this seems a weak invention. It is extremely likely that Luitprand would be a member of the nuptial embassy; but if so he left his bones by the way or in Constantinople; for in 973, the year of the marriage, another takes his bishopric, and no further mention is made of him. She was recalled by her sons after the death of Zimisces, and is said to have again taken part in public affairs. If Luitprand lived to enter Constantinople in a diplomatic capacity for the third time he must have felt himself rehabilitated. 'Comparing present feelings with the past,' he must during his inauspicious mission to Nicephorus Phocas have looked back regretfully to the bright days of his diplomatic début in 949 at the Court of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, of which he tells us with delightful self-complacency at the end of his unfinished history. He celebrates before all things the economy of King Berengar, who, wishing to send an envoy to Constantinople without expense to himself, took occasion to observe to Luitprand's uncle: 'What bliss were but your hopeful nephew acquainted with Greek!' 'Gladly,' returned the more than parental kinsman,' would I make him a Greek scholar at the price of half my substance.' 'Oh dear!' rejoined the King, 'it need not cost you the hundredth part. I will send him on an embassy to Constantinople, and you shall pay his expenses.' The uncle, fairly caught, with or without a good grace, provided Luitprand with outfit, viaticum, and presents for the Greek Emperor, and despatched him in company with Liutfred, Ambassador from the Emperor of Germany, who was bound for Constantinople at the same time. They sailed from Venice, which had taken the place of Ravenna as the chief port of the Adriatic, on August 25, and arrived at Constantinople on September 17. Scarcely landed, he found himself in a difficulty. The German Ambassador had brought splendid gifts; the too thrifty Berengar had sent nothing worth acceptance. Luitprand, as he assures us, took an heroic resolution, and diverted the presents he was to have made on his own account to the service of his master. Thus did Berengar most improperly gain credit with the Greeks for having given the Basileus nine coats of mail, seven shields, two gilded silver cups, and a boy slave, the very football of fortune, originally stolen by merchants of Lorraine to sell to the Spanish Moors. The Emperor was gratified, and Luitprand was admitted to the banquets of the Palace, where he beheld the famous automatic golden tree, described by Gibbon and in Scott's Count Robert of Paris.' The golden birds warbled and the golden lions roared, but Luitprand was neither transported nor dismayed, for,' he says, 'I had heard all about it beforehand.' What did amaze him was the sudden elevation of the Emperor, who, when Luitprand prostrated himself in adoration, appeared enthroned at a moderate height from the ground, but when he arose was regarding him from the ceiling, in virtue, as the Ambassador reasonably conjectures, of the opera tion of some concealed piece of mechanism. It would be extremely interesting if we could see in this the germ of the hydraulic lift. Luitprand next describes the surprising feats of some Byzantine athletes, approaching the dexterity of the old gentleman in 'Alice in Wonderland' who 'balanced an eel on the end of his nose,' and records how a repartee procured him a dress of honour from the Emperor. Here he breaks off, just as he seems about to treat of affairs of State; perhaps summoned by Otto to take part against his old master Berengar. It would be interesting to know whether Luitprand ever read the elaborate treatise on the ceremonies of the Byzantine Court compiled by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. He would there learn with what distinction he would have been treated could but Nicephorus Phocas have recognised in Otto the successor of Augustus. Constantine hardly seems to have regarded any Western sovereign in that light since the subversion of the Western Empire. For a precedent he goes back to the fifth century, when Leo the Thracian received an embassy from the ephemeral Emperor Anthemius. Two regulations of Byzantine etiquette are worthy of note. No armed soldiers are to be present at the reception of the Western envoys, 'for they are not barbarians.' The Ambassadors' orations are to be taken down by reporters, a fact to be noted by the historians of shorthand. THEODORE HOOK BY VISCOUNT ST. CYRES. OLD-FASHIONED writers of the Lives of unimportant Saints had an excellent custom, well worthy of revival in the modern world. They wasted very little time over what a pleasant euphemism calls the 'facts' of their hero's life-dull chronological details as to the date of his birth, or the places he held in the Church or world; and of course they were careful to keep in the background any blots there might be on his career. Instead are long accounts of the qualities that gained for him his title of Saint-his Faith, his Hope, his Temperance, his Justice and so on through the old scholastic scale of virtues. These, it is argued, are the only points in which he was of value to the world, and in them alone has the world a reasonable interest; the rest had much better be forgotten. It is a pity that Mr. Dalton Barham did not borrow a leaf from the Catholic book when he sat down to write his pleasant, but only too elaborate, Life of Theodore Hook. Hook was certainly no Saint-Dr. Garnett even denies him the possession of a sterling character-but he has won undying fame as a humorist and pamphleteer. Why not, then, agree to treat him on the hagiographical principle-dwell simply on his humour and his pamphleteering, and drop his unsuccessful love-affairs and the squabbles over his Treasurership of the Mauritius? He was born in 1788, being the younger, by no less than seventeen years, of the two sons of Mr. James Hook, a professional musician. Mr. Hook was also a composer of great repute in his day, though I fear that his hundred and forty comic operas did not long survive him. Two of his songs, however, still keep their place at Penny Readings-'Within a Mile of Edinburgh Town,' a ballad written in the Scotch style,' and 'The Lass of Richmond Hill,' written in the English. Anyhow, the copyrights brought in enough to give the elder son, James, an excellent education. He took orders; made a judicious marriage with Miss Farquhar, daughter of George IV.'s confidential physician; and rose through the favour of Carlton House to high preferment in the Church, ending as Dean of Worcester. He, in his turn, was father of a greater Dean, Walter Farquhar Hook, of Chichester, the Apostle of the Middle Classes.' 6 Theodore's own early surroundings, however, were anything but decanal. His mother died young, and his father did little for his education beyond giving him the run of every theatre in London. It is true that he went for a short time to Harrow, where he distinguished himself on the night of his arrival by throwing a stone through the bedroom window of his tutor's wife-it is said, at the instigation of a fellow-pupil, George Noel Byron. Later on he kept a term or two at Oxford, where he seriously endangered his matriculation by one of the best-known of his jokes. Being asked to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, he said he would willingly sign forty, if the Vice-Chancellor would like it better. The scandalised dignitary only forgave him on the intercession of his brother James. But Oxford-an Oxford just beginning to awaken from her indolence and port-was not the place for Theodore Hook. He was more in his element in London, writing libretti for his father's operas or farces on his own account. The character of these last may be guessed from Byron's kindly notice of his old schoolfellow in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' : Gods! o'er those boards shall Folly rear her head, Hook revenged himself by a burlesque of one of the interviews' which the noble misanthrope at Venice sometimes granted to inquisitive tourists. Few people realise how much the rise of personal journalism owes to the author of Childe Harold' : Lord Byron has several peculiarities. He reduced himself from corpulency to the opposite extent by eating raisins and occasionally sipping brandy. He has a strong antipathy to pork when underdone, and nothing could induce him to partake of Fish which had been caught for more than ten days; indeed, he has a singular dislike even to the smell of it. . . . He is very particular about his tooth-picks, and generally uses those made of a particular kind of wood, in preference to quills. A critic more dangerous than Byron was the Examiner of Plays, who laid his veto on one of Hook's pieces, called 'Killing no Murder.' One can scarcely wonder that he did so, for Killing no Murder' is an outrageous satire on the Wesleyan Revival. I conceived,' said its author, 'that by blending the most flipp ant and ridiculous of all callings, except a man-milliner's-I mean |
