GLEICHEN.

A very singular adventure is related concerning a German count of this name. He was taken in a fight against the Turks, and carried into Turkey, where he suffered a hard and long captivity, being put upon ploughing the ground, &c. Upon a certain day, the daughter of the king, his master, came up to him, and asked him several questions, whilst she was walking. His good mien and dexterity so pleased the princess, that she promised to set him free, and to follow him, provided he would marry her. He answered, “I have

a wife and children?” “That is no argument,” replied she, “the custom of the Turks allows one man several wives.” The count was not stubborn, but acquiesced to these reasons, and gave his word. The princess employed herself so industriously to get him out of bondage, that they were soon in readiness to go on board a vessel, and they arrived happily at Venice. The count found there one of his men, who had travelled every where to hear of him. He told him that bis wife and children were in good health; whereupon he presently went to Rome; and, after be had ingenuously related what he had done, the pope granted him a solemn dispensation to keep his two wives. Theatrum Historicum of Andrew Hondorf, pag. 535, of the fifth edition, 8vo. ⁴¹ If the court of Rome showed itself so easy on this occasion, the count’s wife was not less so; for she received very kindly the Turkish lady, by whose means she recovered her dear husband, and had for this concubine a particular kindness. The Turkish princess answered very handsomely those civilities; and, though she proved barren, yet she loved tenderly the children, which the other wife bore in abundance. There is still at Erford a monument of this story to be seen.

A very worthy gentleman, who told me this story in the year 1697, seemed very much surprised that the Protestant writers, when they are obliged to answer the reproaches touching the permission the reformers gave to a landgrave of Hesse, do not instance the dispensation granted by the pope to Count de Gleichen, and desired to know my thoughts thereupon. If my memory fail me not, my answer amounted to this: first, that this passage was somewhat obscure and uncertain; and secondly, that it would signify nothing to allege it, unless either the pope’s brief, or the testimony of some contemporary author, or the consent of the Romish writers, could be produced. Hondorf is almost the only author that vouches for

this story: now he quoting nobody, and being but a compiler, whom the learned never much esteemed, and also a Protestant, the Roman Catholics would not fail to reject his testimony. They would ask, out of what records or annals he has taken that passage; and, since he quotes nothing, they would pretend that he has no other ground for it than a hearsay, or uncertain, and even fabulous traditions; such as many illustrious families industriously propagate, concerning the manner in which their ancestors were freed from bondage in the times of the crusades. In short, if they denied the fact, what could one answer to them? the monument at Erford can prove nothing: for after all, does the figure of a man between two figures of women clearly signify polygamy? May it not as well signify, among other things, two successive marriages, or two marriages contracted between a husband and two living wives, but the latter of which marriages was declared void? Are there not abundance of ridiculous stories which people endeavour to prove by monuments of stone? Thus some pretend to prove that a certain countess of Holland was delivered of 365 children at once; a thing which all good historians make a jest of, and evince to be a falsity. This gentleman, however, told me that Du Val has mentioned this adventure in his description of Germany. “In the year 1227,” says Du Val, “a count of Gleichen obtained leave from the pope to have two wives at once.” If this story be true, we have in it a great instance of the triumph and power of love. The daughter of a king is ready not only to renounce the lofty advantages of her condition, to follow a slave to the world’s end, but actually becomes a fugitive; after having overlooked dangers, to which her design exposed both her own life, and that of the prisoner with whom she was in love. She did not engage herself by degrees in a flight so surrounded with dangers, so disadvantageous, so scandalous: no; she fully resolves upon it the very first time she sees the slave. Ut vidi ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error, Virgil. Eclog. viii. ver. 41. ⁴² might she have said, like many others. I know not whether the lady de Ville-Dieu has romanced the story of our Count de Gleichen. This has been a fine subject for her pen; and, as dry as Hondorf’s narrative may seem to be, she would have made something very pretty of it. -

An abbot, who had heard something of this story, but was ignorant of the true state of the case, wrote thus Lettres du Comte de Bussi Rabutin, Tom. i. pag. 114, 115, Dutch edit. ⁴³ to the Count de Bussy Rabutin, the 12th of June, 1674. “I was the other day with Madame de , and as they talked of Mr de ------, who presented a petition to the pope, praying he might be allowed to marry another wife; they said that the holy see had once done that favour to a German count, who, not having enough of one wife, was permitted, for the salvation of his soul, to marry a second. Madame de -----, who was before nodding and felling asleep, awaked at the hearing of this, and said, sighing, “that there were no such husbands now-a-days.” It manifestly appears that he confounds things, and that, of two adventures, he makes but one. He blends together what concerns the Count of Gleichen, and what regards a landgrave of Hesse, and knows not the circumstances of either. The permission, which he pretends was granted by the holy see to a German count, was not grounded on the insufficiency of the wife; nor was that, granted to a landgrave of Hesse, founded on the same reason, though Thuanus says so. I would not warrant that the abbot has better observed the rules of history, as to the jest and sighing of Madame de -----, than the rest. He invented, perhaps, that reflection himself, and wrote it, nevertheless, historically, to Count Rabutin, to end

his letter with a diverting anecdote. However it be, I happened the other day to be in company with a gentleman who has been married these five or six years, and I took notice that, after he had been told that part of the abbot’s letter, he said, almost sighing, “that if there were no such husbands now-a-days, there were yet fewer wives like that of the count.” I wish he had made another reflection,—that the lady supposed, without reason, that our age falls short of the former times; which is false. Husbands of that stamp were always very scarce, and as scarce in preceding ages as in the present.

The journal of Hamburgh will furnish me with .a good supplement to this article. Mr Dartis, speaking of a novel of Mr le Noble, intituled “Zulima, or Pure Love,” observes, that the first notion of this romance was taken from a memoir among the archives of the house of Gleichen, which descends from a prince of Westphalia, the chief hero of this historical novel. He was called Eberard, and, having been taken in the battle of Joppa, which the Sultan Noradin gained over the Christians of the crusade, he was so happy as to inspire with love the daughter of that sultan. She helped him to break the chains of his slavery, went with him into Europe, and was his second wife after the death of her, whom he had married some time before the crusade. Mr le Noble cites, as an indisputable witness of the truth of the story, the tomb, where lie the ashes of this prince and his two wives. “It is still to be seen,” says he, “at Hervorde, in Westphalia, where he resided. On this foundation it is that he has built a pious love-intrigue, which aimed first at the conversion of a sultaness, and afterwards ended in her marriage with the Westphalian prince.” He says in another place, that the writers of romances are obliged to follow history, when they tell in a preface the foundation of their fictions. “Yet this,” adds he, “is what Mr le Noble has not done in

the advertisement which he has prefixed to his Zulima, as will appear by the extract of a letter which I have received from a good hand on this subject. It is as follows: “It appears evidently from what you have said of Mr le Noble's little book, that he has confounded all. Eberard, Duke of Westphalia, is a personage absolutely unknown to history; and, if he lived in the time of Noradin, a Saracen prince of the twelfth century, how could he be author of the Counts of Gleichen, who pretend to have received their earldom from Charlemagne, and who at least are older than the wars beyond sea? The family of the counts of Gleichen is extinct, and I believe what they pretend to fetch from their archives is as fabulous as the rest of the little romance. It is true, however, there is a tradition, confirmed by some modern chronicles, which imports that a count of Gleichen, bringing with him from beyond sea the lady that freed him, and meeting again his first wife, found the means of keeping them both in good understanding with each other, and with the consent (they say) of the church; which is not very probable. We may hold it for certain that there is no monument of a duke Eberhard, of Westphalia, neither at Erford, nor at Hervorde. The counts of Gleichen were neighbours of Erford, in Thuringia, and had nothing common with Hervorde, in Westphalia.—Art. Gleichen.