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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
IRVINE
IN MEMORY OF
Maggie Wilson
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CHARLES LAMB.
Reiroducsd from a Cruj <it Printed in yar^s,
be Pre
! DAVID J.
: V
UNIVERSITY EDITION
Crowned /Sbaeterpiecee
OF
literature
THAT HAVE ADVANCED CIVILIZATION
As Preserved and Presented fay
TLbe lKIlorl^'0 £c6t Eseai^
From the Earliest Period to the Present Time
DAVID J. BREWER
Editor
EDWARD A. ALLEN
WILLIAM SCHUYLER
Associate Editors
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TEN VOLUMES
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ITKRD. I\ ICA-ISKU rUB. OO.
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FERD. P. KAISER PUB. CO.
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THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
PROFESSOR KUNO FRANCKE, Ph. D.,
Department of German, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mas&
HIRAM CORSON. A. M., LL. D.,
Department of English Literature, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.
WILLIAM DRAPER LEWIS. Ph. D., Dean of the Department of Law,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
RICHARD GOTTKEIL, Ph. D.,
Professor of Oriental Languages,
Columbia University, in the City of New York.
MRS. LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
Author « Swallow Flights, » « Bed-Time Stories,» etc. Boston, Mass.
WILLIAM VINCENT BYARS,
Manager The Valley Press Bureau, St. Louis.
F. M. CRUNDEN, A. M.,
Librarian St. Louis Public Library; President (1890) Amkricau Library Association.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M., LL. D., Professor of English and Literature,
Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C.
ALCfiE FORTIER, Lit. D.,
Professor of Romance Languages, Tulane University, New Orleans. La.
SHELDON JACKSON, D. D.. LL. D.,
Bureau of Education, Washington, D C
A. MARSHALL ELLIOTT, Ph. D.. LL. D., Professor of Romance Languages,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. WILLIAM P. TRENT. M. A..
Professor of English Literature,
Columbia University, in the City of New York.
CHARLES MILLS CxAYLEV, Litt. D.,
Department of English, University of California, Berkeley, CaL
RICHARD JONES. Pii. D..
Department of English, vice Austin H. Mf.rrill, deceased. Department of Elocution, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tann.
W. STUART SYMINGTON, Jr., Ph. D..
VrofesRor of Romance Languages, Amherst Collkgk. Amherst, M,
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME Vll
uved pack
Lamb, Charles 1775-1834 2451
A Complaint of tlie Decay of Beggars in the Me- tropolis A Dissertation upon Roast Pig New Year's Eve Modern Gallantry Popular Fallacies
That Enough Is as Good as a Feast
That the Worst Puns Are the Best
That We Should Rise with the Lark
That We Should Lie Down with the Lamb
Landor, Walter Savage 1775-1864 2485
Addison Visits Steele The Pangs of Approaching the Gods
Lang, Andrew 1844- 1490
The Beresford Ghost Story Celebrated Literary Forgerie*
Lanier, Sidney 1842-1881 2496
On the Ocklawaha in May
Lavater, Johann Caspar 1741-1801 2511
On Reading Character
Leckv, William Edward Hartpole 1838- 2516
Montaigne and Middle-Age Superstition Sex and Moral Character
LEGARji, Hugh Swinton »78^i843 2523
Liberty and Greatnes* A Miraculous People
LIVED PAGE
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 1646-1716 2528
On the Ultimate Origin of Things
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 1729-1781 2536
<< Laocoon >* — Art's Highest Law Poetry and Painting Compared The Education of the Human Race
Lewes, George Henry 18 17-1878 2546
Rousseau, Robespierre, and the French Revolution
LiEBiG, Justus von i 803-1 873 2554
Goldmakers and the Philosopher's Stone Man as a Condensed Gas
Lingard, John 1771-1851 2563
Cromwell's Government by the « Mailed Hand®
LivY (Titus Livius) 59 B. C- 17 A. D. 2567
On the Making of History
Locke, John 1632-1704 2571
" Of Civil Government ® — Its Purposes
Of Tyranny
Of the Conduct of the Understanding
Concerning Toleration and Politics in the Churches
Of Ideas in General, and Their Original
LocKHART, John Gibson 1794-1854 2595
The Character of Sir Walter Scott Burns and the Pundits of Edinburgh
LOMBROSO, CeSARE 1 836- 2600
Eccentricities of Famous Men
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 1807-1882 2604
Anglo-Saxon Language and Poetry A Walk in Pere Lachaise When the Swallows Come The First Bloom of Summer Men of Books Leaders of Humanity The Loom of Life The Modern Romans
Vll
UVED PAGE
LoNGiNus e, 310-273 A. D 2636
On the Sublime Sublimity in the Great Poets Great Masters of Eloquence Liberty and Greatness
Lowell, James Russell 1819-1891 2657
The Pious Editor's Creed
On Paradisaical Fashions for Women
Some Advantages of Poverty
Lamb's Good-Nature
Prophets of the New Dispensation
Loving and Singing
Poetry and Religion
Lubbock, Sir John 1834- 2677
A Song of Books
The Happiness of Duty
Lucian c. \7.o-c. 200 A. D 2687
That Bibliomaniacs Should Read Their Own Books
Luther, Martin 1483-1546 2690
That Unnecessary Ig^norance Is Criminal
Lyell, Sir Charles 1797-1875 2695
The Great Earthquake of Lisbon
LvLY. John c, i 553-1606 2698
A Cooling Card for All Fond Lovers
How the Life of a Young Man Should Be Led
LvTTON, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, Baron 2702
1803-1873
The Sanguine Temperament Some Observations on Shy People Readers and Writers
McCarthy, Justin 1830- 2711
The Last of the Napoleons
Macaulay. Thomas Bahington, Baron 1800-1859 2717
John Bunyan and the "Pilgrim's Progress* The Tinpcachment of Warri n TlrmtillgS
LIVED PAGE
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Baron — Continued
Samuel Johnson in Grub Street
Addison and His Friends
Milton and Dante
The Genius of Mirabeau
History as an Evolution
Montgomery's Satan
On Gladstone's « Church and State"
Machiavelli
Machiavelli, Niccolo 1469-1527 2775
Whether Princes Ought to Be Faithful to Their
Engagements How Far Fortune Influences the Things of This
World, and How Far She May Be Resisted
Mackenzie, Henry i 745-1 831 2781
An Old Countryhouse and an Old Lady
Mackintosh, Sir James 1765-1832 2785
On the Genius of Bacon
Madison, James 1751-1836 2794
General View of the Powers Proposed to Be
Vested in the Union
Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner The Law of Nations
Mallet, Paul Henri
Civilization and the Earliest Literature
Malthus, Thomas Robert
Ratios of the Increase of Population and Food
Mandeville, Sir John Fourteenth Century a8i6
A Mohammedan on Christian Vices The Devil's Head in the Valley Perilous
Marcellinus, Ammianus £. 330-^. 395 A. D. 3820
Luxury of Roman Decadence
Martineau, Harriet 1802-1876 2826
Walter Savage Landor
|
I822-I886 |
2799 |
|
I730-I807 |
2803 |
|
1766-1834 |
2809 |
LIVED PAOK
Marx. Karl 1818-1883 5831
The Buying and Selling of Labor-Power
Maurice, Frederick Denison 1805-187 2835
The Friendship of Books
Maury, Matthew Fontaine 1806-1873 2854
The Sea and Its Sublime Laws
\
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VII
PAGE
Charles Lamb (Portrait, Photogravure) Frontispiece
Sir Walter Scott and His Friends (Photogravure) 2595
Sir Johr. Lubbock (Photogravure) 2677
A Sudden Squall (Photogravure) 2854
CHARLES LaM:
(1775-1834)
A
pj ETWEEN the ages of forty-five and fifty years, — having suf- l^ fered and renounced whatever was necessary t: educate him for so high a mission, — Charles Lamb wrote tb;; * Essays of Elia.** It is hard to think of an angel with a stoop and a 'cad habit of stuttering. We do not usually imagine that the garments of the Seraphim smell of stale tobacco smoke, or that the ministers of grace are liable to make puns without provocation. Still of such super- natural souls as Lamb it has been written: —
* Through all the world heaven's angels walk obscure, With radiance hidden from our darkened eyes By forms of humblest clay, whose mean disguise May veil celestial light more rare and pure Than we with purblind sight could dare endure *
If there is anything in evidence, Lamb in a London ravem, stut- tering out his jokes through thick clouds of tobacco smoke, was even then an inhabitant of the same heaven in which Thomas a Kempis wrote the "Imitatio Christi,'^ — the heaven which belongs to the pure in heart. "St. Charles,'^ Coleridge called him, after having known him from the time they were Blue-Coat boys together in cnnsc s Hos- pital School. Nothing short of saintliness would have made him the g^eat humorist he is. His life was a long tragedv /*•" -rnoccnr vic- tim of a hereditary taint, he was confined in a madhouse at twenty- one. Only a few months after his release, his sister Mary, in a violent paroxysm of insanity, killed her mother and was committed to a luna- tic asylum, with the prospect of life imprisonment among the in- sane. Her brother, scarcely more than a boy and with « the means of a day laborer, » pledged himself to the authorities to nurse and care for her if they would make him her guardian, and it was to this martyrdom that he devoted himself, sacrificing his hopes of happiness with Alice Winterton, and remaining a bachelor all his life. He lived with his sister as her guardian and nurse, watching for the recurrence of the symptoms of her madness, and when they appeared, going with her to the asylum that she might be confined until restored to herself. Out of this touching love between the brother and sister came the "Tales from Shakespeare* and "Poetry for Children,* "bv
2452 CHARLES LAMB
Charles and Mary Lamb,**— joint productions whicli make it evident that Lamb sought to inspire his sister with his own spirit of hope and cheerfulness. That the « Tales from Shakespeare,* which will be read with delight by children as long as the language in which they are written remains intelligible, could have been the result of the struggle for self-possession of two supersensitive minds under the constant dread of the recurrence of madness, is one of those miracles of contradiction which glorify human nature and human sanity in the teeth of Lombroso and all others who, having discovered that ^^ genius is a neurosis,* imagine that it is nothing more.
In Lamb it was the fruit of ripening manliness in that form which is called * Virtue,* — the quality of the ^^ F/r,* or fighting man, who can stand at the front in the first rank, stooped down behind his shield, but unyielding when the lines are broken and every one else is retreating. *-^ Certa tanquam miles bonus! ^'* writes Thomas a Kempis of such a one as Lamb. *-'• Fight like a good soldier ! * So does the metaphor of struggle endured and of blows taken without shrinking inhere in the meaning of such patient virtue as this — virtue which makes manliness divine even in its weakness.
Lamb's humor is clearly a result of consciousness of his own in- firmities and of the clear perception such self-knowledge gives him of the infirmities of others. Grote, Gibbon, and Macaulay, Locke, Descartes, and Plato, the historians, and the philosophers know much and tell much of human nature, but those who know more than they care or dare to tell do not write history or philosophy. They write such fairy tales as those of De la Motte Fouque, and Hans Chris- tian Andersen, and such essays as those of Lamb. The tenderness of Andersen and the playfulness of Lamb are marks of the acute sensitiveness of ph37-sical organization which must accompany the re- sponsiveness of the body to the control of mind. One of the marks of self-mastery in the physical suffering such responsiveness entails is humor. All humor is the result of a reaction. It may grow more and more brutal as the brutal nature is strengthened by reaction against the higher; but in Lamb it grows more and more tender and delicate as he ripens for translation to some heaven where — let us hope — reactions are no more; where there are no headaches in unlimited punches, and no drjmess of tongue after such long nights of innumerable pipes as preceded the ** Renunciation * in which Lamb wrote: —
« For thy sake tonacco I Would do anything — but die!"*
Delightful as is the secret wisdom of Lamb's essays, it is said that his conversation was even more so. Never preaching and never
CHARLES LAMB «45^
prosing himself, he is reputed to have furnished frequent texts to Coleridge — who did both. <^ I think, Charles," said Coleridge, ®yoti never heard me preach.*' " I ne-ne-never heard you do anything else, • replied Lamb with severe gravity, and no doubt with a deliberately protracted stutter.
Lamb's antecedents were anything but patrician. His father, who was ^'engaged in his youth in domestic service,* never rose higher than a clerkship for a bencher in the Inner Temple. Seven years in the Blue-Coat School of Christ's Hospital was all the scholastic education Charles ever had. In 1789 he became a clerk in the South Sea House, and in 1792 in the India House, where he worked until his fiftieth year. He was then retired on a pension of ^^400 a year, but he wrote little after this and lived to enjoy his moneyed ease for only nine years. He died December 27th, 1834, and when Professor Morley tells us that on that date he ^* entered into his heavenly rest,* we will not think of questioning it. But as for the kind of a heaven it is he entered, we can only guess that there will be a London in it with no fogs, and many clubrooms, inhabited exclusively by people who are fit to associate with the author of « The Complaint of the Decay of Beggars.* W. V. B.
A COa^LAINT of the DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE
METROPOLIS
THE all sweeping- besom of societarian reformation — your only modem Alcides' club to rid the time of its abuses — is up- lift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the crowded cros- sing, from the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is * with sighing sent."
I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this im- pertinent crusado, or helium ad extcrviinationcvi^ proclaimed against a species. Much good might be sucked from these Beggars.
They were the oldest and the honorablest form of pauper- ism. Their appeals were to our common nature; less revoltingf to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant to the particular humors or caprice of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-
a4S4 CHARLES LAMB
creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment.
There was a dignity springing from the very depth of their desolation; as to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being a man than to go in livery.
The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel any- thing towards him but contempt? Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected our minds with the same heroic pity, the same com- passionate admiration, with which we regard his Belisarius beg- ging for an obolus ? Would the moral have been more graceful, more pathetic?
The Blind Beggar in the legend, — the father of pretty Bessy, — whose story doggerel rhymes and alehouse signs cannot so degrade or attenuate but that some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements — this noble Earl of Corn- wall ( as indeed he was ) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stripped of all, and seated on the flowering green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by his side, illumining his rags and his beggary — would the child and parent have cut a better figure, doing the honors of a counter, or expiating their fallen con- dition upon the three-foot eminence of some sempstering shop- board ?
In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode to your king. The poets and romancical writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them) when they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates the height he falls from. There is no medium which can be presented to the imagination without offense. There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest him of his garments, till he answer " mere nature ** ; and Cressid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, supplicating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish.
The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a converse policy, when they would express scorn of greatness without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen.
CHARLES LAMB 2455
How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had de- clined his affections upon the daughter of a baker! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the ** true ballad/' where King Cophetua woos the beggar maid?
"Pauperism," "pauper,'* "poor man," are expressions of pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns a beg- gar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbor grice." Its poor rents and comings-in are soon summed up and told. Its pretenses to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches poor man in the streets with impolitic mention of his condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally compara- tive insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale of comparison. He is not under the measure of property. He confessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or unbraideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy neighbor seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer to the great, a led cap- tain, or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar.
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put on court mourning. He weareth all colors, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price of stock or land affectcth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man troublcth him with questioning his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the uni- verse.
24.56 CHARLES LAMB
The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad Singer; and in their pictur- esque attire as ornamental as the Signs of Old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementoes, dial mottoes, the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry —
« Look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there.*
Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's, Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had ex- pelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dog guide at their feet, — whither are they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sun warmth ? Immured between four walls, in what withering poorhouse do they endure the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropped half -penny no more consoles their for- lorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope- stirring tread of the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves ?
and who will farm their dogs ? Have the overseers of St. L
caused them to be shot ? or were they tied up in sacks, and
dropped into the Thames, at the suggestion of B , the mild
rector of ?
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most classi- cal and, at the same time, most English, of the Latinists! — who has treated of this human and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship in the sweetest of his poems, the " Epitaphium in Canem,*^ or << Dog's Epitaph.'* Reader, peruse it; and say, if custo- mary sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis.
^^ Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilts, Dum vixi, tutela vigil colianenque se?iectce, Dux cceco fidus: nee, me ducetite, solebat, Pr(Ete?iso June atque hiiie baeulo, per iniqua locorum Ineertam explorare viam; sed fila seeutus, Quc£ dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta
CHARLES LAMB 245;
FLxit inoffenso gress^i; gelidumque sedile
In nudo nactus saxo, qua prcctcrcuntium
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis plorax'it abortam.
Ploravit nee frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter.
Quels corda et tnentem indiderat natura benlgnam.
Ad I at us interea Jacui sopltus he rile,
Vel medlls vigil i?i somnls; ad herllla jussa
Auresque atque anlmum arrectus, sen frustula amid
Porrexlt soelasque dapes, seu longa diei
Tcedia perpessus, rcdltum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, hcec vita /uit, dum fata sinebant, Dum ncque languebam morbls, nee inerte seneetd; QucB tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite eczcum Orbavlt domlnum: prlsel sed gratia faetl Ne tola intereat, longos delecta per annos, Exlguum hune Irus tumulum de eesplte feeit, Etsi inopis, non ingratce, miinuscula dextrce; Carmine slgnavltque brevl, domlnumque canemque Quod memoret, fidumque canem domlnumque benlgnum?'*
*Poor Irus's faithful wolf-dog here I lie, That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, His guide and guard: nor, while my service lasted, Had he occasion for that staff, with which He now goes picking out his path in fear Over the highways and crossings; but would plant, Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd: To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear Prick'd up at his least motion; to receive At his kind hand ray customary crumbs. And Common portion in his feast of scraps; Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent With fjur long day and tedious beggary.
These were my manners, this my way of life. Till age and slow disease me overtook, And sever'd from my sightless master's side. But lest the grace of so good deeds should die.
2458 CHARLES LAMB
Througli tract of years in mute oblivion lost. This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, In long and lasting union to attest, The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog.**
These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanim- ity, viewing the hale stoutness and hearty heart of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the accident, which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigor from the soil which he neighbored. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature which should have recruited his left legs and thighs was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my eyes it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous ap- pearance. He seemed to want but his just statue to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man part of a Centaur, from which the horse half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body portion which was left him. The OS sublime was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly coun- tenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way 'impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poorhouse, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction.
Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called for legal interference to remove; or not rather a salutary and a touching object, to the passers-by in a great city?
CHARLES LAMB 2459
Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights — endless sights — is a great city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Liisus (not Natures, indeed, but) Acct- dfntium ? What if in forty-and-two years' going about the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumor ran) of a few hundreds — whom had he injured? whom had he imposed upon ? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuftling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion — he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow-cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clerg}'man de- posing before a House of Commons' committee — was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping post, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with — a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond ?
There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sat down at the cripples* feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, aye, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou hast lost thy breed. **
Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced, A clerk in the Bank was sur- prised with the announcement of a five-hundred-poimd legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Pcckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his half-penny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sat begging alms by the wayside in the borough. The good old beggar recognized his daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind? — or not rather a beautiful morn! of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble gratitude ujion the other ?
2460 CHARLES LAMB
I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk.
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking and looking up with his no eyes in the sun
Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against aim ?
Perhaps I had no small change.
Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition, imposture — give and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels.
Shut not thy purse strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the '^ seven small children, ^^ in whose name he implores thy as- sistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a half-penny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not.
<^ Pray God, your honor, relieve me, * said a poor beadswoman
to my friend L one day : " I have seen better days. » << So
have I, my good woman, '^ retorted he, looking up at the welkin, v^hich was just then threatening a storm — and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as a tester. It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or the par- ish beadle.
But L has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical
light on some occasions.
P, S. — My friend Hume (not M. P.) has a curious manuscript in his possession, the original draft of the celebrated « Beggar '3 Petition » (who cannot say by heart the « Beggar's Petition * l) as it was written by some school usher (as I rem.ember), with cor rections interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the Doctor's improvement, I recollect one most judi- cious alteration,
« A pamper'd menial drove me froin the door.*' It stood originally —
" A livery servant drove me," etc.
CHARLES LAMB 246)
Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language properly
substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against
Wordsworth, I think I must get H. to send it to the London as
a corollary to the foregoing.
Complete. From the London Magazine, June, 1822.
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG
MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or bit- ing it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his ** Mundane Mutations," where he designates a kind of golden age by the terra Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' holiday. The manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner fol- lowing. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lub- berly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. To- gether with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely suf- ferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. Wliat could it proceed from? — not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt that smell before — in
2462 CHARLES LAMB
deed this was by no means the first accident of the kind v/hich had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire- brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them, in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted — crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new- born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with a retributory cudgel, and, finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced in his lower regions had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becom- ing a little more sensible of his situation, something like the fol- lowing dialogue ensued : —
* You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what — what have you got there, I say?»
Oh, father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats ! *
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still
CHARLES LAMB 2463
shouting out, « Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O Lord ! " — with such like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death foi an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he, in his turn, tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretense, proved not alto- gether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the nighttime. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in ablaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable as- size town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself pro- duced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and burning their fingers as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompt- ing to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given, — to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision; and, when the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or
2464 CHARLES LAMB
money. In a few days his lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or, indeed, of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind.
Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favor of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in roast pig.
Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps obsoniorum.
I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig and pork — those hobbydehoys — but a young and tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty — with no original speck of the amor imniunditics, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble — the mild forerunner, or prceliidiiim, of a grunt.
He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument !
There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous — oh, call it not fat — but an in- definable sweetness growing up to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure
CHARLES LAMB 246$
food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other that both together make but one ambrosian result, or com- mon substance.
Behold him, while he is doing — it seemeth rather a refresh- ing warmth than a scorching heat that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! — Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars!
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obsti- nate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all manner of filthy con- versation! From these sins he is happily snatched away —
*Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, Death came with timely care*^ —
his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coal heaver boltcth him in reek- ing sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. She is, indeed, almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excori- ateth the lips that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she med- dleth not with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might bar- ter her consistently for a mutton chop.
Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censori- ous palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weak- ling refuseth not his mild juices.
Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unraveled without bazard, he is — good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means
\n — 155
2466 CHARLES LAMB
extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare.
I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an inter- est in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents/^ I often say, "endear Absents.** Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, "give everything," I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavors, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate. It argues an insensibility.
I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holi- day without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum cake, fresh from the oven. On my way to school (it was over London Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of gelf-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a present of — the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge my better feelings re- turned and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger that I had never seen before, and who might he a bad man for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not an- other— would eat her, nice cake — and what should I say to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I was to part with her pretty present — and the odor of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit
CHARLES LAMB 2467
of almsgiving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and, above all, I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good- for-nothing, old gray impostor.
Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing the tender victims. We read of pigs whipped to death with some- thing of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like re- fining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto.
I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young stu- dents, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learn- ing and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death by whipping {per fiagel- lationein extremani) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death ? ** I forget the decision.
His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shallots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are — but consider, he is a weakling — a flower.
Complete. From the London Magazine, September, 1822.
NEW YEAR'S EVE
EVERY man hath two birthdays: two days at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he tcrmeth "his." In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect noth- ing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it be- yond cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an
2468 CHARLES LAMB
interest too wide to be pretermitted by king- or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.
Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth; all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected — in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal color; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed: —
" I saw the skirts of the departing Year. »
It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some of my com- panions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those who —
« Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. >>
I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books, new faces, new years, — from some mental twist which makes it diffi- cult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pell- mell with past disappointments. I am armor proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversa- ries. I play over again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would no more alter them than the incidents of some well- contrived novel. Methinks it is better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W n, than that so passion- ate a love adventure should be lost. It was better that our fam- ily should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue.
CHARLES LAMB 2469
In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox when I say that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation of self-love ?
If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is introspective — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect for his pres- ent identity than I have for the man Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and humorsome ; a notorious . . . ; addicted to ... ; averse from counsel, neither taking it, nor offering it; — . . . besides; a stammering buffoon; what you will; lay it on, and spare not; I subscribe to it all, and much more,
than thou canst be willing to lay at his door but for the child
Elia — that ** other me," there, in the background — I must take leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master — with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and- forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient smallpox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least color of falsehood. — God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed! Thou art sophisticated. — I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) it was; how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful! From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself, — and not some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpracticed steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being!
That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyn- crasy. Or is it owing to another cause; simply, that being with- out wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favorite ? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader — (a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly conceited only, I retire im- penetrable to ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia.
The elders, with wliom I was brouglit up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution; and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them with
2470 CHARJLES LAMB
circumstances of peculiar ceremony. In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mor- tal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth ? — I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like misers' far- things. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away *^ like a weaver's shuttle. ** Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. Any alteration on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods plant a terribly fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me.
Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle- light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself — do these things go out with life ?
Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him ?
And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my em- braces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some
CHARLES LAMB 247 T
awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading ?
Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here, — the recognizable face — the *" sweet assurance of a look " — ?
In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to give it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself en- joy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, — that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus's sickly sister, like that in- nutritious one denounced in the Canticles: — I am none of her minions — I hold with the Persian.
Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like humors, run into that capi- tal plague sore. I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge; and speak of the g^ave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death — but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and ( with Friar John ) give thee to sixscore thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy privation, or more frightful and confound- ing positive!
Those antidotes prescribed against the fear of thee are alto- gether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a man that he shall "lie down with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows? — or, forsooth, that "so shall the fairest face appear?" — why, to comfort me, must Alice W n be a gob- lin ? More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your ordinary tomb- stones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that " such as he now is, I must
2472 CHARLES LAMB
shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 182 1, Another cup of wine — and while that turncoat bell that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the song made on a like occa- sion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton: —
The New Year
Hark! the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us, the day himself 's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look as seems to say.
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings.
More full of soul-tormenting gall
Than direst mischiefs can befall.
But stay! but stay! methinks my sight.
Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His reversed face may show distaste,
And frown upon the ills are past;
But that which this way looks is clear.
And smiles upon the Newborn Year.
He looks too from a place so high,
The Year lies open to his eye;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
Why should we then suspect or fear The influences of a year. So smiles upon us the first morn, And speaks us good so soon as born. Plague cn't! the last was ill enough.
CHARLES LAMB 2473
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we brush 'd through
The last, why so we may this tooj
And then the next in reason should
Be superexcellently good:
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity
Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support
Than those do of the other sort:
And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the New Guest
"With lusty brimmers of the best;
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet,
And render e'en Disaster sweet:
And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack.
We better shall by far hold out,
Till the next Year she face about.
How say you, reader — do not these verses smack of the rough. magnanimity of the old English vein ? Do they not fortify like a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction ? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected ? Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries — And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to yoii all, my masters!
Complete. From the London Magazine, January, 1821.
MODKRN GALLANTRY
IN COMPARING modem with ancient manners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females, as females.
^474 CHARLES LAMB
I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, when I can forget that in the nineteenth century of the era from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders.
I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to the fact that in England women are still occasionally — hanged.
I shall believe in it when actresses are no longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen.
I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fishwife across the kennel; or assists the apple woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated.
I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not known, or think themselves not observed — when I shall see the traveler for some rich tradesman part with his admired box coat, to spread it over the defenseless shoulders of the poor woman who is passing to her parish on the roof of the same stagecoach with him, drenched in the rain — when I shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about her, seated at their ease and jeering at her distress; till one that seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest significantly declares "she should be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and handsomer.* Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not seen a politer bred man in Lothbury.
Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such prin- ciple influencing our conduct, when more than one-half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be per- formed by women.
Until that day comes^ I shall never believe this boasted point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find their account equally.
I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attention's paid to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear — to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title.
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I shall believe it to be something more thaa a name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer; — when the phrases "antiquated virginity" and such a one has " overstood her market, " pronounced in good company, shall raise immediate offense in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken.
Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of the directors of the South Sea Company, — the same to whom Ed- wards, the Shakespeare commentator, has addressed a fine son- net,— was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at .an early age, and be- stowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the finest gentleman of his time. He had not one sys- tem of attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no dis- tinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bareheaded — smile, if you please — to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to some street — in such a posture of unforced civility as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women; but be reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar woman) with more ceremony than we can afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow cheeks.
He was never married, but in his youth he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley, — old Winstanley's daughter of Clapton, — who, dying in the early days of their courtship, ecu-
2476 CHARLES LAMB
firmed in him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short courtship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil speeches — the common gallantries — to which kind of thing she had hither- to manifested no repugnance — but in this instance with no ef- fect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the follow- ing day, finding her a little better humored, to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young women ; but that — a little before he had commenced his compliments — she had overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to the appointed time, and she thought to herself, * As I am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed beauty, and known to be a for- tune, — I can have my choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one (naming the milliner), — and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the appointed hour, — though perhaps I had sat up half the night to forward them, — what sort of compliments should I have received then ? — And my woman's pride came to my assistance, and I thought that if it were only to do me honor, a female, like myself, might have received handsomer usage; and I was determined not to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the belonging to which was, after all, my strongest claim and title to them. *
I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover; and I have sometimes imagined that the uncommon strain of courtesy which through life regulated the actions and behavior of my friend towards all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress.
I wish the whole female world would entertain the same no- tion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we
CHARLES LAMB 2477
should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man — a pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a sister
— the idolater of his female mistress — the disparager and de- spiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in whatever condition placed — her handmaid, or dependant — she deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attraction. What a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she is a woman;
— and next to that — to be respected by him above all othei women. But let her stand upon her female character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions, incident to individual prefer- ence, be so many pretty additaments and ornaments — as many, and as fanciful, as you please — to that main structure. Let her first lesson be — with sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence her
sex.
Complete. From the London Magazine, November, 1822.
POPULAR FALLACIES That Enough Is as Good as a Feast
NOT a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round Guildhall, who really believes this saying. The inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in revenge by some- body who was disappointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag- of-mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the palate, which knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is usually something left for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of proverbs which have a tendency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money is not health; riches cannot purchase everything; the metaphor which makes gold to be mere muck, with tlie morality which traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the unhand- some excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which im- putes dirt to acrett — a sophistry so barefaced that even the
2478 CHARLES LAMB
literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abun- dance of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily believe to have been the invention of some cunning borrower who had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbor, which he could only hope to carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these sayings out of the artful metonymy which envelops it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independ- ence, heart's-ease, a man's own time to himself, are not muck — however we may be pleased to scandalize with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for us.
Complete. Number VI,
That the Worst Puns Are the Best
IF BY worst be only meant the most far-fetched and startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear, not a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes bounding into the presence, and does not fihow the less comic for being dragged in sometimes by the head and shoulders. What though it limp a little, or prove defective in one leg — all the better. A pun may easily be too curious and artificial. Who has not at one time or other been at a party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender in that line), where, after ringing a round of the most ingenious conceits, every man contributing his shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the day; after making a poor word run the gaunt- let till it is ready to drop; after hunting and winding it through all the possible ambages of similar sounds; after squeez- ing And hauling and tugging at it till the very milk of it will not yield a drop further — suddenly some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a comer, who was never 'prentice to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, as we do by a known poor man when a money subscription is going round, no one call- ing upon him for his quota, has all at once come out with some- thing so whimsical, yet so pertinent — so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied — so exquisitely good, and so de- plorably bad at the same time — that it has proved a Robin
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Hood's shot? Anything^ ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening. This species of wit is the better for not being- perfect in all its parts. What it gains in com- pleteness, it loses in naturalness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it has upon some other faculties. The puns which are most entertaining are those which will least bear an analysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded with a sort of stigma in one of Swift's " Miscellanies '* :
An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying a hare through the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary question: • Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a wig ? '*
There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defense of it against a critic who should be laughter proof. The quibble in itself is not considerable. It is only a new turn given by a little false pro- nunciation to a very common, though not a very courteous in- quiry. Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner party, it would have been vapid; to the mistress of the house, it would have shown much less wit than rudeness. We must take in the totality of time, place, and person: the pert look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled porter; the one stop- ping at leisure, the other hurrying on with his burden; the inno- cent though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the sec- ond; the place — a public street — not favorable to frivolous in- vestigations; the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire; namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the good things which they carry, they being in most countries considered rather as the tem- porary trustees than owners of such dainties — which the fellow was beginning to understand; but then the wig again comes in, and he can make nothing of it; all put togetlier constitute a picture. Hogarth could have made it intelligible on canvas.
Yet nine out cf ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The same per- son shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cremona, because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to call it cold;
2,480 CHARLES LAMB
because of thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty aside) we must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. But as some sto- ries (applied by Swift to a lady's dress, or mantua, as it was then termed, coming in contact with one of those fiddles called Cre- monas), are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been better had it been less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was enough in conscience; the Cremoncs afterward loads it. It is, in fact, a double pun, and we have always observed that a superfetation in this sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom poli- tic to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time ; or, perhaps, the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The im- pression, to be forcible, must be simultaneous and undivided.
Complete. Number IX.
A
That We Should Rise with the Lark
T what precise minute that little airy musician doffs his night gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable mat- ins, we are not naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human gentleman — that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercise — we take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we say; for to do it in earnest requires another half hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty sunrisings, as we are told, and such like gauds abroad in the world, in summertime especially, some hours before what we have assigned, which a gentleman may see, as they say, only for getting up. But having been tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon
CHARLES LAMB 2481
such observances; which have in them, besides, something- Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called), to go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the long hours after in listlessness and headaches; Nature herself sufficiently declaring her sense of our presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail waking- courses by the measures of that celes- tial and sleepless traveler. We deny not that there is some- thing sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to get the start of a lazy world, to conquer death by proxy in his image. But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us; and we pay usually, in strange qualms before night falls, the penalty of the unnatural inversion.
Therefore, while the busy part of mankind are fast huddling on their clothes, or are already up and about their occupations, content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale, we choose to linger abed, and digest our dreams. It is the very time to re- combine the w'andering images which night in a confused mass presented; to snatch them from forgetfulness; to shape and mold them. Some people have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they goilp them too ^ossly to taste them curiously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scat- tered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies; to drag into day- light a struggling and half-vanishing nightmare; to handle and examine the terrors or the airy solaces. We have too much re- spect for these spiritual communications to let them go so lightly. We are not so stupid or so careless as that imperial forgetter of his dreams, that we should need a seer to remind us of the form of them. They seem to us to have as much significance as our waking concerns; or rather to import us more nearly, as more nearly we approach by years to the shadowy world whither we are hastening. We have shaken hands with the world's busi- ness; we have done witli it; we have discharged ourselves of it. Why should we get up ? We have neither suit to solicit, nor af- fairs to manage. The drama has shut in upon us at the fourth act. We have nothing here to expect but in a sliort time a sick- bed and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death by such shadows as night affords. We are already half accpiainteil with ghosts. We were never much ir tlie world. Disappointment VII — 156
248« CHARLES LAMB
early struck a dark veil between ns and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed gray before our hairs. The mighty changes of the world already appear as but the vain stuff out of which dramas are composed. We have asked no more of life than what the mimic images in playhouses present us with. Even those types have waxed fainter. Our clock appears to have struck. We are superannuated. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we contract politic alliances with shadows. It is good to have friends at court. The abstracted media of dreams seem no ill introduction to that spiritual presence, upon which, in no long time, we expect to be thrown. We are trying to know a little of the usages of that colony; to learn the language, and the faces we shall meet with there, that we may be the less awkward at our first coming among them. We willingly call a phantom our fel- low, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark companionship. Therefore we cherish dreams. We try to spell in them the al- phabet of the invisible world, and think we know already how it shall be with us. Those uncouth shapes, which, while we clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. We feel attenuated into their meagre essences, and have given the hand of half-way approach to incorporeal being. We once thought life to be something, but it has unaccountably fallen from us before its time. Therefore we choose to dally with visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why should we get up ?
Complete. Number XI.
That We Should Lie Down with the Lamb
WE COULD never quite understand the philosophy of this ar- rangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for instruction to these woolly bedfellows. A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found out long sixes. Hail candlelight! with- out disparagement to sun or moon, the kindliest luminary of the three — if we may not rather style thee their radiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon! We love to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candlehght. They are everybody's sun and moon. This is our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, what savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, win- tering in caves and unillumined fastnesses! They must have lain
CHARLES LAMB 2483
about and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's cheek to be sure that he understood it ? This accounts for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a sombre cast (try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition of those unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with candles. We wonder how they saw to pick up a pin, if they had any. How did they sup ? What a melange of chance carving they must have made of it! Here one had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's shoulder; there another had dipped his scooped palm in a kid skin of wild honey, when he meditated right mare's milk. There is neither good eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, even in these civilized times, has never experienced this, when at some economic table he has commenced dining after dusk, and waited for the flavor till the lights came ? The senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal in the dark, or distinguish Sherris from pure Malaga ? Take away the candle from the smoking man: by the glimmering of the left ashes, he knows that he is still smoking, but he knows it only by an in- ference; till the restored light, coming in aid of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then how he redoubles his puffs! how he burnishes! There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noonday in gardens, and in sultry arbors; but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquettes, that will have you all to themselves, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper the writer digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odor. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential Phabus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the Bun's light. They are abstracted works —
"Things that were born when none but the still night And his dumb candle saw his pinching throes.**
Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, the crude material; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must be content to hold their in- spiration of the candle. The mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Night and silence call out the starry fanciee. Milton's " Morning
2484 CHARLES LAMB
Hymn in Paradise,* we would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and Taylor's rich description of a sunrise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself , in these our humbler lucubra tions, tune our best-measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, ^* bless- ing the doors," or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted courts our. endeavors. We would indite something about the Solar System. — Betty, bring the candles.
Complete. Number XII.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
(1775-1864)
•ALTER Savage Landor was born at Warwick, England, January 30th, 1775. He lived to be eighty-five years old, and, ac- cording to his passionate admirer, Algernon Charles Swin- burne, *in the course of this long life he won for himself such a double crown of glory in verse and in prose as had been won by no other Englishman but Milton." That Landor was a man of the most highly developed intellect is unquestionable, and but for a most singular contradiction he might have been the greatest force in the literature of the nineteenth century. An extreme Republican in his politics, he was in all his literary sympathies an intellectual aristo- crat of the severest and most exclusive type. By his politics he alienated the class to which he belonged by virtue of the habits of his mind, and by the haughtiness of his intellectual superiority he excluded from his circle the masses with whom he sympathized. What he stood for in the poetry of the nineteenth century was illus- trated when, after publishing his poem of "Gebir" in a first edition in English, he corrected it in a second English edition, and then translated it into Latin, in order to satisfy his own sense of harmony. According to Mr. Swinburne, the Latin version << has a might and melody of line, and a power and perfection of language," by virtue of which " it must always dispute the palm of precedence with the Eng- lish version." We may well believe it, and regret the more on account of it that Landor's genius was not led by the necessary study of the past to a fuller recognition of the demands of the present and the future. Of his prose writings, his <* Pericles and Aspasia," pub- lished in 1836, best exhibits the fullness of his knowledge of classical subjects, while his "Imaginary Conversations" ( 1821-48) more nearly appro.\imatcs the level of modern taste. His tragedy of " Count Julian," which appeared in 181 2, is generally considered the best of his poems, and his admirers sometimes class it with Milton's " Samson Agonistes." Landor's career was erratic. He was expelled from Oxford for firing a gun at the window of a peculiarly obnoxious Tory. In 1808 he served as a volunteer against Napoleon in Spain, and in 181 1 married Miss Julia Thuillicr, a banker's daughter, with whom he "fell in love at first sight" and from whom he finally si-parated. Much of his life was spent in Italy, where he died Scp- V:mbcr 17th, 1864.
2486 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
ADDISON VISITS STEELE
[The time of the visit is shortly after Steele's arrest for debt caused by Addison, supposedly to give him an opportunity for sobriety.]
Addison —
Dick! I am come to remonstrate with you on the unlucky- habits which have been so detrimental to your health and fortune.
Steele — Many thanks, Mr. Addison; but really my fortune is not much improved by your arresting me for the hundred pounds; nor is my health, if spirits are an indication of it, on seeing my furniture sold by auction to raise the money.
Addison — Pooh, pooh, Dick ! what furniture had you about the house ?
Steele — At least I had the armchair, of which you never be- fore had dispossessed me longer than the evening; and happy should I have been to enjoy your company in it again and again, if you had left it me.
Addison — We will contrive to hire another. I do assure you, my dear Dick, I have really felt for you.
Steele — I only wish, my kind friend, you had not put out your feelers quite so far, nor exactly in this direction; and that my poor wife had received an hour's notice; she might have car- ried a few trinkets to some neighbor. She wanted her salts; and the bailiff thanked her for the bottle that contained them, telling her the gold head of it was worth pretty nearly half a guinea.
Addison — Lady Steele then wanted her smelling bottle ? Dear me! the weather, I apprehend, is about to change. Have you any symptoms of your old gout ?
Steele — My health has been long on the decline, you know.
Addison — Too well I know it, my dear friend, and I hinted it as delicately as I could. Nothing on earth beside this consid- eration should have induced me to pursue a measure in appear- ance so unfriendly. You must grow more temperate . . . you really must.
Steele — Mr. Addison, you did not speak so gravely and so firmly when we used to meet at Will's. You always drank as much as I did, and often invited and pressed me to continue, when I was weary, sleepy, and sick.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 2487
Addison — You thought so because you were drunk. Indeed, at my own house I have sometimes asked you to take another glass, in compliance with the rules of society and hospitality.
Steele — Once, it is true, you did it at your house ; the only time I ever had an invitation to dine in it. The Countess was never fond of the wit that smells of wine ; her husband could once endure it.
Addison — We could talk more freely, you know, at the tavern. There we have dined together some hundred times.
Steele — Most days, for many years.
Addison — Ah, Dick! Since we first met there, several of our friends are gone off the stage.
Steele — And some are still acting.
Addison — Forbear, my dear friend, to joke and smile at in- firmities or vices. Many have departed from us, in consequence, I apprehend, of indulging in the bottle! When passions are ex- cited, when reason is disturbed, when reputation is sullied, when fortune is squandered, and when health is lost by it, a retreat is sounded in vain. Some cannot hear it, others will not profit by it.
Steele — I must do you the justice to declare that I never saw any other effect of hard drinking upon you than to make you more circumspect and silent.
Addison — If ever I urged you, in the warmth of my heart, to transgress the bounds of sobriety, I entreat you as a Christian to forgive me.
Steele — Most willingly, most cordially.
Addison — I feel confident that you will think of me, speak of me, and write of me, as you have ever done, without a diminu- tion of esteem. We are feeble creatures; we want one another's aid and assistance ; a want ordained by Providence, to show us at once our insufficiency and our strength. We must not abandon our friends from slight motives, nor let our passions be our inter- preters in their own cause. Consistency is not more requisite to the sound Christian than to the accomplished politician.
Steele — I am inconsistent in my resolutions of improvement no man ever was more so; but my attachments have a nerve in them neither to be deadened by ill treatment nor loos- ened by indulgence. A man grievously wounded knows by the acuteness of the pain that a spirit of vitality is yet in him. I know that I retain my friendship for you by what you have made me suffer.
Addison — Entirely for your own good, I do protest, if you could see it.
2488 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Steele — Alas! all our sufferings are so; the only mischief is that we have no organs for perceiving it.
Addison — You reason well, my worthy sir; and relying on your kindness in my favor (for every man has enemies, and those mostly who serve their friends best), I say, Dick, on these considerations, since you never broke your word with me, and since I am certain you would be sorry it were known that four- score pounds' worth could be found in the house, I renounce for the present the twenty yet wanting. Do not beat about for an answer; say not one word; farewell.
Steele — Ah! could not that cold heart, often and long as I reposed on it, bring me to my senses! I have, indeed, been drunken; but it is hard to awaken in such heaviness as this of mine is. I shared his poverty with him; I never aimed to share his prosperity. Well, well; I cannot break old habits. I love my glass; I love Addison. Each will partake in killing me. Why cannot I see him again in the armchair, his right hand upon his heart under the fawn-colored waistcoat, his brow erect and clear as his conscience; his wig even and composed as his temper, with measurely curls and antithetical topknots, like his style; the calmest poet, the most quiet patriot; dear Addison! drunk, deliberate, moral, sentimental, foaming over with truth and virtue, with tenderness and friendship, and only the worse in one ruffle for the wine.,
Complete. From « Imaginary Conversations. >>
THE PANGS OF APPROACHING THE GODS {Cicero speaks)
I AM persuaded of the truth in what J have spoken, and yet — ah, Quintus! there is a tear that philosophy cannot dry, and a pang that will rise as we approach the gods.
Two things tend beyond all others, after philosophy, to in- hibit and check our ruder passions as they grow and swell in us, and to keep our gentler in their proper play; and these two things are, seasonable sorrow and inoffensive pleasure, each mod- erately indulged. Nay, there is also a pleasure, humble, it is true, but graceful and insinuating, which follows close upon our very sorrows, reconciles us to them gradually, and sometimes renders us, at last, undesirous altogether of abandoning them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 2489
If ever you have remembered the anniversary of some day whereon a dear friend was lost to you, tell me whether that an- niversary was not purer and even calmer than the day before. The sorrow, if there should be any left, is soon absorbed, and full satisfaction takes place of it, while you perform a pious office to Friendship, required and appointed by the ordinances of Nature. When my Tulliola was torn away from me, a thousand plans were in readiness for immortalizing her memory, and rais- ing a monument up to the magnitude of my grief. The grief itself has done it; the tears I then shed over her assuaged it in me, and did everything that could be done for her, or hoped, or wished. I called upon Tulliola: Rome and the whole world heard me. Her glory was a part of mine, and mine of hers, and when Eternity had received her at my hands, I wept no longer. The tenderness wherewith I mentioned, and now mention her, though it suspends my voice, brings what consoles and comforts me; it is the milk and honey left at the sepulchre, and equally sweet, I hope, to the departed.
The gods, who have given us our affections, permit us rarely the uses and the signs of them. Immoderate grief, like every- thing else immoderate, is useless and pernicious; but if we did not tolerate and endure it; if we did not prepare for it, meet it, commune with it; if we did not even cherish it in its season, — much of what is best in our faculties, much of our tenderness, much of our generosity, much of our patriotism, much, also, of our genius, would be stifled and extinguished.
When I hear any one call upon another to be manly and restrain his tears, if they flow from the social and the kind affec- tions, I doubt the humanity and distrust the wisdom of the coun- selor. Were he humane, he would be more inclined to pity and to sympathize than to lecture and reprove; and were he wise, he would consider that tears are given us by nature as a remedy to affliction, although, like other remedies, they should come to our relief in private. Philosophy, we may be told, would prevent the tears, by turning away the sources of tliem, and by raising up a rampart against pain and sorrow. I am of opinion that philosophy, quite pure and totally abstracted from our appetites and passions, instead of serving us the l)ctter, would do us little or no good at all. We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.
From *'Iniajjinary Conversations.**
ANDREW LANG
(1 844-)
^osT Scotchmen are serious, but by some miracle Andrew Lang escaped the North British sense of responsibility which would have made him great instead of entertaining. No one who knows him, however, will wish him to be other than he is. He is, perhaps, at his best in his verse of the Old French school, though he is an attractive prose writer on many themes. He writes old English with great purity and clearness, as he has illustrated in his translations from Homer. His " Ballads and Verses Vain >> and other poems have been widely read in America, as well as in England, and *The World's Desire, >* a novel he published as joint author with Haggard, in 1890, is one of the most entertaining of all the stories of the Argive Helen. As an essayist and reviewer, Lang has long occupied a prominent place in the best English periodicals. He was born at Selkirk, Scotland, March 31st, 1844. After graduating at Oxford, he was made a Fellow of one of its colleges, and in 1888 GiflEord lecturer at St. Andrew's University.
THE BERESFORD GHOST STORY
JUST as the anecdote of William Tell and the Apple occurs in various times, and among widely severed races, so, in a minor degree, does the famous Beresford ghost story pre- sent itself in mythical fashion. The Beresford tale is told at great length by Dr. F. G. Lee, in his ^^ Glimpses of the Supernatural.*^ As usual, Dr. Lee does not give the names of his informants, nor trace the channels through which the legend reached them. But he calls his version of the myth, << an authentic record. >* To be brief. Lord Tyrone and Miss Blank were orphans, educated in the same house * in the principles of Deism. ** When they were about fourteen years of age their preceptor died, and their new guardians tried to <* persuade them to embrace revealed religion. ® The boy and girl, however, stuck to Deism. But they made a compact that he or she who died first should appear to the sur- vivor **to declare what religion was most approved by the
ANDREW LANG 249I
Supreme Being.* Miss Blank married Sir Martin Beresford. One day she appeared at breakfast with a pale face, and a black band round her wrist. Long afterwards, on her deathbed, she ex- plained that this band covered shrunken sinews. The ghost of Lord Tyrone, at the hour of his death, had appeared to her, had prophesied (correctly) her future, and had touched her wrist by way of a sign.
"He struck my wrist; his hand was as cold as marble; in a moment the sinews shrank up, every nerve withered. ... I bound a piece of black ribbon round my wrist.'* The black rib- bon was formerly in the possession of Lady Betty Cobb, who, during her long life, was ever ready to attest the truth of this narration, as are, to the present hour, the whole of the Tyrone and Beresford families.
Nothing would induce me to dispute the accuracy of a report vouched for by Lady Betty Cobb and all the Tyrones and Beres- fords. But I must be permitted to point out that Lord Tyrone merely did what many ghosts had done before in that matter of touching Lady Beresford's wrist. Thus, according to Henry More, " one " {bogie) " took a relation of Melanchthon's by the hand, and so scorched her that she bore the mark of it to her dying day. '* Before Melanchthon the anecdote was ^^ improved * by Eudes de Shirton in a sermon. According to Eudes, a cer- tain clerk, Serlon, made with a friend the covenant which Miss Blank made with Lord Tyrone. The survivor was to bring news of the next world. Well, the friend died, and punctually ap- peared to Serlon, " in a parchment cloak, covered with the finest writing in the world. *^ Being asked how he fared, he said that this cloak, a punishment for his love of Logic, weighed heavier than lead, and scorched like the shirt of Nessus. Then he held out his hand and let fall a drop which burned Serlon to the bone —
"And evermore that Master wore A covering on his wrist.'*
Before Eudes de Shirton, William of Malmesbury knew this anecdote, which he dates about 1060- 1063, and localizes in Nantes. His characters are ** two clerks, " an Epicurean and a Platonist, who made the usual contract that the first to die should appear to the survivor, and state whether Plato's ideas or " Epicurus his atoms " were the correct re{)ly to tlie conundrum of the universe.
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ANDREW LANG
The visit was to be paid within thirty days of the death. One of the philosophical pair was killed, a month passed, no news of him came. Then, when the other expected nothing less, and was busy with some ordinary matter, the dead man suddenly stood before him. The spectre explained that he had been un- able to keep his appointment earlier ; and, stretching out his hand, let fall three burning drops of blood, which branded, not the wrist, but the brow of the psychical inquirer. The anecdote re- curs later, and is attached by certain commentators on Dante to one Siger de Brabant. Now this legend may be true about Lady Beresford, or about William of Malmesbury's two clerks, or about Siger de Brabant, or about Serlon ; but the same facts of a com- pact, the punctual appearance of the survivor, and the physical sign which he gave, can scarcely have occurred more than once. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that the narrative vouched for by two noble families is accurate, and that the tales of William of Malmesbury, Henry More, Eudes de Shirton, and Siger de Brabant are myths —
<* Or such refraction of events As often rises ere they rise.*
From «The Comparative Study of Ghost Stories. >^
CELEBRATED LITERARY FORGERIES
THE most famous forgeries of the eighteenth century were those of Macpherson, Chatterton, and Ireland. Space (fortu- nately) does not permit a discussion of the Ossianic ques- tion. That fragments of Ossianic legend (if not of Ossianic poetry) survive in oral Gaelic traditions, seems certain. How much Mac- pherson knew of these, and how little he used them in the bom- bastic prose which Napoleon loved (and spelled *^ Ocean *) it is next to impossible to discover. The case of Chatterton is too well known to need much more than mention. The most extraordi- nary poet for his years who ever lived began with the forgery of a sham feudal pedigree for Mr. Bergum, a pewterer. Ireland started on his career in much the same way, unless Ireland's ** Confessions *' be themselves a fraud, based on what he knew about Chatterton. Once launched in his career, Chatterton drew endless stores of poetry from <* Rowley's MS." and the muni-
ANDREW LANG 2493
ment chest in St. Mary Redcliff's. Jacob Bryant believed in them and wrote an " Apology ** for the credulous. Bryant, who believed in his own system of mytholog-y, might have be- lieved in anything. When Chatterton sent his * discoveries " to Walpole (himself somewhat of a mediaeval imitator), Gray and Mason detected the imposture, and Walpole, his feelings as an antiquary injured, took no more notice of the boy. Chatterton's death was due to his precocity. Had his genius come to him later, it would have found him wiser and better able to command the fatal demon of intellect, for which he had to find work, like Michael Scott in the legend.
The end of the eighteenth century, which had been puzzled or diverted by the Chatterton and Macpherson frauds, witnessed also the great and famous Shakespearean forgeries. We shall never know the exact truth about the fabrication of the Shakes- pearean documents, and ** Vortigern," and the other plays. We have, indeed, the confession of the culprit; habemus confitentein renin, but Mr. W. H. Ireland was a liar and a solicitor's clerk, so versatile and accomplished that we cannot always believe him, even when he is narrating the tale of his own iniquities. The temporary, but wide and turbulent success of the Ireland forgeries suggests the disagreeable reflection that criticism and learning are (or a hundred years ago were) worth very little as literary touchstones. A polished and learned society, a society devoted to Shakespeare and to the stage, was taken in by a boy of eighteen. Young Ireland not only palmed off his sham docu- ments, most makeshift imitations of the antique, but even his ridiculous verse on the experts. James Boswell went down on his knees and thanked Heaven for the sight of them; and feeling thirsty after these devotions, drank hot brandy and water. Dr. Parr was as readily gulled, and probably the experts, like Ma- lone, who held aloof, were as much influenced by jealousy as by science. The whole story of young Ireland's forgeries is not only too long to be told here, but forms the topic of a novel, ** The Talk of the Town," on which Mr. James Payn is at present en- gaged. The frauds are not likely in his hands to lose either their humor or their complicated interest of plot. To be brief, then, Mr. Samuel Ireland was a gentleman extremely fond of old literature and old books. If we may trust the "Confessions" (1805) of his candid son, Mr. W. H. Ireland, a more harmless and con- fiding old person than Samuel never collected early English tracts.
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Living in his learned society, his son, Mr. W. H. Ireland, ac- quired not only a passion for black letters, but a desire to emu- late Chatterton. His first step in guilt was the forgery of an autograph on an old pamphlet, with which he gratified Samuel Ireland. He also wrote a sham inscription on a modern bust of Cromwell, which he presented as an authentic antique. Finding that the critics were taken in, and attributed this new bust to the old sculptor Simon, Ireland conceived a very low and not un- justifiable opinion of critical tact. Critics would find merit in anything which seemed old enough. Ireland's next achievement was the forgery of some legal documents concerning Shakespeare. Just as the bad man who deceived the guileless Mr. Shapira, forged his Deuteronomy on the blank spaces of old synagogue rolls, so young Ireland used the cut-off ends of old rent rolls. He next bought up quantities of old fly-leaves of books, and on this ancient paper he indited a sham confession of faith, which he attributed to Shakespeare. Being a strong " evangelical, " young Mr. Ireland gave a very Protestant complexion to this edi- fying document. And still the critics gaped and wondered and believed, Ireland's method was to write in an ink made by blend- ing various liquids used in the marbling of paper for bookbind- ing. This stuff was supplied to him by a bookbinder's apprentice. When people asked questions as to whence all the new Shakes- peare manuscripts came, he said they were presented to him by a gentleman who wished to remain anonymous. Finally, the im- possibility of producing this gentleman was one of the causes of the detection of the fraud. According to himself, Ireland per- formed prodigies of acuteness. Once he had forged, at random, the name of a contemporary of Shakespeare. He was confronted with a genuine signature, which, of course, was quite different. He obtained leave to consult his *' anonymous gentleman,*^ rushed home, forged the name on the model of what had been shown to him, and returned with this signature as a new gift from his benefactor. That nameless friend had informed him that there were two persons of the same name, and that both signatures were genuine. Ireland's impudence went the length of introduc- ing an ancestor of his own, with the same name as himself, among the companions of Shakespeare. If *^ Vortigern '* had succeeded (and it was actually put on the stage with all possible pomp), Ireland meant to have produced a series of pseudo- Shakespearean plays from William the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth. When
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busy with " Vortigern " he was detected by a friend of his own age, who pounced on him while he was at work, as Lasus pounced on Onomacritus. The discoverer, however, consented to ^' stand in '^ with Ireland, and did not divulge his secret. At last, after the fiasco of "Vortigern," suspicion waxed so strong, and disagree- able inquiries for the anonymous benefactor were so numerous that Ireland fled from his father's house. He confessed all, and, according to his own account, fell under the undying wrath of Samuel Ireland. Any reader of Ireland's " Confessions " will be likely to sympathize with old Samuel as the dupe of his son. The whole story is told with a curious mixture of impudence and humor, and with great plausibility. Young Ireland admits that his " desire for laughter " was almost irresistible, when people — learned, pompous, sagacious people — listened attentively to the papers. One feels half inclined to forgive the rogue for the sake of his youth, his cleverness, his humor. But the " Confessions " are, not improbably, almost as apocr>'phal as the original documents. They were written for the sake of money, and it is impossible to say how far the same mercenary motive actuated Ireland in his forgeries. Dr. Ingleby, in his "Shakespeare Fabrications,* takes a very rigid view of the conduct, not only of William, but of old Samuel Ireland. Sam, according to Dr. Ingleby, was a partner in the whole imposture, and the " Confessions " was only one element in the scheme of fraud. Old Samuel was the Fagan of a band of young literary Dodgers. He " positively trained his whole family to trade in forgery,** and as for Mr. W. H. Ireland, he was "the most accomplished liar that ever lived," which is certainly a distinction in its way. The point of the joke is that, after the whole conspiracy exploded, people were anxious to buy examples of the forgeries. Mr. W. H. Ireland was equal to the occasion. He actually forged his own, or (according to Dr. In. gleby) his father's forgeries, and, by thus increasing the supply, he deluged the market with sham shams, with imitations of imi- tations. If this accusation be correct, it is impossible not to ad- mire the colossal impudence of Mr. W. H. Ireland. Dr. Ingleby, in the ardor of his honest indignation, pursues William into his private life, which it appears was far from exemplary. But lit- erary criticism should be content with a man's works, his domes- tic life is matter, as Aristotle often says, " for a separate kind of investigation."
SIDNEY LANIER
(1842-1881)
[n sustained power of description, De Quincey's « Pains of Opium » is the only essay in the English language which can be rightly classed with « On the Ocklawaha in May,» by Sidney Lanier, while, as might be expected, the melody of Lanier's prose is greatly superior to that of De Quincey's. Almost wholly neglected during his lifetime, Lanier was recognized after his death as one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. He wrote little, but of that little nothing can be spared. His << Hymns of the Marshes'^ have been pronounced by his English admirers the greatest poems ever written in America; and if we take purity and sublimity as the standard by which to judge the essential ele- ment of great poetry, we need not hesitate to conclude that they are unequaled in the English verse of the nineteenth century. They show a greater intensity than Browning's and a higher lyrical fac- ulty than Tennyson's. Lanier is not Longfellow's equal in breadth ; and a life of suffering made him so intensive and introspective that, while distinctly superior to Longfellow in poetic quality, he is greatly his inferior in that most important quality by which the poet who has a message to deliver to mankind succeeds in making it intelligi- ble to the largest possible number of people. Lanier's poetry has been growing steadily in favor with the decrease of sectional preju- dices, but as a prose writer he is scarcely known at all. The prose essay by which he is best known is an examination of the funda- mental" principles of English verse. While it is of interest chiefly to specialists, it is a most extraordinary production. In it Lanier, who was a highly trained musician with an exquisite ear for melody, was carried by his sense of music to a realization of the fundamental principle which governs the melody of Homer and other great classi- cal poets who practiced the Homeric mode. This may be called a coincidence, as Lanier had made no special study of classical verse, and as far as appears was unaware of the fundamental identity of principle governing the music of English verse, and that of the clas- sical poets. But if a coincidence, it is one of governing law — not of chance. Lanier's own verse approximates the melody of the great classical poets, especially of the Horatian lyric and the Virgilian hex- ameter, to an extent that can ne-^er be realized except through the
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closest scientific comparison. It is scientifically accurate to say that he illustrates classical modes better than any other poet of the nineteenth century, and classical melody better than any other of the century except Burns. The ear for melody which governs his verse controls every inflection of the wonderful prose of his * On the Ocklawaha in May.*' Whether he is in jest or earnest, whether he is listening to a deck hand's whistling, or looking at the stars, the simple unforced, thoroughly natural prose in which he expresses his own unconscious sublimity, rises and falls with the free swing of a tnne played by a master of the violin expressing his own deepest feelings and highest thoughts in his music. The essay is one of a series on Florida scen- ery contributed by Lanier to Lippincott's Magazine in 1875. It was afterwards used with others by Florida railroads to advertise the State, and those who read it aloud in his cadences will not need to be told that neither before nor since has any State had such an ad- vertisement. There is no pretense of fine writing or « word painting " about it. The effort which becomes evident in the highest reaches of De Quincey's descriptive writing is nowhere apparent. The reader can hardly avoid the fear that Lanier will break down before the close and lapse into the bathos which so often punishes vigorous American attempts at eloquence; but Lanier is not more vigorous in his attempt than he would be in playing the flute or the violin, and whether he is gay or sad, sublime, or witty, he goes through to the end as easily, as unostentatiously, as naturally, as if the music of his language were really that of the instruments on which he learned *' the whole art of composition. "
"He was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3d, 1842. His father, Robert S. Lanier, was a lawyer of ability and standing; and the family had sufficient means to educate Sidney at Oglethorpe College, where he graduated in i860. At the age of nineteen he enlisted in the Confederate Army and served until captured near the close of the war, contracting, as a result of hardship and exposure, the disease of the lungs of which, after years of suffering, he died at Lynn, North Carolina, September 7th, 1881. From 1868 to 1872 he studied and prac- ticed law at Macon. In 1873 he removed to Baltimore where he sup- ported himself by playing the flute at concerts, and afterwards (1879- 1881) as lecturer on English Literature at Johns Hopkins University. His poems, edited by his wife, were first collected and published in 1884. They have not yet attained general circulation, and they prob- ably will not until they can be reproduced in popular editions. But no one who reads them at all is ever likely to forget them. In such verses as —
"Ye marshes, how ranciid and simple and n( thin^'-v,'it.hhol(liiig and free. Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourbelveB Lo the sea! VII— 157
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Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the Catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain, » —
we liave a suggestion more nearly adequate than can be found in any other modern poet of the free melody of classical verse, and with it a sublimity of thought which no classical poet ever attained. Lanier's life was one of infinite pathos, and he set it to immortal music. W. V. B.
ON THE OCKLAWAHA IN MAY
FOR a perfect journey God gave us a perfect day. The little Ocklawaha steamboat Marion — a steamboat which is like nothing in the world so much as a Pensacola gopher with a preposterously exaggerated back — had started from Pilatka some hours before daylight, having taken on her passengers the night previous; and by seven o'clock of such a May morning as no words could describe, unless words were themselves May mornings, we had made the twenty-five miles up the St. John's to where the Ocklawaha flows into that stream nearly opposite Welaka.
Just before entering the mouth of the river, our little gopher boat scrambled alongside a long raft of pine logs which had been brought in separate sections down the Ocklawaha, and took off the lumbermen to carry them back up the stream for another descent, while this raft was being towed by a tug to Jacksonville.
That man who is now stepping from the wet logs to the bow guards of the Marion, — how can he ever cut down a tree? He is a slim, melancholy native, and there is not bone enough in his whole body to make the left leg of a good English coal heaver; moreover, he does not seem to have the least suspicion that a man needs grooming. He is disheveled and wry-trussed to the last degree; his poor weasel jaws nearly touch their inner sides as they suck at the acrid ashes in his dreadful pipe; and there is no single filament of either his hair or his beard that does not look sourly and at wild angles upon its neighbors' fila- ment. His eyes are viscidly unquiet; his nose is merely dreari- ness come to a point; the corners of his mouth are pendulous with that sort of suffering which involves no particular heroism,
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such as gnats, or waiting for the com bread to get done, or be- ing out of tobacco; and his — But, poor devil! I withdraw all that has been said; he has a right to look disheveled and sor- rowful; for listen: "Well, sir,'* he says, with a. dilute smile, as he wearily leans his arm against the low deck and settles him- self so, though there are a dozen vacant chairs in reach, " ef we didn' have ther sentermentalest rain right thar on them logs last night, I'll be dadbusted!" He had been in it all night.
I fell to speculating on his word " sentermental, *' wondering by what vague associations with the idea of " centre " — eg-, a centre shot, perhaps, as a shot which beats all other shots — he had arrived at such a form of expletive, or, rather, intensive.
But not long, for presently we rounded the raft, abandoned the broad and garish highway of the St. John's and turned off to the right into the narrow lane of the Ocklawaha, the sweetest water lane in the world — a lane which runs for a hundred miles of pure delight betwixt hedgerows of oaks and cypresses and palms and magnolias and mosses and manifold vine growths; a lane clean to travel along, for there is never a speck of dust in it, save the blue dust and gold dust which the wind blows out of the flags and the lilies; a lane which is as if a typical woods ramble had taken shape, and as if God had turned into water and trees the recollection of some meditative stroll through the lonely seclusions of his own soul.
As we advanced up the stream our wee craft seemed to emit her steam in more leisurely whiffs, as one puffs one's cigar in a contemplative walk through the forest. Dick, the pole man, — a man of marvelous fine function when we shall presently come to the short narrow curves, — lay asleep on the guards, in great peril of rolling into the river over the three inches that inter- vened between his length and the edge; the people of the boat moved not, spoke not; the white crane, the curlew, the limpkin, the heron, the water turkey were scarcely disturbed in their sev- eral vocations as we passed, and seemed quickly to persuade themselves, after each momentary excitement of our gliding by, that we were really, after all, no monster, but only a mere day- dream of a monster. The stream, which in its broader stretches reflected the sky so perfectly that it seemed a ribbon of heaven, bound in lovely doublings upon the breast of the land, now be- gan to narrow; the blue of heaven disappeared, and the green of the overleaning trees assumed its place. The lucent current
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lost all semblance of water. It was simply a distillation of many- shaded foliages, smoothly sweeping along beneath us. It was green trees fluent. One felt that a subtle amalgamation and mu- tual give and take had been effected between the natures of water and of leaves. A certain sense of pellucidness seemed to breathe coolly out of the woods on either side of us, while the glassy dream of a forest over which we sailed appeared to send up ex- halations of balms and stimulant pungencies and odors.
" Look at that snake in the water ! " said a gentleman as we sat on deck with the engineer, just come up from his watch.
The engineer smiled. *^ Sir, it is a water turkey,** he said gently.
The water turkey is the most preposterous bird within the range of ornithology. He is not a bird; he is a Neck, with such subordinate rights, members, appurtenances, and hereditaments thereunto appertaining as seem necessary to that end. He has just enough stomach to arrange nourishment for his neck, just enough wings to fly painfully along with his neck, and just enough legs to keep his neck from dragging on the ground; and, as if his neck were not already pronounced enough by reason of its size, it is further accentuated by the circumstance that it is light colored, while the rest of him is dark.
When the water turkey saw us, he jumped up on a limb and stared. Then suddenly he dropped into the water, sank like a leaden ball out of sight, and made us think he was certainly drowned, when presently the tip of his beak appeared, then the length of his neck lay along the surface of the water, and in this position, with his body submerged, he shot out his neck, drew it back, wriggled it, twisted it, twiddled it, and spirally poked it into the east, the west, the north, and the south, with a violence of in- volution and a contortionary energy that made one think in the same breath of corkscrews and of lightning.
But what nonsense ! All that labor and perilous asphyxiation for a beggarly sprat or a couple of inches of water snake ! Yet I make no doubt this same water turkey would have thought us as absurd as we him if he could have seen us taking our break- fast a few minutes later. For as we sat there, some half-dozen men at table in the small cabin, all that sombre melancholy which comes over the average American citizen at his meals de- scended upon us. No man talked after the first two or three fee- ble sparks of conversation had gone out; each of us could hear
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the Other cninching his bread in faiicibus, and the noise thereof seemed to me, in the ghastly stillness, like the noise of earth- quakes and of crashing worlds. Even our furtive glances toward each other's plates were presently awed down to a sullen gazing of each into his own; the silence increased, the noises became intolerable, a cold sweat broke out over me. I felt myself grow- ing insane, and rushed out to the deck with a sigh as of one saved from a dreadful death by social suffocation.
There is a certain position a man can assume on board the Marion which constitutes an attitude of perfect rest, and leaves one's body in such blessed ease that one's soul receives the heavenly influences of the voyage absolutely without physical im- pediment. Know, therefore, tired friends that shall hereafter ride up the Ocklawaha, — whose name I would fain call legion, — that if you will place a chair just in the narrow passageway which runs alongside the cabin, at the point where this passageway descends by a step to the open space in front of the pilot house, on the left-hand side as you face the bow, you will, as you sit down in your chair, perceive a certain slope in the railing where it descends by a gentle angle of some thirty degrees to accommo- date itself to the step just mentioned; and this slope should be in such a position that your left leg unconsciotisly stretches it- self along the same by the pure insinuating solicitations of the fitness of things, and straightway dreams itself off into Elysian tranquillity. You should then tip your chair in a slightly diag- onal direction back to the side of the cabin, so that your head will rest there-against, your right arm will hang over the chair back, and your left arm will repose along the level railing. I ™ig^t go further and arrange your right leg, but upon reflection I will give no specific instructions for it, because I am disposed to be liberal in this matter, and to leave some gracious scope for personal idiosyncrasies, as well as a margin of allowance for the accidents of time and place. Dispose, therefore, your right leg as your own heart may suggest, or as all the precedent forces of time and of the universe may have combined to require you.
Having .secured this attitude, open wide the eyes of your body and of your soul; repulse with heavenly suavity the conversa- tional advances of the natty drummer who fancies he might pos- sibly sell you a bill of white goods and notions, as well as the far-off inquiries of the real-estate person, who has his little pri- vate theory that you desire to purchase a site for an orange
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grove ; thus sail, sail, sail, through the cypresses, throu^ h the vines, through the May day, through the floating suggestions of the unutterable that come up, that sink down, that waver and sway hither and thither; so shall you have revelations of rest, and so shall your heart forever afterward interpret Ocklawaha to mean Repose.
Some twenty miles from the mouth of the Ocklawaha, at the right-hand edge of the stream, is the handsomest residence in America. It belongs to a certain alligator of my acquaintance, a very honest and worthy saurian, of good repute. A little cove of water, dark green under the overhanging leaves, placid, pellucid, curves round at the river edge into the flags and lilies with a curve just heartbreaking for the pure beauty of the flexure of it. This house of my saurian is divided into apartments, — little subsidiary bays which are scalloped out by the lily pads accord- ing to the sinuous fantasies of their growth. My saurian, when he desires to sleep, has but to lie down anywhere; he will find marvelous mosses for his mattress beneath him; his sheets will be white lily-petals; and the green disks of the lily pads will rise above him as he sinks, and embroider themselves together for his coverlet. He never quarrels with his cook, he is not the slave of a kitchen, and his one housemaid, the stream, forever sweeps his chambers clean. His conservatories there under the glass of that water are ever and without labor filled with the en- chantments of strange under- water growths; his parks and his pleasure grounds are bigger than any king's. Upon my saurian's house the winds have no power; the rains are only a new de- light to him, and the snows he will never see! Regarding fire, as he does not employ its slavery, so he does not fear its tyranny. Thus, all the elements are the friends of my saurian's house. While he sleeps he is being bathed; what glory to awake sweet and clean, sweetened and cleaned in the very act of sleep ! Lastly, my saurian has unnumbered mansions, and can change his dwell- ing as no human householder may. It is but a mere fillup of his tail, and, lo! he is established in another palace, as good as the last, ready furnished to his liking.
For many miles together the Ocklawaha is, as to its main channel, a river without banks, though not less clearly defined as a stream for that reason. The swift, deep current meanders be- tween tall lines of forests; beyond these, on both sides, there is water also — a thousand shallow runlets lapsing past the bases of
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multitudes of trees. Along the immediate edges of the stream every tree trunk, sapling, stump, or other projecting coign of vantage is wrapped about with a close-growing vine. At first, like an unending procession of nuns disposed along the aisle of a church, these vine figures stand. But presently, as one journeys, this nun imagery fades out of one's mind; a thousand other fan- cies float with ever-new vine shapes into one's eyes. One sees repeated all the forms one has ever known, in grotesque juxta- positions. Look ! here is a graceful troop of girls, with arms wreathed over their heads, dancing down into the water; here are high velvet armchairs and lovely green fauteuils of divers patterns and of softest cushionment; now the vines hang in loops, in pavilions, in columns, in arches, in caves, in pyramids, in women's tresses, in harps and lyres, in globular mountain ranges, in pagodas, domes, minarets, machicolated towers, dogs, belfries, draperies, fish, dragons; yonder is a bizarre congress — Una on her lion, Angelo's Moses, two elephants with howdahs, the Lao- coon group; Arthur and Lancelot, with great brands extended aloft in combat; Adam, bent with love and grief, leading Eve out of Paradise; Caesar shrouded in his mantle, receiving his stab; Greek chariots, locomotives, brazen shields and cuirasses, colum- biads, the Twelve Apostles, the stock exchange; — it is a green dance of all things and times!
The edges of the stream are further defined by flowers and water leaves. The tall blue flags; the ineffable lilies sitting on their round lily pads like white queens on green thrones; the tiny stars and long ribbons of the water grasses; the cunning pha- lanxes of a species of bar net which, from a long stem that swings off down stream along the surface, sends up a hundred graceful stemlets, each bearing a shield-like disk, and holding it aloft as the antique soldiers held their bucklers to form the tcstudo in at- tacking,— all these border the river in infinite varieties of pur- fling and chasement.
The river itself has an errant fantasy and takes many shapes. Presently we came to where it seemed to branch off into four separate curves, like two opposed S's intersecting at their middle pi^int. "Them's the winding Blades," said my raftsman.
To h)ok down these lovely vistas is like looking down the dreams of some young girl's soul; and the gray moss-bearded trees gravely lean over them in contemplative attitudes, as if they were studying, in the way that wise old poets study, the
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mysteries and sacrednesses and tender depths of some visible rev- erie of maidenhood.
And then after this day of glory came a night of glory. Down in these deep-shaded lanes it was dark, indeed, as night drew on. The stream, which had been all day a ribbon of beauty, sometimes blue and sometimes green, now became a black band of mystery. But presently a brilliant flame flares out over- head; they have lighted the pine knots on top of the pilot house. The fire advances up these dark sinuosities, like a brilliant god that for his mere whimsical pleasure calls the black chaos into instantaneous definite forms as he floats along the river curves. The white columns of the cypress trunks, the silver-embroidered crowns of the maples, the green and white galaxies of the lilies, — these all come in a continuous apparition out of the bosom of the darkness, and retire again; it is endless creation succeeded by endless oblivion. Startled birds suddenly flutter into the light, and, after an instant of illuminated flight, melt into the darkness. From the perfect silence of these short flights one derives a cer- tain sense of awe. The mysteiy of this enormous blackness which is on either hand appears to be about to utter herself in these suddenly articulated forms, and then to change her mind and die back into mystery again.
Now there is a mighty crack and crash; limbs and leaves scrape and scrub along the deck; a bell tinkles below; we stop. In turning a short curve the boat has run her nose smack into the right bank, and a projecting stump has thrust itself sheer through the starboard side. Out, Dick! out, Henry! Dick and Henry shuffle forward to the bow, thrust forth their long white pole against a tree trunk, strain and push and bend to the deck, as if they were salaming the god of night and adversity. The bow slowly rounds into the stream, the wheel turns, and we puff quietly along.
Somewhere back yonder in the stern Dick is whistling. You should hear him ! With the great aperture of his mouth and the rounding vibratory surfaces of his thick lips he gets out a mel- low breadth of tone that almost entitles him to rank as an orcheS' tral instrument. Here is what he is whistling: —
Allegretto. D. C, ad infinitum.
yti
■^^^^^m
SIDNEY LANIER 2505
It is a genuine plagal cadence. Observe the syncopations marked in this tune; they are characteristic of negro music. I have heard negroes change a well-known air by adroitly syncopal' ino- it in this way, so as to give it a barbaric effect scarcely im« aginable; and nothing illustrates the negro's natural gifts in the way of keeping a difficult tempo more clearly than his perfect execution of airs thus transformed from simple to complex times and accentuations.
Dick has changed his tune: allegro! —
Da capo, of course, and da capo indefinitely; for it ends on the dominant! The dominant is a chord of progress; there is no such thing as stopping. It is like dividing ten by nine, and carrying out the decimal remainders, — there is always one over.
Thus the negro shows that he does not like the ordinary accentuations, nor the ordinary cadences of tunes; his ear is primitive. If you will follow the course of Dick's musical rev- erie , — which he now thinks is solely a matter betwixt himself and the night, as he sits back there in the stern alone, — pres- ently you will hear him sing a whole minor tune without once using a semitone; the semitone is weak, it is a dilution, it is not vigorous and large like the whole tone; and I have heard a whole congregation of negroes at night, as they were worship- ing in their church with some wild song or other, and swaying to and fro with the ecstasy and the glory of it, abandon, as by one consent, the semitone that should come according to the civilized modus, and sing in its place a big lusty whole tone that would shake any man's soul. It is strange to observe tliat some or the most magnificent cfTects in advanced modern music are produced by the same method — notably in the works of Asgei Hamerik of Baltimore and of Edward Grieg of Copenhagen. Any one who has heard Thomas's orchestra lately will have nc difficulty in remembering his delight at the beautiful Nordischc Suite by tlio former writer and the piano concerto by the latter.
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As I sat in the cabin to note down Dick's music by the single candle therein, through the door came a slim line of dragon flies, of a small whitish species, out of the dark toward the candle flame, and proceeded incontinently to fly into the same, to get singed and to fall on the table in all varieties of melancholy mayhem, crisp-winged, no-legged, blind, aimlessly fluttering, dead. Now, it so happened that as I came down into Florida out of the North this spring, I passed just such a file of human moths fly- ing toward their own hurt; and I could not help moralizing on it, even at the risk of voting myself a didactic prig. It was in the early April (though even in March I should have seen them all the same), and the Adam insects were all running back north- ward,— from the St. John's, from the Ocklawaha, from St. Augus- tine, from all Florida, — moving back indeed, not toward warmth, but toward a cold which equally consumes, to such a degree that its main effect is called consumption. Why should the Florida visitors run back into the catarrhal North m the early spring? What could be more unwise ? In New York is not even May simultaneously warm water and iced vinegar? But in Florida May is May. Then why not stay in Florida till May ?
But they would not. My route was by the * Atlantic Coast Line,'* which brings and carries the great mass of the Florida pilgrims. When I arrived at Baltimore there they were; you could tell them infallibly. If they did not have slat boxes with young alligators or green orange -sticks in their hands, you could at any rate discover them by the sea beans rattling against the alligator's teeth in their pockets; when I got aboard the Bay Line steamer which leaves Baltimore every afternoon at four o'clock for Portsmouth, the very officers and waiters on the steamer were talking alligator and Florida visitors. Between Portsmouth and Weldon I passed a train load of them ; from Weldon to Wil- mington, from Wilmington to Columbia, from Columbia to Au- gusta, from Augusta to Savanna, from Savanna to Jacksonville, in passenger cars, in parlor cars, in sleeping cars, they thickened as I passed. And I wondered how many of them would, in a little while, be crawling about, crippled in lung, in liver, in limbs, like these flies.
And then it was bedtime.
Let me tell you how to sleep on an Ocklawaha steamer in May. With a small bribe persuade Jim the steward to take the mattress out of your berth and lay it slanting just along the rail-
SIDNEV LANIER 2507
ing that incloses the lower part of the upper deck, to the left of the pilot house. Then lie flat-backed down on the same, draw your blanket over you, put your cap on your head in considera- tion of the night air, fold your arms, say some little prayer or other, and fall asleep with a star looking right down into your eyes !
When you awake in the morning your night will not seem any longer, any blacker, any less pure, than this perfect white blank in the page, and you will feel as new as Adam.
At sunrise, when I awoke, I found that we were lying still with the boat's nose run up against a sandy bank, which quickly rose into a considerable hill. A sandy-whiskered native came down from the pine cabin on the knoll. ** How air ye ? ** he sang out to our skipper, with an evident expectation is his voice, ** Got any freight for me ? *^
The skipper handed him a heavy parcel in brown wrapper. He examined it keenly with all his eyes, felt it over carefully with all his fingers; his countenance fell, and the shadow of a great despair came over it. " Look a here ! ^* he said, " hain't you brought me no terbacker ? *
"Not unless it's in that bundle,* said the skipper,
« H— 1 ! " said the native ; « hit's nothin' but shot » ; and he turned off toward the forest, as we shoved away, with a face like the face of the apostate Julian when the devils were dragging him down the pit.
I would have let my heart go out in sympathy to this man — for the agony of his soaked soul after *' terbacker " during the week that must pass ere the Marion come again is not a thing to be laughed at — had I not believed that he was one of the vanilla gatherers. You must know that in the low grounds of the Ocklawaha grows what is called the vanilla plant, and that its leaves are much like those of tobacco. This " vanilla " is now extensively used to adulterate cheap chewing tobacco, as I am informed, and the natives along the Ocklawaha drive a consid- erable trade in gathering it. The process of their commerce is exceedingly simple, and the bills drawn against the consignments arc primitive The officer in charge of the Marion showed me several of the communications received at various landings during our journey, accompanying shipments of the spurious weed. They were generally about as followti: —
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Deer Sir : —
I send you one bag Verneller, pleeze fetch one par of shus numb 8 and ef enny over fetch twelve yards hoamspin.
Yrs. trly,
The captain of the steamer takes the bags to Pilatka, barters the vanilla for the articles specified, and distributes them on the next trip up to their respective owners.
In a short time we came to the junction of Silver Spring <^Run,'* with the Ocklawaha proper. This ^* run * is a river formed by the single outflow of the v/aters of Silver Spring, nine miles above. Here new astonishments befell. The water of the Ocklawaha, which had before seemed clear enough, now showed but like a muddy stream as it flowed side by side, unmixing, for a little distance, with this Silver Spring water.
The Marion now left the Ocklawaha and turned into the run. How shall one speak quietly of this journey over transparency ? The run is in many places very deep; the white bottom is hol- lov/ed out in a continual succession of large spherical holes, whose entire contents of darting fish, of under mosses, of flowers, of submerged trees, of lily stems, of grass ribbons, revealed them- selves to us through the lucid fluid as we sailed along thereover. The long series of convex bodies of water filling these great cav- ities impressed one like a chain of globular worlds composed of a transparent lymph. Great numbers of keen-snouted, long-bodied garfish shot to and fro in unceasing motion beneath us; it seemed as if the underworlds were filled with a multitude of crossing sv;ord blades wielded in tireless thrust and parry by invisible arms.
The shores too had changed. They now opened into clear savannas, overgrown with broad-leafed grass to a perfect level two or three feet above the water, stretching back to the boun- daries of cypress and oak; and occasionally, as we passed one of these expanses curving into the forest with a diameter of half a m.ile, a single palmetto might be seen in or near the centre — perfect type of that lonesome solitude which the Germans call *■*■ Einsamkeit ^^ (one-some-ness.) Then, again, the palmettoes and cypresses would swarm toward the stream and line its banks.
Thus for nine miles, counting our gigantic rosary of water wonders and lonelinesses, we fared on. Then we rounded to in
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the very bosom of Silver Spring itself, and came to the wharf. Here there were warehouses, a turpentine distillery, men rtmning about with boxes of freight and crates of Florida vegetables for the Northern market, country stores with wondrous assortment of goods, — physic, fiddles, groceries, schoolbooks, what-not, — and, a little further up the shore of the spring, a tavern. I learned, in a hasty way, that Ocala was five miles distant, that I could get a very good conveyance from the tavern to that place, and that on the next day, Sunday, a stage would leave Ocala for Gainesville, some forty miles distant, being the third relay of the long stage line which runs three times a week between Tampa and Gainesville via Brooksville and Ocala.
Then the claims of scientific fact and of guidebook informa- tion could hold me no longer. I ceased to acquire knowledge, and got me back to the wonderful Spring, drifting over it, face downward, as over a new world. It is sixty feet deep a few feet off shore, they say, and covers an irregular space of several acres; but this sixty feet does not at all represent the actual impression of depth which one gets as one looks through the superincum- bent water down to the bottom. The distinct sensation is, that, although the bottom down there is clearly seen, and although all the objects in it are about of their natural size, undiminished by any narrowing of the visual angle, yet it and they are seen from a great distance. It is as if Depth itself, that subtle abstraction, had been compressed into a crystal lymph, one inch of which would represent miles of ordinary depth.
As one rises from gazing into these quaint profundities, and glances across the broad surface of the spring, one's eye is met by a charming mosaic of brilliant hues. The water plain varies in color according to what it lies upon. Over the pure white limestone and shells of the bottom it is perfect malachite green; over the water grass it is a much darker green; over the moss it is that rich brown and green which Bodmer's forest engravings so vividly suggest; over neutral bottoms it reflects the sky's or the clouds' colors. All these hues are further varied by mixture with the manifold shades of foliage reflections cast from over-hanging boscage near the shore, and still further by the angle of the observer's eye. One would think that these elements of color variation were numerous enough, but they were not nearly all. Presently the splash of an oar in some distant part of the spring sent a succession of ripples circling over tlic
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pool. Instantly it broke into a thousandfold prism Every ripple was a long curve of variegated sheen ; the fundamental hues of the pool when at rest were distributed into innumerable kaleidoscope flashes and brilliancies; the multitudes of fish became multitudes of animated gems, and the prismatic lights seemed actually to waver and play through their translucent bodies, until the whole spring, in a great blaze of sunlight, shown like an enormous fluid jewel that, without decreasing, forever lapsed away upward in successive exhalations of dissolving sheens and glittering colors.
Complete. From Lippincott's Magazine 1875. Reproduced by permission. Copyright, 1875, by J. B. Lippincott & Co.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
(1741-1801)
l.jHANN Caspar Lavater is chiefly celebrated for his attempt to formulate a science of physiognomy, but he was noted in his own generation as a poet and theologian. He was born at Zurich, Switzerland, November 15th, 1741, and educated there for the Church. He passed his life in his native town, and wrote there the « Swiss Songs*' (1767) and « The Looks into Eternity ** (1768), which gave him his first reputation. His celebrated work on << Physiognomy," to which Goethe contributed a chapter, appeared in 1775-78. While he did not reduce physiognomy to an exact science, Lavater's good qualities of mind and style so appealed to the universal wish that such a science were possible as to immortalize the book, Lavater died January 2d, 1801, as a result of protracted suffering caused by a wound received from infuriated soldiers he was attempting to ap- pease after the taking of Zurich by the French in 1799.
ON READING CHARACTER
ALL countenances, all forms, all created beings, are not only different from each other in their classes, races, and kinds, but are also individually distinct.
Each being differs from every other being of its species. How- ever generally known, it is a truth the most important to our purpose, and necessary to repeat, that: "There is no rose per- fectly similar to another rose, no eg^r to an egg, no eel to an eel, no lion to a lion, no eagle to an eagle, no man to a man."
Confining this proposition to man only, it is the first, the most profound, most secure, and unshaken foundation stone of physiog- nomy that, however intimate tlic analogy and similarity of the innumerable forms of men, no two men can be found who, brought together, and accurately compared, will not appear to be very remarkably different.
Nor is it less incontrovertible that it is equally impossible to find two minds, as two countenances, which perfectly resemble each other.
2512 JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
This consideration alone will be sufficient to make it received as a truth, not requiring further demonstration, that there must be a certain native analogy between the external varieties of the countenance and form, and the internal varieties of the mind. Shall it be denied that this acknowledged internal variety among all men is the cause of the external variety of their forms and countenances ? Shall it be affirmed that the mind does not in- rtuence the body, or that the body does not influence the mind ?
Anger renders the muscles protuberant; and shall not there- fore an angry mind and protuberant muscles be considered as cause and effect ?
After repeated observation that an active and vivid eye and an active and acute wif are frequently found in the same person, shall it be supposed that there is no relation between the active eye and the active mind ? Is this the effect of accident ? Of accident! Ought it not rather to be considered as sympathy, an interchangeable and instantaneous effect, when we perceive that, at the very moment the understanding is most acute and pene- trating and the wit the most lively, the motion and fire of the eye undergo, at that moment, the most visible change ?
Shall the open, friendly, and unsuspecting eye and the open, friendly, and unsuspecting heart be united in a thousand in- stances, and shall we say the one is not the cause, the other the effect?
Shall Nature discover wisdom and order in all things; shall cor- responding causes and effects be everywhere united; shall this be the most clear, the most indubitable of truths; and in the first, the most noble of the works of Nature, shall she act arbitrarily, without design, without law ? The human countenance, that mirror of the Divinity, that noblest of the works of the Creator, — shall not motive and action, shall not the correspondence between the interior and the exterior, the visible and the invisible, the cause and the effect, be there apparent ?
Yet this is all denied by those who oppose the truth of the science of physiognomy.
Truth, according to them, is ever at variance with itself. Eternal order is degraded to a juggler, whose purpose it is to deceive.
Calm reason revolts at the supposition that Newton or Leib- nitz ever could have the countenance and appearance of an idiot, incapable of a firm sten. a meditating eye; of comprehending
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER 2513
the least difficult of abstract propositions, or of expressing him- self so as to be understood; that one of these in the brain of a Laplander conceived his Theodica; and that the other in the head of an Eskimo, who wants the power to number further than six, and affirms all beyond to be innumerable, had dissected the rays of light, and weiglied worlds.
Calm reason revolts when it is asserted that the strong man may appear perfectly like the weak, the man in full health like another in the last stage of a consumption, or that the rash and irascible may resemble the cold and phlegmatic. It revolts to hear it affirmed that joy and grief, pleasure and pain, love and hatred, all exhibit themselves under the same traits; that is to say, under no traits whatever, on the exterior of man. Yet such are the assertions of those who maintain physiognomy to be a chimerical science. They overturn all that order and combina- tion by which eternal wisdom so highly astonishes and delights the understanding. It cannot be too emphatically repeated that blind chance and arbitrary disorder constitute the philosophy of fools; and that they are the bane of natural knowledge, philosophy, and religion. Entirely to banish such a system is the duty of the true inquirer, the sage, and the divine.
All men (this is indisputable), absolutely all men, estimate all things whatever by their physiognomy, their exterior, tem- porary superficies. By viewing these on every occasion, they draw their conclusions concerning their internal properties.
What merchant, if he be unacquainted with the person of whom he purchases, does not estimate his wares by the physiog- nomy or appearance of those wares ? If he purchase of a distant correspondent, what other means does he use in judging whether they are or are not equal to his expectation ? Is not his judg- ment determined by the color, the fineness, the superficies, the ex- terior, the physiognomy ? Does he not judge money by its physiognomy ? Why docs he take one guinea and reject another ? Why weigh a third in his hand ? Docs he not determine according to its color, or impression; its outside, its physiognomy? If a stranger enter his shop, as a buyer or seller, will he not observe him ? Will he not draw conclusions from his countenance ? Will he not, almost before he is out of hearing, pronounce some opin- ion upon him, and say: "This man has an honest look,** ** That man has a pleasing, or forbidding, countenance ** ? What is it to the purpose whether his judgment be right or wrong ? He VII— 158
2514 JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
judges. Though not wholly, he depends in part upon the exte- rior form, and thence draws inferences concerning the mind.
How does the farmer, walking through his grounds, regulate his future expectations by the color, the size, the growth, the ex- terior; that is to say, by the physiognomy of the bloom, the stalk, or the ear, of his corn; the stem and shoots of his vine tree ? ** This ear of corn is blighted,'^ ** That wood is full of sap; this will grow, that not,*^ affirms he, at the first or second glance. "Though these vine shoots look well, they will bear but few grapes.'* And wherefore ? He remarks, in their appearance, as the physiognomist in the countenances of shallow men, the want of native energy. Does not he judge by the exterior ?
Does not the physician pay more attention to the physiognomy of the sick than to all the accounts that are brought him con- cerning his patient ? Zimmermann, among the living, may be brought as a proof of the great perfection at which this kind of judgment has arrived; and among the dead, Kempf, whose son has written a treatise on * Temperament. **
The painter — Yet of him I will say nothing; his art too evi- dently reproves the childish and arrogant prejudices of those who pretend to disbelieve physiognomy.
The traveler, the philanthropist, the misanthrope, the lover, ( and who not ? ) all act according to their feelings and decisions, true or false, confused or clear, concerning physiognomy. These feelings, these decisions, excite compassion, disgust, joy, love, ha- tred, suspicion, confidence, reserve, or benevolence.
Do we not daily judge of the sky by its physiognomy ? No food, not a glass of wine or beer, not a cup of coffee or tea, comes to table, which is not judged by its physiognomy, its ex- terior, and of which we do not thence deduce some conclusion respecting its interior, good or bad properties.
Is not all nature physiognomy, superficies and contents; body and spirit; exterior effect and internal power; invisible begin- ning and visible ending ?
What knowledge is there, of which man is capable, that is not founded on the exterior; the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible ?
Physiognomy, whether understood in its most extensive or confined signification, is the origin of all human decisions, efforts, actions, expectations, fears, and hopes; of all pleasing and un- pleasing sensations, which are occasioned by external objects.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER 2515
From the cradle to the grave, in all conditions and ages throughout all nations, from Adam to the last existing man, from the worm we tread on to the most sublime of philosophers, (and why not to the angel, why not to the Mediator Christ?) physiognomy is the origin of all we do and suffer.
Each insect is acquainted with its friend and its foe; each child loves and fears, although it knows not why. Physiognomy is the cause; nor is there a man to be found on earth who is not daily influenced by physiognomy; not a man who cannot figure to himself a countenance which shall to him appear ex- ceedingly lovely, or exceedingly hateful ; not a man who does not, more or less, the first time he is in company with a stranger, observe, estimate, compare, and judge him, according to appear- ances, although he might never have heard of the word or thing called physiognomy; not a man who does not judge of all things that pass through his hands, by their physiognomy; that is, of their internal worth by their external appearance.
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
(I 838-)
~ILLIAM Edward Hartpole Lecky was born near Dublin, Ire-
land, March 26th, 1838, and educated at Cheltenham College and at Trinity College, Dublin. His first work ^^The Lead- ers of Public Opinion in Ireland,'^ which appeared in 1861, did not at- tract general attention ; but ^^ The History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,*^ which followed four years later, made him one of the most influential historical writers of his generation. In 1869 he followed it with his <^ History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne,*' which is by many considered his masterpiece. He has published numerous other works, including a volume of poems, whose extraordinary lack of merit is wholly un- accountable, in view of the extraordinary goodness of his prose style. In 1896 he was elected to Parliament as a representative of Dublin University.
MONTAIGNE AND MIDDLE-AGE SUPERSTITION
IT HAS been justly remarked by Malebranche, that Montaig-ne is cii example of a writer who had no pretensions to be a great reasoner, but who, nevertheless, exercised a most pro- found and general influence upon the opinions of mankind. It is not, I think, diificult to discover the explanation of the fact. In an age which was still spellbound by the fascinations of the past, he applied to every question a judgment entirely un- clouded by the imaginations of theologians, and unshackled by the dictates of authority. His originality consists not so much in his definite opinions or in his arguments, as in the general tone and character of his mind. He was the first French author who had entirely emancipated himself from the retrospective habits of thought that had so long been universal; who ventured to judge all questions by a secular standard, by the light of common sense, by the measure of probability which is furnished by daily experience. He was, no doubt, perfectly aware that ^* the laws of Plato, of the twelve tables, of the consuls, of the emperors, and
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 2517
of all nations and legislators. — Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, — had decreed capital penalties against sorcerers '* ; he knew that ^^ prophets, theologians, doctors, judges, and magistrates, had elucidated the reality of the crime by many thousand violent presumptions, accusations, testi- monies, convictions, repentances, and voluntary confessions, per- sisted in to death '^ ; but he was also sensible of the extreme fallibility of the human judgment; of the facility with which the mind discovers, in the phenomena of history, a reflection of its preconceived notions; and of the rapidity with which systems of fiction are formed in a credulous and undiscriminating age. While Catholics, Protestants, and Deists were vying with each other in their adoration of the past; while the ambition of every scholar and of every theologian was to form around his mind an atmos- phere of thought that bore no relation to the world that was about him; while knowledge was made the bondslave of cre- dulity, and those whose intellects were most shackled by prejudice were regarded as the wisest of mankind, it was the merit of Montaigne to rise, by the force of his masculine genius, into the clear world of reality; to judge the opinions of his age with an intellect that was invigorated, but not enslaved, by knowledge; and to contemplate the systems of the past, without being dazzled by the reverence that had surrounded them. He looked down upon the broad field of history, upon its clashing enthusiasms, its discordant systems, the ebb and flow of its ever-changing belief, and he drew from the contemplation a lesson widely dif- ferent from his contemporaries. He did not, it is true, fully recognize those moral principles which shine with an unchanging splendor above the fluctuations of speculative opinions; he did not discover the great laws of eternal development which preside over and direct the progress of belief, infuse order into the seeming chaos, and reveal in every apparent aberration the traces of a superintending Providence; but he, at least, obtained an intense and realized perception of the fallibility of the human intellect; a keen sense of the absurdity of an absolute deference to the past, and of the danger of punishing men with death on account of opinions concerning which we can have so little assur- ance. These things led him to suspect that witchcraft might be a delusion. The bent and character of his mind led him to be- lieve that witchcraft was grossly improbable. He was the first great representative of the modern secular and rationalistic spirit.
2518 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
By extricating his mind from the trammels of the past, he had learned to judge the narratives of diabolical intervention by a standard and with a spirit that had been long unknown. The pre- disposition of the old theologians had been to believe that the phenomena of witchcraft were all produced by the Devil; and, when some manifest signs of madness or of imposture were ex- hibited, they attempted to accommodate them to their supernatural theory. The strong predisposition of Montaigne was to regard witchcraft as the result of natural causes; and, therefore, though he did not attempt to explain all the statements which he had heard, he was convinced that no conceivable improbability could be as great as that which would be involved in their reception. This was not the happy guess of ignorance. It was the result of a mode of thought which he applied to all theological questions. Fifty years earlier, a book embodying such conceptions would have appeared entirely incomprehensible, and its author would perhaps have been burned. At the close of the sixteenth century, the minds of men were prepared for its reception, and it flashed like a revelation upon France. From the publication of the *^ Essays ^* of Montaigne, we may date the influence of that gifted and ever-enlarging rationalistic school, which gradually effected the destruction of the belief in witchcraft, not by refuting or ex- plaining its evidence, but simply by making men more and more
sensible of its intrinsic absurdity.
From « Rationalism in Europe. >'
SEX AND MORAL CHARACTER
MORALLY, the general superiority of women over men is, I think, unquestionable. If we take the somewhat coarse and inadequate criterion of police statistics, we find that, while the male and female populations are nearly the same in number, the crimes committed by men are usually rather more than five times as numerous as those committed by women; and although it may be justly observed that men, as the stronger sex, and the sex upon whom the burden of supporting the family is thrown, have more temptations than women, it must be re- membered, on the other hand, that extreme poverty which verges upon starvation is most common among women, whose means of livelihood are most restricted, and whose earnings are smallest
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 25 19
and most precarious. Self-sacrifice is the most conspicuous ele- ment of a virtuous and relig-ious character, and it is certainly far less common among men than among women, whose whole lives are usually spent in yielding to the will and consulting the pleas- ures of another.
There are two great departments of virtue: the impulsive, or that which springs spontaneously from the emotions, and the de- liberative, or that which is performed in obedience to the sense of duty; and in both of these I imagine women are superior to men. Their sensibility is greater, they are more chaste both in thought and act, more tender to the erring, more compassionate to the suffering, more affectionate to all about them. On the other hand, those who have traced the course of the wives of the poor, and of many who, though in narrow circumstances, can hardly be called poor, will probably admit that in no other class do we so often find entire lives spent in daily persistent self-denial, in the patient endurance of countless trials, in the ceaseless and de- liberate sacrifice of their own enjoyments to the well-being or the prospects of others. In active courage women are inferior to men. In the courage of endurance they are commonly their superiors; but their passive courage is not so much fortitude which bears and defies, as resignation which bears and bends. In the ethics of intellect they are decidedly inferior. To repeat an expression I have already employed, women very rarely love truth, though they love passionately what they call "the truth, *^ or opinions they have received from others, and hate vehemently those who differ from them. They are little capable of impartiality or of doubt; their thinking is chiefly a mode of feeling; though very generous in their acts, they are rarely generous in their opinions, and their leaning is naturally to the side of restriction. They persuade rather than convince, and value belief rather as a source of consolation than as a faithful expression of the reality of things. They are less capable than men of perceiving qualifying circumstances, of admitting the existence of elements of good in systems to which they are opposed, of distinguishing the personal character of an opponent from the opinions he maintains. Men lean most to justice, and women to mercy. Men are most ad- dicted to intemperance and brutality, women to frivolity and jealousy. Men excel in energy, self-reliance, perseverance, and magnanimity; women in humility, gentleness, modesty, and en- durance. The realizing imagination which causes us to pity and
2520 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
to love is more sensitive in women than in men, and it is espe- cially more capable of dwelling on the unseen. Their religious or devotional realizations are incontestably more vivid; and it is probable that, while a father is most moved by the death of a child in his presence, a mother generally feels most the death of a child in some distant land. But though more intense, the sym- pathies of women are commonly less wide than those of men. Their imaginations individualize more; their affections are, in consequence, concentrated rather on leaders than on causes; and if they care for a great cause, it is generally because it is rep- resented by a great man, or connected with some one whom they love. In politics their enthusiasm is more naturally loyalty than patriotism. In history they are even more inclined than men to dwell exclusively upon biographical incidents or characteristics as distinguished from the march of general causes. In benevolence, they excel in charity, which alleviates individual suffering, rather than in philanthropy, which deals with large masses, and is more frequently employed in preventing than in allaying calamity. It was a remark of Winckelmann, that " the supreme beauty of Greek art is rather male than female '* ; and the justice of this remark has been amply corroborated by the greater knowledge we have of late years attained of the works of the Phidian period, in which art achieved its highest perfection, and in which, at the same time, force, and freedom, and masculine grandeur, were its pre-eminent characteristics. A similar observation may be made of the moral ideal of which ancient art was simply the expres- sion. In antiquity the virtues that were most admired were almost exclusively those which are distinctively masculine. Cour- age, self-assertion, magnanimity, and, above all, patriotism, were the leading features of the ideal type; and chastity, modesty, and charity, the gentler and the domestic virtues, which are especially feminine, were greatly undervalued.
With the single exception of conjugal fidelity, none of the virtues that were very highly prized were virtues distinctively or pre-eminently feminine. With this exception, nearly all the illus- trious women of antiquity were illustrious chiefly because they overcame the natural conditions of their sex. It is a character- istic fact that the favorite female ideal of the artists appears to have been the Amazon. We may admire the Spartan mother, or the mother of the Gracchi, repressing every sign of grief when their children were sacrificed upon the altar of their country; we
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 2521
may wonder at the majestic courage of a Porcia, or an Arria, but we extol them chiefly because, being women, they emanci- pated themselves from the frailty of their sex, and displayed a heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the bravest of men. We may bestow an equal admiration upon the noble devotion and charity of a St. Elizabeth of Hungary'', or a Mrs. Fry, but we do not admire them because they displayed these virtues, al- though they were women, for we feel that their virtues were of the kind which the female nature is most fitted to produce. The change from the heroic to the saintly ideal, from the ideal of Pa- ganism to the ideal of Christianity, was a change from a type which was essentially male to one which was essentially femi- nine. Of all the great schools of philosophy, no other reflected so faithfully the Roman conception of moral excellence as Stoicism, and the greatest Roman exponent of Stoicism summed up its character in a single sentence when he pronounced it to be be- yond all other sects the most emphatically masculine. On the other hand, an ideal type in which meekness, gentleness, pa- tience, humility, faith, and love are the most prominent fea- tures, is not naturally male, but female. A reason probably deeper than the historical ones which are commonly alleged, why sculpture has always been peculiarly Pagan and painting pecul- iarly Christian, may be found in the fact that sculpture is espe- cially suited to represent male beauty, or the beauty of strength, and painting female beauty, or the beauty of softness; and that Pagan sentiment was chiefly a glorification of the masculine qualities of strength, and courage, and conscious virtue, while Christian sentiment is chiefly a glorification of the feminine qualities of gentleness, humility, and love. The painters whom the religious feeling of Christendom has recognized as the most faithful exponents of Christian sentiment have always been those who infused a large measure of feminine beauty even into their male characters; and we never, or scarcely ever, find that the same artist has been conspicuously successful in delineating both Chris- tian and Pagan types. Michael Angelo, whose genius loved to expatiate on the sublimi'.y of strength and defiance, failed sig- nally in his representations of the Christian ideal; and Perugino was equally unsuccessful when he sought to portray the features of the heroes of antiquity. The position that was gradually as- signed to the Virgin as the female ideal in the belief and the devotion of Christendom was a consecration or an expression of
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the new value that was attached to the feminine virtues. The general superiority of women to men in the strength of their reli- gious emotions, and their natural attraction to a religion which made personal attachment to its Founder its central duty, and which imparted an unprecedented dignity and afforded an un- precedented scope to their characteristic virtues, account for the very conspicuous position they assumed in the great work of the conversion of the Roman Empire.
From the « History of European Morals.*
HUGH SWINTON LEGARfe
(1 789- 1 843)
puGH SwiNTON Legare, a distinguished scholar and essayist of South Carolina, was born at Charleston, January 2d, 1789. His attention as a writer was divided between the classical studies, of which he was fond, and politics, into which as one of the best-educated men of his State, during its formative period, he was almost necessarily drawn. He represented South Carolina in Con- gress from 1837 to 1839. retiring to serve as Attorney-General and Secretary of State from 1841 to his death in June, 1843. His style as a prose writer is a valuable illustration of the evolution of American prose through forms derived from oratory.
LIBERTY AND GREATNESS
THE name of Republic is inscribed upon the most imperishable monuments of the species, and it is probable that it will continue to be associated, as it has been in all past ages, with whatever is heroic in character, and sublime in genius, and elegant and brilliant in the cultivation of arts and letters. It would not have been difficult to prove that the base hirelings who, in this age of legitimacy and downfall, have so industri- ously inculcated a contrary doctrine, have been compelled to fal- sify history and abuse reason. I might have " called up antiquity from the old schools of Greece " to show that these apostles of despotism would have passed at Athens for barbarians and slaves. I might have asked triumphantly. What land had ever been visited with the influences of liberty, that did not flourish like the spring ? What people had ever worshiped at her altars, without kindling with a loftier spirit and putting forth more noble energies ? Where she had ever acted, that her deeds had not been heroic ? Where she had ever spoken, that her elo- quence had not been trinmjihant and sublime ? It might have been demonstrated that a state of society in which nothing is ob- tained by patronage — nothing is yielded to the accidents of birth and fortune — where those wiio are already distinguished must
2524 HUGH SWINTON LEGARE
exert themselves lest they be speedily eclipsed by their inferiors, and these inferiors are, by every motive, stimulated to exert themselves that they may become distinguished — and where, the lists being open to the whole world, without any partiality or exclusion, the champion who bears off the prize must have tasked his powers to the very uttermost, and proved himself the first of a thousand competitors — is necessarily more favorable to a bold, vigorous, and manly way of thinking and acting, than any other. I should have asked with Longinus, Who but a Republican could have spoken the Philippics of Demosthenes ? and what has the patronage of despotism ever done to be compared with the spontaneous productions of the Attic, the Roman, and the Tuscan miise ?
With respect to ourselves, who have been so systematically vilified by British critics — if any answer were expected to be given to their shallow and vulgar sophistry, and there was not a sufficient practical refutation of it, in the undoubted success of some of the artists and writers that are springing up in our own times — we should be perfectly safe, in resting, upon the operation of general causes and the whole analogy of history, our anticipa- tion of the proudest success, in all the pursuits of a high and honorable ambition. That living, as we do, in the midst of a forest, we have been principally engaged in felling and improv- ing it; and that those arts, which suppose wealth and leisure and a crowded population, are not yet so flourishing amongst us as they will be in the course of a century or two, is so much a matter of course, that, instead of exciting wonder and disgust, one is only surprised how it should even have attracted notice; but the question whether we are destitute of genius and sensi- bility and loftiness of character, and all the aspirings that prompt to illustrious achievements, and all the elements of na- tional greatness and glory, is quite a distinct thing, and we may appeal, with confidence, to what we have done and to what we are, to the Revolution we are this day celebrating, to the career we have since run, to our recent exploits upon the flood and in the field, to the skill of our diplomacy, to the comprehensive views and undoubted abilities of our statesmen, to the virtues and prosperity of our people, to the exhibition on every occasion of all the talents called for by its exigencies and admitted by its nature; nay, to the very hatred — the vehement and irrepressible hatred with which these revilers themselves have so abundantly
HUGH SWINTON LEGAR6 2525
honored us — to show that nothing can be more preposterous than the contempt with which they have sometimes affected to speak of us.
And, were there no other argument, as there are many, to prove that the character of the nation is altogether worthy of its high destinies, would it not be enough to say that we live un- der a form of government and in a state of society to which the world has never yet exhibited a parallel ? Is it then nothing to be free ? How many nations, in the whole annals of human kind have proved themselves worthy of being so ? Is it nothing that we are Republicans ? Were all men as enlightened, as brave, as proud as they ought to be, would they suffer themselves to be insulted with any other title ? Is it nothing that so many inde- pendent sovereignties should be held together in such a confederacy as ours ? What does history teach us of the difficulty of institut- ing and maintaining such a polity, and of the glory that, of con- sequence, ought to be given to those who enjoy its advantages in so much perfection and on so grand a scale ? For can anything be more striking and sublime than the idea of an imperial repub- lic, spreading over an extent of territory more immense than the empire of the Csesars, in the accumulated conquests of a thou- sand years — without prefects or proconsuls or publicans — founded in the maxims of common sense — employing within it- self no arms but those of reason — and known to its subjects only by the blessings it bestows or perpetuates, yet capable of directing against a foreign foe all the energies of a military des- potism — a Republic in which men are completely insignificant, and principles and laws exercise throughout its vast dominion a peaceful and irresistible sway, blending in one divine harmony such various habits and conflicting opinions, and mingling in our institutions the light of philosophy with all that is dazzling in the associations of heroic achievement and extended domination, and deep-seated and formidable power!
From « Characteristics of the American Revolution.*
2526 HUGH SWINTON LEGARE
A MIRACULOUS PEOPLE
IT IS impossible to contemplate the annals of Greek literature and art without being struck with them, as by far the most extraordinary and brilliant phenomena in the history of the human mind. The very language — even in its primitive simplic- ity, as it came down from the rhapsodists who celebrated the exploits of Hercules and Theseus, was as great a wonder as any it records. All the other tongues that civilized man has spoken are poor and feeble and barbarous, in comparison with it. Its compass and flexibility, its riches and its powers, are altogether unlimited. It not only expresses with precision all that is thought or known at any given period, but it enlarges itself naturally, with the progress of science, and affords, as if without an effort, a new phrase, or a systematic nomenclature whenever one is called for. It is equally adapted to every variety of style and subject — to the most shadowy subtlety of distinction, and the utmost exact- ness of definition, as well as to the energy and the pathos of popu- lar eloquence — to the majesty, the elevation, the variety of the epic, and the boldest license of the dithyrambic, no less than to the sweetness of the elegy, the simplicity of the pastoral, or the heedless gayety and delicate characterization of comedy. Above all what is an unspeakable charm — a sort of nai'vet^ is peculiar to it, which appears in all those various styles, and is quite as becoming and agreeable in a historian or a philosopher — Xeno- phon for instance — as in the light and jocund numbers of Anacreon. Indeed, were there no other object in learning Greek but to see to what perfection language is capable of being carried, not only as a medium of communication, but as an in- strument of thought, we see not why the time of a young man would not be just as well bestowed in acquiring a knowledge of it — for all the purposes, at least, of a liberal or elementary edu- cation— as in learning algebra, another specimen of a language or arrangement of signs perfect in its kind. But this wonderful idiom happens to have been spoken, as was hinted in the pre- ceding paragraph, by a race as wonderful. The very first monu- ment of their genius — the most ancient relic of letters in the western world — stands to this day altogether unrivaled in the exalted class to which it belongs. What was the history of this immortal poem and of its great fellow ? Was it a single individ-
HUGH SWINTON LEGARB 2527
ual, and who was he, that composed them ? Had he any master or model ? What had been his education, and what was the state of society in which he lived ? These questions are full of interest to a philosophical inquirer into the intellectual history of the species, but they are especially important with a view to the subject of the present discussion. Whatever causes account for the matchless excellence of these primitive poems, and for that of the language in which they are written, will go far to explain the extraordinary' circumstance, that the same favored people left nothing unattempted in philosophy, in letters, and in arts, and attempted nothing without signal, and, in some cases, unrivaled success. Winckelmann undertakes to assign some reasons for this astonishing superiority of the Greeks, and talks very learnedly about a fine climate, delicate organs, exquisite susceptibility, the full development of the human form by gymnastic exercises, etc. For our own part, we are content to explain the phenomenon after the manner of the vScottish school of metaphysicians, in which we learned the little that we profess to know of that de- partment of philosophy, by resolving it at once in an original law of nature; in other words, by substantially, but decently, confess- ing it to be inexplicable.
From an essay on « Classical Learning."
GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ
(1646-1716)
OTTFRIED WiLHELM VON Leibnitz, One of the inost celebrated philosophers and mathematicians of the seventeenth century, was born at Leipsic, Germany, July 6th, 1646. His father was professor of Law in Leipsic University, where Leibnitz himself was educated in jurisprudence and philosophy. After studying math- ematics at Jena and taking a degree of Doctor of Law at Altdorf, he began life as an assistant in revising the statutes for the elec- tor of Mainz, in whose service he rem.ained for about six years, leaving it to reside at Hanover where for forty years he served -the Brunswick family under three successive princes, — dying November 14th, 1716, in neglect due to the fact that the House of Brunswick had succeeded to the throne of England and removed its seat to London. It is said that there was only a single mourner at his grave, and an eyewitness of the interment says that he was * buried more like a robber than what he really was, the ornament of his country. » He was a man of almost universal genius, ^* distinguished in mathe- matics, natural science, philosophy, theology, history, jurisprudence, politics, and philology.'^ He made notable discoveries in physics, and invented a calculating machine which « added, subtracted, multi- plied, divided, and extracted roots.* Among his many celebrated writings, those which continue to be most generally read are his philosophical works, a valuable translation of which has been re- cently made by Prof. George Martin Duncan, of Yale University.
ON THE ULTIMATE ORIGIN OF THINGS
IN ADDITION to the wofld or aggregate of finite things, there is some unique Being who governs, not only like the soul in me, or rather like the Ego itself in my body, but in a much higher relation. For one Being dominating the universe not only rules the world, but he creates and fashions it, is superior to the world, and, so to speak, extramundane, and by this very fact is the ultimate reason of things. For the sufficient reason of existence can be found neither in any particular thing, nor in
GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ 2529
the whole aggregate or series. Suppose a book on the elements of geometry to have been eternal and that others had been suc- cessively copied after it, it is evident, that, although we might account for the present book by the book which was its model, we could, nevertheless, never, by assuming any number of books whatever, reach a perfect reason for them; for we may always wonder why such books have existed from all time; that is, why books are and why they are thus written. What is true of books is also true of the different states of the world, for, in spite of certain laws of transformation, a succeeding state is in a cer- tain way only a copy of the preceding, and to whatever anterior state you may go back you will never find there a perfect reason why, forsooth, there is any world at all, and such a world as ex- ists. For even if you imagine the world eternal, nevertheless, since you posit nothing but a succession of states, and as you find a sufficient reason for them in none of them whatsoever, and as any number of them whatever does not aid you in giving a reason for them, it is evident that the reason must be sought elsewhere. For in eternal things it must be understood that even where there is no cause there is a reason which, in perduring things, is necessity itself or essence, but in the series of changing things, if it were supposed that they succeed each other eternally, this reason would be, as will soon be seen, the prevalence of in- dications where the reasons are not necessitating (by an absolute or metaphysical necessity, the opposite of which would imply contradiction), but inclining. From which it follows that, by supposing the eternity of the world, an ultimate extramundane reason of things, or God, cannot be escaped.
The reasons of the world, therefore, lie hidden in something extramundane different from the chain of states or series of things the aggregate of which constitutes the world. We must, there- fore, pass from physical or hypothetical necessity, which deter- mines the posterior states of the world by the prior, to some- thing which is absolute or metaphysical necessity, the reason for which cannot be given. For the present world is necessary, physi- cally or hypothetically, but not absolutely or metaphysically. It be- ing granted, indeed, tliat the world is such as it is, it follows that things may hereafter be such as they are. But as the ultimate origin must be in something which is mctaj^hysically necessary, and as the reason of the existing can only be from the existing,
there must exist some one being metaphysically necessary, or VII — 159
2530 GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ
whose essence is existence ; and thus there exists something which differs from the plurality -of beings or from the world, which, as we have recognized and shown, is not metaphysically necessary.
But in order to explain a little more clearly how, from eter- nal or essential or metaphysical truths, temporary, contingent, or physical truths arise, we ought first to recognize that from the very fact that something exists rather than nothing, there is in possible things, that is, in the very possibility or essence, a cer- tain need of existence, and, so to speak, sopie claim to exis- tence; in a word, that essence tends itself towards existence. Whence it further follows that all possible things, whether ex- pressing essence or possible reality, tend by equal right toward existence, according to their quantity of essence or reality, or according to the degree of perfection which they contain, for perfection is nothing else than quantity of essence.
Hence it is most clearly understood that among the infinite combinations of possibles and possible series, that one exists by which the most of essence or of possibility is brought into ex- istence. And, indeed, there is always in things a principle of determination which is to be taken from the greatest and the smallest, or in such a way that the greatest effect is obtained with the least, so to speak, expenditure. And here the time, place, or, as many say, the receptivity or capacity of the world may be considered as the expenditure or the ground which can be most easily built upon, whereas the varieties of forms cor- respond to the commodiousness of the edifice and the multiplic- ity and elegance of its chambers. And it is with it in this re- spect as with certain games where all the spaces on a table are to be filled according to determined laws. Now, unless a certain skill be employed, you will be finally excluded by unfavorable spaces and forced to leave many more places empty than you can or wish. But there is a certain very easy way of filling the most possible space. Just as, therefore, if it is resolved to make a triangle, there being no other determining reason, it commonly happens that an equilateral results; and if it is resolved to go from one point to another without any further determination as to the way, the easiest and shortest path will be chosen; so it being once posited that being is better than not being, or that there is a reason why something should be rather than nothing, 01 that we must pass from the possibility to the act, it follows that even in the absence of every other determination the quantity of
GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ 253 1
existence is as great as possible, regard being had to the capacity of the time and of the place ( or to the possible order of exist- ence), exactly as the squares are disposed in a given area in such a way that it shall contain the greatest number of them possible. From this it is now marvelously understood how, in the very origin of things, a sort of divine mathematics or of metaphysical mechanism was employed, and how the determi- nation of the greatest quantity of existence takes place. It is thus that from all angles the determined angle in geometry is the right angle, and that liquids placed in heterogeneous positions take that form which has the most capacity, or the spherical; but especially it is thus that in ordinary mechanics itself, when sev- eral heavy bodies strive together, the motion which results con- stitutes, on the whole, the greatest descent. For just as all the possibles tend by equal right to exist by reason of reality, so all weights tend by an equal right to descend by reason of their gravity; and as here a movement is produced which contams the greatest possible descent of heavy bodies, so there a world is produced in which is found realized the greatest number of possibles.
And thus we now have physical necessity from metaphysical; for, although the world be not metaphysically necessary, in the sense that its contrary implies a contradiction or a logical ab- surdity, it is nevertheless physically necessary, or determined in such a way that its contrary implies imperfection or moral ab- surdity. And as possibility is the principle of essence, so per- fection or the degree of essence (through which the greatest possible number is at the same time possible) is the principle of existence. Whence at the same time it is evident that the au- thor of the world is free, although he makes all things determi- nately, for he acts according to a principle of wisdom or of perfection. Indeed, indifference arises from ignorance, and the wiser one is the more determined one is to the highest degree of perfection.
But, you will say, however ingenious this comparison of a certain determining metaphysical mechanism with the physical mechanism of heavy bodies may appear, nevertheless it fails in this, that heavy bodies truly exist, whereas possibilities and es- sences prior to existence or outside of it arc only fancies or fic- tions in which the rcas<jn of existence cannot be sought. I answer, that neither these essences nor these so-called eternal
2532 GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ
truths are fictions, but that they exist in a certain region of ideas, if I may thus speak, that is, in God himself, the source of all essences and of the existence of all else. And the existence of the actual series of things shows sufficiently of itself that my assertion is not gratuitous. For since the reason is not found in this series, as we have shown above, but must be sought in metaphysical necessities or eternal truths, and since that which exists can only come from that which existed, as we have re- marked above, eternal truths must have their existence in a cer- tain subject absolutely and metaphysically necessary, that is, in God, through whom those things which otherwise would be im- aginary, are, to speak barbarously but significantly, realized.
And in truth we discover that everything is done in the world according to the laws, not only geometrical, but also metaphys- ical, of eternal truths; that is, not only according to material ne- cessities, but also according to formal necessities; and this is true, not only generally in that which concerns the reason, which we have just explained, of a world existing rather than nonexisting, and existing thus rather than otherwise (a reason which can only be found in the tendency of the possible to existence), but if we descend to the special we see the metaphysical laws of cause, of power, of action holding good in admirable manner in all nature, and prevailing over the purely geometrical laws themselves of matter, as I found in accounting for the laws of motion: a thing which struck me with such astonishment that, as I have explained more at length elsewhere, I was forced to abandon the law of the geometrical composition of forces which I had defended in my youth when I was more materialistic.
Thus, therefore, we have the ultimate reason of the reality, as well of essences as of existences, in a Being who is necessarily much superior and anterior to the world itself, since it is from him that not only the existences which this world contains, but also the possibles themselves derive their reality. And this rea- son of things can be sought only in a single source, because of the connection which they all have with one another. But it is evident that it is from this source that existing things continu- ally emanate, that they are and have been its products, for it does not appear why one state of the world rather than another, the state of to-day rather than that of to-morrow, should come from the world itself. We see also, with the same clearness, how God acts, not only physically but freely ; how the efficient
GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ • 2533
and final cause of things is in him, and how he manifests not only his greatness and his power in the construction of the ma- chine of the world, but also his goodness and his wisdom in the creation. And in order that no one should think that we con- found here moral perfection or goodness with metaphysical per- fection or greatness, or that the former is denied while the latter is granted, it must be known that it follows from what has been said that the world is most perfect, not physically, or, if you pre- fer, metaphysically, because that series of things is produced in which there is the most reality in action, but also that it is most perfect morally, because really moral perfection is physical perfec- tion for souls themselves. Thus the world is not only the most admirable machine, but, in so far as it is composed of souls, it is also the best republic, through which as much happiness or joy is brought to souls as is possible, in which their physical perfec- tion consists.
But you will say, we experience the contrary in this world, for often good people are very unhappy, and not only innocent brutes, but also innocent men, are afflicted and even put to death with torture; finally, the world, if you regard especially the government of the human race, resembles a sort of confused chaos rather than the well-ordered work of a supreme wisdom. This may appear so at the first glance, I confess, but if you ex- amine the thing more closely, it evidently appears from the things which have been alleged, that the contrary should be af- firmed; that is, that all things and consequently souls attain to the highest degree of perfection possible. And in truth it is not proper to judge before having examined, as the jurisconsults say, the whole law. We know only a very small part of the eternity which extends into immensity; for the memory of the few thousands of years which history transmits to us are, indeed, a very little thing. And yet from an experience so short we dare to judge of the immense and of the eternal, like men who, born and brought up in a prison, or, if you prefer, in the subter- ranean salt mines of the Sarmatifc, think that there is no other light in the world than the lamp whose feeble gleam hardly suffices to direct their steps. Let us look at a very beautiful picture, and let us cover it in such a way as to see only a very small part of it. What else will appear in it, however closely we may examine it and however near we may approach to it, ex- cept a certain confused mass of colors, without choice and with-
2534 GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ
out art ? And yet when we remove the covering and regard it from the proper point of view, we will see that what appeared thrown on the canvas at haphazard has been executed with the greatest art by the author of the work. What the eyes discover in the picture, the ears discover in music. The most illus- trious composers often introduce discords into their harmonies in order to excite and pique, so to speak, the listener, who, anxious as to the outcome, is all the more pleased when soon all things are restored to order. Just as we rejoice to have passed through slight dangers and experienced small ills, whether because of a feeling of egotism, or because we find pleasure in the frightful images which tight-rope dances or leapings between swords {sauts perilleux) present, so we partly lose laughing children, pretending to throw them far away from us, like the ape which, having taken Christian, king of the Danes, while still an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, carried him to the top of the roof, and, when everybody was frightened, brought him back laughing, safe and sound to his cradle. According to the same principle, it is insipid always to eat sweetmeats; we must mingle with them sharp, acid, and even bitter things, which excite the taste. He who has not tasted bitter things has not merited sweet things, and even will not appreciate them. It is the law even of joy that pleasure be not uniform, for it engenders disgust, renders us stupid and not joyous.
As to what we said, that a part may be disturbed without prejudice to the general harmony, it must not be understood as meaning that no account is made of the parts, or that it suffices that the entire world be perfect in measure, although it might happen that the human race should be unhappy, and that there should be in the universe no regard for justice, no heed taken of our lot, as some think who do not judge rightly enough of the whole of things. For it must be known that as in a well- constituted republic as much care as possible is taken of the good of the individual, so the universe cannot be perfect if individual interests are not protected as much as the universal harmony will permit. And here a better law could not be established than th-; very law of justice which wills that each one partici- pate in the perfection of the universe and in a happiness of his own proportioned to his own virtue and to the good-will he en- tertains 'oward the common good, by which that which we call the charity and love of God is fulfilled, in which alone, accord-
GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ 2535
ing to the judg-ment of the wisest theologians, the force and power of the Christian religion itself consists. And it ought not appear astonishing that so large a part should be given to souls in the universe since they reflect the most faithful image of the supreme Author, and hold to him not only the relation of ma- chine to artificer, but also that of citizen to prince; and they are to continue as long as the universe itself; and in a manner they express and concentrate the whole in themselves so that it can be said that souls are whole parts.
As regards especially the afflictions of good people, we must hold for certain that there results for them a greater good, and this is not only theologically, but physically true. So grain cast into the ground suffers before producing its fruit. And w^e may affirm, generally, that afflictions, temporarily evil, are in effect good, since they are short cuts to greater perfections. So in physics, liquors which ferment slowly take more time also to im- prove; whereas, those the agitation of which is greater, reject certain parts with more force and are more promptly improved.
And we might say of this that it is retreating in order the better to leap forward {qiC on recede^ pour mieux saiiter).
We should, therefore, regard these considerations not merely as agreeable and consoling, but also as most true. And, in gen- eral, I feel that there is nothing truer than happiness, and noth- ing happier nor sweeter than truth.
Complete. Chapter xvii. From the « Philosophical Works " of Leibnitz.
Translated by Prof. George Martin Duncan, Yale University. By permission. Copyright, 1890, by Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Publishers, New Haven, Conn.
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING
(1729-1781)
Pessing's " Nathan the Wise * might have remained the favorite drama of Germany, if Goethe and Schiller had not written after him; and, in spite of them and of their works as critics in the same field, his ^* Laocoon * keeps its place above all other critical writings of modern times, occupying for modern times the same place of unquestionable pre-eminence that is conceded to Longinus <^ On the Sublime,*^ among classical writers on related subjects. Its purpose was to define the nature, the principles, and the scope of sculpture, painting, and poetry, as modes of expressing human thought and emotion. His familiarity with the great classical poets was so inti- mate that his knowledge of plastic and graphic art, as well as of poetic, seems to be due chiefly to their teachings or to suggestions from their principles. His illustrations are so largely based on classical verse that ideas which cannot fail to be stimulating to all can be wholly intelligible only to those who will consent to share his enthusiasm for the great masters from whom his education was so largely derived.
He was born at Kamenz, in Upper Lusatia, January 226., 1729. His father, who was a clergyman, sent him to Leipsic to study theology; but it is said that Lessing devoted his time largely to the theatre and the drama instead of to his text-books. The result was his first comedy, "The Young Scholar,** which was produced in 1748, — giving great offense to his parents, who concluded that he was neglecting his studies and took him away from the University. He returned and took up the study of medicine, but soon afterwards left the Uni- versity for Berlin, where he supported himself by writing until 1751. He then entered the University of Wittenberg to complete his studies. Taking his degree of Master and returning to Berlin, he began the brilliant career which made him one of the greatest names in the literature in Germany. As a poet he is attractive, as a writer of fables he is a friend of successive generations of the young in and out of Germany; as the author of « Minna von Barnhelm,** "Emilia Galotti,'* and "Nathan the Wise,** he is secure in his place as one of the favorite dramatists of Germany, and as a critic he has given the world in his " Laocoon ** a work so great that it redeems criticism from the reproach of negation and almost gives it a place as one of the
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 2537
creative arts. Lessing belonged to the great period of intellectual development in Germany which rescued the country from the domi- nation of Parisian taste in art and literature, thus making possible Goethe, — the only Gothic writer who can rank with Shakespeare. At Lessing's death, February 15th, 1781, Germany already had full assur- ance of Goethe as the greatest Teutonic genius of modern times ; but it is no exaggeration to say that the ^* Faust " does not give fuller play to the genius of the Teutonic peoples for poetry than the <' Laocoon '* does to what is their not less characteristic genius for criticism.
W. V. B.
« LAOCOON » — ART'S HIGHEST LAW
BF, IT a fable or history that Love caused the first attempt of the creative Art, thus much is certain, that it was never weary of assisting the great old Masters; for although now the scope of Painting is enlarged so as to be more especially the art which imitates bodies upon flat surfaces, yet the wise Greek placed it within much narrower limits and confined it to the imi- tation of beautiful bodies. His Painter painted nothing but the beautiful ; even the common type of the beautiful, the beautiful of an inferior kind, was to him only an accidental object for the exercise of his practice and for his recreation. The perfection of the object itself must be the thing which enraptures him : he was too great to require of those who contemplated him that they should be content with the cold satisfaction arising from the sight of a successful resemblance, or from reflection upon the skill of the artist producing it; to his art nothing was dearer, nothing seemed to him nobler than the object and end of Art itself.
" Who would paint you when nobody will look at you ? ** says the old epigrammatist of a very ugly man. Many modern arti.sts would say, " Be as ugly as it is possible to be, I will neverthe- less paint you; though no one will willingly look at you, yet they will willingly look at my picture, — not because it reproduces you, but because it is a proof of my skill which can so exactly imi- tate so hideous an object.**
Tn truth the connection between this extravagant boasting and a fatal dexterity, which is not ennobled by the worth of the object, is only too natural; even the (Irceks have had their Pau- son and their Pyrcicus. They had Ihcm. but they passed severe judgment upon them l^auson, who confined him.sclf to the beau-
2538 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING
tiful of ordinary nature, whose low taste most congenially ex- pressed the deficient and the hateful, lived in the most sordid poverty; and Pyreicus, who painted barbers' rooms, dirty work- shops, donkeys, and kitchen vegetables with all the diligence of a Dutch painter, as if such things in nature had so much fasci- nation and were so rarely seen, obtained the nickname of PoTzap6ypa(po<z (the filth painter) ; although the rich voluptuary bought his works at extravagant prices, thus coming to the help of their utter worthlessness by impressing upon them a fictitious value. Governments themselves have not thought it unworthy of their vigilance to restrain by force the artist within his proper sphere. The law of the Thebans, which ordered the imitation of the beautiful and forbade the imitation of the ugly, is well known. It was no law against the bungler, which it was generally sup- posed to be, even by Junius. It condemned the Greek Ghezzi, the unworthy trick of Art to attain a likeness through an exaggera- tion of the uglier parts of the original — in a word, the caricature.
From the spirit of the beautiful also flowed the law of the Olympic judges. Every Olympian conqueror obtained a statue, but an Iconic was only granted to him who had been three times a conqueror. Portraits of the moderately successful were not allowed to abound among works of Art, for although even the portrait approached to the ideal, nevertheless the likeness was the dominant circumstance; it is the ideal of a certain man, not the ideal of a man generally.
We smile when we hear that with the Ancients even the Arts were subjected to civil laws; but we are not always right when we smile. Unquestionably, laws should exercise no power over sciences, for the end of science is truth. Truth is necessary for the soul, and it would be tyranny to exercise the slightest com- pulsion with respect to the satisfaction of this essential need.
The end of Art, on the other hand, is pleasure, and pleasure can be dispensed with; therefore, it may always depend upon the lawgiver what kind of pleasure he will allow, and what amount of each kind.
The plastic Arts especially, over and above the certain in- fluence which they exercise upon the character of a nation, are capable of an effect which requires the vigilant supervision of the law. If beautiful men are the cause of beautiful statues, the latter, on the other hand, have reacted upon the former, and the state has to thank beautiful men.
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 2539
With US the tender imagination of the mother appears to express itself only in monsters. From this point of view I believe that in certain ancient legends, which are generally thrown aside as untrue, there is some tnith to be found. The mothers of Aristomenes, Aristodtemos, Alexander the Great, Scipio, Augus- tus, Galerius, all dreamed during their pregnancy that their hus- band was a snake. The snake was the sign of godhead, and the beautiful statues of a Bacchus, an Apollo, a Mercury, a Hercules, were seldom without snakes. These honorable wives had in the daytime fed their eyes on the god, and the bewildering dream awakened the form of the wild beast. This is how I read the dream, and despise the explanation which was given by the pride of sires and the shamelessness of flatterers; for certainly there must have been one cause why the adulterous fancy always took the form of a snake.
But I return to my path. My only wish has been to lay down firmly the principle that with the Ancients beauty was the highest law of the imitative Arts.
This principle being firmly established, it necessarily follows that everything else by which imitative Art can at the same time extend its influence must, if it does not harmonize with beauty, entirely give place to it, and if it does harmonize, at least be subordinate to it. Let me dwell on the consideration of Expression.
There are passions and degrees of passion which express themselves in the countenance by the most hideous distortions, and which place the whole body in such attitudes of violence that all the fine lines which mark it in a position of repose are lost. The ancient artists either abstained from these altogether and entirely, or used them in a subordinate degree, in which they were susceptible of some measure of beauty. Rage and de- spair do not disgrace any of their works. I dare aver that they have never created a Fury.
Wrath is diminished into severity. The Jupiter of the poet who hurls the thunderbolt is wrathful; the Jupiter of the ar- tist is severe.
Lamentation is softened into sorrow; and when this mitiga- ticm cannot take place — if the lamentation should be equally de- grading and disfiguring, what did Timanthes do ? His picture of the Sacrifice of Iphigcnia, in which he distributed to all the by- standers their proper share of grief, but veiled the countenance
2540 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING
of the father, which ought to manifest a grief surpassing that of all the others, is well known, and many clever things have been said about it. He had, said one critic, so exhausted himself in the physiognomy of sorrow that he despaired of being able to give an expression of greater sorrow to the father. He thereby confessed, said another critic, that the grief of a father in such a catastrophe was beyond all expression. I, for my part, see neither the incapacity of the artist nor the incapacity of the Art. ^ As the degree of the affection becomes stronger, so do the corre- sponding features of the countenance; the highest degree has the most decided features, and nothing is easier for Art than to express them. But Timanthes knew the limits which the Graces had fixed to his Art. He knew that the grief which overcame Agamemnon as a father found expression in distortions, which are always hideous. So far as beauty and dignity could be com- bined with this expression, he went. He might easily have passed over or have softened what was hideous; but inasmuch as his composition did not permit him to do either, what resource remained but to veil it ? What he might not paint he left to conjecture. In a word, this veiling is a sacrifice which the artist made to beauty. It is an example not how an artist can force expression beyond the limits of Art, but how an artist should subject it to the first law of Art, — the law of beauty.
Apply this observation to the Laocoon, and the reason which I seek is clear. The master strove to attain the highest beauty in given circumstances of bodily anguish. It was impossible to combine the latter in all its disfiguring vehemence with the former. It was therefore necessary to diminish it; he must soften screams into sighs, not because the screaming betrayed an igno- ble soul, but because it disfigured the countenance in a hideous manner. Let any one only in thought force wide open the mouth of Laocoon and judge. Let any one make him scream and then look. It was a creation which inspired sympathy, be- cause it exhibited beauty and suffering at the same time; now it has become a hideous horrible creation from which we gladly turn away our face, because the aspect of it excites what is un- pleasant in pain without the beauty in the suffering object which can change this unpleasantness into the secret feeling of sympathy.
The mere wide-opening of the mouth — putting out of con- sideration how violent and disgusting the other portions of the
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 254I
face distorted and displaced by it would become — is in painting a blot, and in statuary a cavity, which produces the worst ef- fect possible. Montfaucon showed little taste when he declared an old bearded head with an open mouth to be Jupiter in- structing an oracle. Must a god scream when he reveals the future ? Would a pleasing curve of the mouth make his speech suspicious ? Neither do I believe Valerius, that Ajax, in the picture by Tiraanthes already mentioned, must have been rep- resented as screaming. Far worse masters in the time of decayed Art do not allow the wildest barbarians, when suffer- ing terror and agony of death under the sword of the con- queror, to open their mouths so as to scream.
It is certain that this reduction of the most extreme bodily anguish to a lower scale of feeling was visible in many of the ancient works of Art. The suffering Hercules in the poisoned garment, by the hand of an unknown ancient master, was not the Hercules of Sophocles, who yelled so dreadfully that the Locrian cliffs and the Eubean promontories re-echoed with it. He was rather melancholy than mad. The Philoctetes of Pyth- agoras Leontinus appeared to impart his pain to the observer, an effect which the slightest feature of ugliness would have pre- vented. It may be asked how I know that this master had made a statue of Philoctetes ? — from a passage in Pliny, which ought not to have waited for my correction, so palpably is it
corrupted or mutilated.
Complete. «Laocoon,» Chap. iL
POETRY AND PAINTING COMPARED
DOES not Poetry suffer too great a loss if we take away from her all images of corporeal beauty ? Who wishes to take them away ? If we seek to prevent her pursuing a par- ticular path, by which she expects to arrive at sucli images, while she follows the footsteps of a sister Art, but in which she painfully wanders up and down without ever reaching the same goal: do wc therefore close every other path to her, even those in which Art in her turn must follow her a great distance ?
Even Homer, who so carefully abstains from all detailed de- scription of corporeal beauty, from whom wc barely Icam, even parenthetically, that Helen has white arms and beautiful hair, even this poet knows, nevertheless, how to give us an idea of her
3542 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING
beauty, which far surpasses all that art is capable of represent- ing to us.
Let us only remember the passage in which Helen appears before the council of the Trojan elders. The venerable old men gaze on her, and one says to the other: —
Oi) vi;j.£(Ttg Tpiua<i Kai ivKVTJfiida? ^A^aiohg ToiTjS' aii(p\ yovatKi noXov yjwvov aXyta Tzdff^etv Aiuu)<i aOavdzrjai OstJ's ei? (bna eouev.
What can convey to us a more lively idea of beauty than that cold old age should think it justified the woe which had cost so much blood and so many tears ?
What Homer could not describe in detail he makes us under- stand by the effect: O poets! paint for us the pleasure, inclina- tion, love, rapture, which beauty causes, and you will have painted beauty itself. Who can think that the beloved object of Sappho, at the sight of whom she confesses to have lost sense and judg- ment, was ugly ? Who does not believe that he has seen the most beautiful and perfect form the moment he sympathizes with the emotions which only such a form can awaken ?
It is not because Ovid describes the different parts of the beautiful body of his Lesbia, in the lines —
^^ Quos humeros, quales vidi tetigique lacertos !'''* etc.,
but it is because he describes them with that inebriating volup- tuousness which so readily awakens our desires, that we imagine ourselves to enjoy the sight which he enjoyed.
Another way by which poetry attains the end of painting in the description of corporeal beauty is by changing beauty into grace. Grace is beauty in motion, and therefore less within the province of the painter than the poet. The painter can only create a presumption of motion; in reality, however, his figures are without motion. Consequently, grace with him borders on grimace. But in poetry it remains what it is, — a transitory beauty which we wish to see repeated. It comes and goes; and as we can generally more easily and more vividly remember a motion than a mere form or color, it follows that grace in the same proportions will produce a stronger impression upon us than beauty. All that in the picture of Alcina pleases and excites us is grace. The impression which her eyes make is not in conse- quence of their being black and fiery, but because they are —
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 2543
*•*■ Pictosi a riguardar, a moier parchi^"^ ;
have a look of sv.-eetness and languor; that love flutters round them and discharges his whole quiver from them. Her mouth charms us, not because her vermilion lips disclose two rov.-s of choice pearl; but because they form that love-inspiring smile which of itself opens paradise upon earth; because from them come those friendly words which soften the roughest heart. Her bosom enchants us less because milk and ivory and apples are the image of their whiteness and exquisite form — but rather be- cause we see them gently undulate like the waves on the ex- tremest edge of the shore when a playful zephyr agitates the sea.
"■Due pome acerbe, e pur d'avorio fatte, Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte?''
I am certain that such traits of grace compressed into one or two stanzas would have produced more effect than the five others, over which Ariosto has scattered them, interweaving with them cold indications of a beautiful form, in a manner far too learned to affect our feelings.
Anacreon himself preferred to err by an obvious impropriety, in requiring an impossibility from the painter, rather than not animate with grace the image of his mistress.
Tpo<ptpoo S zcru) yv^etou^ fJefH '/.uyoi'^io rpa^7J}.o) XdpiTe<: nirocvTo naaai.
" Let all the graces hover over her soft chin and her marble neck." How did he intend this? In the most literal meaning? It was incapable of execution by the painter. The painter could give the chin its finest round — its most beautiful dimple amoris digitulu inipressuvi ( for the £tw appears to me to indicate a dimple), he could give the most beautiful carnation to the neck, but he could go no further. The movement of this beautiful neck, the play of the muscles by which the dimple became more or less visible, the special grace was beyond the reach of his power. The poet used the most forcible expressions of his art to make beauty visible to us, in order that tlie jjainter might make use of the most forcible expression of his art. A new illustration of our former remark that the poet, even when he
2544 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING
speaks of works of Art, is not on that account obliged to con- fine himself within the boundaries of Art.
Complete. ^'Laocoon,^ Chap. xxi.
THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE
EDUCATION has its aim with the race, not less than with the individual. That which is educated is educated for some end. The flattering prospects which are opened to the youth, the honor and affluence which are held up before him, — what are these but means by which he is educated to become a man, a man who, though these prospects of affluence and honor should fail, shall still be capable of doing his duty ? Is this the aim of human education ? And does the Divine edu- cation fall short of this ? What art can accomplish with the individual, shall not nature accomplish with the whole ? Blas- phemy ! Blasphemy !
No ! it will come ! it will surely come, the period of perfec- tion, when, the more convinced his understanding is of an ever- better future, the less man will need to borrow from that future the motives of his actions; when he will choose the good because it is good, and not because arbitrary rewards are annexed to it which are only to fix and strengthen his wandering gaze, at first, until he is able to appreciate the interior and nobler reward of well doing. It will surely come, the period of a new, eternal gospel, which is promised us, even in the elementary books of the New Covenant. Proceed in thine imperceptible course. Eternal Providence ! Only let me not despair of thee, because imper- ceptible. Let me not despair of thee, even though thy steps to me should seem to retrograde. It is not true that the shortest way is always a straight one. Thou hast, in thine eternal course, so much to take along with thee ! So many sidelong steps to make ! And what if it be now, as good as proved, that the great, slow wheel which brings the race nearer to its perfection, is put in motion, only by smaller, quicker wheels, of which each con- tributes its part to the same end ?
Not otherwise! The path by which the race attains to its perfection, each individual man — some earlier, and some later — must first have gone over. ^^ Must have gone over in one and the same life ? Can he have been a sensual Jew and a spiritual Chris-
GUTTHOLD KP'.iRAIM LESSING 2545
tian in the same life ? Can he, in the same life, have overtaken
both these?'* Perhaps not! But why may not each individual man
have existed more than once in this world ? Is this hypothesis,
therefore, so ridiculous, because it is the oldest ? because it is the
one which the human understanding immediately hit upon, before
it was distracted and weakened by the sophistry of the schools ?
Why may not I at one time have accomplished, • already here on
earth, all those steps toward my perfection, which mere temporal
rewards and punishments will enable man to accomplish; and, at
another time, all those, in which we are so powerfully assisted by
the prospect of eternal compensations. "Why should I not return as
often as I am able to acquire new knowledges, new talents ? Is it
because I carry away so much at one time as to make it not worth
the while to return, or because I forget that I have been here
before ? It is well for me that I forget it. The remembrance of
my former states would allow me to make but a poor use of the
present. Besides, what I am necessitated to forget now, have I
forgotten it forever ? Or because, on this supposition, too much
time would be lost to me ? Lost ? What have I then to delay ?
Is not the whole eternity mine ?
The summing up in the essay on " The Education of the Human Race." vii — 160
GEORGE HENRY LEWES (1817-1878)
'HEN a history or biography makes its way by fifty years of slow growth from the full-leather binding of the gentle- man's library to the paper-backed edition sold at a shilling, it is beyond the reach of negative criticism. George Henry Lewes wrote a ^* History of Philosophy, >> which gained him the consideration of scholars. His ^* Studies in Animal Life >^ showed his sympathy with the high purposes of science. His " Aristotle '^ and * Life of Goethe * testified his habit of frequenting <Hhe higher walks'^ of the world's literature. But only in his ^* Life of Robespierre ^* has he attained what seems to be the enduring honor of the paper back. The popu- larity of the book is due first to its picturesqueness, but scarcely less to the essay writer's habit of limiting himself. There is a suf- ficient element of completeness in the treatment of each episode to allow the book to be read, a little at a time, with satisfaction. For those who believe or feel with Dr. Johnson that << smattering '' is a necessary habit of the human intellect, a result of the com- pulsion under which it cannot escape practicing the comparative method of scientific investigation, the essayist must always be the best historian and the most instructive biographer.
Lewes was born in London, April 18th, 1817. He lived to the age of sixty-one, dying November 30th, 1878, after a life devoted industriously and successfully to literature. It seems to be the irony of some half- mccking moral law, that such a man after such labors should be re- membered chiefly as the associate of George Eliot! — the man who gave up his own uncongenial family life to seek the pleasures of intellectual sympathy. It is irony, however, which probes what seems to be the radical failing of his character, — a failing which initially was more than half a virtue, — the fineness of nerve which made all that is repulsive in life so painful to him that he shunned it, and so lost that discipline of intellectual disturbance through which moral greatness is fostered and enabled to find its readiest expression.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES 2547
ROUSSEAU. ROBESPIERRE. AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
THE spirit which animated the Revolution was the spirit of Rousseau. From the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the formation of the Constitution in 1793, there is no im- portant act in which the influence of the Genevese philosopher is not discernible. But beyond this Rousseau has special interest for us here, as the acknowledged teacher of Robespierre, who, of all his disciples, adhered most rigidly to his principles, and gave them the most unflinching application.
Rightly to understand Robespierre it is first indispensable that we should understand Rousseau. I shall be fulfilling, therefore, the first object of this biography in devoting a few pages to the political writings of the author of the ** Social Contract.*'
The gayety, frivolity, wit, and elegance of France, so charm- ing to those who lived in the salons, formed, as it were, but the graceful vine which clustered over a volcano about to burst; or, rather, let me say it was the rouge which, on a sallow, sunken cheek, simulated the ruddy glow of health. Lying deep down in the heart of society there was profound seriousness: the sadness of misery, of want, of slavery clanking its chains, of free thought struggling for empire. This seriousness was about to find utter- ance. The most careless observer could not fail to perceive the heavy thunderclouds which darkened the horizon of this sunny day. The court and the salons were not France, they occupied the foremost place upon the stage, but another actor was about to appear, before whom they would shrink into insignificance; that actor was the People.
The people became the fashion. Philanthrophy was de ton ton. The philosophers speculated about the people; the littdra- teurs declaimed about them. Courtiers played at being peasants. A village was constructed at Trianon ; village fetes were given at royal farms by royal peasants. Idyls were (I la mode. Flo- rian, Gcsner, and " Paul et Virginie " were the flowers of this peasant literature. As in our own day we see some aristocratic writers joining with the most democratic in the senseless lauda- tion of that grandiose al>straction — "The People,*' — so in un- happy France the warmest eulogists of the starved, uneducated, jncared-for masses were those who profited by their subjection. Restless, unbelieving, sick at heart of the existing state of things, they played at being peasants, and poetized the people!
2548 GEORGE HENRY LEWES
Among the philosophic nobles, there were some who quitted their talons rouges to wear thick shoes; and relinquished their costume to put on that of the bourgeoisie. It was very danger- ous work playing thus with their dignities, when those dignities were already tottering!
Few were in earnest, because few had convictions. At length a man arose in whom pretense grew into seriousness, paradoxes ripened into convictions : that man was Rousseau. The ** Contrat Social '^ was the bible of the Revolution. From it orators drew their principles, their political aphorisms, their political language. As a metaphysician, and as a rhetorician, his influence was in- calculable. He was the man of his epoch, and therefore was he powerful. He united the elegance and eloquence of the philos- ophers and litterateurs to the sadness and seriousness of the peo- ple. In his strange career we see him uneasily moving amidst the salons of Paris, dressed in his Armenian robes, creating a sensation amongst the wits and poets, the dilettanti and beauties; ^* among them, but not of them * ; and then, sick of his uneasy position, brusquely breaking away from all society, turning mis- anthrope, disdaining all the elegancies of life, and endeavoring in solitude to find that peace among plants which men had de- nied him. A similar course is observable in his writings: he commences with a frivolous paradox to end with an extravagant conviction.
The mixture of pretense and reality in Rousseau; of willful folly, and of gloiious truth; of despicable baseness, and of noble qualities, makes up the mystery and piquant charm of his char- acter. "He was," as Carlyle finely says, "a lonely man, his life a long soliloquy." In that soliloquy may be read the heights and depths of human nature. His ideas were often noble, grand, and tender; his acts degraded. He taught mothers by his elo- quence to nurse their children, and threw his own children into the foundling hospital. His sensibility led him to sympathize with whatever was beautiful; his weakness and selfishness sug- gested acts which have left inefifaceable stains upon his memory. He was one of that class of men whose practice springs not from their precepts; in whom the unclouded intellect discerns and honors truth, while the will is too miserably weak to act the truth. He has had his acrid antagonists, and his eloquent de- fenders. Are not both right — both wrong? It is possible to draw, and truly draw, a fearful picture of one-half of this man;
GEORGE HENRY LEWES 2549
but such a one-sided view will never obtain general acceptance, for many will deeply sympathize with what was noble in him, and impartial men will always proclaim it.
Few read his works. That marvelous book, ** The Confes- sions, " will never, indeed, cease to find readers; but while " Emile * and ** La Nouvelle Heloise " from time to time tempt the ad- venturous, lured by celebrated titles, I do not believe that one student in fifty ever looks into the " Discourse on the Inequality of Conditions, " or the " Social Contract. ** But as these were his great revolutionary works, it is to them that I must here direct attention.
The period which elapses between 1745 and 1764 is at once the most disastrous, and, in some respects, the most remarkable, in the history of France. No period offers such striking con- trasts. On the one hand, France, beaten in every quarter of the globe, loses her colonies, her marine, and even her honor; on the other hand, she collects together at Paris a brilliant band of writers, whose ideas are destined to become the guiding lights of Europe. Among these Rousseau holds a foremost rank.
In the year 1750 the Academy of Dijon proposed, as the sub- ject of its prize essay, this question: ^* Has the establishment of science and literature contributed to purify society ? "
It was an absurd question. Absurd, because as literature is itself the expression of society, which it in turn reacts upon, you cannot separate the two, and determine either the influence of literature upon society, or what society would have been had there been no literature: in other words, what society would have been, had it not been society; for society is a complex con- dition, of which literature is a vital clement. In rude ballads as in wealthy libraries, literature is an agent inseparable from civi- lization. You might as well speculate on what a man's constitu- tion would be without a liver, as on what the constitution of so- ciety would be without literature. In this question, however, the metaphysicians of the eighteenth century saw no absurdity. Rousseau determined to answer it.
** One day, walking with Diderot at Vincennes, talking on the proposed question, * Which side do you take?* I asked him (it is Diderot who speaks). He replied, < The affirmative.' * That * said I, ' is the pons asinorum: all the mediocre talents will take that route, and you can only utter commonplaces. Take tlie other side, and you will find it an open field, rich and fruitful,
^55 o GEORGE HENRY LEWES
for eloquence and philosophy. ^ '■ You are right ^ said he, after a few moments' reflection ; ^ I will follow your advice. ' *
It was as a paradox which v/ould startle rather than as a truth which might be commonplace, that Rousseau first threw down the gauntlet against civilization, proclaiming the superiority of ignorance and the greatness of savage life. There was some- thing piquant in the idea. He confesses as much in the first page, where he asked himself, ^* How shall I dare to blame the sciences in the presence of one of the most learned bodies of Europe ? or praise ignorance before a celebrated Academy ? '* But the result is more piquant still; this Academy absolutely awarded the prize to the audacious eulogist of ignorance ! After this we cannot wonder if a paradox which an Academy could crown should produce an immense sensation in a frivolous so- ciety startled by the novelty, and allured by the eloquence of the Discourse. There was an air of serious conviction about Rous- seau. A close and pressing logic, bold and sweeping dogmatism, and a masterly style, if they failed to convince, at least left readers in an embarrassment from whence there was no escape. No one was persuaded, yet no one could refute him. Replies abounded; even a king condescended to step into the arena; but Rousseau's antagonists did not see the absurdity of the question, and could not, therefore, see the -npiozov ^'ey^o? of his answer.
Rousseau's position is this: Science, Art, and Literature are the produce and producers of all the vices of civilization. Man in a state of unlettered simplicity is healthy, brave, and virtuous. He loses these qualities in society. ^* The ebb and flow of the ocean have not been more regularly subjected to the course of the planet which illumes the night than the fate of morals and prob- ity to the progress of science and art.'* This aphorism is uni- versally accepted, and Rousseau's tactic consists in boldly, and without qualification, applying it in the sense contrary to that accepted by mankind. He thus continues: ^^ We have seen vir- tue disappear, according as the light of the sciences has risen upon our horizon, and the same phenomenon has been observed in all times and in all countries." This position, so authorita- tively assumed, domineers over the whole argument. He subse- quently supports it by a magnificent audacity: he gives to every science a vice as its origin! *^ Astronomy is born from supersti- tion; Eloquence from ambition, from hate, from flattery, from
GEORGE HENRY LEWES 2551
falsehood; Geometry from avarice (!); Physics from a vain curi- osity; all — including Morality itself — from human pride."
No sane man could seriously maintain such arguments, al- though this was not the first time they had found utterance. St. Aubain, in a now forgotten work, called " Trait6 de I'Opinion," which Rousseau had studied in his youth, advanced most of the objections to be found in this " Discours. " In fact skepticism had infested every department of human inquiry, until at last men began to doubt whether all inquiry were not useless. Rousseau's paradox, therefore, although suggested by Diderot, was the legiti- mate product of the epoch, and hence its success.
Not merely as a protest against the science and literature of the age did this ^* Discours *^ startle France ; there were tones in it of a higher strain; there were sentences of serious appli- cation. Philosophers were on thrones, were at court, were ca- ressed in salons. Princes prided themselves on their patronage of literature. Rousseau, instead of swelling the list of eulogists who proclaimed such liberality as the great virtue of an enlight- ened monarch, boldly declared this patronage was adroit tyranny.
Extravagant as the leading idea of this Discourse unquestion« ably is, it was surpassed in his next work. Men are prone to believe in their own lies when they find others credulous, and the idea which Rousseau took up as a paradox to display his in- genuity produced so great a sensation that he began to believe he had discovered a truth. He had accidentally lighted upon a mine, and now dug vigorously onwards in search of the ore. His own unhappy life, his own unsociable temper, his consciousness of genius, and irritated self-love, all fitted him for the task of declaiming against unjust social distinctions; and while thus in- dulging in his vengeance, he was earning his laurels. He spat upon the society wherein he felt his false position, and the world applauded that indulgence of his wrath!
The Academy of Dijon having gained celebrity by its foolish program, grew bolder, and proposed this momentous cjucstion: " What is the origin of the inccjuality among men, and is it sanc- tioned by the law of nature ? " R(nisscau's famoiis " Discours " did not obtain the prize, but it created a greater sensation than any prize essay ever written. It is the paradox of the first " Dis- cours," but more seriously meditated, more powerfully stated. It is less of a caprice, and more of a conviction. It is a sombre, veho- ment protest against civilization, a protest in favor of tha poor
2552 GEORGE HENRY LEWES
against the rich, of the oppressed and degraded Many against the polished, vicious Few. This very seriousness, I suppose, pre- vented the prize being awarded to the ** Discours. '^ Certain it is, that it alarmed the ingenious, frivolous society of France, and that its full success was not obtained till some years later, when the times had grown more serious.
Vhoinme qui m^dit^ est un animal dt'prave. That is the key- stone of the arch; and it is nothing more than the aphoristic formula of his first "Discours.'^ He admits that inequalities, physical as well as mental, exist, but these inequalities he at- tributes to the corrosive influence of civilization, with its luxuries, its subtleties, and its vices. In a state of nature, men's bodies, being equally exercised, become equally vigorous, and the healthy body forms the healthy mind. He paints in glowing colors the ideal state of savage life, of men without language, except a few expressive sounds such as animals employ to articulate their wants, wandering amidst boundless forests, chasing their game, reposing under trees, unperverted by the illimitable desires and unsatisfied passions of civilized men, knowing none of the subtleties of affec- tion, taking a wife to satisfy a passing desire, and heedless of his offspring, brave, simple, truthful, and free.
** Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books ! *
That is what man was, and what he is you are called upon to compare with that primeval state.
So far it is only another statement of his former idea, but, as he proceeds, the dangerous consequences, rigorously deduced from it, appear. Men were born equal — equal in health, in strength, in virtue, in property. The earth belonged to all, and to none. Society began with the spoliation of the many, in favor of the few; it, and its laws, are the consecration of that spoliation.
" The first man who, having inclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say, * This is mine,* and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. What crimes, what battles, what murders, and what horrible miseries, would he have spared the human race, who should have torn down the fence, and exclaimed : *■ Beware how you listen to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all, and the earth to no one ! ' '*
This bold attack upon the very nature of property so startled the age, that even Voltaire called it the philosophy of a black-
GEORGE HENRY LEWES 2553
guard who counseled the poor to plunder the rich. It was passing beyond the limits of permissible paradox, and was be- coming alarming. Rousseau was serious. He met the objection naturally made, that a man having built a wall by his own labor was entitled to its benefit, by asking, ** Who gave you the right to build it ? How can you pretend to be repaid for a la- bor we, the masses, never imposed upon you ? The unanimous consent of the whole human race was necessary before you could appropriate from the common funds more than was neces- sary for your own subsistence. You are rich ! but we suffer. Your wealth is our poverty. In vain you appeal to laws. What are laws but the adroit selfishness of men, who framed maxims for the preservation of their possessions ? Property is a spolia- tion; laws may secure, but they cannot justify it.**
This is no longer a mere audacious paradox; it is an un- happy error. It is not a caprice of speculative ingenuity, it is a vigorously deduced conclusion. It has not only logical con- sistency, but is strengthened by popular feeling. It is a doc- trine which will fructify in Revolutions! To those who are in misery and want, it comes like a revelation of truth, responding to their sense of social injustice. To those who roll in wealth, it comes like a spectre to scare them from their possessions, — a spectre they cannot exorcise. It is a doctrine, it is a convic- tion, and is backed by millions, stung by a sense of injustice! Attempt not to answer it with phrases about " sacred rights of property,'* << security of order,** <* well-being of the state,** and so forth; it tells you plainly that these rights are un-sacred, and that this well-being of a state is the pampered indulgence of a few, wrung from the sufferings of millions!
That bold idea once thrown upon the world, the world '* will not willingly let die.** France suffered from it. We, in our wealthy England, also suffer from it. In thousands of heads and hearts it works, forming the basis of a political gospel. Those who most revolt against it, find it difficult to answer. It never will be answered so long as social science continues in the hands of metaphysicians. Happily, their reign is drawing to a close!
From the <* Life of Robespierre. »
I
JUSTUS VON LIEBIG
(1803-1873)
[usTUS VON LiEBiG, one of the greatest chemists of the nine- teenth century, was born May 12th, 1803, at Darmstadt, Ger- many, where his father was a <^ dry Salter ^> and dealer in dye stuffs. The chemical experiments made by his father in attempt- ing to purify his dyes are thought to have given the first impulse to the scientific genius of the son. It is said that even as a boy Justus Liebig acquired through persistent experimenting a greater knowledge of chemistry than that of <^many full-grown professors of the sci- ence.'^ Under the impulse thus gained, he studied at Bonn and Erlangen, graduating from the latter university in 1822 and studying afterwards under Gay-Lussac at Paris. On his return to Germany he became professor of Chemistry in the University of Giessen, where he remained for twenty-five years. During this time he published his " Letters on Chemistry '^ and other works of the highest merit, which made him a world-wide reputation. In 1852 he left Giessen for the University of Munich, where he served as professor of Chem- istry until his death, April i8th, 1873. In 1845 he had been ^< en- nobled >* as <^ Freiherr von Liebig, *^ and it is to this that he owes the title of << Baron, ^^ by which he is frequently called. His work practi- cally founded the science of organic chemistry, out of which some of the greatest discoveries of the age have developed. His <* Letters on Chemistry » are admirable in their methods of expression. He has a faculty many scientific investigators lack, — that of making himself so clearly intelligible that he transmits to his readers no small part of his own enthusiasm for his subject.
GOLDMAKERS AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
IN ALL metals, according- to the creed of the alchemists, there is contained a principle which gives to them the metallic char- acter. This is the mercury of the adepts. To increase the proportion of this principle in the baser metals is to ennoble them„ If we extract this metallic principle from any body or metal, if we increase its power by refining it, and thus produce the quin- tessence of all metallicity (to coin a word), we have the stone
JUSTUS VON LIEBIG 2555
which, when made to act on base or unripe metalSj matures and ennobles them. The mode of action of the philosopher's stone was considered by many as analogous to that of a ferment. * Dees not yeast change the juice of plants or a solution of sugar by a new arrangement of their particles into the youth-giving and invigorating water of life? {Aqua vita, alcohol.) Does it not effect the expulsion of all impurities ? Does not a ferment (sour dough) convert flour into nourishing bread ? " (George Rip- pel, fifteenth century.)
In its utmost perfection, as the ^* universale, '* one part, ac- cording to Roger Bacon, sufficed to transmute a million parts — according to Raymond Lully, ten billions of parts — of a base metal into gold. According to Basil Valentine, the power of the philosopher's stone extends only to seventy parts; and John Price, the last alchemist and goldmaker of the eighteenth century, de- scribes it as transmuting only from thirty to sixty parts of base metal.
For the preparation of the philosopher's stone the first requi- site was the raw material, the Adamic earth, virgin earth, which is mdeed to be found everywhere, but its discovery is dependent on certain conditions known to the initiated alone, ^^ When we have once obtained this,** says Isaacus HoUandus, ^* the prepara- tion of the stone is a labor fit only for women, or child's play. From the materies prima, cruda or rcmota, the philosopher ob- tains first the mercury of the adepts, which differs from ordinary quicksilver, and is the quintessence, the first condition of the crea- tion or procreation of all metals. To this is added philosophical gold, and the mixture is left for a long time in an incubatory or brooding furnace, which must have the form of an o^gz. There is thus obtained a black substance, the raven's head, or caput corvi, which, after long exposure to heat, is converted into a v,'hite body. This is the white swan, cygniis a/bus. After this has been long and more fiercely heated, it becomes yellow, and finally bright red, and now the great work is consummated.**
Other accounts of the process for preparing the philosopher's stone are rendered, by their being mixed up with mystical views, yet darker and more mysterious. The custom, to(j, prevalent in those ages, of regulating divisions of time by the hours of prayer, passed, during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, into the laboratories of the alchemists; and it is easy to perceive how, by degrees the success of the operation crme to be regarded a^
2556 JUSTUS VON LIEBIG
essentially dependent on the efficacy of prayers, which prayers were at first used only to determine its duration. In the seventeenth century, the transformation of alchemistical ideas into religious notions had become so complete, that alchemistical expressions were frequently employed to designate religious ideas. In the writings of the mystics (for example, in those of the enthusiastic Jacob Bohme, 1624), the term "philosopher's stone * no longer sig- nifies the substance which transmutes baser metals into gold, but " conversion ^^ ; the clay furnace is " the earthly body ^* ; and the green lion is "the Lion of David.'*
Previous to the invention of printing, it was easy for an alche- mist to keep secret his discoveries. He exchanged them only for the observations of other adepts. The chemical processes which they published are clearly and intelligibly described, in so far, at least, as they are not such as to lead to any practical result in reference to the chief object of their search; but they ex- pressed their views, and described their labors, on the subject of " the grand arcanum '* in figurative language and in mysterious symbols. They propounded in an unintelligible language that which, in their own minds, was only the faint dawn of an idea.
That which chiefly excites our wonder is, that the existence of the philosopher's stone should have been regarded, for so many centuries, as a truth established beyond all doubt, while yet no one possessed it, and each adept only maintained that it was in the possession of another.
Who, indeed, could entertaiii a doubt, after Van Helmont had declared, in 16 18, that on several occasions there had been sent to him, from an unknown hand, one-fourth of a grain of the precious material, with which he had converted into pure gold eight ounces of quicksilver ? Did not Helvetius, the distinguished body physician to the Prince of Orange, and the bitter opponent of alchemy, himself relate, in his " Vitulus Aureus quem Mundus Adorat et Orat'* (1667), that he had obtained the most convincing proofs of the existence of the philosopher's stone ? For he, the skeptic, had received, from a stranger, a fragment of the size of half a rape seed, and therewith, in presence of his wife and son, had transmuted six drams of lead into gold, which stood the tests applied to it by the warden of the mint at the Hague F Were not two pounds and a half of quicksilver converted into pure gold, of which a large medal was struck (Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, IV. 171), with the figure of the God of Day (Sol or
JUSTUS VON LIEBIG 2557
gold) holding the caduceus of Mercury, to indicate the origin of the precious metal, and the legend ** Diviyia Metamorphosis Exhibita PragcB,'' XV. Jan., An. MDCXLVII? in ''PrcFsentia Sac. Cess. Maj. Ferdinandi Tertu,^^ etc.? Was not this done at Prague, in pres- ence of the Emperor Ferdinand III. (1637-1657) by the Burgo- master, Count von Russ, with the aid of one grain of a red powder, which he had received from a certain Richthausen, and he again from an unknown ? (According to J. F, Gmelin, this medal was still extant in 1797, in the treasury at Vienna.) The Landgrave of Hesse, Darmstadt also, Ernst Ludwig, as we are told by the alchemists, received, from an unknown hand, a packet containing red and white tincture, with directions for their use. Ducats were coined of the gold which had been made from lead by this means, and from the silver thus obtained were coined the Hessian "specie dollars'* of 171 7, on which is the legend, ^'^ Sic Deo Placiiit in Tribulationibus.^^ (Kopp. II. 172.)
It can hardly be doubted that the amateurs of alchemy in these cases experienced something similar to that which befell the distinguished and highly deserving professor of theology, Sem- ler, in Halle (1791), who occupied himself at one time in experi- ments with a then renowned universal medicine, which was offered for sale under the name of atmospheric salt (Luftsalz) by a cer- tain Baron von Hirsch. Semler thought he had discovered that gold grew, or was produced in this salt when kept warm and moist. He sent, in 1787, a portion of the salt, with the gold grown in it to the Academy of Sciences, at Berlin. Klaproth, who examined it, found it to contain glauber salt (sulphate of soda) and sulphate of magnesia, enveloped in a "magna," and gold leaf in considerable quantity. Semler also sent to Klaproth some of the salt in which no gold had yet grown, and a liquor which " contained the germ of gold, and which impregnated the atmospheric salt in a proper warm temperature." It appeared, however, that the salt was already mixed with gold. Semler firmly believed in the production of the gold. In 1788 he wrote, " Two glasses are bearing gold. ?>vcry five or six days I remove it; each time about twelve to fifteen grains. Two or three other glasses are in progress, and the gold blooms out below.** A new portion which was sent to Klaproth in leaves of from four to nine .square inches proved that the gold plant had unfortunately de- generated, for it now bore adulterated gold or pinchbeck. At last the matter was cleared up. Scmlcr's servant, who had to
2558 JUSTUS VON LIEBIG
take care of the hothouse, had introduced gold into the glasses, in order to give his master pleasure; but being on one occasion prevented from doing so himself, his wife undertook the business; but she was of opinion that pinchbeck leaf was much cheaper and would serve the purpose equally well.
During the sixteenth century alchemists were found in the courts of all princes. The Emperor Rudolph II. and the Elector Palatine Frederick were known as patrons of alchemy. Men of all ranks studied transmutation, and strove to attain possession of the grand arcanum. Just as in the present day vast sums are expended by princes, private persons, and associations in mining enterprises for the discovery of metallic ores, of coal, or of strata of salt, so were vast sums squandered in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries for the researches deemed necessary in order to discover the philosopher's stone. A multitude of adventurers appeared, who endeavored, at the courts of the great and mighty, to pass for adepts, that is, possessors of the secret; but this was a dangerous game, for those who at one court, or at another, succeeded, by dexterously managed transmutations, in establish- ing their character as adepts, and carried off honors and riches as their reward, were sure finally to fail elsewhere; and their end commonly was, to be hung in a robe covered with gold leaf on a gallows adorned in a like manner. Those, again, whose im- posture could not be proved, expiated the fatal honor of being believed to possess the philosopher's stone, under the hands of covetous princes, by imprisonment and tortures. Indeed, the cruel treatment which such adventurers experienced was re- garded as the strongest proof of the truth of their art.*
The great (Francis) Bacon, Benedict Spinoza, and Leibnitz be- lieved in the philosopher's stone, and in the possibility of the transmutation of metals; and the decisions of Faculties of Juris- prudence prove how deep and how widely extended these ideas had at that period become. The Faculty of Law in Leipsic de- clared in 1580, in their judgment against David Beuther, that he was proved to possess the knowledge of the philosopher's stone; and the same faculty, in 1725, gave a decision in the affair of the Countess Anna Sophia von Erbach against her husband, Count Frederick Charles von Erbach. The lady had granted pro- tection, in her castle of Frankenstein, to a fugitive, who was pur- sued and hunted like a wild beast; and he, who was an adept,
* Kopp.
JUSTUS VON LIEBIG 2559
had, to show his gratitude, converted the silver plate of the countess into gold. The count claimed the half of it, because the increase in its value had been obtained on his territory, and under coverture. But the faculty decided against him, because the object claimed had been, before its conversion into gold, the property of the countess, and she could not lose her right of property in it by the transmutation.
In our day, men are only too much disposed to regard the views of the disciples and followers of the Arabian school, and of the late alchemists, on the subject of transmutation of metals, as a mere hallucination of the human mind, and, strangely enough, to lament it. But the idea of the variable and change- able corresponds to universal experience, and always precedes that of the unchangeable. The notion of bodies, chemically simple, was first firmly established in the science by the intro- duction of the Daltonian doctrine, which admits the existence of solid particles, not further divisible, or atoms. But the ideas connected with this view are so little in accordance with our ex- perience of nature, that no chemist of the present day holds the metals, absolutely, for simple, undecomposable bodies, for true elements. Only a few years since, Berzelius was firmly con- vinced of the compound nature of nitrogen, chlorine, bromine, and iodine; and we allow our so-called simple substances to pass for such, not because we know that they are in reality undecom- posable, but because they are as yet undecomposed ; that is, be- cause we cannot yet demonstrate their decomposability, so as to satisfy the requirements of science. But we all hold it possible that this may be done to-morrow. In the year 1807, the alka- lies, alkaline earths, and earths proper, were regarded as simple bodies, till Davy demonstrated that they were compounds of metals with oxygen.
In the last twenty-five years of the preceding century, many of the most distinguished philosophers believed in the transmu- tation of water into earth. Indeed, the belief was so widely prevalent, that Lavoisier, the greatest chemist of his day, thought it advisable, in a series of beautiful experiments, to submit to in- vestigation the grounds on which it rested, and to point out their fallacy. Such notions as that of the production of lime during the incubation of eggs, and of iron and metallic oxides in the animal and vegetable vital processes, have found, even in the present century, acute and enthusiastic defenders.
2560 JUSTUS VON LIEBIG
It is the prevailing ignorance of chemistry, and especially of its history, which is the source of the very ludicrous and exces- sive estimation of ourselves, with which many look back on the age of alchemy; as if it were possible or even conceivable that for more than a thousand years the most learned and acute men, such as Francis Bacon, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, could have regarded as true and well-founded an opinion void of all founda- tion. On the contrary, must we not suppose, as a matter beyond a doubt, that the idea of the transmutability of metals stood in the most perfect harmony with all the observation and all the knowledge of that age, and in contradiction to none of these ?
In the first stage of the development of science, the alche- mists could not possibly have any other notions of the nature of metals than those which they actually held. No others were admissible or even possible; and their views were consequently, by natural law, inevitable. Without these ideas, chemistry would not now stand in its present perfection; and in order to call that science into existence, and in the course of fifteen hundred or two thousand years to bring it to the point which it has now reached, it would have been necessary to create the science anew. We hear it said that the idea of the philosopher's stone was an error; but all our views have been developed from errors, and that which to-day we regard as truth in chemistry, may, perhaps, before to-morrow, be recognized as a fallacy. ...
Alchemy was never at any time anything different from chem- istry. It is utterly unjust to confound it, as is generally done, with the goldmaking of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the alchemists there was always to be found a nucleus of genuine philosophers, who often deceived themselves in their theoretical views; whereas the goldmakers, properly so called, knowingly deceived both themselves and others. Alchemy was the pure science, goldmaking included all those processes in which chemistry was technically applied. The achievements of such alchemists as Glauber, Bottger, and Kunkel, in this direc- tion, may be boldly compared to the greatest discoveries of our
century.
From « Letters on Chemistry.*
JUSTUS VON LIEBIG 256 1
MAN AS A CONDENSED GAS
MANY of the fundamental or leading ideas of the present time appear, to him who knows not what science has already achieved, as extravagant as the notions of the alchemists. Not, indeed, the transmutation of metals, which seemed so proba- ble to the Ancients, but far stranger things are held by us to be attainable. We have become so accustomed to wonders, that noth- ing any longer excites our wonder. We fix the solar rays on paper, and send our thoughts literally with the velocity of light- ning to the greatest distances. We can, as it were, melt copper in cold water, and cast it into statues. We can freeze water into ice, or mercury into a solid malleable mass, in white-hot crucibles; and we consider it quite practicable to illuminate most brightly entire cities with lamps devoid of flame or fire, and to which the air has no access. We produce, artificially, ultramarine, one of the most precious minerals; and we believe that to-morrow or next day some one may discover a method of producing from a piece of charcoal a splendid diamond; from a bit of alum, sap- phires or rubies; or from coal tar the beautiful coloring principle of madder, or the valuable remedies known as quinine and morphine. All these things are either as precious or more useful than gold. Every one is occupied in the attempt to discover them, and yet this is the occupation of no individual inquirer. All are occupied with these things, inasmuch as they study the laws of the changes and transformations to which matter is subject; and yet no one individual is specially engaged in these researches, inasmuch as no one, for example, devotes his life and energies to the solution of the problem of making diamonds or quinine. Did such a man exist, furni.shcd with the necessary knowledge, and with the cour- age and perseverance of the old goldmakers, he would have a good prospect of being enabled to solve such problems. The latest discoveries on the constitution and production of the or- ganic bases permit us to believe all this, without giving to any one the right to ridicule us as makers of gold.
Science has demonstrated that man, the being who performs all these wonders, is formed of condensed or solidified or lique- fied gases; that he lives on condensed as well as uncondensed gases, and clothes himself in condensed gases; that he prepares his food by means of condensed gas, and, by means of the same VII— 161
JUSTUS VON LIEBIG
agent, moves the heaviest weights with the velocity of the wind. But the strangest part of the matter is, that thousands of these tabernacles formed of condensed gas, and going on two legs, oc- casionally, and on account of the production and supply of those forms of condensed gas which they require for food and cloth- ing, or on account of their honor and power, destroy each other in pitched battles by means of condensed gas; and, further, that many believe the peculiar powers of the bodiless, conscious, think- ing, and sensitive being, housed in this tabernacle, to be the re- sult, simply, of its internal structure and the arrangement of its
particles or atoms.
From « Letters on Chemistry.*
JOHN LINGARD
(1771-1851)
^ixgard's " History of England,* which appeared in fourteen vol- umes between 18 19 and 1831, ran through numerous editions during the author's lifetime, and was translated into French, German, and Italian. Cardinal Wiseman called it the only impartial history of England, and it is valued by students because it is, in fact, the only history which gives the material necessary for an impartial study of the evolution of English civilization during the period when the priests of the Roman Catholic Church were hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors, if they persisted in the attempt to say mass any- where in England, Scotland, or Wales. Lingard was born at Win- chester, England, February 7th, 1771. and educated in the Roman Catholic College at Douay, France. Returning to England he was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1795. In 181 1 he took up his residence at Hornby, in Lancashire, where he spent the rest of his life in clerical and literary labors. Besides his *< His- tory of England * he wrote the " History and Antiquities of the An- glo-Saxon Church " and a considerable number of controversial tracts and essays. He died at Hornby, July 17th, 1851.
CROMWELL'S GOVERNMENT BY THE « MAILED HAND»
AT LENGTH (1653) CromwcU fixed on his plan to procure the dissolution of the parliament, and to vest for a time the sovereign authority in a council of forty persons, with him- self at their head. It was his wish to effect this quietly by the votes of the parliament — his resolution to effect it by open force, if such votes were refused. Several meetings were held by the ofBcers and members at the lodj^ings of the lord general in Whitehall. St. John and a few others gave their assent; the rest, under the guidance of Whitelock and Widrington, declared that the dissolution would be dangerous, and the establishment of the proposed council unwarrantable. In the meantime the house resumed the consideration of the new representative body; and several qualifications were voted, to all of which the officers
2564 JOHN LINGARD
raised objections, but chiefly to the ** admission of members, • a project to strengthen the government by the introduction of the presbyterian interest, " Never,* said Cromwell, ^' shall any of that judgment who have deserted the good cause be admitted to power. ** On the last meeting, held on the nineteenth of April, all these points were long and warmly debated. Some of the officers declared that the parliament must be dissolved ^* one way or other * ; but the general checked their indiscretion and precipi- tancy, and the assembly broke up at midnight, with an under- standing that the leading men on each side should resume the subject in the morning.
At an early hour the conference was recommenced, and, after a short time, interrupted, in consequence of the receipt of a notice by the general, that it was the intention of the house to comply with the desires of the army. This was a mistake ; the opposite party had, indeed, resolved to pass a bill of dissolu- tion ; not, however, the bill proposed by the officers, but their own bill, containing all the obnoxious provisions, and to pass it that very morning, that it might obtain the force of law before their adversaries could have time to appeal to the power of the sword. While Harrison <* most strictly and humbly '* conjured them to pause before they took so important a step, Ingoldsby hastened to inform the lord general at Whitehall. His resolution was im- mediately formed, and a company of musketeers received orders to accompany him to the house. At this eventful moment, big with the most important consequences, both to himself and his country, whatever were the workings of Cromwell's mind, he had the art to conceal them from the eyes of the beholders. Leaving the military in the lobby, he entered the house and composedly seated himself on one of the outer benches. His dress was a plain suit of black cloth, with gray worsted stock- ings. For a while he seemed to listen with interest to the de- bate; but when the speaker was going to put the question, he whispered to Harrison, <* This is the time; I must do it*; and rising, put off his hat to address the house. At first his lan- guage was decorous, and even laudatory. Gradually he became more warm and animated; at last he assumed all the vehemence of passion, and indulged in personal vituperation. He charged the members with self-seeking and profaneness; with the frequent denial of justice, and numerous acts of oppression; with idolizing the lawyers, the constant advocates of tyranny; with neglecting
JOHN LINGARD 2565
the men who had bled for them in the field, that they might gain the Presbyterians who had apostatized from the cause; and with doing- all this in order to perpetuate their own power and to replenish their own purses. But their time was come; the Lord had disowned them; he had chosen more worthy instru- ments to perform his work. Here the orator was interrupted by Sir Peter Wentworth, who declared that he had never heard language so unparliamentary, — language, too, the more offensive, because it was addressed to them by their own servant, whom they had too fondly cherished, and whom, by their unprecedented bounty, they had made what he was. At these words Cromwell put on his hat, and, springing from his place, exclaimed, " Come, come, sir, I will put an end to your prating.^* For a few sec- onds, apparently in the most violent agitation, he paced forward and backward, and then, stamping on the floor, added. ** You are no parliament; I say you are no parliament; bring them in. bring them in I" Instantly the door opened, and Colonel Worsley entered, followed by more than twenty tnusketeers. " This," cried Sir Henry Vane, ** is not honest; it is against morality and com- mon honesty. " " Sir Henry Vane, " replied Cromwell ; " Oh, Sir Henry Vane I The Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Vane! He might have prevented this. But he is a juggler, and has not common honesty himself!" From Vane he directed his discourse to Whitelock, on whom he poured a torrent of abuse; then point- ing to Chaloner, "There," he cried, "sits a drunkard"; next to Marten and Wentworth, "There are two whoremasters " ; and afterwards, selecting different members in succession, described them as dishonest and corrupt livers, a shame and scandal to the profession of the Gospel. Suddenly, however, checking him- self, he turned to the guard and ordered them to clear the house. At these words Colonel Harrison took the speaker by the hand and led him from the chair; Algernon Sidney was next com- pelled to quit his seat; and the other members, eighty in num- ber, on the approach of the military, rose and moved towards the door. Cromwell now resumed his discourse. "It is you," he ex- claimed, " that have forced mc to do this. I have sought the Lord both day and night that he would rather slay me than put me on the doing of this work." Alderman Allan took advantage of these words to observe that it was not yet too late to undo what had been done; but Cromwell instq|itly charged him with peculation, and gave him into custody. Wlicn all were gone,
2566 JOHN IINGARD
fixing his eye on the mace, **What," said he, '^ shall we do with this fool's bauble? Here, carry it away.'* Then, taking the act of dissolution from the clerk, he ordered the doors to be locked, and, accompanied by the military, returned to Whitehall.
That afternoon the members of the council assembled in their usual place of meeting. Bradshaw had just taken the chair, when the lord general entered and told them that if they were there as private individuals they were welcome; but if as the council of state, they must know that the parliament was dis- solved, and with it also the council. ** Sir,** replied Bradshaw, with the spirit of an ancient Roman, " we have heard what you did at the house this morning, and before many hours all Eng- land will know it. But, sir, you are mistaken to think that the parliament is dissolved. No power under heaven can dissolve them but themselves; therefore take you notice of that.^* After this protest they withdrew. Thus, by the parricidal hands of its own children, perished the Long Parliament, which, under a vari- ety of forms, had. for more than twelve years, defended and in- vaded the liberties of the nation. It fell without a struggle 01 a groan, unpitied and unregretted. The members slunk away to their homes, where they sought by submission to purchase the forbearance of their new master; and their partisans, if partisans they had, reserved themselves in silence for a day of retribution, which came not before Cromwell slept in his grave. The royal- ists congratulated each other on an event which they deemed a preparatory step to the restoration of the king; the army and navy, in numerous addresses, declared that they would live and die, stand and fall, with the lord general; and in every part of the country the congregations of the saints magnified the arm of the Lord, which had broken the mighty, that In lieu of the sway of mortal men the fifth monarchy the reign of Christ might be established on earth.
From '< History of England."*
LIVY
(Titus Livius)
(c. 59 B. C.-17 A. D.)
pvv's prose style is essentially that of the writer of direct narrative. He is conceded to be the "most important prose writer of the Augustan Age,*^ but if a writer's philosophy were to be judged by the moralizing he does, rather than by the view he takes of events, Livy might fairly be called the least philo- sophical of historians. That he was not so, however; that he did really consider events for their meaning as a part of a connected whole, rather than for their own sake as facts appealing to patriotic or individual vanity, he shows in the preface to his " History. >* "To the following considerations,'* he says, "I wish every one seriously and earnestly to attend: By what kind of men and by what sort of conduct in peace and war the empire has been both acquired ana extended; then, as discipline gradually declines, let him follow in his thoughts the structure of ancient morals (at first as it were leaning aside ; then sink- ing further and further; then beginning to fall precipitate), until he ar- rives at the present times, when our vices have attained to such a height of enormity that we can no longer endure either the burden of them or the sharpness of the necessary remedies. This is the great ad- vantage to be derived from the study of history, — indeed, the only one which can make it answer any profitable and salutary purpose." This certainly is a philosophical motive of the highest order, and those who remember that Livy has defined it as the only motive which justified him in the immense labor of his "History*' will acquit him of the charge of using fact and myth to glorify Rome, rather \han to develop what he conceived to be the truth. The preface to his "History" is an essay of great merit and correct form. It might not be safe to say that no other such can be found in his historical works, but a search through the "History" will seldom show an inter- ruption of the continuity of his narrative longer than half a page at a time. He stops occasionally to define his facts in a few terse sen- tences of comment or explanation, but nearly always he seeks to illustrate his idea of the meaning of history by the statement of fact itself rather than by comment upon it. He was born at Padua (Pataviumj, c. 61 B. C. and died there at the age of seventy-six. Over
2568 LIVY
forty years of his life were spent in Rome, where he wrote his " His- tory* in one hundred and forty-two books, of which thirty-five have come down to us. He also wrote a celebrated treatise on " Oratory * in the form of dialogues, discussing the training of an orator and the secret of his success at the bar and in public life.
ON THE MAKING OF HISTORY jk
WHETHER, in tracing the series of the Roman history from the foundation of the city, I shall employ my time to good purpose is a question V ich I cannot positively deter- mine: nor, were it possible, would I venture to pronounce such determination: for I am aware that the matter is of hisfh an- tiquity, and has been already treated by many others; the latest writers always supposing themselves capable, either of throwing some new light on the subject, or, by the superiority of their talents for composition, of excelling the more inelegant writers who preceded them. However that may be, I shall, at all events, derive no small satisfaction from the reflection that my best endeavors have been exerted in transmitting to posterity the achievements of the greatest people in the world; and if, amidst such a multitude of writers, my name should not emerge from obscurity, I shall console myself by attributing it to the eminent merit of those who stand in my way in the pursuit of fame. It may be further observed that such a subject must require a work of immense extent, as our researches must be carried back through a space of more than seven hundred years; that the state has, from very small beginnings, gradually increased to such a magnitude that it is now distressed by its own bulk; and that there is every reason to apprehend that the generality of readers will receive but little pleasure from the accounts of its first origin, or of the times immediately succeeding, but will be impatient to arrive at that period, in which the powers of this overgrown state have been long employed in working their own destruction. On the other hand, this much will be derived from my labor, that, so long at least as I shall have my thoughts to- tally occupied in investigating the transactions of siich distant ages, without being embarrassed by any of those unpleasing con- siderations, in respect of later days, which, though they might not have, power to warp a writer's mind from the truth, would
LIVY 2569
yet be sufficient to create uneasiness, I shall withdraw myself from the sight of the many evils to which our eyes have been so long accustomed. As to the relations which have been handed down of events prior to the founding of the city, or to the circumstances that gave occasion to its being founded, and which bear the semblance rather of poetic fictions than of authentic records of history: — these, I have no intention either to maintain or refute. Antiquity is always indulged with the privilege of rendering the origin of cities more venerable, by intermixing divine with human agency; and if any nation may claim the privilege of being allowed to consider its original as sacred, and to attribute it to the operations of the gods, surely the Roman people, who rank so high in military fame, may well expect that, while they choose to represent Mars as their own parent, and that of their founder, the other nations of the world may acqui- esce in this, with the same deference with which they acknowl- edge their sovereignty. But what degree of attention or credit may be given to these and such like matters, I shall not consider as verv material.
To the following considerations, I wish every one seriously and earnestly to attend: By what kind of men, and by what sort of conduct, in peace and war, the empire has been both acquired and extended; then, as discipline gradually declines, let him fol- low in his thoughts the structure of ancient morals (at first as it were leaning aside; then sinking further and further; then beginning to fall precipitate), until he arrives at the present times, when our vices have attained to such a height of enormity that we can no longer endure either the burden of them or the sharpness of the necessary remedies. This is the great advan- tage to be derived from the study of history, — indeed, the only one which can make it answer any profitable and salutary purpose; for being abundantly furnished with clear and distinct examples of every kind of conduct, we may select for ourselves, and for the state to which we belong, such as are worthy of imitation; and, carefully noting such as, being dishonorable in their princi- ples, are equally so in their effects, learn to avoid them. Now, either partiality to the subject of my intended work misleads me, or there never was any state either greater, or of purer morals, or richer in good examples, than this of Rome; nor was there fcver any city into which avarice and hixury ma<le their en- trance so late, or wIttp poverty and frujsfallty were so highly
257° i/iVY
and so long held in honor; men contracting their desires in proportion to the narrowness of their circumstances. Of late years, indeed, opulence has introduced a greediness for gain, and the boundless variety of dissolute pleasures has created in many a passion for ruining themselves, and all around them. But let us, in the first stage at least of this undertaking, avoid gloomy reflections, which, when perhaps unavoidable, will not, even then, be agreeable. If it were customary with us, as it is with poets, we would more willingly begin with good omens, and vows, and prayers to the gods and goddesses, that they would propitiously grant success to our endeavors, in the prosecution of so arduous a task.
The preface to his ^^ History '^ complete.
JOHN LOCKE
(1632-1704)
{T IS impossible to overestimate the extent of the influence which ideas defined by John Locke have exerted on the civilization of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. No American of our colonial period had more to do than he did with forcing the revolution which separated the North American colonies from England and created the United States. During the Middle Ages the Schoolmen and others who were left unnoticed by their sovereigns as learned triflers discussed, with all the niceties of scho- lastic method, the question of whether or not one man has ever really derived from heaven the right to render its decrees for the control of others, without their consent and against their will. All the arguments which slowly accumulated on the negative side of this question Locke mastered and co-ordinated, — advancing beyond his predecessors with the confidence which belonged only to the highest genius. His treatise " Of Civil Government '* and his ^< Letters con- cerning Toleration >* bore their ripe fruit in the American Declaration of Independence, the constitution of the United States, and the grad- ual cessation of "religious*^ persecutions, through the use of the po- litical machinery of the State. The worst and the almost only reproach against Locke is that when he attempted to draw a Constitution which would make his ideas practical, he was absurdly inconsistent with his own high ideals. But nothing less was to have been ex- pected. The men who drafted and adopted the Constitution of the United States were consciously or unconsciously moved by the same ideals, but their collective wisdom in what is rightly pronounced the greatest success (jf its kind in history did not free it from inconsist- encies so gross that radical differences of interpretation due to them resulted in the bloodiest civil war of modern times. It is not desir- able to attempt to vindicate Locke against any charge of inconsist- ency, crudity, or absurdity which may be reasonably based on isolated facts of his life and writings. There is scarcely a page in the greatest work of Hacon which does not present similar contrasts. Every genius of the highest order becomes so by virtue of triumphing once or twice only over the iron laws of tradition and environment which govern his generation. In most things he must belong to his generation, or he could not exist in it. In .1 fow things which con-
2572 JOHN LOCKE
stitute his governing idea and are the result of tne Titanic triumph of individuality in its struggle with the governing mind and impulses of the mass, he belongs to the whole past and future of the human race. This itself is an inconsistency; but only in the measure in which it exists and appears does genius exist as the governing in- fluence in the life and work of any man. Locke's great genius showed itself most effectively and usefully in his assertion of fundamental po- litical principles, but it is in his <' Essay concerning Human Under- standing >^ that he develops his greatest power of connected thought. It occasioned one of the most protracted controversies in the history of modern philosophy, — a controversy concerning which it needs only to be said here that in declaring ^^ sensation ** to be the ^^ great source of most of the ideas we have,*> Locke stops with the "understand- ing ** as a mode of interpreting facts. With the faith " which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen,** he does not deal as a part of the understanding. Whatever may be the shortcomings of his philosophy, he has written, without doubt, in a sin- gle sentence, more than the majority of philosophers succeed in put- ting in a volume. That sentence, <^ Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?** is one of the most celebrated and the most pregnant in the history of thought. Locke was born in Somer- set, England, August 29th, 1632. His father was a lawyer who had been a captain in the Parliamentary army during the civil wars ; so that Locke came in his youth directly under the control of the same influences which had educated Pym and Hampden. He completed his scholastic education at Christ's Church, Oxford, in 1656, and for some time afterwards continued to reside at the University as a lec- turer on Greek and Rhetoric. He studied medicine, but did not take a degree, though when he entered the family of the Earl of Shaftes- bury he served as family physician, as well as the Earl's confidential agent. It was through this connection that Locke made his cele- brated failure as a constitution maker. His patron, being at that time one of the "proprietors** of the Carolinas, induced him to attempt to have a model government for the colon3^ After the fall of Shaftes- bury, Locke was compelled to go into exile, and he lived abroad, chiefly in Holland, until 1688, when he returned to England as the favorite of William of Orange, who wished to promote him to high rank in the diplomatic service. Locke declined, however, and became Commissioner of Appeals, — a modest office with light duties, which enabled him to pursue his studies. The " Essaj'' concerning Human Understanding** appeared in 1690, Locke receiving ;^3o for the copy- right. Professor Eraser recalls the fact that this is almost exactly the sum that Kant received for his "Critique of Pure Reason,** the only
JOHN LOCKE 2573
philusopbical work written since Locke's <* Essay.'* which is generally admitted to belong to the same class with it. Locke's health be- gan to fail in 1690, but, in spite of asthma and other infirmities, he continued to write vigorously until 1700. when his accumulating weak- nesses checked, but did not suppress, his activity. His last years were spent in the study of the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. He began his fourth letter on "Toleration'* in 1704 and on the twenty- eighth of October in that year, leaving his work in the middle of a sentence, he declared himself "in perfect charity with all men'* and died. He is buried in the parish church of High Laver in a tomb which attracts few visitors, but his mind is omnipresent as a part of the "perfect charity with all men,'* which, as it imperfectly governs the lives of individuals and enables them to tolerate each other,
constitutes the world's civilization.
W. V. B.
«0F CIVIL GOVERNMENT » — ITS PURPOSES
IF MAN in the state of nature be so free, as has been said, if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to
the greatest, and subject to nobody, why will he part with his freedom ? Why will he give up this empire, and subject him- self to the dominion and control of any other power ? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasions of others. For all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing to quit this condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers; and it is not without reason that he seeks out and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the genera] name. Property.
The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property; to which in the .'^tate of nature there arc many things wanting.
Firstly, there wants an established, settled, known law, re- ceived and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all contro-
2574 JOHN LOCKE
versies between them. For though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures, yet men, being biased by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the applica- tion of it to their particular cases.
Secondly, in the state of nature there wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences ac- cording to the established law. For every one in that state, being both judge and executioner of the law of nature, men being partial to themselves, passion and revenge is very apt to carry them too far, and with too much heat in their own cases, as well as negli- gence and unconcernedness, to make them too remiss in other men's.
Thirdly, in the state of nature there often wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution. They who by any injustice offend will seldom fail, where they are able by force to make good their injustice; such resistance many times makes the punishment dangerous, and fre- quently destructive to those who attempt it.
Thus mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state of nature, being but in an ill condition, while they remain in it, are quickly driven into society. Hence it comes to pass that we seldom find any number of men live any time together in this state. The inconveniences that they are therein exposed to by the irregular and uncertain exercise of the power every man has of punishing the transgressions of others makes them take sanc- tuary under the established laws of government, and therein seek the preservation of their property. It is this makes them so willingly give up every one his single power of punishing, to be exercised by such alone as shall be appointed to it amongst them; and by such rules as the community, or those authorized by them to that purpose, shall agree on. And in this we have the original right and rise of both the legislative and executive power, as well as of the governments and societies themselves.
For in the state of nature, to omit the liberty he has of in- nocent delights, a man has two powers.
The first is to do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of himself, and others within the permission of the law of nature, by which law, common to them all, he and all the rest of man- kind are of one community make up one society, distinct from all other creatures. And were it not for the corruption and
JOHN LOCKE 2575
viciousness of degenerate men there would be no need of any other, no necessity that men should separate from this great and nat- ural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations.
The other power a man has in the state of nature is the power to punish the crimes committed against that law. Both these he gives up when he joins in a private, if I may so call it, or particular political society, and incorporates into any common- wealth separate from the rest of mankind.
The first power, viz., of doing whatsoever he thought fit for the preservation of himself and the rest of mankind, he gives up to be regulated by laws made by the society, so far forth as the preservation of himself and the rest of that society shall require; which laws of the society in many things confine the liberty he had by the law of nature.
Secondly, the power of punishing he wholly gives up, and engages his natural force (which he might before employ in the execution of the law of nature, by his own single authority as he thought fit) to assist the executive power of the society, as the law thereof shall require. For being now in a new state, wherein he is to enjoy many conveniences, from the labor, assistance, and society of others in the same community, as well as protec- tion from its whole strength, he has to part also with as much as his natural liberty, in providing for himself, as the good, pros- perity, and safety of the society shall require; which is not only necessary but just, since the other members of the society do the like.
But though men, when they enter into society, give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature into the hands of the society, to be so far disposed of by the legislative as the good of the society shall require, yet it be- ing only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself, his liberty, and property (for no rational creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse), the power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend further than the common good, but is obliged to secure every one's property by providing against those three defects above mentioned that made the state of na- ture so unsafe and uneasy. And so whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any commonwealth is bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people,
3576 JOHN LOCKE
and not by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide controversies by those laws; and to employ the force of the community at Home only in the execu- tion of such laws, or abroad, to prevent or redress foreign in- juries, and secure the community from inroads and invasion. And all this to be directed to no other end but the peace, safety, and public good of the people.
OF TYRANNY
As USURPATION is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate ad- vantage. When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his will the rule, and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.
If one can doubt this to be truth or reason, because it comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king will make it pass with him. King James I. in his speech to the parliament, 1603, tells them thus: "I will ever prefer the weal of the public and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine, — thinking ever the wealth and weal of the com- monwealth to be my greatest weal and worldly felicity, — a point wherein a lawful king doth directly differ from a tyrant. For I do acknowledge that the special and greatest point of difference that is between a rightful king and a usurping tyrant is this: that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction of his de- sires and unreasonable appetites, the righteous and just king doth, by the contrary, acknowledge himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of his people.'^ And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he hath these words: * The king binds himself by a double oath to the observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom. Tacitly, as by being a king, and so bound to protect as well the people as the laws of
JOHN LOCKE 2577
his kingdom, and expressly by his oath at his coronation; so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws in framing his govern- ment agreeable thereunto, according to that paction which God made with Noah after the Deluge. Hereafter, seedtime and har- vest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease while the earth remaineth. And therefore a king governing in a settled kingdom leaves to be a king and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he leaves off to rule accord- ing to his laws." And a little after, "Therefore all kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be glad to bound themselves within the limits of their laws. And they that persuade them the contrary are vipers and pests, both against them and the commonwealth.*^ Thus that learned king, who well understood the notions of things, makes the difference betwixt a king and a tyrant to consist only in this, that one makes the laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the public the end of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will and appetite.
It is a mistake to think this fault is proper only to monarch- ies; other forms of government are liable to it as well as that. For wherever the power that is put in any hands for the govern- ment of the people and the preservation of their properties is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary irregular commands of those that have it, there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse, and the intolerable do- minion of the Decemviri at Rome was nothing better.
Wherever law ends tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm. And whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command to compass that upon the subject which the law allows, not ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed as any other man who by force invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. lie that hath authority to seize my person in the street may be opposed as a thief and a robber if he endeavor to break into my house to execute a writ, notwith- standing that I know he has such a warrant and such a legal authority as will empower him to arrest me abroad. And why
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this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed. Is it reasonable that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest part of his fath- er's estate, should thereby have a right to take away any of his younger brother's portions ? Or that a rich man, who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor neighbor ? The being rightfully possessed of great power and riches exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam is so far from be- ing an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine and oppression, which the endamaging one another without authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it. For the exceeding the bounds of au- thority is no more a right in a great than a petty oflficer, no more justifiable in a king than a constable; but is so much the worse in him in that he has more trust put in him, has already a much greater share than the rest of his brethren, and is sup- posed, from the advantages of his education, employment, and counselors, to be more knowing in the measures of right and wrong.
May the commands then of a prince be opposed ? May he be resisted as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but imagine he has not a right done him .? This will unhinge and overturn all polities, and, instead of government and order, leave nothing but anarchy and confusion.
To this I answer that force is to be opposed to nothing but to unjust and unlawful force; whoever makes any opposition in any other case draws on himself a just condemnation both from God and man, and so no such danger or confusion will follow, as is often suggested. For: —
Firstly, as in some countries, the person of the prince by law is sacred, and so whatever he commands or does his person is still free from all question or violence, not liable to force, or any judicial censure or condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to the illegal acts of any inferior officer, or other com- missioned by him, unless he will, by actually putting himself into a state of war with his people, dissolve the government, and leave them to that defense which belongs to every one in the state of nature. For of such things who can tell what the end will be ? And a neighbor kingdom has shown the world an odd example. In all other cases the sacredness of the person exempts him from all inconveniences, whereby he is secure, whilst the
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government stands from all violence and harm whatsoever, than which there cannot be a wiser constitution. For the harm he can do in his own person not being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far, nor being able by his single strength to sub- vert the laws, nor oppress the body of the people, should any prince have so much weakness and ill nature as to be willing to do it, the inconvenieucy of some particular mischiefs that may happen sometimes when a heady prince comes to the throne are well recompensed by the peace of the public and security of the government in the person of the chief magistrate thus set out of the reach of danger; it being safer for the body that some few private men should be sometimes in danger to suffer than that the head of the republic should be easily and upon slight occasions exposed.
Secondly, but this privilege belonging only to the king's per- son, hinders not, but they may be questioned, opposed, and re- sisted who use unjust force, though they pretend a commission from him which the law authorizes not. As is plain in the case of him that has the king's writ to arrest a man, which is a full commission from the king, and yet he that has it cannot break open a man's house to do it, nor execute this command of the king upon certain days, nor in certain places, though this com- mission have no such exception in it, but they are the limitations of the law, which, if any one transgress, the king's commission excuses him not. For the king's authority being given him only by the law, he cannot empower any one to act against the law, or justify him by his commission in so doing; the commission or command of any magistrate where he has no authority being as void and insignificant as that of any private man. The differ- ence between the one and the other being that the magistrate has some authority so far and to such ends, and the private man has none at all. For it is not the commission, but the authority, that gives the right of acting, and against the laws there can be no authority; but, notwithstanding such resistance, the king's per- son and authority arc still both secured, and so no danger to governor or government.
Thirdly, supposing a government wherein the person of the chief magistrate is not thus sacred, yet this doctrine of the law- fulness of resisting all unlawful exercises of his power will not, upon every sh'ght occasion, endanger him or embroil the govern- ment. For where the iniured nartv may be relieved, and his
2580 JOHN LOCKE ^
damages repaired by appeal to the law, there can be no pretense for force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from appealing to the law. For nothing is to be accounted hos- tile force but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal. And it is such force alone that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man v/ith a sword in his hand demands my purse in the highway, when perhaps I have not i2d. in my pocket; this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver ;^ioo to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force if I endeavor to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or pos- sibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any), and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other law- fully. The reason whereof is plain, because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it, and when it was gone it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass. The loss was irreparable, which, to prevent the law of nature, gave me a right to destroy him who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my ;£ioo that way.
Fourthly, but if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy which is due by law be, by the same power, obstructed, yet the right of resisting, even in such manifest acts of tyranny, will not sud- denly or on slight occasions disturb the government. For if it reach no further than some private men's cases, though they have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them, yet the right to do so will not easily engage them in a contest wherein they are sure to perish; it being as impossible for one or a few oppressed men to disturb the government, where the body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a raving madman or heady malcontent to overturn a well-settled state, the people be- ing as little apt to follow the one as the other.
But if either these illegal acts have extended to the majority of the people, or if the mischief and oppression has light only 00 some few, but in such cases as the precedent, and conse-
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quences seem to threaten all, and they are persuaded in their consciences, and their laws, and with them their estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too, how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force used against them I cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I confess, that attends all governments whatsoever when the governors have brought it to this pass to be generally suspected of their people; the most dangerous state which they can possibly put themselves in, wherein they are the less to be pitied, because it is so easy to be avoided, — it being impossible for a governor, if he really means the good of his people, and the preservation of them and their laws together, not to make them see and feel it, as it is for the father of a family not to let his children see he loves and takes care of them.
But if all the world shall observe pretenses of one kind and actions of another; arts used to elude the law, and trust of prerogative ( which is an arbitrary power in some things left in the prince's hand to do good, not harm to the people) employed contrary to the end for which it was given. If the people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrate chosen suitable to such ends, and favored or laid by proportionably as they promote or oppose them; if they see several experiments made of arbi- trary power, and that religion underhand favored (though pub- licly proclaimed against) which is readiest to introduce it, and the operators in it supported as much as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the better; if a long train of actings show the councils all tending that way, how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind which way things are going, or from casting about how to save himself, than he could from believing the cap- tain of the ship he was in was carrying him and the rest of the company to Algiers when he found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to again as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him ?
2582 JOHN LOCKE
OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING
THERE is, it is visible, great variety in men's understandings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference be- tween some men in this respect, that art and industry would never be able to master; and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which other men easily at- tain unto. Amongst men of equal education there is a great in- equality of parts. And the woods of America, as well as the schools of Athens, produce men of several abilities in the same kind. Though this be so, yet I imagine most men come very short of what they might attain unto in their several degrees, by a neglect of their understandings. A few rules of logic are thought sufficient in this case for those who pretend to the highest improvement; whereas I think there are a great many natural defects in the understanding capable of amendment, which are overlooked and wholly neglected. And it is easy to perceive that men are guilty of a great many faults in the exer- cise and improvement of this faculty of the mind, which hinder them in their progress and keep them in ignorance and error all their lives. Some of them I shall take notice of, and endeavor to point out proper remedies for in the following discourse.
Besides the want of determined ideas, and of sagacity and ex- ercise in finding out and laying in order intermediate ideas, there are three miscarriages that men are guilty of in reference to their reason, whereby this faculty is hindered in them from that service it might do and was designed for. And he that reflects upon the actions and discourses of mankind will find their de- fects in this kind very frequent and very observable.
The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbors, ministers, or who else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit faith in, for the saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for themselves.
The second is of those who put passion in the place of rea- son, '^nd being resolved that shall govern their actions and argu- ments, neither use their own, nor hearken to other people's reason, any further than it Guits their humor, interest, or party; and these, one may observe, commonly content themselves with words which have no distinct ideas to them, though, in other matters
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that they come with an unbiased indifferency to, they want not abilities to talk and 6car reason, where they have no secret in- clination that hinders them from being untractable to it.
The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason, but, for want of having that which one may call large, sound, round-about sense, have not a full view of all that relates to the question and may be of moment to decide it. We are all shortsighted, and very often see but one side of a matter; our views are not extended to all that has a connection with it. From this defect, I think, no man is free. We see but in part, and we know" but in part, and therefore it is no wonder we con- clude not right from our partial views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of his own parts how useful it is to talk and consult with others, even such as came short with him in capac- ity, quickness, and penetration; for, since no one sees all, and we generally have different prospects of the same thing, accord- ing to our different, as I may say, positions to it, it is not in- congruous to think, nor beneath any man to try, whether another may not have notions of things which have escaped him, and which his reason would make use of, if they came into his mind. The faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceives those who trust to it; its consequences from what it builds on are evident and certain; but that which it oftenest, if not only, misleads us in, is that the principles from which we conclude, the grounds upon which we bottom our reasoning, are but a part; something is left out which should go into the reckoning to make it just and exact.
In this we may see the reason why some men of study and thought, that reason right, and are lovers of truth, do make no great advances in their discoveries of it. Error and truth are uncertainly blended in their minds, their decisions are lame and defective, and they are very often mistaken in their judgments. The reason whereof is, they converse but with one sort of men, they read but one sort of books, they will not come in the hear- ing but of one sort of notions; the truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen in the intellectual world, where light shines, and, as they conclude, day blesses them ; but the rest of that vast expanse they give up to night and darkness, and so avoid coming near it. They have a petty traflflc with known cor- respondents in some little creek; within that they confine them- selves, and arc dexterous managers enough of the wares and prod-
2584 JOHN LOCKE
ucts of that comer with which they content themselves, but will not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge, to survey the riches that nature hath stored other parts with, no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful, than what has fallen to their lot in the admired plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to them contains whatsoever is good in the universe. Those who live thus mewed up within their own contracted territories, and will not look abroad beyond the boundaries that chance, conceit, or lazi- ness has set to their inquiries, but live separate from the notions, discourses, and attainments of the rest of mankind, may not amiss be represented by the inhabitants of the Marian Islands, which, being separated by a large tract of sea from all communion with the habitable parts of the earth, thought themselves the only peo- ple of the world. And though the straitness and conveniences of life amongst them had never reached so far as to the use of fire, till the Spaniards, not many years since, in their voyages from Acapulco to Manila brought it amongst them, yet, in the want and ignorance of almost all things, they looked upon themselves, even after that the Spaniards had brought amongst them the notice of variety of nations abounding in sciences, arts, and con- veniences of life, of which they knew nothing, they looked upon themselves, I say, as the happiest and wisest people in the uni- verse.
We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of any- thing, such at least as would carry us further than can be easily imagined; but it is only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill in anything, and leads us towards perfection.
A middle-aged plowman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and language of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned, and his joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. The legs of a dancing master, and the fingers of a musician, fall, as it were, naturally without thought or pains into regular and admirable motions. Bid them change their parts, and they will in vain endeavor to produce like mo- tions in the members not used to them, and it will require length of time and long practice to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing actions do we find rope dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to! Not but that sundry in almost all manual arts are as wonderful, but I name those which the world takes notice of for such, because, on that very account, they give money to see them. All these admired motions,
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beyond the reach and almost the conception of unpracticed spectators, are nothing but the mere effects of use and industry in men, whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them from those of the amazed lookers-on.
As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is; and most even of those excellencies which are looked on as natural endowments will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery, others for apologues and opposite divert- ing stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather because it is not got by rules; and those who excel in either of them never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learned. But yet it is true that at first some lucky hit which took with somebody, and gained him com- mendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavors that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it without perceiving how; and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never carries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reason- ing are very different, even concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westmin- ster Hall to the Exchange will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking; and one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or Inns of Court.
To what purpose all this, but to show that the difference, so observable in men's iinderstandings and parts, does not arise so much from the natural faculties as acquired habits ? He would be laughed at that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hcdger, at past fifty. And he will not have much bet- ter success who shall endeavor at that age to make a man rea- son well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best pre- cepts of logic or oratory. Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory''; practice must settle
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the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
This being so, that defects and weakness in men's understand- ings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a com^plaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them.
From the essay on «The Conduct of the Understanding. »
CONCERNING TOLERATION AND POLITICS IN THE CHURCHES
THE end of a religious society is the public worship of God, and, by means thereof, the acquisition of eternal life. All discipline ought therefore to tend to that end, and all ec- clesiastical laws to be thereunto confined. Nothing ought nor can be transacted in this society relating to the possession of civil and worldly goods. No force is here to be made use of upon any occasion whatsoever. Force belongs wholly to the civil mag- istrate, and the possession of all outward goods is subject to his jurisdiction.
But it may be asked, by what means, then, shall ecclesiastical laws be established, if they must be thus destitute of all compul- sive power? I answer: They must be established by means suit- able to the nature of such things, whereof the external profession and observation — if not proceeding from a thorough conviction and approbation of the mind — is altogether useless and unprofit- able. The arms by which the members of this society are to be kept within their duty are exhortations, admonitions, and ad- vices. If by these means the offenders will not be reclaimed, and the erroneous convinced, there remains nothing further to be done but that such stubborn and obstinate persons, who give no ground to hope for their reformation, should be cast out and separated from the society. This is the last and utmost force of ecclesiastical authority. No other punishment can thereby be in- flicted than that, the relation ceasing between the body and the member which is cut off. The person so condemned ceases to be a part of the church.
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These things being thus determined, let us inquire, in the next place, how far the duty of toleration extends, and what is required from every one b}* it.
And, firstly, I hold that no church is bound, by the duty of toleration, to retain any such person in her bosom as, after ad- monition, continues obstinately to offend against the laws of the society. For these being the condition of communion and the bond of the society, if the breach of them were permitted with- out any animadversion the society would immediately be thereby dissolved. But, nevertheless, in all such cases care is to be taken that the sentence of excommunication, and the execution thereof, carry with it no rough usage of word or action whereby the ejected person may in any wise be damnified in body or estate. For all force (as has often been said) belongs only to the magis- trate, nor ought any private persons at any time to use force, unless it be in self-defense against unjust violence. Excommuni- cation neither does, nor can, deprive the excommunicated person of any of those civil goods that he formerly possessed. All those things belonged to the civil government, and are under the magistrate's protection. The whole force of excommunication consists only in this: that the resolution of the society in that respect being declared, the union that was between the body and some member comes thereby to be dissolved; and that relation ceasing, the participation of some certain things which the society communicated to its members, and unto which no man has any civil right, comes also to cease. For there is no civil injury done unto the excommunicated person by the church minister's refus- ing him that bread and wine, in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, which was not bought with his, but other men's money. Secondly, no private person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in liis civil enjoyments because he is of another church or religion. All the rights and franchises that belong to him as a man, or as a denizen, are inviolably to be preserved to him. These are not the business of religion. No violence nor injury is to be offered him, whether he be Chris- tian or Pagan. Nay, we must not content ourselves with the narrow measures of bare justice; charity, bounty, and liberality n.-st be added to it. This the Gospel enjoins, this reason di- rects, and this that natural fellowship we arc born into requires of us. Tf any man err from the right way, it is his own misfor- *une, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in
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the things of this life because thou supposest he will be misera. ble in that which is to come.
What I say concerning- the mutual toleration of private persons differing from one another in religion, I understand also of par- ticular churches which stand, as it were, in the same relation to each other as private persons among themselves: nor has any one of them any manner of jurisdiction over any other; no, not even when the civil magistrate (as it sometimes happens) comes to be of this or the other communion. For the civil government can give no new right to the church, nor the church to the civil gov- ernment. So that whether the magistrate join himself to any church, or separate from it, the church remains always as it was before — a free and voluntary society. It neither requires the power of the sword by the magistrate's coming to it, nor does it lose the right of instruction and excommunication by his going from it. This is the fundamental and immutable right of a spontaneous society — that it has power to remove any of its members that transgress the rules of its institution; but it can- not, by the accession of any new members, acquire any right of jurisdiction over those that are not joined with it. And there- fore peace, equity, and friendship are always mutually to be ob- served by particular churches, in the same manner as by private persons, without any pretense of superiority or jurisdiction over one another.
That the thing may be made clearer by an example, let us suppose two churches — the one of Arminians, the other of Cal- vinists — residing in the city of Constantinople. Will any one say that either of these churches has right to deprive the members of the other of their estates and liberty (as we see practiced elsewhere), because of their differing from it in some doctrines and ceremonies, whilst the Turks in the meanwhile silently stand by, and laugh to see with what inhuman cruelty Christians thus rage against Christians ? But if one of these churches hath this power of treating the other ill, I ask which of them it is to whom that power belongs, and by what right. It will be answered, undoubtedly, that it is the orthodox church which has the right of authority over the erroneous or heretical. This is, in great and specious words, to say just nothing at all. P'or every church is orthodox to itself; to others, erroneous or heretical. For what- soever any church believes, it believes to be true; and the con- trary unto those things, it pronounces to be error. So that the
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controversy between these churches about the truth of their doc- trines, and the purity of their worship, is on both sides equal; nor is there any judge, either at Constantinople or elsewhere upon earth, by whose sentence it can be determined. The de- cision of that question belongs to the Supreme Judge of all men, to whom also alone belongs the punishment of the erroneous. In the meanwhile, let those men consider how heinously they sin, who, adding injustice, if not to their error, yet certainly to their pride, do rashly and arrogantly take upon them to misuse the servants of another master, who are not at all accountable to them.
Nay, further: if it could be manifest which of these two dis- senting churches were in the right, there would not accrue thereby unto the orthodox any right of destroying the other. The churches have neither any jurisdiction in worldly matters, nor are fire and sword any proper instruments wherewith to convince men's minds of error, and inform them of the truth. Let us suppose, nevertheless, that the civil magistrate inclined to favor one of them, and to put his sword into their hands, that (by his con- sent) they might chastise the dissenters as they pleased. Will any man say that any right can be derived unto a Christian church over its brethren from a Turkish emperor? An infidel, who has himself no authority to punish Christians for the arti- cles of their faith, cannot confer such an authority upon any society of Christians, nor give unto them a right which he has not himself. This would be the case at Constantinople; and the reason of the thing is the same in any Christian kingdom. The civil power is the same in every place. Nor can that power, in the hands of a Christian prince, confer any greater authority upon the Church than in the hands of a heathen; which is to say, just none at all.
Nevertheless, it is worthy to be observed and lamented that the most violent of these defenders of the truth, the opposers of errors, the exclaimers against schism, do hardly ever let loose this their zeal for God, with which they are so warmed and in- flamed, unless where they have the civil magistrate on their side. But so soon as ever court favor has given them the better end of the staff, and they begin to feel themselves the stronger, then presently peace and charity are to be laid aside. Otherwise they are religiously to be observed. Where they have not the power to carry on persecution and to become masters, there they desire
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to live upon fair terms, and preach up toleration. When they are not strengthened with the civil power, then they can bear most patiently and unmovedly the contagion of idolatry, supersti^ tion, and heresy in their neighborhood; of which on other oc- casions the interest of religion makes them to be extremely apprehensive. They do not forwardly attack those errors which are in fashion at court or are countenanced by the government. Here they can be content to spare their arguments; which yet (with their leave) is the only right method of propagating truth, which has no such way of prevailing as when strong arguments and good reason are joined with the softness of civility and good usage.
Nobody, therefore, in fine, neither single persons nor churches, nay, nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretense of religion. Those that are of another opinion would do well to consider with themselves how pernicious a seed of discord and war, how powerful a provocation to endless hatreds, rapines, and slaughters they thereby furnish unto mankind. No peace and security, no, not so much as common friendship, can ever be es- tablished or preserved amongst men so long as this opinion pre- vails, that dominion is founded in grace and that religion is to be propagated by force of arms.
In the third place, let us see what the duty of toleration re- quires from those who are distinguished from the rest of man- kind ( from the laity, as they please to call us ) by some ecclesias- tical character and ofiice; whether they be bishops, priests, presbyters, ministers, or however else dignified or distinguished. It is not my business to inquire here into the original of the power or dignity of the clergy. This only I say, that whence- soever their authority he sprung, since it is ecclesiastical, it ought to be conf.ned within the bonds of the Church, nor can it in any manner be extended to civil affairs, because the Church itself is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth. The boundaries on both sides are fixed and immovable. He jumbles heaven and earth together, the things most remote and opposite, who mixes these two societies, which are in their orig- inal end, business, and in everything perfectly distinct and in- finitely different from each other. No man, therefore, with whatsoever ecclesiastical office he be dignified, can deprive an- other man that is not of his church and faith either of. liberty
JOHN LOCKE 2591
or of any part of his worldly goods upon the account of that difference between them in religion. For whatsoever is not law- ful to the whole Church cannot by any ecclesiastical right be- come lawful to any of its members.
But this is not all. It is not enough that ecclesiastical men abstain from violence and rapine and all manner of persecution. He that pretends to be a successor of the Apostles, and takes upon him the office of teaching, is obliged also to admonish his hearers of the duties of peace and good-will towards all men, as well towards the erroneous as the orthodox; towards those that differ from them in faith and worship as well as towards those that agree with them therein. And he ought industriously to exhort all men, whether private persons or magistrates ( if any such there be in his church), to charity, meekness, and tolera- tion, and diligently endeavor to allay and temper all that heat and unreasonable averseness of mind which either any man's fiery zeal for his own sect or the craft of others has kindled against dissenters. I will not undertake to represent how happy and how great would be the fruit, both in Church and State, if the pulpits everywhere sounded with this doctrine of peace and toleration, lest I should seem to reflect too severely upon those men whose dignity I desire not to detract from, nor would have it diminished either by others or themselves. But this I say, that thus it ought to be. And if any one that professes himself to be a minister of the Word of God, a preacher of the Gospel of Peace, teach otherwise, he either understands not or neglects the busi- ness of his calling, and shall one day give account thereof unto the Prince of Peace. If Christians are to be admonished that they abstain from all manner of revenge, even after repeated provoca- tions and multiplied injuries, how much more ought they who suffer nothing, who have had no harm done them, forbear vio- lence and abstain from all manner of ill usage towards those from whom they have received none! This caution and temper they ought certainly to use towards those who mind only their own business, and are solicitous for nothing but that (what- ever men think of them ) they may worship God in that manner which they are persuaded is acceptable to him, and in which they have the strongest hopes of eternal salvation. In private domestic affairs, in the management of estates, in the C(jnservation of bodily health, every man may consider what suits his own convenience, and follow what course he likes best. No man com-
2593 JOHN LOCKE
plains of the ill management of his neighbor's affairs. No man is angry with another for an error committed in sowing his land or in marrying his daughter. Nobody corrects a spendthrift for consuming his substance in taverns. Let any man pull down, or build, or make whatsoever expenses he pleases, nobody murmurs, nobody controls him; he has his liberty. But if any man do not frequent the church, if he do not there conform his behavior exactly to the accustomed ceremonies, or if he brings not his children to be initiated in the sacred mysteries of this or the other congregation, this immediately causes an uproar. The neighborhood is filled with noise and clamor. Every one is ready to be the avenger of so great a crime, and the zealots hardly have the patience to refrain from violence and rapine so long till the cause be heard, and the poor man be, according to form, condemned to the loss of liberty, goods, or life. Oh, that our ecclesiastical orators of every sect would apply themselves with all the strength of arguments that they are able to the con- founding of men's errors! But let them spare their persons. Let them not supply their want of reasons with the instruments of force, which belong to another jurisdiction, and do ill become a churchman's hands. Let them not call in the magistrate's au- thority to the aid of their eloquence or learning, lest perhaps, whilst they pretend only love for the truth, this their intemper- ate zeal, breathing nothing but fire and sword, betray their am- bition and show that what they desire is temporal dominion.
From the << Letter concerning Toleration. >>
OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL
EVERY man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such as are those expressed by the words: Whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, ele- phant, army, drunkenness, and others. It is in the first place, then, to be inquired how he comes by them. I know it is a re- ceived doctrine that men have native ideas and original char- acters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have, at large, examined already; and I suppose what I have said in the foregoing book will be much more easily
JOHN LOCKE 2593
admitted, when I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind; for which I shall appeal to every one's own observation and experience.
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be fur- nished ? "Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety ? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowl- edge ? To this I answer in one word, from experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately de- rives itself. Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.
Firstly, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them: and thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities; which, when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they, from external objects, convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call Sensa- tion.
Secondly, the other fountain from which experience furnish- eth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the opera- tions of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got, which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without; and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the diflercnt actings of our own minds; which we, being conscious of and observing in ourselves, do from tlicse re- ceive into our understandings as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might prop- vn— 163
2594 JOHN LOCKE
erly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other Sensation, so I call this, Reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection, then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean that notice w^hich the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them; by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz., external material things, as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term Operations here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.
The understanding seems to me not to have the least glim- mering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensi- ble qualities, which are all those different perceptions they pro- duce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas
of its own operations.
From Book II. «0f Humau Understanding. »
-'■ f . Lhis, R ...y ... aind gets
itself _ reflection, aid be under :ts own opei.. of there cor understanding. These t- as the T'bjects of sens witi the objects
fro nee all our ideas take
Op* here I use in a largv
' 'TIS of the mind al
Bui ai I call the oth'
■^ '■'''•fas it affords beii:
.w j^ .. its own operatic;
'1 the following part of th
mean that notice which tl
nd the manner of them; 1
as of these operations in t)
J., external material thini';
^- of our own min
re to me the only origins
their beginnings. The ter
e, as comprehending n
)ouc us ideas, but some sort metimes from them, such as is the satisfacti* I r xoii .. ig from any thought.
The undv n£; seems to me not to have the lea'^t glir,
ernpJ obi-, ts^^^^n^jj^ ^^)i^mf%'^Md}^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^"■
•c all those riiiferLnt ■"'^•'•ceptions they pr;
aind furnishes "the u.
nsf with ideas^
'his is one of several pictures of its class by whicii Faed is chiefly remem- bered. Next to Scott, who sits on th6 extreme left fbreground, i» Mackenzie. The others in their order from the spectator's left are
Wilson, Crabbe, Lockhart, Wordsworth, Jeffrey (all in the rear of the table).
Ferguson and Campbell yxn front), Moore, Allen, Wilkie and Con»tabl»,
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
(1 794- 1 8 54)
[HiEFLY remembered as the son in law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott, John Gibson Lockhart was in his own gener- ation a literary man of great distinction. He edited the Quarterly Review from 1826 to 1853; and in his official capacity as the leading critic of England, did not hesiiate to pronounce Tennyson a melancholy failure in his first attempts at poetry. Lockhart's own best work was done in verse as the translator of <* Ancient Spanish Ballads,*^ which are never likely to lose their popularity with lovers of spirited, narrative poetry. He was born at Cambusnethan, in Lanarkshire, Scotland, July 14th, 1794, and was educated for the bar. After joining the staff of Blackwoods in 18 18, he never attempted to practice his profession. In 1820 he married Sir Walter Scott's eldest daughter, Sophia. His association with Sir Walter was intimate, qualifying him in every way for his principal prose work, *^ Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott,*' which appeared in seven volumes from 1837 to 1839. He died at Abbotsford, November 25th, 1854.
THE CHARACTER OF SIR WALTER SCOTT
No MAN was a firmer or more indefatigable friend. I know not he ever lost one; and a few with whom, during the energetic middle stage of life, from political difTerenccs or other accidental circumstances, he lived less familiarly, had all gathered round him, and renewed the full warmth of early affec- tion in his later days. There was enough to dignify the connec- tion in their eyes; but nothing to chill it on cither side. The imagination that so completely mastered him when he chose to give her the rein was kept under most determined control when any of the positive obligations of active life came into question. ^ high and pure sense of duty presided over whatever he had to do as a citizen and a magistrate; and as a landlord he con- sidered his estate as an extension of his hearth.
Of his political creed, the many who hold a different one will of course say that it was the natural fruit of his political devo-
2596 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
tion to the mere prejudice of antiquity; and I am quite willing to allow that this must have had a great share in the matter — and that he himself would have been as little ashamed of the word Prejudice as of the word Antiquity. Whenever Scotland could be considered as standing separate on any question from the rest of the empire, he was not only apt, but eager to em- brace the opportunity of again rehoisting, as it were, the old signal of national independence; and I sincerely believe that no circumstance in his literary career gave him so much personal satisfaction as the success of ^* Malachi Malagrowther's Epistles.** He confesses, however, in his diary, that he was aware how much it became him to summon calm reason to battle imaginative prepossessions on this score; and I am not aware that they ever led him into any serious political error. He delighted in letting his fancy run wild about ghosts and witches and horoscopes — but I venture to say, had he sat on the judicial bench a hun- dred years before he was born, no man would have been more certain to give juries sound direction in estimating the pretended evidence of supernatural occurrences of any sort; and I believe, in like manner, that had any anti-English faction, civil or re- ligious, sprung up in his own time in Scotland, he would have done more than any other living man could have hoped to do, for putting it down. He was on all practical points a steady, conscientious Tory of the school of William Pitt; who, though an anti-revolutionist, was certainly anything but an anti-reformer. He rejected the innovations, in the midst of which he died, as a revival, under alarmingly authoritative auspices, of the doctrines which had endangered Britain in his youth, and desolated Europe throughout his prime of manhood. May the gloomy anticipa- tions which hung over his closing years be unfulfilled! But should they be so, let posterity remember the warnings and the resistance of his and other powerful intellects were probably in that event the appointed means for averting a catastrophe in which, had England fallen, the whole civilized world must have been involved.
Sir Walter received a strictly religious education under the eye of parents, whose virtuous conduct was in unison with the principles they desired to instill into their children. From the great doctrines thus recommended he appears never to have swerved; but he must be numbered among the many who have incurred considerable risk of doing so, in consequence of the rigid-
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 2597
ity with which Presbyterian heads of families, in Scotland, were used to enforce compliance with various relics of the puritanical obsen'ance. He took up, early in life, a repugnance to the mode in which public worship is conducted in the Scottish Establish- ment; and adhered to the sister Church, whose system of govern- ment and discipline he believed to be the fairest copy of the primitive polity, and whose litanies and collects he reverenced as having been transmitted to us from the age immediately succeed- ing that of the Apostles. The few passages in his diaries, in which he alludes to his own religious feelings and practices, show clearly the sober, serene, and elevated frame of mind in which he habit- ually contemplated man's relations with his Maker; the modesty with which he shrunk from indulging either the presumption of reason, or the extravagance of imagination, in the province of Faith; his humble reliance on the wisdom and mercy of God; and his firm belief that we are placed in this state of existence, not to speculate about another, but to prepare ourselves for it by active exertion of our intellectual faculties, and the constant cul- tivation of kindness and benevolence towards our fellowmen.
But his moral, political, and religious character has sufficiently impressed itself upon the great body of his writings. He is, in- deed, one of the few great authors of modern Europe who stand acquitted of having written a line that ought to have embittered the bed of death. His works teach the practical lessons of mo- rality and Christianity in the most captivating form — unobtru- sively and unaffectedly. And I think it is not refining too far to say. that in these works, as well as in his whole demeanor as a rnan of letters, we may trace the happy effects — enough has already been said as to some less fortunate and agreeable ones — of his having written throughout with a view to something be- yond the acquisition of personal fame. Perhaps no great poet ever n:ade his literature so completely ancillary to the objects and purposes of practical life. However his imagination might expati:.te, it was sure to rest over his home. The sanctities of domestic love and social duty were never forgotten, and the same circumstance that most ennobled all his triumphs affords also the best apology for his errors.
From « Life of vScott.»
2598 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
BURNS AND THE PUNDITS OF EDINBURGH
IT NEEDS no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensa- tions of an isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergy- men or professors, must have been in the presence of this big- boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, with his great flashing eyes, who, having forced his way among them from the plow-tail at a single stride, manifested in the whole strain of his bearing and con- versation, a most thorough conviction that, in a society of the most eminent men of his nation, he was exactly where he was entitled to be; hardly deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an oc- casional symptom of being flattered by their notice: by turns calmly measured himself against the most cultivated understand- ings of his time in discussion; overpowered the bon mots of the most celebrated convivialists by broad floods of merriment, im- pregnated with all the burning life of genius; astounded bosoms habitually enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social reserve, by compelling them to tremble — nay to tremble visibly — beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos; and all this without indicat- ing the smallest willingness to be ranked among those profes- sional ministers of excitement, who are content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their own persons, even if they had the power of doing it; and — last and probably worst of all — who was known to be in the habit of enlivening societies which they would have scorned to approach, still more frequently than their own, with eloquence no less magnificent; with wit in all likelihood still more daring; often enough, as the superiors whom he fronted without alarm might have guessed from the be- ginning, and had ere long no occasion to guess, with wit pointed at themselves.
The lawyers of Edinburgh, in whose wider circles Burns figured at his outset, with at least as much success as among the pro- fessional literati^ were a very different race of men from these; they would neither, I take it, have pardoned rudeness, nor been alarmed by wit. But being, in those days, with scarcely an ex- ception, members of the landed aristocracy of the country, and forming by far the most influential body, as indeed they still do, in the society of Scotland, they were, perhaps, as proud a set of men as ever enjoyed the tranquil pleasures of unquestioned
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 3599
superiority. What their haughtiness, as a body, was, may be guessed, when we know that inferior birth was reckoned a faif and legitimate ground for excluding any man from the bar. In one remarkable instance, about this very time, a man of very extraordinary talents and accomplishments was chiefly opposed in a long and painful struggle for admission, and, in reality, for no reasons but those I have been alluding to, by gentlemen who, in the sequel, stood at the very head of the Whig party in Edin- burgh ; and the same aristocratical prejudice has, within the mem- ory of the present generation, kept more persons of eminent qualifications in the background, for a season, than any English reader would easily believe. To this body belonged nineteen out of twenty of those patricians, whose stateliness Burns so long re- membered and so bitterly resented. It might, perhaps, have been well for him had stateliness been the worst fault of their man- ners. Winebibbing appears to be in most regions a favorite in- dulgence with those whose brains and lungs are subjected to the severe exercises of legal study and forensic practice. To this day, more traces of these old habits linger about the Inns of Court than in any other section of London. In Dublin and Edinburgh the barristers are even now eminently convivial bodies of men; but among the Scotch lawyers of the time of Burns the principle of jollity was, indeed, in its high and palmy state. He partook largely in those tavern scenes of audacious hilarity, which then soothed, as a matter of course, the arid la- bors of the northern noblesse de la robe — so they were called in " Redgauntlet ** — and of which we are favored with a specimen in the High Jinks chapter of "Guy Mannering. "
From «Life of Burns. >»
CESARE LOMBROSO
(1 836-)
foMBROSO's essays on the *^ Pathology of Genius * created one of the hottest literary discussions of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. While he does not commit himself to the direct assertion that genius is a diseased as well as an abnormal con- dition of the human intellect, the facts and anecdotes with which he illustrated his essays all tended to leave that impression in the mind of the general public. The discussion which ensued was at all times animated and sometimes bitter, frequently subjecting Lombroso him- self to severe tests by his own standards. ^^The Man of Genius, '^ which appeared in 1888, summarizes his conclusions on this subject. He has made a comprehensive study of the pathology of the crimi- nal intellect, and his works on ** criminology *^ are valued by special- ists in all civilized countries. He was born at Venice in November, 1836 (at Verona, according to other authorities). The University of Turin was his Alma Mater, and he is now professor of Psychiatry there.
ECCENTRICITIES OF FAMOUS MEN
FORGETFULNEss IS One of the characteristics of genius. It is said that Newton once rammed his niece's finger into his pipe; when he left his room to seek for anything he usually returned without bringing it. Rouelle generally explained his ideas at great length, and when he had finished, he added: ** But this is one of my arcana which I tell to no one.*^ Sometimes one of his pupils rose and repeated in his ear what he had just said aloud; then Rouelle believed that the pupil had discovered the arcanum by his own sagacity, and begged him not to di- vulge what he had himself just told to two hundred persons. One day, when performing an experiment during a lecture, he said to his hearers: **You see, gentlemen, this caldron over the flame ? Well, if I were to leave off stirring it, an explosion would at once occur which would make us all jump.** While saying these words, he did not fail to forget to stir, and the pre-
CESARE LOMBROSO 2601
diction was accomplished; the explosion took place with a fearful noise: the laboratory windows were all smashed, and the audi- ence fled to the garden. Sir Everard Home relates that he once suddenly lost his memory for half an hour, and was unable to recogriize the house and the street in which he lived; he could not recall the name of the street, and seemed to hear it for the first time. It is told of Ampere that when traveling on horse- back in the country he became absorbed in a problem; then, dismounting, began to lead his horse, and finally lost it; but he did not discover his misadventure until, on arrival, it attracted the attention of his friends. Babinet hired a country house, and after making the payments returned to town; then he found that he had entirely forgotten both the name of the place and from what station he had started.
One day Buffon, lost in thought, ascended a tower and slid down by the ropes, unconscious of what he was doing, like a som- nambulist. Mozart, in carving meat, so often cut his fingers, ac- customed only to the piano, that he had to give up this duty to other persons. Of Bishop Munster, it is said that, seeing at the door of his own antechamber the announcement: "The master of the house is out," he remained there awaiting his own return. Of Toucherel, it is told by Arago, that he once even forgot his own name. Beethoven, on returning from an excursion in the forest, often left his coat on the grass, and often went out hat- less. Once, at Neustadt, he was arrested in this condition, and taken to prison as a vagabond; here he might have remained, as no one would believe that he was Beethoven, if Herzog, the conductor of the orchestra, had not arrived to deliver him. Gioia, in the excitement of composition, wrote a chapter on the table of his bureau instead of on paper. The Abb6 Beccaria, absorbed in his experiments, said during mass: ^'' ltd expcrientia facta est. ^'^ St. Dominic, in the midst of a princely repast, suddenly struck the table and exclaimed: "^ Conclusuvi est contra Mauicheos.^^ It is told of Ampbre that having written a formula, with which lie was pre-occupicd, on the back of a cab, he started in pursuit as soon as the cab went off. Diderot hired vehicles which he then left at the door and forgot, thus needlessly paying coachmen for whole days. He often forgot the hour, the day, the month, and even the person to whom he was speaking; he would then speak long monologues like a somnambulist. Rossini, conducting the orchestra at the rehearsal of his "Barbiere," which was a fiasco,
26o2 CESARE LOMBROSO
did not perceive that the public, and even the performers, had left him alone in the theatre until he reached the end of an act.
Hagen notes that originality is the quality that distinguishes genius from talent. And Jurgen-Meyer: "The imagination of talent reproduces the stated fact; the inspiration of genius makes it anew. The first disengages or repeats; the second in- vents or creates. Talent aims at a point which appears dif- ficult to reach; genius aims at a point which no one perceives. The novelty, it must be understood, resides not in the elements, but in their shock. '^ Novelty and grandeur are the two chief characters which Bettinelli attributes to genius ; " for this rea- son," he says, "poets call themselves troubadours or trouvbres. * Cardan conceived the idea of the education of deaf mutes before Harriot; he caught a glimpse of the application of algebra to geometry and geometric constructions before Descartes. Gior- dano Bruno divined the modern theories of cosmology and of the origin of ideas. Cola di Rienzi conceived Italian unity, with Rome as capital, four hundred years before Cavour and Mazzini. Stoppani admits that the geological theory of Dante, with the re- gard to the formation of seas, is at all points in accordance with the accepted ideas of to-day.
Genius divines facts before completely knowing them; thus Goethe described Italy very well before knowing it; and Schil- ler, the land and people of Switzerland, without having been there. And it is on account of those divinations which all pre- cede common observation, and because genius, occupied with lofty researches, does not possess the habits of the many, and because, like the lunatic and unlike the man of talent, he ia often disordered, the man of genius is scorned and misunder- stood. Ordinary persons do not perceive the steps which have led the man of genius to his creation, but they see the difference between his conclusions and those of others, and the strange- ness of his conduct. Rossini's " Barbiere, '^ and Beethoven's •^Fidelio" were received with hisses; Boito's "Mefistofele" and Wagner's " Lohengrin * have been hissed at Milan. How many academicians have smiled compassionately at Marzolo, who has dis. covered a new philosophic world ! Bolyai, for his invention of the fourth dimension in anti- Euclidian geometry, has been called the geometrician of the insane, and compared to a miller who wishes to make flour of sand. Every one knows the treatment accorded to Fulton and Columbus and Papin, and, in our own days, to
CESARE LOMBROSO 2603
Piatti and Praga and Abel, and to Schliemann, who found Ilium, where no one else had dreamed of looking for it, while learned academicians laughed. "There never was a liberal idea,** wrote Flaubert, " which has not been unpopular; never an act of justice which has not caused scandal; never a great man who has not been pelted with potatoes or struck by knives. ^ The history of human intellect is the history of human stupidity,* as M. de Vol- taire said.**
In this persecution, men of genius have no fiercer or more terrible enemies than the men of academies, who possess the weapons of talent, the stimulus of vanity, and the prestige by preference accorded to them by the vulgar, and by governments which, in large part, consist of the vulgar. There are, indeed, countries in which the ordinary level of intelligence sinks so low that the inhabitants come to hate, not only genius, but even
talent.
From «The Man of Genius.®
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
(1807-1882)
jF THE ability to express the best and most helpful thoughts that are common to humanity in all ages and countries, and to m.ake this expression so lucid, so simple, so truthful, that those who most need to be helped by it are reached, influenced, and elevated — if to do this is the highest work of the poet, then Long- fellow's sphere of usefulness in poetry is higher and more nearly universal than that of any other poet who has written English verse during the nineteenth century. In what may be classed as the pecul- iar qualities of genius, he may not rank with Byron, with Shelley, or even with Tennyson or Swinburne in England, or with Poe and Lanier in America, But his usefulness is incomparably greater in America than that of any other poet of his century. He is pecul- iarly the poet of the home and the favorite of all those who prefer for themselves, or for those they wish to influence, an assured future of quiet usefulness rather than an uncertain and feverish life of that spasmodic admiration which the world bestows only on the extraor- dinary or the abnormal. The quiet stream which, beginning as a cold and pellucid brook flowing from the melting snows of some lofty mountain peak, gathers volume and increasing warmth in the low- lands until, without losing its native purity and clarity, it swells at last to a noble river, fertilizing wide areas of wood and field, of orchard and garden where grain and fruit and flowers in profusion and in beauty cheer the eye and delight the heart as a result of its fructifying influences — this is the type of the usefulness of Longfel- low as a poet; as a benefactor of his own country, as a friend of universal humanity.
That he was one of the greatest scholars of New England, as well as its greatest poet, is a fact which his own modesty left unasserted. But no one who attempts to follow him where his traces are obvious, through the literature of the classical, mediaeval, and modern period, will doubt the extent of his industry or the thoroughness of his scholarship. As a prose writer he has an unpretentious and lucid style of direct statement which is always admirable in its spirit, and seldom at fault in its expression. His prose in the essays he has prefixed to « The Poets and Poetry of Europe, » in his « Hyperion, » and •^Outre-Mer® ranks with the very best prose of its class written in
M
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2605
America, and it is essentially superior both in idea and expression to the best work of the members of Longfellow's own literary circle, who made prose writing much more a specialty that he ever attempted to do. If it were not that his use of German hexameter in his "Evangeline" is still under discussion, it might be said without dan- ger of dispute that he did his best work in everything he attempted, and that he did even his worst work well. It is true when all is said that " Evangeline " is an admirable poem, worthy of its theme and of its author, though its mode is that of Voss rather than of Homer. When all has been admitted that can be truly said in depreciation of Longfellow, his work remains still unimpeached, to testify that there is no higher name in the American literature of the nineteenth cen- tury. He was born at Portland, Maine, February 27th, 1807. After graduating at Bowdoin College in 1825, he spent between two and three years in Europe, returning to become professor of Modern Lan- guages at Bowdoin (1829-1835). After a second visit to Europe he be- came professor of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres at Harvard, where he remained eighteen years, retiring in 1854 and continuing to reside at Cambridge, where he devoted himself to literature. His poems were widely circulated in England, and many of them have been translated into German and other continental languages. He died March 24th, 1882, after a life so placid that but for his deep sor- row at the loss of his wife it might have been redeemed wholly from that pathetic element which so frequently excites, if it does not occa- sion, poetic genius. The placidity of his life which re-appears in his verse has been the chief occasion for the charge of coramonplaceness brought against him. But it is illogical to the last degree to con- found the peaceful with the commonplace. The spirit of peace is as rare in poetry as it is in life, and it is Longfellow's greatest glory that his work expresses it.
W. V. B.
ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE AND POETRY
WF. READ in history that the beauty of an ancient manuscript tempted King Alfred, when a boy at his mother's knee, to learn the letters of the Saxon tonj^fue. A volume which that monarch minstrel wrote in after years now lies before me so beautifully printed that it might tempt any one to learn, not only the letters of the Saxon language, but the language also. The monarch himself is looking from the ornamental in- itial letter of the first chapter. He is crowned and careworn; having a beard, and long, flowing locks, and a face of majesty.
26o6 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
He seems to have just uttered those remarkable words, with which his preface closes: "And now he prays, and for God's name implores, every one of those whom it lists to read this book, that he would pray for him, and not blame him, if he more rightly understand it than he could; for every man must, according to the measure of his understanding, and according to his leisure, speak that which he speaks, and do that which he does. '^
I would fain hope that the beauty of this and other Anglo- Saxon books may lead many to the study of that venerable language. Through such gateways will they pass, it is true, into no gay palace of song; but among the dark chambers and mold- ering walls of an old national literature, all weather-stained and in ruins. They will find, however, venerable names recorded on those v/alls; and inscriptions, worth the trouble of deciphering. To point out the most curious and important of these is my present purpose; and according to the measure of my under- standing, and according to my leisure, I speak that which I speak.
The Anglo-Saxon language was the language of our Saxon forefathers in England, though they never gave it that name. They called it English. Thus King Alfred speaks of translating "from book-latin into English** {of bee Ledene on Englise); Abbot ^Ifric was requested by ^thelward « to translate the book of Genesis from Latin into English ** {anwendan of Ledene on Englise tha hoc Genesis); and Bishop Leofric, speaking of the manuscript he gave to the Exeter Cathedral, calls it «a great English book** {my eel Englise hoc). In other words, it is the old Saxon, a Gothic tongue, as spoken and developed in England. That it was spoken and written uniformly throughout the land is not to be imagined, when we know that Jutes and Angles were in the country as well as Saxons. But that it was essen- tially the same language everywhere is not to be doubted, when we compare pure West Saxon texts with Northumbrian glosses and books of Durham. Hickes speaks of a Dano-Saxon period in the history of the language. The Saxon kings reigned six hundred years; the Danish dynasty, twenty only. And neither the Danish boors, who were earthlings {yrthlingas) in the coun- try, nor the Danish soldiers, who were dandies at the court of King Canute, could, in the brief space of twenty years, have so overlaid or interlarded the pure Anglo-Saxon with their provin-
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2607
cialisms, as to give it a new character, and thus form a new period in its history, as was afterwards done by the Normans.
The Dano-Saxon is a dialect of the language, not a period which was passed through in its history. Down to the Norman Conquest, it existed in the form of two principal dialects; namely, the Anglo-Saxon in the South; and the Dano-Saxon, or North, umbrian, in the North. After the Norman Conquest, the language assumed a new form, which has been called, properly enough, Norman-Saxon and Semi-Saxon.
This form of the language, ever flowing and filtering through the roots of national feeling, custom, and prejudice, prevailed about two hundred years; that is, from the middle of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century, when it became English. It is impossible to fix the landmarks of a language with any great precision; but only floating beacons, here and there. . . .
It is oftentimes curious to consider the far-off beginnings of great events, and to study the aspect of the cloud no bigger than one's hand. The British peasant looked seaward from his harvest field, and saw, with wondering eyes, the piratical schooner of a Saxon Viking making for the mouth of the Thames. A few years — only a few years — afterward, while the same peasant, driven from his homestead north or west, still lives to tell the story to his grandchildren, another race lords it over the land, speaking a different language and living under different laws. This important event in his history is more important in the world's history. Thus began the reign of the Saxons in Eng- land; and the downfall of one nation, and the rise of another, seem to us at this distance only the catastrophe of a stage play.
The Saxons came into England about the middle of the fifth century. They were pagans; they were a wild and warlike people; brave, rejoicing in sea storms, and beautiful in person, with blue eyes, and long flowing hair. Their warriors wore their shields sus- pended from their necks by chains. Their horsemen were armed with iron sledge hammers. Their priests rode upon marcs, and carried into the battlefield an image of the god Irminsula; in figure like an armed man; his helmet crested with a cock; in his right hand a banner, emblazoned with a red rose; a bear carved upon his breast; and, hanging from his shoulders, a shield, on which was a lion in a field of flowers.
26o8 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Not two centuries elapsed before the whole people was con- verted to Christianity. ^Ifric, in his homily on the birthday of St. Gregory, informs us that this conversion was accomplished by the holy wishes of that good man, and the holy works of St. Augus- tine and other monks. St. Gregory beholding one day certain slaves set for sale in the market place of Rome, who were " men of fair countenance and nobly haired,'^ and learning that they were heathen, and called Angles, heaved a long sigh, and said: "Well-away! that men of so fair a hue should be subjected to the swarthy devil! Rightly are they called Angles, for they have angels' beauty; and therefore it is fit that they in heaven should be companions of angels. ^^ As soon, therefore, as he undertook the popehood {^papanJiad under feng), the monks were sent to their beloved work. In the Witena Gemot, or Assembly of the Wise, convened by King Edwin of Northumbria to consider the pro- priety of receiving the Christian faith, a Saxon Ealdorman arose, and spoke these noble words: ^^ Thus seemeth to me, O king, this present life of man upon earth, compared with the time which is unknown to us; even as if you were sitting at a feast, amid your Ealdormen and Thegns in winter time. And the fire is lighted, and the hall warmed, and it rains, and snows, and storms with- out. Then cometh a sparrow, and fiieth about the hall. It cometh in at one door, and goeth out at another. While it is within, it is not touched by the winter's storm; but that is only for a moment, only for the least space. Out of the winter it cometh, to return again into the winter eftsoon. So also this life of man endureth for a little space. What goeth before it and what fol- loweth after, we know not. Wherefore, if this new lore bring aught more certain and more advantageous, then it is worthy that we should follow it.-*^
Thus the Anglo-Saxons became Christians. For the good of their souls they built monasteries and went on pilgrimages to Rome. "The whole country,*^ to use Malmesbury's phrase, "was glorious and refulgent with relics.'^ The priests sang psalms night and day; and so great was the piety of St. Cuthbert, that, according to Bede, he forgot to take off his shoes for months to- gether,— sometimes the whole year round; — from which Mr. Turner infers, that he had no stockings. They also copied the Evangelists, and illustrated them with illuminations; in one of which St. John is represented in a pea-green dress with red stripes. They also drank ale out of buffalo horns and wooden-
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2609
knobbed goblets. A Mercian king gave to the Monastery of Croyland his great drinking horn, that the elder monks might drink therefrom at festivals, and " in their benedictions remember sometimes the soul of the donor, Witlaf. ** They drank his health with that of Christ, the^ Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and other saints. Malmesbury says that excessive drinking was the com- mon vice of all ranks of people. We know that King Hardican- ute died in a revel; and King Edmund, in a drunken brawl at Pucklechurch, being, with all his court, much overtaken by liquor, at the festival of St. Augustine. Thus did mankind go reeling through the Dark Ages; quarreling, drinking, hunting, hawking, singing Psalms, wearing breeches, grinding in mills, eating hot bread, rocked in cradles, buried in coffins, — weak, suflfering, sub- lime. Well might King Alfred exclaim, * Maker of all creatures! help now thy miserable mankind.''
A national literature is a subject which should always be ap- proached with reverence. It is difficult to comprehend fully the mind of a nation; even when that nation still lives, and we can visit it, and its present history, and the lives of men we know, help us to a comment on the written text. But here the dead alone speak. Voices, half understood; fragments of song, ending abruptly, as if the poet had sung no further, but died with these last words upon his lips; homilies, preached to congregations that have been asleep for many centuries; lives of saints, who went to their reward long before the world began to scoff at saint- hood; and wonderful legends, once believed by men, and now, in this age of wise children, hardly credible enough for a nurse's tale; nothing entire, nothing wholly understood, and no further comment or illustration than may be drawn from an isolated fact found in an old chronicle, or, perchance, a rude illumination in an old manuscript! Such is the literature we have now to consider. Such fragments and mutilated remains has the human mind left of itself, coming down through the times of old, step by step, and every step a century. Old men and venerable accompany us through the Past; and, pausing at the threshold of the Present, they put into our hands at parting, such written records of them- selves as they have. We should receive these things with rever- ence. We should respect old age.
*" This leaf, is it not blown about by the wind ? Woe to it for its fate! Alas! it is old." VII — 164
26io HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
What an Anglo-Saxon glee-man was, we know from such commentaries as are mentioned above. King Edgar forbade the monks to be ale-poets (ealascopas) ; and one of his accusations against the clergy of his day was, that they entertained glee-men in their monasteries, where they had dicing, dancing, and singing till midnight. The illumination of an old manuscript shows how a glee-man looked. It is a frontispiece to the Psalms of David. The great psalmist sits upon his throne, with a harp in his hand, and his masters of sacred song around him. Below stands the glee-man; throwing three balls and three knives alternately into the air, and catching them, as they fall, like a modern juggler. But all the Anglo-Saxon poets were not glee-men. All the harp- ers were not hoppesteres, or dancers. The sceop, the creator, the poet, rose, at times, to higher things. He sang the deeds of heroes, victorious odes, death songs, epic poems; or sitting in cloisters, and afar from these things, converted Holy Writ into Saxon chimes.
The first thing which strikes the reader of Anglo-Saxon poetry is the structure of the verse; the short exclamatory lines, whose rhythm depends on alliteration in the emphatic syllables, and to which the general omission of the particles gives great energy and vivacity. Though alliteration predominates in all Anglo-Saxon poetry, rhyme is not wholly wanting. It had line rhymes and final rhymes; which, being added to the alliteration, and brought so near together in the short, emphatic lines, pro- duce a singular effect upon the ear. They ring like blows of hammers on an anvil. For example : —
«Flah mah fliteth, The strong dart flitteth,
Flan man hwiteth, The spear man whetteth,
Burg sorg biteth, Care the city biteth,
Bald aid thwiteth. Age the bold quelleth,
Wraec-faec writheth, Vengeance prevaileth,
Wrath ath smiteth.» Wrath a city assaileth.
Other peculiarities of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which cannot es- cape the reader's attention, are its frequent inversions, its bold transitions, and abundant metaphors. These are the things which render Anglo-Saxon poetry so much more difficult than Anglo- Saxon prose. But upon these points I need not enlarge. It is enough to have thus alluded to them.
One of the oldest and most important remains of Anglo- Saxon literature is the epic poem of " Beowulf. ^^ Its age is
HENRY WADSWORTH LOl/GFELLOW 3611
unknown; but it comes from a very distant and hoar antiquity; scmewhere between the seventh and tenth centuries. It is like a piece of ancient armor; rusty and battered, and yet strong. From within comes a voice sepulchral, as if the ancient armor spoke, telling a simple, straightforward narrative; with here and there the boastful speech of a rough old Dane, reminding one of those made by the heroes of Homer. The style, likewise, is sim- ple,— perhaps one should say austere. The bold metaphors^ which characterize nearly all the Anglo-Saxon poems we have read, are for the most part wanting in this. The author seems mainly bent upon telling us how his Sea-Goth slew the grendel and the firedrake. Pie is too much in earnest to multiply epithets and gorgeous figures. At times he is tedious; at times obscure; and he who undertakes to read the original will find it no easy task. The poem begins with a description of King Hrothgar the Scylding, in his great hall of Heort, which re-echoed with sound of harp and song. But not far off, in the fens and marshes of Jut- land, dwelt a grim and monstrous giant, called Grendel, a de- scendant of Cain. This troublesome individual was in the habit of occasionally visiting the Scylding's palace by night, to see, as the author rather quaintly says, " how the doughty Danes found themselves after their beer carouse. " On his first visit, he de- stroyed some thirty inmates, all asleep, with beer in their brains; and ever afterwards kept the whole land in fear of death. At length the fame of these evil deeds reached the ears of Beowulf, the Thane of Higelac, a famous Viking in those days, who had slain sea monsters, and wore a wild boar for his crest. Straight- way he sailed with fifteen followers for the court of Heort; un- armed, in the great mead hall, and at midnight fought the Grendel, tore off one of his arms, and hung it up on the palace wall as a curiosity; the fiend's fingers being armed with long nails, which the author calls the hand spurs of the heathen hero {Jiaethenes hond-sporu hildc-rinccs). Retreating to his cave, the grim ghost {^rima gasf) departed this hfe; whereat there was great carousing at Heort. Rut at night came the Grendel's mother, and carried away one of the beer-drunken heroes of the ale- wassail {beore druncne ofcr eolwacge). Beowulf, with a great escort, pursued her to the fen lands of the Grendel; plunged, all armed, into a dark-rolling and dreary river, that flowed from the monster's cavern; slew worms and dragons manifold; was dragged to the bottom by the old wife; and seizing a magic sword, which
26 1 2 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
lay among the treasures of that realm of wonders, with one fell blow let her heathen soul out of its bone-house {ban-hus). Hav- ing thus freed the land from the giants, Beowulf, laden with gifts and treasures, departed homeward, as if nothing special had happened; and, after the death of King Higelac, ascended the throne of the Scyldings. Here the poem should end, and, we doubt not, did originally end. But, as it has come down to us, eleven more cantos follow, containing a new series of adventures. Beowulf has grown old. He has reigned fifty years; and now, in his gray old age, is troubled by the devastations of a mon- strous firedrake, so that his metropolis is beleaguered, and he can no longer fly his hawks and merles in the open country. He resolves, at length, to fight with this firedrake; and with the help of his attendant, Wiglaf, overcomes him. The land is made rich by the treasures found in the dragon's cave; but Beowulf dies of his wounds.
Thus departs Beowulf, the Sea-Goth, of the world-kings the mildest to men, the strongest of hand, the most clement to his people, the most desirous of glory. And thus closes the oldest epic in any modern language; written in forty-three cantos and some six thousand lines. The outline, here given, is filled up with abundant episodes and warlike details. We have ale revels, and giving of bracelets, and presents of mares, and songs of bards. The battles with the Grendel and the Firedrake are min- utely described; as likewise are the dwellings and rich treasure- houses of those monsters. The fire stream flows with lurid light; the dragon breathes out flame and pestilential breath; the gigan- tic sword, forged by the Jutes of old, dissolves and thaws like an icicle in the hero's grasp; and the swart raven tells the eagle how he fared with the fell wolf at the death feast. Such is, in brief, the machinery of the poem. It possesses great epic merit, and in parts is strikingly graphic in its descriptions. As we read, we can almost smell the brine, and hear the sea breeze blow, and see the mainland stretch out its jutting promontories, those sea- noses {sae-naessas), as the poet calls them, into the blue waters of the solemn main.
In the words of Mr. Kemble, I exhort the reader "to judge this poem not by the measure of our times and creeds, but by those of the times which it describes; as a rude, but very faithful picture of an age, wanting, indeed, in scientific knowledge, in mechanical expertness, even in refinement; but brave, generous, and
I
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 3613
right principled; assuring him of what I well know, that these echoes from the deserted temples of the past, if listened to in a sober and understanding spirit, bring with thein matter both strengthening and purifying the heart. *^
The next work to which I would call the attention of my readers is very remarkable, both in a philological and in a poeti- cal point of view; being written in a more ambitious style than " Beowulf. *' It is Casdmon's " Paraphrase of Portions of Holy Writ.'^ Casdmon was a monk in the minster of Whitby. He died in the year 680. The only account we have of his life is that given by the Venerable Bede in his ^* Ecclesiastical History."
By some he is called the "father of Anglo-Saxon poetry,** be- cause his name stands first in the history of Saxon songcraft; by others, the "Milton of our forefathers,'* because he sang of Lucifer and the Loss of Paradise.
The poem is divided into two books. The first is nearly com- plete, and contains a paraphrase of parts of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. The second is so mutilated as to be only a series of unconnected fragments. It contains scenes from the New Testament, and is chiefly occupied with Christ's descent into the lower regions; a favorite theme in old times, and well known in the history of miracle plays, as the "Harrowing of Hell,** The author is a pious, prayerful monk; "an awful, reverend, and re- ligious man.** He has all the simplicity of a child. He calls his Creator the Blithe-heart King; the patriarchs, Earls; and their children, Noblemen. Abraham is a wise-heedy man, a guardian of bracelets, a mighty earl; and his wife Sarah, a woman of elfin beauty. The sons of Reuben are called Sea Pirates. A laugher is a laughter-smith (hleahtor-smith) ; the Ethiopians, a people brown with the hot coals of heaven {brtine leode hatuni heofon-coluni).
Striking poetic epithets and passages are not, however, want- ing. Tlicy are sprinkled here and there throughout the nar- rative. The sky is called the roof of nations, the roof adorned with stars. After the overthrow of Pharaoh and his folk, he says, the blue air was with corruption tainted, and the bursting ocean whooped a bloody storm. Nebuchadnezzar described as a naked, unwilling wanderer, a wondrous wretch and weedlcss. Horrid ghosts, swart and sinful,
" Wide through windy halls Wail woeful.**
2614 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW
And, in the sack of Sodom, we are told how many a fearful, pale-faced damsel must trembling go into a stranger's embrace; and how fell the defenders of brides and bracelets, sick with wounds. Indeed, whenever the author has a battle to describe, and hosts of arm-bearing and war-faring men draw from their sheaths the ring-hilted sword of edges doughty {hring-maeled sweord ecgum dihtig), he enters into the matter with so much spirit that one almost imagines he sees, looking from under that monkish cowl, the visage of no parish priest, but of a grim war wolf, as the brave were called in the days when Csedmon wrote.
The genuineness of these remains has been called in ques tion, or, perhaps, I should say, denied, by Hickes and others They suppose the work to belong to as late a period as the tenth century, on account of its similarity in style and dialect to other poems of that age. Besides, the fragment of the ancient Caedmon, given by Bede, describing the Creation, does not cor- respond exactly with the passage on the same subject in the Junian or Pseudo Caedmon; and, moreover, Hickes says he has detected so many Dano-Saxon words and phrases in it, that he "cannot but think it was written by some Northumbrian (in the Saxon sense of the word), after the Danes had corrupted theii language.'' Mr. Thorpe replies very conclusively to all this; that the language of the poem is as pure Anglo-Saxon as that of Alfred himself; that the Danisms exist only in the "imagination of the learned author of the Thesauous *' ; and that, if they were really to be found in the work under consideration, it would prove no more than that the manuscript was a copy made by a Northumbrian scribe, at a period when the language had become corrupted. As to the passage in Bede, the original of Caedmon was not given; only a Latin translation by Bede, which Alfred, in his version of the venerable historian, has retranslated into Anglo-Saxon. Hence the difference between these lines and the opening lines of the poem. In its themes the poem corresponds exactly with that which Bede informs us Casdmon wrote; and its claim to genuineness can hardly be destroyed by such objec- tions as have been brought against it.
Such are the two great narrative poems of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Of a third, a short fragment remains. It is a mutilated thing; a mere torso. Judith of the Apocrypha is the heroine. The part preserved describes the death of Holofernes in a fine, brilliant style, delighting the hearts of all Anglo-Saxon scholars.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 3615
The original will be found in Mr. Thorpe's "Analecta"; and translations of some passages in Turner's *^ History,*^ But a more important fragment is that on the " Death of Byrhtnoth *^ at the battle of Maldon. This, likewise, is in Thorpe; and a prose translation is given by Conybeare in his ^^Illustrations." It savors of rust and antiquity, like " Old Hildebrand '^ in German. What a fine passage is this, spoken by an aged vassal over the dead body of the hero, in the thickest of the fight!
" Byrhtwold spoke ; he was an aged vassal ; he raised his shield; he brandished his ashen spear; he full boldly exhorted the warriors. ^ Our spirit shall be the hardier, our heart shall be the keener, our soul shall be the greater, the more our forces diminish. Here lieth our chief all mangled; the brave one in the dust; ever may he lament his shame that thinketh to fly from this play of weapons! Old am I in life, yet will I not stii hence; but I think to lie by the side of my lord, by that much loved man ! * *
Shorter than either of these fragments is a third on the "Fight of Finsborough." Its chief value seems to be, that it relates to the same action which formed the theme of one of Hrothgar's bards in "Beowulf." Mr. Conybeare has given it a place in his work. In addition to these narrative poems and fragments, two others, founded on "Lives of Saints," are men- tioned, though they have never been published. They are the "Life and Passion of St. Juliana," and the "Visions of the Her- mit Guthlac."
There is another narrative poem, which I must mention here on account of its subject, though of a much later date than the foregoing. It is in the " Chronicle of King Lear and His Daugh- ters," in Norman-Saxon; not rhymed throughout, but with rhymes too often recurring to be accidental. As a poem it has no merit, but shows that the story of Lear is very old; for, in speaking of the old King's death and burial, it refers to a pre- vious account, " as the book tellcth " (ase the bock telleth). Cor- delia is married to Aganippus, king of France; and, after his death, reigns over England, tliough Maglaudus, king of Scotland, declares that it is a " muckle shame, that a queen should be king over the land."
Besides these long, elaborate poems, the Anglo-Saxons had their odes and ballads. Thus, when King Canute was sailing by the abbey of Ely, he heard the voices of the monks chanting
26 1 6 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
their vesper hymn. Whereupon he sang, in the best Anglo- Saxon he was master of, the following rhyme : —
« Merry sang the monks in Ely, As King Canute was steering by; Row, ye knights, near the land, And hear we these monks' song.*
The best and properly speaking, perhaps the only, Anglo- Saxon odes we have, are those preserved in the ^* Saxon Chroni- cle,*^ in recording the events they celebrate. They are five in number. ^^ ^thelstan's Victory at Brunanburh,** A. D. 938; the ^^ Victories of Edmund ^theling,* A. D. 942; the ^^ Coronation of King Edgar,» A. D. 973; the "Death of King Edgar,» A. D. 975; and the « Death of King Edward, » A. D. 1065. The « Battle of Brunanburh ** is already pretty well known by the numerous English versions and attempts thereat, which have been given of it. This ode is one of the most characteristic specimens of Anglo- Saxon poetry. What a striking picture is that of the lad with flaxen hair, mangled with wounds; and of the seven earls of An- laf, and the five young kings, lying on the battlefield, lulled asleep by the sword! Indeed, the whole ode is striking, bold, graphic. The furious onslaught; the cleaving of the wall of shields; the hewing down of banners; the din of the fight; the hard hand-play; the retreat of the Northmen, in nailed ships, over the stormy sea; and the deserted dead, on the battle ground, left to the swart raven, the war hawk, and the wolf ; — all these im- ages appeal strongly to the imagination. The bard has nobly described this victory of the illustrious war smiths (wlance wig- smithas), the most signal victory since the coming of the Saxons into England; so say the books of the old wise men.
And here I would make due and honorable mention of the * Poetic Calendar,'* and of King Alfred's * Version of the Metres of Boethius. ** The " Poetic Calendar ** is a chronicle of great events in the lives of saints, martyrs, and apostles, referred to the days on which they took place. At the end is a strange poem, consisting of a series of aphorisms, not unlike those that adorn a modern almanac.
In addition to these narratives and odes and didactic poems, there is a vast number of minor poems on various subjects, some of which have been published, though for the most part they still lie asleep in manuscripts, — hymns, allegories, doxologies,
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2617
proverbs, enigmas, paraphrases of the Lord's Prayer, poems on Death and the Day of Judgment, and the like. A great quantity of them is contained in the celebrated Exeter Manuscript; a folio given by Bishop Leofric to the Cathedral of Exeter in the elev- enth century, and called by the donor, a " mycel Englisc boc be gehwylcum thingum on leothwisan geworht," a great English book about everything, composed in verse. A minute account of the contents of this manuscript, with numerous extracts, is given by Conybeare in his " Illustrations." Among these is the begin- ning of a very singular and striking poem, entitled, ^* The Soul's Complaint against the Body." But perhaps the most curious poem in the Exeter Manuscript is the ** Rhyming Poem,** to which I have before alluded.
I will close this introduction with a few remarks on Anglo- Saxon prose. At the very boundary stand two great works, like landmarks. These are the ** Saxon Laws,** promulgated by the various kings that ruled the land; and the "Saxon Chronicle,** in which all great historic events, from the middle of the fifth to the middle of the twelfth century, are recorded by contemporary v.-riters, mainly, it would seem, the monks of Winchester, Peter- borough, and Canterbury. Setting these aside, doubtless the most important remains of Anglo-Saxon prose are the writings of King Alfred the Great.
What a sublime old character was King Alfred! Alfred, the Truth-Teller! Thus the ancient historian sumamed him, as others were surnamed the Unready, Ironside, Harefoot. The principal events of his life are known to all men, — the nine battles fought in the first year of his reign; his flight to the marshes and for- ests of Somersetshire; his poverty and suffering, wherein was fulfilled the prophecy of St. Neot, that he should "be bruised like the ears of wheat ** ; his life with the swineherd, whose wife bade him turn the cakes, that they might not be burnt, for she saw daily that lie was a great eater; his successful rally; his victories, and his future glorious reign; these things arc known to all men. And not only these which are events in his life, but also many more, which are traits in his character, and con- trolled events; as, for example, that he was a wise and virtuous man, a religious man, a learned man {ur that age. Perhaps they know, even, how he measured time with his six horn lanterns; also, that he was an author and wrote many books. But of these books how few persons have read even a single line ! And
26 1 8 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
yet it is well worth one's while, if he wish to see all the calm dignity of that great man's character, and how in him the scholar and the man outshone the king. For example, do we not know- better, and honor him more, when we hear from his own lips, as it were, such sentiments as these ? ** God has made all men equally noble in their original nature. True nobility is in the mind, not in the flesh. I wished to live honorably whilst I lived, and, after my life, to leave to the men who were after me my memory in good works ! **
The chief writings of this royal author are his translations of Gregory's ^^ Pastoralis, '^ Boethius's ^^Consolations of Philosophy," Bede's "Ecclesiastical History,* and the "History of Orosius,*' known in manuscripts by the mysterious title of " Hormesta. " Of these works the most remarkable is the Boethius; so much of his own mind has Alfred infused into it. Properly speaking, it is not so much a translation as a gloss or paraphrase; for the Saxon king, upon his throne, had a soul which was near akin to that of the last of the Roman philosophers in his prison. He had suffered, and could sympathize with suffering humanity. He adorned and carried out still further the reflections of Boe- thius. He begins his task, however, with an apology, saying, " Alfred, king, was translator of this book, and turned it from book-latin into English, as he most plainly and clearly could, amid the various and manifold worldly occupations which often busied him in mind and body " ; and ends with a prayer, beseech- ing God, " by the sign of the holy cross, and by the virginity of the blessed Mary, and by the obedience of the blessed Michael, and by the love of all the saints and their merits, * that his mind might be made steadfast to the divine will and his own soul's need.
Other remains of Anglo-Saxon prose exist in the tale of "Apollonius of Tyre'^; the " Bible Translations'^ and "Colloquies* of Abbot ^Ifric; "Glosses of the Gospels,* at the close of one of which the conscientious scribe has written, " Aldred, an un- worthy and miserable priest, with the help of God and St. Cuth- bert, overglossed it in English * ; and, flnally, various miscellaneous treatises, among which the most curious is a " Dialogue between Saturn and Solomon.*
Hardly less curious, and infinitely more valuable, is a " Col- loquy * of ^Ifric, composed for the purpose of teaching boys to speak Latin. The Saxon is an interlinear translation of the
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 3619
Latin. In this " Colloquy " various laborers and handicraftsmen are introduced, — plowmen, herdsmen, huntsmen, shoemakers, and others; and each has his say, even to the blacksmith, who dwells in his smithy amid iron fire sparks and the sound of beating sledge hammers and blowing bellows {iscntie fyr spear ean^ and sivegincga beatendra slecgea, and blawendra byliga).
Complete. From «The Poets and Poetry of Eur ope. »
A WALK IN PERE LACHAISE
Our fathers find their gfraves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.
Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, — to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man.
Sir Thomas Browne's «Urn Burial.*
THE cemetery of P^re Lachaise is the "Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys and beneath the open sky, — in the other their resting place is in the shadowy aisle and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sun- shine and the shower: in the other no sound but the passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the moldering tracery of the tomb.
P^re Lachaise stands just beyond the Barri^re d'Aulney, on a hillside looking toward the city. Numerous gravel walks, winding through shady avenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the principal entrance to a cha])el on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has not its little inclosure planted with shrubbery, and a thick mass of foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as the branches rise and fall upon it, — the occasional note of a bird among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs beneath have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any one can enter that inclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so many
2620 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
great and good men, without feeling the religion of the place steal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomj expression pass off from the stern countenance of Death.
It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited this celebrated spot for the first time. The first object that arrested my attention on entering was a monument in the form of a small Gothic chapel which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to the right hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures, carved in stone and dressed in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. It is the tomb of Ab^lard and Heloise. The history of these two unfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; but perhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbed in the slumber of the grave, Abelard died in the monastery of St. Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body was afterward removed to the convent of the Paraclete, at the request of H^loise, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb. Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the lady abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward, they were again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclete was destroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church of Nogent-sur-Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister at Paris, and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Pere Lachaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life of such passionate and disastrous love, — such sorrows, and tears, and penitence, — their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in the grave ! — that their death should so much resemble their life in its changes and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, its in- quietudes and its persecutions ! — that mistaken zeal should follow them down to the very tomb, — as if earthly passion could glim- mer, like a funeral lamp, amid the damps of the chamel house, and " even in their ashes burn their wonted fires *' !
As I gazed on the sculptured forms before me, and the little chapel whose Gothic roof seemed to protect their marble sleep, my busy memory swung back the dark portals of the past, and the picture of their sad and eventful lives came up before me [n the gloomy distance. What a lesson for those who are en- dowed with the fatal gift of genius! It would seem, indeed, that he who " tempers the wind to the shorn lamb * tempers also his
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2621
chastisements to the errors and infirmities of a weak and simple mind, — while the transgressions of him upon whose nature are IT. ore strongly marked the intellectual attributes of the Deity are followed, even upon earth, by severer tokens of the Divine dis- pleasure. He who sins in the darkness of a benighted intellect sees not so clearly, through the shadows that surround him, the countenance of an offended God; but he who sins in the broad noonday of a clear and radiant mind, when at length the delirium of sensual passion has subsided and the cloud flits away from before the sun, trembles beneath the searching eye of that ac- cusing Power which is strong in the strength of a godlike intel- lect. Thus the mind and the heart are closely linked together, and the errors of genius bear with them their own chastise- ment, even upon earth. The history of Abdlard and Heloi'se is an illustration of this truth. But at length they sleep well. Their lives are like a tale that is told ; their errors are " folded up like a book " ; and what mortal hand shall break the seal that death has set upon them ?
Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left, which conducted me up the hillside. I soon found myself in the deep shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle. I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every step awakened a new tiain of thrilling recollections, for at every step my eye caught the name of some one whose glocy had exalted the character of his native land, and resounded across the waters of the Atlantic. Philoso- phers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre, — where are they ? With the living, and not with the dead ! The right hand has lost its cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed, still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come.
Amid these graves of genius I observed here and there a splendid monument, which had been raised by the pride of family over the dust of men who could lay no claim cither to the grati- tude or remembrance of posterity. Their presence seemed like au iotrusion into the sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there ? Why should it crowd the dust of the great ? That
2 622 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW "
was no thoroughfare of business, — no mart of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants! "What servants,** says Jeremy Tay- lor, *^ shall we have to wait upon us in the grave ? what friends to visit us ? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and un- wholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funerals ? * Material wealth gives a factitious superiority to the living, but the treasures of intellect give a real superiority to the dead; and the rich man, who would not deign to walk the street with the starving and penniless man of genius, deems it an honor, when death has redeemed the fame of the neglected, to have his ashes laid beside him, and to claim with him the silent companionship of the grave.
I continued my walk through the numerous winding paths, as chance or curiosity directed me. Now I was lost in a little green hollow overhung with thick-leaved shrubbery, and then came out upon an elevation, from which, through an opening in the trees, the eye caught glimpses of the city, and the little esplanade at the foot of the hill where the poor lie buried. There poverty hires its grave and takes but a short lease of the narrow house. At the end of a few months, or at most of a few years, the ten- ant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who,* says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried ? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered ? '*
Yet even in that neglected corner the hand of affection had been busy in decorating the hired house. Most of the graves were surrounded with a slight wooden paling, to secure them from the passing footstep; there was hardly one so deserted as not to be marked with its little wooden cross and decorated with a garland of flowers; and here and there I could perceive a solitaiy mourner, clothed in black, stooping to plant a shrub on the grave, or sitting in motionless sorrow beside it.
As I passed on amid the shadowy avenues of the cemetery, 1 could not help comparing my own impressions with those which others have felt when walking alone among the dwellings of the dead. Are, then, the sculptured urn and storied monument noth- ing more than symbols of family pride ? Is all I see around me a memorial of the living more, than of the dead, an empty show of sorrow, v/hicb thus va«iits kself in motuBofeil pageant as)4
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2623
funeral parade ? Is it indeed true, as some have said, that the simple wild flower which springs spontaneously upon the grave, and the rose which the hand of affection plants there, are fitter objects wherewith to adorn the narrow house ? No ! I feel that it is not so! Let the good and the great be honored even in the grave. Let the sculptured marble direct our footsteps to the scene of their long sleep; let the chiseled epitaph repeat their names, and tell us where repose the nobly good and wise! It is not true that all are equal in the grave. There is no equality even there. The mere handful of dust and ashes, the mere dis- tinction of prince and beggar, of a rich winding sheet and a shroudless burial, of a solitary grave and a family vault, — were this all, then, indeed it would be true that death is a com- mon leveler. Such paltry distinctions as those of wealth and poverty are soon leveled by the spade and mattock; the damp breath of the grave blots them out forever. But there are other distinctions which even the mace of death cannot level or ob- literate. Can it break down the distinction of virtue and vice ? Can it confound the good with the bad ? the noble with the base ? all that is truly great, and pure, and godlike, with all that is scorned, and sinful, and degraded? No! Then death is not a common leveler! Are all alike beloved in death and honored in their burial ? Is that holy ground where the bloody hand of the murderer sleeps from crime ? Docs every grave awaken the same emotions in our hearts ? And do the footsteps of the stranger pause as long beside each funeral stone ? No! Then all are not equal in the grave! And as long as the good and evil deeds of men live after them, so long will there be distinctions even in the grave. The superiority of one over an- other is in the nobler and better emotions which it excites; in its more fervent admonitions to virtue; in the livelier recollection which it awakens of the good and the great, whose bodies are crumbling to dust beneath our feet.
If, then, there are distinctions in the grave, surely it is not unwise to designate them by the external marks of honor. Those outward appliances and memorials of respect, — the mournful urn, — the sculptured bust, — the epitaph eloquent in praise, — cannot, indeed, create these distinctions, but they serve to mark them. It is only when pride or wealth builds them to honor the slave of Mammon or the slave of appetite, when the voice from the grave rebukes the false and pompous epitaph, and the dust
2624 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
and ashes of the tomb seem struggling to maintain the superiority of mere worldly rank, and to carry into the grave the baubles of earthly vanity, — it is then, and then only, that we feel how utterly worthless are all the devices of sculpture and the empty pomp of monumental brass!
After rambling leisurely about for some time, reading the in- scriptions on the various monuments which attracted my curios- ity, and giving way to the different reflections they suggested, I sat down to rest myself on a sunken tombstone. A winding gravel walk, overshaded by an avenue of trees, and lined on both sides with richly sculptured monuments, had gradually conducted me to the summit of the hill upon whose slope the cemetery stands. Beneath me in the distance, and dim discovered through the misty and smoky atmosphere of evening, rose the countless roofs and spires of the city. Beyond, throwing its level rays athwart the dusky landscape, sank the broad red sun. The dis- tant murmur of the city rose upon my ear, and the toll of the evening bell came up, mingled with the rattle of the paved street and the confused sounds of labor. What an hour for meditation ! What a contrast between the metropolis of the living and the metropolis of the dead ! I could not help calling to my mind that allegory of mortality, written by a hand which has been many a long year cold : —
" Earth goeth upon earth as man upon mold, Like as earth upon earth never go should, Earth goeth upon earth as glistening gold,
And yet shall earth unto earth rather than he would.
" Lo, earth on earth, consider thou may,
How earth cometh to earth naked alway; Why shall earth upon earth go stout or gay,
Since earth out of earth shall pass in poor array?®
Before I left the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and the objects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I passed the gateway, I turned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel on the summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk of snow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy mass of foliage around, and pointing iipward to the gleam of the departed sun, that still lingered in the sky, and mingled with the soft starlight of a summer evening.
Complete. From «Outre-Mer.»
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2625
WHEN THE SWALLOWS COME
IT WAS a sweet carol, which the Rhodian children sang of old in spring, bearing in their hands, from door to door, a swal- low, as herald of the season : —
* The swallow is come ! The swallow is come ! O fair are the seasons, and light
Are the days that she brings,
With her dusky wings, And her bosom snowy white.'*
A pretty carol, too, is that, which the Hungarian boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the returning stork in spring: —
<< Stork I stork ! poor stork ! Why is thy foot so bloody ? A Turkish boy hath torn it; Hungarian boy will heal it, With fiddle, fife, and drum.*'
But what child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, where spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails, and the misty pennon of the east wind nailed to the mast! Yet even here, and in the stormy month of March even, there are bright warm mornings, when we open our win- dows to inhale the balmy air. The pigeons fly to and fro, and we hear the whirring sound of wings. Old flies crawl out of the cracks, to sun themselves; and think it is summer. They die in their conceit; and so do our hearts within us, when the cold sea breath comes from the eastern sea; and again, —
" The driving hail Upon the window beats with icy flail.**
The red-flowering maple is first in blossom, its beautiful pur- ple flowers unfolding a fortnight before the leaves. The moose- wood follows, with rose-colored buds and leaves; and the dog- wood, robed in the white of its own pure blossoms. Tlien comes the sudden rain storm, and the birds fly to and fro, and shriek. Where do they hide themselves in such storms ? At what fire- sides dry their feathery cloaks ? At the fireside of the great, ▼n— i'j5
2626 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
hospitable sun, to-morrow, not before, — they must sit in wet gar- ments until then.
In all climates spring is beautiful. In the south it is intoxi- cating, and sets a poet beside himself. The birds begin to sing; — they utter a few rapturous notes, and then wait for an answer in the silent woods. Those green-coated musicians, the frogs, make holiday in the neighboring marshes. They, too, belong to the orchestra of nature; whose vast theatre is again opened, though the doors have been so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung with snow and frost, like cobwebs. This is the pre- lude, which announces the rising of the broad green curtain. Al- ready the grass shoots forth. The waters leap with thrilling pulse through the veins of the earth; the sap through the veins of the plants and trees; and the blood through the veins of man. What a thrill of delight in springtime ! What a joy in being and mov- ing ! Men are at work in gardens ; and in the air there is an odor of the fresh earth. The leaf buds begin to swell and blush. The white blossoms of the cherry hang upon the boughs like snowflakes, and ere long our next-door neighbors will be completely hidden from us by the dense green foliage. The May flowers open their soft blue eyes. Children are let loose in the fields and gardens. They hold buttercups under each others' chins, to see if they love butter. And the little girls adorn themselves with chains and curls of dandelions; pull out the yellow leaves to see if the schoolboy loves them, and blow the down from the leafiess stalk. to find out if their mothers want them at home.
And at nio-ht so cloudless and so still! Not a voice of liv- ing thing, — not a whisper of leaf or waving bough, — not a breath of wind, — not a sound upon the earth nor in the air! And over- head bends the blue sky, dewy and soft, and radiant with innu- merable stars, like the inverted bell of some blue flower, sprinkled with golden dust, and breathing fragrance. Or if the heavens are overcast, it is no wild storm of wind and rain; but clouds that melt and fall in showers. One does not wish to sleep, but lies awake to hear the pleasant sound of the dropping rain.
From « Hyperion.*
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2627
THE FIRST BLOOM OF SUMMER
THEY were right, — those old German minnesingers, — to sing' the pleasant summer time! What a time it is! How June stands illuminated in the calendar! The windows are all wide open; only the Venetian blinds closed. Here and there a long streak of sunshine streams in through a crevice. We hear the low sound of the wind among the trees; and, as it swells and freshens, the distant doors clap to, with a sudden sound. The trees are heavy with leaves; and the gardens full of blossoms, red and white. The whole atmosphere is laden with perfume and sunshine. The birds sing. The cock struts about, and crows loftily. Insects chirp in the grass. Yellow buttercups stud the green carpet like golden buttons, and the red blossoms of the clover like rubies. The elm trees reach their long, pendulous branches almost to the ground. White clouds sail aloft; and vapors fret the blue sky with silver threads. The white village gleams afar against the dark hills. Through the meadow winds the river, — careless, indolent. It seems to love the country, and is in no haste to reach the sea. The bee only is at work, — the hot and angry bee. All things else are at play; he never plays, and is vexed that any one should.
People drive out from town to breathe, and to be happy. Most of them have flowers in their hands; bunches of apple blossoms, and still oftener lilacs. Ye denizens of the crowded city, how pleasant to you is the change from the sultry streets to the open fields, fragrant with clover blossoms! How pleasant the fresb breezy country air, dashed with brine from the meadows! Plow pleasant, above all, the flowers, the manifold beautiful flowers!
It is no longer day. Through the trees rises the red moon, and the stars are scarcely seen. In the vast shadow of night, the coolness and the dews descend. I sit at the open window to enjoy them; and hear only the voice of the summer wind. Like black hulks, the shadows of the great trees ride at anchor on the billowy sea of grass. I cannot sec the red and blue flowers, but I know that they are there. Far away in the meadow gleams the silver Charles. The tramp of horses' hoofs sounds from the wooden bridge. Then all is still, save the continuous wind ot the summer night. Sometimes I know not if it be the wind or the sound of the neignbormg eea The village clock strikes; and I foeJ that I am not alone.
2628 HENRY WADSWORTH I,ONGFKI<I.OW
How different is it in the city. It is late and the crowd is
gone. You step out upon the balcony, and lie in the very bo- som of the cool dewy night, as if you folded her garments about you. The whole starry heaven is spread out overhead. Beneath lies the public walk with trees, like a fathomless, black gulf, into whose silent darkness the spirit plunges and floats away, with some beloved spirit clasped ia its embrace. The lamps are still burning up and down the long street. People go by, with gro- tesque shadows, now foreshortened and now lengthening away into the darkness and vanishing, while a new one springs up be- hind the walker, and seems to pass him on the sidev/alk. The iron gates of the park shut with a jangling clang. There are footsteps, and loud voices, — tumult, — a drunken brawl, — an alarm of fire; — then silence again. And now at length the city is asleep, and we can see the night. The belated moon looks over the roofs, and finds no one to welcome her. The moonlight is broken. It lies here and there in the squares, and the opening of streets, — angular, like blocks of white marble.
From « Hyperion."
MEN OF BOOKS
WHAT a strange picture a university presents to the imagina- tion. The lives of scholars in their cloistered stillness; — literary men of retired habits, and professors who study sixteen hours a day, and never see the world but on a Sunday Nature has, no doubt, for some wise purpose, placed in their hearts this love of literary labor and seclusion. Otherwise, who v/ould feed the undying lamp of thought ? But for such men as these, a blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror's banner, would blow it out forever. The light of the soul is easily extinguished. And when- ever I reflect upon these things I become aware of the great im- portance, in a nation's history, of the individual fame of scholars and literary men. I fear that it is far greater than the world is willing to ackaowledge; or, perhaps, I should say, than the world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out from England's history the names of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton only, and how much of her glory would you blot out with them! Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michael
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2629
Angelo, and Raphael, and how much would still be wanting to the completeness of her glory ! How would the history of Spain look if the leaves were torn out, on which are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon ! What would be the fame of Portugal, without her Camoens; of France, without her Racine, and Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany, without her Martin Luther, her Goethe, and Schiller! Nay, what were the nations of old, without their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell me, do not these men in all ages and in all places, emblazon with bright colors the armorial bearings of their country ? Yes, and far more than this; for in all ages and all places they give humanity assurance of its greatness; and say. Call not this time or people wholly barbarous; for thus much, even then and there, could the human mind achieve! But the boisterous world has hardly thought of acknowledging all this. Therein it has shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision, with which, to take a familiar example, the monks of the Middle Ages are regarded ? That they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in an age when books were few, — so few, so precious, that they were often chained to their oaken shelves with iron chains, like galley slaves to their benches, these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon parch- ment all the lore and wisdom of the past, and transmitted it to us. Perhaps it is not too much to say that but for these monks, not one line of the classics would have reached our day. Surely, then, we can pardon something to those superstitious ages, per- haps even the mysticism of the scholastic philosophy, since, after all, we can find no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possi- ble for the real, and the high aspirings of the human mind after a long-sought and unknown somewhat. I think the name of Mar- tin Luther, the monk of Wittenberg, alone sufficient to redeem all monkhood from the reproach of laziness! If this will not, perhaps the vast folios of Thomas Aquinas will; — or the count- less manuscripts, still treasured in old libraries, whose yellow and wrinkl'jd pages remind one of the hands that wrote them, and the faces that once bent over them.
h'roin * Hyperion. »
2630 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW-
LEADERS OF HUMANITY
IT HAS become a common saying, that men of genius are always in advance of their age; which is true. There is something
equally true, yet not so common; namely, that of these men of genius the best and bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of every age. As the German prose poet says, every possible future is behind them. We cannot suppose that a period of time will ever come, when the world, or any consid- erable portion of it, shall have come up abreast with these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.
And oh! how majestically they walk in history; some like the sun, with all his traveling glories round him ; others wrapped in gloom, yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils!
And yet, on earth, these men were not happy, — not all happy, in the outward circumstance of their lives. They were in want, and in pain, and familiar with prison bars, and the damp, weep- ing walls of dungeons! Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those, who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, en- during much, fulfilling much; — and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death, — and the world talks of them, while they sleep.
It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sanc- tified them! As if the Death Angel, in passing, had touched them with the hem of his garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of disease had been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon their souls. And as in the sun's eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this life eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great
eternity, burning solemnly and forever!
From « Hyperion. »
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2631
THE LOOM OF LIFE
LIFE is one, and universal ; its forms many and individual. Throughout this beautiful and wonderful creation there is never-ceasing motion, without rest by night or day, ever weaving to and fro. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle it flies from birth to death, from death to birth; from the beginning seeks the end, and finds it not, for the seeming end is only a dim beginning of a new outgoing and endeavor after the end. As the ice upon the mountain, when the warm breath of the summer's sun breathes upon it, melts, and divides into drops, each of which reflects an image of the sun, so life, in the smile of God's love, divides itself into separate forms, each bearing in it and reflecting an image of God's love. Of all these forms the highest and most perfect in its God likeness is the human soul. The vast cathedral of nature is full of holy scriptures, and shapes of deep, mysterious mean- ing; but all is solitary and silent there; no bending knee, no up- lifted eye, no lip adoring, praying. Into this vast cathedral comes the human soul, seeking its Creator; and the universal silence is changed to sound, and the sound is harmonious, and has a mean- ing, and is comprehended and felt. It was- an ancient saying of the Persians, that the waters rush from the mountains and hurry forth into all the lands to find the lord of the earth; and the flame of the fire, when it awakes, gazes no more upon the ground, but mounts heavenward to seek the lord of heaven; and here and there the earth has built the great watch towers of the mountains, and they lift their heads far up into the sky, and gaze ever upward and around, to see if the Judge of the World comes not! Thus in nature herself, without man, there lies a waiting, and hoping, a looking and yearning, after, an unknown somewhat. Yes; when, above there, where the mountain lifts its head over all others, that it may be alone with tlie clouds and storms of heaven, the lonely eagle looks forth into the gray dawn, to see if the day comes not! when, by the mountain torrent, the brooding raven listens to hear if the chamois is returning from his nightly pasture in the valley; and when the soon uprising sun calls out the spicy odors of the thousand flowers, the Alpine flowers, with heaven's deep blue and the blush of sunset on their leaves; — then there awakes in nature, and the soul of man can see and comprehend it, an expectation and a longing for a future revelation of God's majesty. It awakens, also, when in the fullness
2632 HENRY WADSWOllTH LONGFELLOW
of life, field and forest rest at noon, and througli the stillness is heard only the song of the grasshopper and the hum of the bee; and when at evening the singing lark, up from the sweet-swelling vineyards rises, or in the later hours of night Orion puts on his shining armor, to walk forth in the fields of heaven. But in the soul of man alone is this longing changed to certainty and ful- filled. For lo! the light of the sun and the stars shines through the air, and is nowhere visible and seen; the planets hasten with more than the speed of the storm through infinite space, and their footsteps are not heard, but where the sunlight strikes the firm surface of the planets, where the storm wind smites the wall of the mountain cliff, there is the one seen and the other heard. Thus is the glory of God made visible, and may be seen, where in the soul of men it meets its likeness changeless and firm- standing. Thus, then, stands man ; — a mountain on the boundary between two worlds; — its foot in one, its summit far-rising into the other. From this summit the manifold landscape of life is visible, the way of the past and perishable, which we have left behind us; and, as we evermore ascend, bright glimpses of the
daybreak of eternity beyond us!
From « Hyperion. »
THE MODERN ROMANS
THE modern Romans are a very devout people. The Princess Doria washes the pilgrims' feet in Holy Week ; every even- ing, foul or fair, the whole year round, there is a rosary sung before an image of the Virgin, within a stone's throw of my window; and the young ladies write letters to St. Louis Gon- zaga, who in all paintings and sculpture is represented as young and angelically beautiful. I saw a large pile of these letters a few weeks ago in Gonzaga's chapel, at the church of St. Igna- tius. They were lying at the foot of the altar, prettily written on smooth paper, and tied with silken ribbons of various colors. Leaning over the marble balustrade, I read the following super- scription upon one of them: '•'- AlV Angelico Giovane S. Ltiigi Gonzaga, Paradiso^^ (To the angelic youth St. Louis Gonzaga, Paradise). A soldier with a musket kept guard over this treasure, and I had the audacity to ask him at what hour the mail went out; for which heretical impertinence he cocked his mustache at
HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 2633
me with the most savage look imaginable, as much as to say, " Get thee gone ** : —
t>^
" Andate, Niente pigliate, E mat ritornate?'*
The modern Romans are likewise strongly given to amuse- ments of every description. Panein et circcnscs, says the Latin satirist, when chiding the degraded propensities of his country- men; Panem et circenses, — they are content with bread and the sports of the circus. The same may be said at the present day. Even in this hot weather, when the shops are shut at noon, and the fat priests waddle about the streets with fans in their hands, the people crowd to the Mausoleum of Augustus, to be choked with the smoke of fireworks and see deformed and hump-backed dwarfs tumbled into the dirt by the masked horns of young bul- locks. What a refined amusement for the inhabitants of ^' pom- pous and holy Rome!** ...
Yonder across the square goes a Minente of Trastevere, a fel- low who boasts the blood of the old Romans in his veins. He is a plebeian exquisite of the western bank of the Tiber, with a swarthy face and the step of an emperor. He wears a slouched hat and blue velvet jacket and breeches, and has enormous silver buckles in his shoes. As he marches along he sing a ditty in his own vulgar dialect : —
* Uno, due, e tre, E lo Papa non i Re?^
Now he stops to talk with a woman with a pan of coals in her hand. What violent gestures! what expressive attitudes! Head, hands, and feet are all in motion, — not a muscle is still. It must be some interesting subject that excites him so much and gives such energy to his gestures and his language. No; he only wants to light his pipe!
It is now past midnight. The moon is full and bright, and the shadows lie so dark and massive in the street tliat they seem a part of the walls that cast them. I have just returned from the Coliseum, whose ruins are so marvelously beautiful by moon- light. No stranger at Rome omits this midnight visit; for though there is something unpleasant in having one's admiration fore- stalled, and being, as it were, romantic aforethought, yet the charm
2634 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW
is SO powerful, the scene so surpassingly beautiful and sublime, — the hour, the silence, and the colossal ruin have such a mastery over the soul, — that you are disarmed when most upon your guard, and betrayed into an enthusiasm which perhaps you had silently resolved you would not feel.
On my way to the Coliseum I crossed the Capitoline Hill, and descended into the Roman Forum by the broad staircase that leads to the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus. Close upon my right hand stood the three remaining columns of the temple of the Thunderer and the beautiful Ionic portico of the temple of Concord, their base in shadow, and the bright moon- beam striking aslant upon the broken entablature above. Before me rose the Phocian column — an isolated shaft, like a thin vapor hanging in the air scarce visible — and far to the left the ruins of the temple of Antonio and Faustina and the three colossal arches of the temple of Peace, dim, shadowy, indistinct, seemed to melt away and mingle with the sky. I crossed the Forum to the foot of the Palatine, and, ascending the Via Sacra, passed beneath the Arch of Titus. From this point I saw below me the gigantic outline of the Coliseum, like a cloud resting upon the earth. As I descended the hillside, it grew more broad and high, more definite in its form, and yet more grand in its dimensions, till, from the vale in which it stands encompassed by three of the seven hills of Rome, — the Palatine, the Coelian, and the Esqui- line, — the majestic ruin in all its solitary grandeur "swelled vast to heaven.^*
A single sentinel was pacing to and fro beneath the arched gateway which leads to the interior, and his measured footsteps were the only sound that broke the breathless silence of the night. What a contrast with the scene which that same midnight hour presented, when, in Domitian's time, the eager populace be- gan to gather at the gates, impatient for the morning sports! Nor was the contrast within less striking. Silence, and the quiet moonbeams, and the broad, deep shadows of the ruined wall! Where were the senators of Rome, her matrons, and her virgins ? Where the ferocious populace that rent the air with shouts when in the hundred holidays that marked the dedication of this im- perial slaughterhouse, five thousand wild beasts from the Libyan deserts and the forests of Anatolia made the arena sick with blood ? Where were the Christian martyrs, that died with prayers upon their lips amid the jeers and imprecations of their fellow-
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2635
men ? Wliere the barbarian gladiators, brought forth to the fes- tival of blood, and "butchered to make a Roman holiday?" The awful silence answered, " They are mine ! '* The dust beneath me answered, ^' They are mine ! "
I crossed to the opposite extremity of the amphitheatre. A lamp was burning in the little chapel which has been formed from what was once a den for the wild beasts of the R.oman festivals. Upon the steps sat the old beadsman, the only tenant of the Coliseum, who guides the stranger by night through the long galleries of this vast pile of ruins. I followed him up a narrow wooden staircase, and entered one of the long and majes- tic corridors which in ancient times ran entirely round the am- phitheatre. Huge columns of solid mason work, that seem the labor of Titans, support the flattened arches above; and, though the iron clamps are gone which once fastened the hewn stones to- gether, yet the columns stand majestic and unbroken amid the ruin around them, and seem to defy "the iron tooth of time." Through the arches at the right I • could faintly discern the ruins of the Baths of Titus on the Esquiline; and from the left, through every chink and cranny of the wall, poured in the brilliant light of the full moon, casting gigantic shadows around me, and diffus- ing a soft, silvery twilight through the long arcades. At length I came to an open space where the arches above had crumbled away, leaving the pavement an unroofed terrace high in air. From this point I could see the whole interior of the amphi- theatre spread out beneath me, half in shadow, half in light, with such a soft and indefinite outline that it seemed less an earthly reality than a reflection in the bosom of a lake. The figures of several persons below were just perceptible, mingling grotesquely with their foreshortened shadows. The sound of their voices reached me in a whisper; and the cross that stands in the centre of the arena looked like a dagger thrust into the sand. I did not conjure up the past, for the past had already become identi- fied with the present. It was l)efore me in one of its visible and most majestic forms. The arbitrary distinctions of time, years, ages, centuries were annihilated. I was a citizen of Rome! This was the amphitheatre of Flavins Vespasian!
Mighty is the spirit of the past amid the ruins of the Eter- nal City!
From «Outre-Mer.»
LONGINUS
{c. 210-273 A. D.)
Jhe treatise of Longinus ^^ On the Sublime ** is second in impor- tance among the critical essays of antiquity only to the ** Poetics ^^ of Aristotle. If he cannot claim such strength of intellect as Aristotle possessed, Longinus is unquestionably his supe- rior in taste and appreciation for the subtleties of poetry as well as inherent sympathy for its sublimity. He is, in fine, much more nearly a poet himself than Aristotle, the light from whose intellect is always as dry as it is steady. Longinus frequently flames up into a bril- liancy of which there is no trace in the *^ Poetics. *^ His essay << On the Sublime** has been admired by the greatest intellects of modern times. It was the model of Burke's essay <' On the Sublime and Beau- tiful,** and it seems to have been oftener in the hands of Dr. Johnson than any other critical essay. The text which has come down to us is incomplete, but the treatise is made up of essays, which, though connected by a thread of well-sustained argument, have each an in- dividuality which would make any one of them valuable, if all the rest were lost. Longinus Cassius (sometimes called also Dionysius Cassius Longinus) was a Greek, perhaps born at Emesa in Syria, where his nearest relatives are known to have resided. He was a disciple of Plato, and became celebrated not only for his own works in philosophy, but as the tutor of the equally celebrated Porphyry. The date of his birth is not known, but that of his death is fixed by the tragical circumstance that, becoming secretary to the unfortu- nate Zenobia, he was put to death by the Roman Emperor Aurelian because his loyalty to his queen made him hostile to Roman su- premacy. The question of his authorship of the treatise *'' On the Sublime ** has been disputed by professional critics of the classics, who have found thus some amusement for themselves without dis- crediting the title of Longinus to this great work, or at least with- out discrediting it more seriously than the title of Homer to the ^'Odyssey** and of Shakespeare to « Hamlet** has been discredited by similar recreations in "Higher Criticism.**
W. V. B.
LONGINUS 2037
ON THE SUBLIME
YOU know, my dear Terentianus, that when we perused Ce- cilius's pamphlet ** On the Subhme " together, we thought it below a subject of that magnitude, that it was entirely de- fective in its principal branches, and that its advantage to read- ers, which ought to be the principal aim of every writer, would prove very small. Besides, though in every scientific treatise two points are required: the first, that the nature of the subject treated of be fully explained; the second, I mean in order of writing, since in importance it is superior that directions be given how and by what methods the object sought may be at- tained: yet Cecilhis, who brings ten thousand instances to show what the sublime is, as if his readers were ignorant of the mat- ter, has somehow or other omitted, as unnecessary, the discipline that might enable us to raise our natural genius in any degree whatever to this sublime. But, perhaps, this writer is not so much to be blamed for his omissions as commended for the mere conception of the idea, and his earnest endeavors. You, indeed, have exhorted me also by all means to set down my thoughts on this sublime, on your own account; let us, then, consider whether anything can be drawn from my private studies, for the service of those who write for the world, or speak in public.
But you, my friend, will give me your judgment on whatever I advance with that exactness which is due to truth, and that sincerity which is habitual to you. For well did the sage answer the question, "In what do we most resemble the gods?" when he replied, " In doing good and speaking truth.'* But since I write, my friend, to you, who are thoroughly versed in polite learning, there will be little occasion to use many previous words in proving that the sublime is a certain excellence and per- fection of language, and that the greatest writers, both in verse and prose, have by this alone obtained the prize of glory, and clothed their renown with immortality. For the grand not only persuades, but even transports an audience. And the admirable, by its astounding efTcct, is always more efficacious than that which merely persuades or delights; for in most cases it rests wholly with ourselves either to resist or yield to persuasion. But these, by the application of a sovereign power and irresist- ible might, get the ascendency over every hearer. Again, dex-
2638 LONGINUS
terity of invention, and good order and economy in composition, are not to be discerned from one or two passages, and some- times hardly from the whole texture of a discourse; but the sublime, when uttered in good season, with the lightning's force scatters all before it in an instant, and shows at once the might of genius in a single stroke. For in these, and truths like these, experimentally conversant as you are with them, you might, my dearest Terentianus, be the instructor of others yourself.
But we ought not to advance before we clear the point whether or not there be any art in the sublime or the pathetic. For some are of opinion that they are altogether mistaken who would reduce it to the rules of art. " The sublime [say they] is born with us, and is not to be learned by precept. The only art to reach it is to have the power from Nature.*^ And, as they reason, the productions of Nature are deteriorated and altogether enervated by the emaciating effects of artistic rules.
But I maintain that the contrary might easily appear, would they only reflect that, though Nature for the most part chal- lenges a sovereign and uncontrollable power in the pathetic and sublime, yet she is not altogether lawless, but delights in a proper regulation. That again, though she is in every case the foundation, and the primary source, and original pattern of pro- duction, yet method is able to determine and adjust the meas- ures, and discriminate the season in each thing, and moreover to teach the cultivation and use of them with the greatest degree of certainty. And further, that flights of grandeur are more exposed to danger when abandoned to themselves, without the aid of science, and having nothing to give them steadiness or equipoise, but left to blind impulse alone and untutored daring. For they often, indeed, want the spur, but they stand as frequently in need of the curb.
Demosthenes somewhere judiciously observes that: "In com- mon life success is the greatest good; that the next, and no less important, is conduct, without which the other must be unavoid- ably of short continuance.** Now the same may be asserted of composition, where Nature supplies the place of success, and art the place of conduct.
But there is one consideration which deserves particular at- tentioUj for the very fact that there is anything in eloquence which depends upon Nature alone, could not be known without that light which we receive from art. If, therefore, as I said
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before, he who censures them that pursue such useful literary labors as this in which I am now engaged, would give due at- tention to these reflections, I believe he would no longer think an investigation of this nature superfluous or useless.
"Let them the chimney's flashing flames repel. Could but these eyes one lurking wretch arrest, I'd whirl aloft one streaming curl of flame. And into embers turn his crackling roof. But now a generous song I have not sounded.*
Streaming curls of flame, spewing against heaven, and making Boreas a piper, with such-like expressions, are not tragical, but supertragical; for the diction is coarse and turbid, and the images are jumbled and tumultuous, and therefore cannot possibly adorn or raise the subject; and whenever carefully examined in the light, their show of being terrible gradually disappears, and they become contemptible and ridiculous. Tragedy will indeed, by its nature, admit of some pomp and grandiloquence, yet even in tragedy it is unpardonable to swell immoderately; much less allowable must it therefore be in prose writing, or those works which are founded in truth. Upon this account some expressions of Gorgias the Leontine are ridiculed, who styles Xerxes the Persian Jupiter, and calls vultures living sepulchres. Some ex- pression-j of Callisthenes deserve the same treatment, for they are not sublime, but inflated. And Clitarchus comes under this cen- sure still more, who is like a tree all bark, and who blows, as Sophocles expresses it, " on small pipes, but without a mouth- piece."
Amphicrates, Hegesias, and Matris, may all be taxed with the same imperfections; for often when, in tlieir own opinion, they are all divine, what they imagine to be inspiration proves empty froth.
Upon the whole, bombast seems to be amongst those faults which are most difficult to be avoided; for all who are naturally inclined to aim at grandeur, in shunning the censure of impo- tence and phlegm, are somehow or other hurried into this fault, being persuaded that
"In great attempts 'tis glorious ev'n to fall.»
But tumors in writing, like those in the human body, arc certain disorders. Empty and veiled over with superficial greatness, they
2640 ■ LONGINUS
only delude, and work effects contrary to those for which they were designed. '^ Nothing, '' according to the old saying, ** is drier than a person distempered with a dropsy. ^^
Now this swollen and pufied-up style endeavors to go beyond the true sublime, whereas puerilities are directly opposite to it. They are altogether low and groveling, meanly and faintly ex- pressed, and, in a word, are the most ungenerous and unpardon- able errors that an author can be guilty of.
But what do we mean by a puerility ? Why, it is certainly no more than a schoolboy's thought, which by too eager a pursuit of elegance, becomes dry and insipid. And those persons com- monly fail in this particular who, by an ill-managed zeal for that which is out of the common way, high-wrought, and, above all, sweet, run into trumpery and affected expressions.
To these may be added a third sort of imperfection in the pathetic, which Theodorus has named the Parenthyrse, or an ill- timed emotion. It is an attempt to work upon the passions, where there is no need of pathos; or some excess, where modera- tion is requisite. For some authors, as if from the effects of in- toxication, fall into passionate expressions, which bear no relation at all to their subject, but are whims of their own, or borrowed from the schools. The consequence is, as might be expected, that they meet with nothing but contempt and derision from their unmoved aiidience, — transported themselves, whilst their hearers are calm and unexcited. But I have reserved the pathetic for another place.
Timaeus abounds very much in the Frigid, the other vice I mentioned — a writer, it is true, suf^ficiently skilled in other points, and who sometimes reaches the genuine sublime. He was also a person of great erudition and fertilit}^ of thought, but extreme to mark the imperfections of others, and utterly blind to his own, though a fond desire of new thoughts and uncommon turns has often plunged him mto shameful puerilities. The truth of these assertions I shall confirm by one or two instances alone, since Cecilius has anticipated me in most of them.
When he commends Alexander the Great, he tells us ** that he conquered all Asia in fewer years than it took Isocrates to com- pose his paneg>^ric on the Persian War. ^* A wonderful parallel indeed, between the conqueror of the world and a professor of rhetoric! By your method of computation, Timaeus, the Lacedae- monians fall vastly short of Isocrates in prowess, for they spent
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thirty years in the siege of Messene, he only ten in writing that panegyric.
But how does he inveigh against those Athenians who were made prisoners after the defeat in Sicily, " Guilty [says he] of sacrilege against Hermes, and having defaced his images, they now suffered a just retribution, and chiefly at the hands of Hermo- crates, the son of Hermon, who was paternally descended from the injured deity." Really, my Terentianus, I am surprised that he has not written of Dionysius the tyrant, *' that, for his heinous impiety towards Jupiter (or Dia) and Hercules (Heraclea), he was dethroned by Dion and Heraclides. "
Why should I dwell any longer upon Timaeus, when even the very heroes of good writing, Xcnophon and Plato, though edu- cated in the school of Socrates, sometimes forget themselves, and transgress through an affectation of such pretty flourishes ? The former, in his " Polity of the Lacedaemonians,** speaks thus: '* They observe an uninterrupted silence, and keep their eyes as fixed and unmoved as if they were so many statues of stone or brass. You might with reason think them more modest than the vir- gins in their eyes.** Amphicrates might, perhaps, be allowed to use the term "modest virgins** for the pupils of the eyes; but what an indecency is it in the great Xenophon ! And what a strange persuasion, that the pupils of the eyes should be in gen- eral the seats of modesty, when impudence is nowhere more visi- ble than in the eyes of some ! Homer, for instance, says of an impertinent person: —
" Drunkard ! thou dog in eye ! **
Timffius, as if he had found a booty, could not pass by even this insipid turn of Xenophon without appropriating it. Accord- ingly he speaks thus of Agathocles: " He ravished his own cousin though married to another person, and on the very day when she was first seen by her husband without a veil, — a crime of which none but he who had prostitutes, not virgins, in his eyes could be guilty." Neither is the otherwise divine Plato to be acquitted of this failing, when he says, for instance, " After they are writ- ten, they deposit in the temples these cypress memorials,'* mean- ing the tables of the laws. And in another passage, " As to the walls, Mcgillus, I would join in the opinion of Sparta, to let them sleep supine on the earth, and not to rouse them up.** Neither docs an expression of Herodotus fall short of it, when he calls
VII — 1G6
2642 LONGINUS
beautiful women ^Hhe pains of the eye/^ though this, indeed, may admit of some excuse, since in his history it is spoken by drunken barbarians. But it is not good to incur the ridicule of posterity for a low conception, though uttered by such characters as these.
Now all such instances of the mean and poor in composition take their rise from the same original; I mean that eager pur- suit of uncommon turns of thought, which most infatuates the writers of the present age, for our excellences and defects flow from the same common source. So that those elegant, sublime, and sweet expressions, which contribute so much to success in writing, are frequently made the causes and foundations of op- posite failures. This is manifest in hyperboles and plurals; but the danger attending an injudicious use of these figures I shall exhibit in the sequel of this work. At present it is incumbent upon me to inquire by what means we may be enabled to avoid those vices which border so near upon, and are so easily blended with, the true sublime.
And this may be, if we first of all gain a thorough and criti- cal insight into the nature of the true sublime, which, however, is by no means an easy acquisition. For to pass a right judg- ment upon composition is the last result of long experience. Not but that a power of distinguishing in these things may per- haps be acquired by attending to some such precepts as I am about to deliver.
It should be understood, my dearest friend, that as in the affairs of life nothing great which it is magnanimous to de- spise — as, for example, riches, honors, titles, crowns, and whatever is varnished over with an imposing exterior — can ever be re- garded as worthy or preference in the opinion of a wise man, since to think lightly of such things is no ordinary excellence; for certainly the persons who have ability sufficient to acquire, but scorn them, are more admired than those who actually pos- sess them — much in the same way also must we judge in respect of the sublime, both in poetry and prose. We must care- fully examine whether some things be not tricked out with this seeming grandeur, this imposing exterior of varnish laid on thickly, which, when examined, would be found a mere delusion, meriting the contempt rather than the admiration of a truly great mind ; for, somehow or other, the soul is naturally elevated by the true sublime, and, lifted up with exultation, is filled with
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transport and inward pride, as if what was only heard had been the product of its own invention.
He, therefore, who has a competent share of natural and ac- quired taste, may easily discover the value of any performance from often hearing it. If he find that it does not transport his soul, or exalt his thoughts — that it does not leave in his mind matter for more enlarged reflection than the mere sounds of the words convey, but that on attentive examination its dignity less- ens and declines — he may conclude that whatever pierces no deeper than the ears can never be the true sublime. For that is truly grand and lofty, which the more we consider the greater ideas we conceive of it; whose force is hard, or, rather, impos- sible to withstand; which sinks deep, and makes such impressions on the mind as cannot be easily worn out or effaced. In a word, 5'ou may pronounce that sublime to be commendable and genuine, which pleases all sorts of men at all times. For when persons of different pursuits, habits of life, tastes, ages, principles, agree in the same joint approbation of any performance, then this union of assent, this combination of so many different judg- ments, stamps a high and indisputable value on that performance which meets with such general applause.
Now there are, if I may so express it, five very copious sources of the sublime, if we presuppose a talent for speaking as a com- mon foundation for these five sorts; and, indeed, without it any- thing whatever will avail but little; —
1. The first and most potent of these is a felicitous boldness in the thoughts, as I have laid down in my essay on Xenophon.
2. The second is a capacity of intense and enthusiastic pas- sion; and these two constituents of the sublime are for the most part the imm.ediate gifts of nature, whereas the remaining sources depend also upon art.
3. The third consists in a skillful molding of figures; which are twofold of sentiment- and language.
4. The fourth is a noble and graceful manner of expression, which is not only to select significant and elegant words, but also to adorn the style and embellish it by the assistance of tropes.
5. The fifth source of the sublime, which embraces all the pre- ceding, is to construct the periods with all possible dignity and grandeur,
I proceed next to consider what is comprehended in each of these sources; but must first observe that, of the five, Ceciiius,
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among other defects, has wholly omitted the pathetic. Now, if he thought that the grand and pathetic, as one and the same thing, were always found together, and were naturally insep- arable, he was under a mistake. For some passions are far removed from grandeur and are in themselves of a lowly charac- ter; as pity, grief, fear; and, on the contrary, there are many things grand and lofty without any passion ; as, among a thou- sand instances, we may see, from what the poet has said, with such exceeding boldness of the Aloides: —
<< To raise Huge Ossa on Olympus' top they strove, And place on Ossa Pelion with its grove; That heaven itself, thus climbed, might be assailed.*
But the sublimity of what he afterwards adds is yet greater: —
"Nor would success their bold attempts have failed,*^ etc.
Among the orators also, all panegyrics and orations composed for pomp and show may be sublime in every way, but yet are for the most part void of passion. Whence those orators who excel in the pathetic scarcely ever succeed as panegyrists; and those whose talents lie chiefly in panegyric are very seldom able in affecting the passions. But, on the other hand, if Cecilius was of opinion that the pathetic did not contribute to the sub- lime, and on that account judged it not worth mentioning, he is guilty of an unpardonable error. For I might confidently aver that nothing so much raises discourse as a fine pathos seasonably applied. For it is this that causes it to breathe forth an energy and fire, resembling the intensity of madness and divine instinct, and inspires it in a manner with the present god.
Introductory essay complete. From the text of Morley.
SUBLIMITY IN THE GREAT POETS
BUT though the first and most important of these divisions, I mean elevation of thought, be rather a natural than an' ac- quired qualification, yet we ought to spare no pains to edu- cate our souls to grandeur, and impregnate them, as it were, with generous and enlarged ideas.
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* But how," it will be asked, *' can this be done?" I hinted in another place that this sublimity is an echo of the inward greatness of the soul. Hence it comes to pass that a bare thought without words challenges admiration for the sake of its grandeur alone. Such is the silence of Ajax in the *' Odyssey " (Book XI., V. 565). which is undoubtedly great, and far loftier than anything he could have said.
To arrive at excellence like this, then, we must needs presup- pose as the primary cause of it that an orator of the tru3 genius must have no mean and ungenerous way of thinking. For it is impossible for those who have grovelin.'j and servile ideas, or are engaged in sordid pursuits all their lives, to produce anything^ worthy of admiration and the praise of all posterity. But grand and sublime expressions must in reason flow from them alone whose conceptions are stored and big with greatness. And thus it is that gfrand thoughts are commonly found to have been ut- tered by men of the loftiest minds. When Parmenio cried, " I would accept these proposals if I were Alexander," Alexander replied, "And so would I if I were Parmenio." His answer showed the greatness of his mind.
So the space between heaven and earth marks out the vast reach and capacity of Homer's genius when he says: —
*< While scarce the skies her horrid head can bound. She stalks on earth."
This description may with no less justice be applied to Ho- mer's genius than to Discord.
But what disparity, what a fall there is in Hesiod's descrip- tion of Melancholy, if, at least, the poem of ** The Shield " may be ascribed to him : —
"A fillliy moisture from her nostrils flowed."
He has not represented his image as terrible, btit hateful. On the other hand, with what majesty and pomp does Homer exalt his deities: —
" Far as a shepherd from some spot on high O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye, Through such a space of uir, with thundering sound. At one long leap th' immortal coursers bound."
He measures the leap of the horses by the extent of the world. And who is there that, considcrinjj the exceeding jifreat-
2646 LONGINUS
ness of the space, would not, with good reason, cry out that, * If the steeds of the Deity were to take a second leap, the world it- self would want room for it * ?
How grand, too, are those creations of the imagination in the combat of the gods: —
<< Heaven in loud thunders bids the trumpet sound, And wide beneath them groans the rending ground. Deep in the dismal regions of the dead Th' infernal monarch reared his horrid head. Leaped from his throne, lest Neptune's arm should lay His dark dominions open to the day. And pour in light on Pluto's drear abodes, Abhorred by men, and dreadful ev'n to gods.*
What a prospect is here, my friend! The earth laid open to its centre; Tartarus itself disclosed to view; the whole world turned upside down and rent in twain; all things at once — heaven, hell, things mortal and immortal share alike the toil and danger of that battle! These are terrific representations, but if not allegorically understood, are inapplicable to deity, and violate the laws of propriety. For Homer, in my opinion, when he re- lates the wounds, the seditions, the retaliations, imprisonments, and tears of the deities, with those evils of every kind under which they languish, has to the utmost of his power exalted the heroes who fought at Troy into gods, and degraded the gods into men. Nay, he makes their condition worse than human; for when man is overwhelmed with misfortunes, he has a reserve in the peaceful haven of death. But he makes the infelicity of the gods as everlasting as their nature.
But how far does he excel those descriptions of the combats of the gods, when he sets a deity in his true light, and paints him in all his majesty, purity, and perfection; as in that descrip- tion of Neptune, which has been handled already by several writ- ers:—
"Fierce as he passed the lofty mountains nod, The forests shake, earth trembled as he trod. And felt the footsteps of the immortal god. His whirling wheels the glassy surface sweep; Th' enormous monsters, rolling o'er the deep. Gambol around him on the wat'ry way, And heavy whales in awkward measures playj The sea subsiding spreads a level plain, Exults and cwns the monarch of the main:
LONGINUS a'l>47
The parting waves before his coursers fly; The wond'ring waters leave the axle dry.*
So likewise the Jewish legislator, — no ordinary persoti, — hav- ing conceived a just idea of the power of God, has nobly ex- pressed it in the beginning of his law. "And God said: What? <Let there be light,* and there was light. *Let the earth be,* and the earth was.*
I hope my friend will not think me tedious if I add another quotation from the poet, where he treats of mortal things; that you may see how he is accustomed to mount along with his heroes to heights of grandeur. A thick cloud and embarrassing darkness as of night envelops the Grecian army, and suspends the battle. Ajax, perplexed what course to take, prays thus: —
"Accept a warrior's prayer, eternal Jove; This cloud of darkness from the Greeks remove; Give us but light, and let us see our foes, We'll bravely fall, though Jove himself oppose.**
The feelings of Ajax are here expressed to the life: it is Ajax himself. He begs not for life; a request like that would be be- neath a hero. But because in that hampering darkness he could display his valor in no illustrious exploit, and his great heart was unable to brook a sluggish inactivity in the field of action, he prays for instant light, not doubting to crown his fall with some meritorious deed, though Jove himself should oppose his ef- forts. Here, indeed, Homer, like a brisk and favorable gale, swells the fury of the battle, he is as warm and impetuous as his heroes, or (as he says of Hector) —
•With such a furious rage his steps advance. As when the god of battles shakes his lance. Or baleful flames, on some thick forest cast, Swift marching, lay the wooded mountain waste: Around his mouth a foamy moisture stands.**
Yet Homer himself shows in the *' Odyssey ** (the remark I am going to add is necessary on several accounts) that when a great genius is in decline, a fondness for the fabulous clings fast to age. Many arguments may be brought to prove that this poem was written after the "Iliad"; but this especially, that in the " Odyssfcv " he ha? introduced the sequel of those calamities
2648 }-.ONGINUS
which began at Troy as so many episodes of the Trojan War; and that therein he renders to his heroes the tribute of mourn- ing and lamentations, as that which he had previously resolved to be due to them. For, in reality, the * Odyssey * is no more than the epilogue of the « Iliad '* —
« There warlike Ajax, there Achilles lies, Patroclus there, a man divinely wise; There, too, my dearest son.*
It proceeds, I suppose, from the same cause, that having writ- ten the ** Iliad ** in the youth and vigor of his genius, he has furnished it with continued scenes of action and combat, whereas the greatest part of the ^* Odyssey * consists of narrative, the char- acteristic of old age. So that in the " Odyssey,'* Homer may with justice be likened to the setting sun, whose grandeur still re- mains, without the meridian heat of his beams. For the style is not so grand and majestic as that of the ^* Iliad '* ; the sublimity not kept up in so uniform and sustained a manner throughout; the tides of passion flow not so copiously, nor in such rapid suc- cession; there is not the same fertility of invention and orator- ical energy; nor is it adorned with such a throng of images drawn from real life; but like the ocean when he retires within him- self, and forsakes his proper bounds, so the genius of Homer still exhibits the ebbing of a mighty tide even in those fabulous and incredible ramblings of Ulysses. Not that I am forgetful of those storms which are described in several parts of the ** Odyssey * ; of Ulysses's adventures with the Cyclops, and some other instances of the true sublime. No; I am speaking indeed of old age, but it is the old age of Homer. However, it is evident, from the whole series of the ^^ Odyssey,*' that there is far more of fiction in it than of real life.
I have digressed thus far merely for the sake of showing, as I observed, that, in the decline of their vigor, the greatest gen- iuses are apt to turn aside into trifles. Those stories of shutting up the winds in a bag; of the men. fed by Circe like swine, whom Zoilus calls weeping porkers; of Jupiter's being nursed by doves like one of their young; of Ulysses in a wreck, when he took no sustenance for ten days; and those improbabilities about the slaughter of the suitors; — all these are undeniable instances of what I have said. Dreams, indeed, they are, but such as even Jove might dream.
LONGINUS 2649
Accept, my friend, in further excuse of this inquiry into the character of the "Odyssey,** my desire of convincing you that a decrease of the pathetic in great orators and poets often ends in the moral kind of writing. Thus the " Odyssey," furnishing us with ethical narratives relating to that course of life which the suitors led in the palace of Ulysses, has in some degree the air of a comedy, wherein the various manners of men are described.
Let us consider next whether we cannot find out some other means to infuse sublimity into our style. Now, as there are no subjects which are not attended by certain circumstances which are always found where they exist, a judicious choice of the most suitable of these adjuncts, and a faculty of accumulating them into one body, as it were, must necessarily produce the sublime. For what by the judgment displayed in the circumstances se- lected, and what by the skillful combination of them, they can- not but attract the hearer.
Sappho is an instance of this; who, in portraying the charac- teristics of intense love, always selects her materials from its at- tendant circumstances, and from the passion as it really exists in nature. But in what particular has she shown her excellence ? In her ability to select those circumstances which are most strik- ing and effective, and afterwards to connect them together: —
"Blest as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while Softly speak and sweetly smile.
*'Twas this deprived my soul of rest, And raised such tumults in my breast; For while I gazed, in transport tost. My breath was gone, my voice was lost.
"My bosom glowed; the subtle flame Ran quick through all my vital frame; O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung; My ears with hollow murmurs rung.
"In dewy damps my limbs were chilled; My blood with gentle horrors thrilled; My fecV)le pulse forgot to play, I fainted, sunk, and died away."
Are you net amazed, my friend, to find how in the same mo- ment she is to seek for her soul, her body, her ears, her tongue,
2650 LrONGINUS
her eyes, her color, all of them as much absent from her as if they had never belonged to her ? And what contrary affections she feels together! • How she glows, chills, raves, reasons; for either she is in tumults of alarm, or she is dying away. The effect of which is, that she seems not to be attacked by one alone, but by a combination of affections.
All the symptoms of this kind are true effects of love; but the excellence of this ode, as I observed before, consists in the judicious choice and connection of the most striking circum- stances. And it proceeds from his due application of the most formidable incidents, that the poet excels so much in describing tempests. The author of the poem on the Arimaspians deems these things full of terror: —
<*Ye powers, what madness! How on ships so frail (Tremendous thought!) can thoughtless mortals sail? For stormy seas they quit the pleasing plain, Plant woods in waves, and dwell amidst the main. Far o'er the deep, a trackless path, they go. And wander oceans in pursuit of woe. No ease their hearts, no rest their eyes can find, On heaven their looks, and on the waves their mind Sunk are their spirits, while their arms they rear. And gods are wearied with their fruitless prayer.*
But every impartial reader will discern that these lines are more florid than terrible. But how does Homer raise a description, to mention only one example amongst a thousand! —
^^ He bursts upon them all : Bursts as a wave that from the cloud impends. And swelled with tempests on the ship descends; White are the decks with foam ; the winds aloud Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud: Pale, trembling, tired, the sailors freeze with fears. And instant death on every wave appears.'*
Aratus has attempted a refinement upon the last thought, and turned it thus : —
"A slender plank preserves them from their fate.*
But instead of exciting terror, he only lessens and refines it away ; and besides, he sets a bound to the impending danger, by saying, " a plank preserves them * and thus removes it. But the
LONGINUS 2651
poet does not once for all limit the danger, but paints them as all but swallowed up ever and anon by each successive wave. Nay, more, by forcing into unnatural composition propositions which ought not to be compounded, and clashing them one against another, as in tj-e« davdro'.o he has made the verse ex- hibit signs of agony corresponding with the calamity it repre- sents; has modeled a striking image of it by the jarring of the words; and has all but stamped the peculiar character of the danger upon his diction. So Archilochus in describing a wreck, and Demosthenes, where he relates the confusion at Athens upon the arrival of ill news. "It was,'' says he, <* in the evening,*' etc. So to speak, they reviewed their forces, and culling out the flower of them, combined them .into one body, from which everything trumpery, or undignified, or puerile, was excluded. For such ex- pressions, like unsightly bits of matter, or fissures, entirely mar the beauty of those parts which, when fitly framed together and
built up coherently, constitute the sublime.
Chapters ix. and x. complete.
GREAT MASTERS OF ELOQUENCE
THE sublimity of Demosthenes is, for the most part, sudden and concise ; that of Cicero, diffuse and consecutive. Again, our countryman, by reason of the force, nay the rapidity, strength, and impetuosity with which he, in a manner, burns and bears down at once all before him, may be likened to a tornado or a thunderbolt; but Cicero, to my thinking, like some widespreading conflagration, rolls on devouring on all sides, with fires exhaust- less, incessant, and abiding, dealt out, now here, now there, from their own central stores, and drawing fresh vigor from successive advances. But of these matters you can better judge than I can. Now the proper season for applying a sublimity so intense as that of Demosthenes is when things are to bo portrayed in the deep- est colors; where vehement passion is to be expressed; and where it is expedient to strike the hearer with astonishment all at once; but the season for employing the difliusc kind is when it is re- quired to pour a shower of gentler influences upon the hearer. For the latter is adapted to the discussion of commonplaces, the generality of perorations, digressions, all narratives and panegyr- ical orations, histories, physiological dissertations, and no few other kinds.
2652 LONGINUS
That Plato, indeed, — for I will return to him, — though his eloquence is as the noiseless lapse of a mighty river, is neverthe- less sublime, you cannot be ignorant when you have read the following specimen in his ** Republic '^ : " They,*^ says he, " that are unprincipled in the lore of wisdom and virtue, and give them- selves wholly to feasting and the like, are urged, as it seems, by a downward impulse, and thus pass their whole life under a de- lusion. For they have never lifted up their eyes to look on Truth, nor been moved by any aspirations after her, nor have experienced the taste of durable and unpolluted pleasure, but, like the beasts, with eyes forever downward bent, stooping towards the earth and bending over tables, they feed their appetites and lusts; and to obtain a larger share of these things, so insa- tiable are their desires, they kick, and gore, and slay each other with horns and hoofs of iron.** And this man instructs us, if we would but listen to him, that there is also some other way, be- sides those already mentioned, which leads to things sublime. And what way is this, and what is its nature ? It is to imitate and emulate the great historians and poets of former days. And be this, my dearest friend, our fixed and steadfast aim. For many are they that are moved to a divine enthusiasm by another's spirit, in the same manner as fame records, that when the pythoness draws nigh the sacred tripod (where, as they say, the cleft earth breathes an inspiring exhalation) she is thereby im- pregnated with the divine influence, and forthwith breaks out in strains of prophecy, according as the Deity inspires her. Thus it is that from the sublime geniuses of the Ancients certain effluvia are wafted to the souls of those that emulate them, as from the sacred caverns; by whose inspiration, even such as are not over-gifted of Phoebus catch enthusiasm from the sublimities of others. Was Herodotus the only devoted imitator of Homer ? Stesichorus was so before him, and so was Archilochus; but more than all of them, Plato, who from the famed Homeric fountain has drawn water by ten thousand by-streams to irrigate his own genius. And, perhaps, it were needful for me to point out in- stances, had not Ammonius and his disciples given a classified list of them. Nor is this plagiarism; but to take a hint from models of poetic fiction or works of art is as defensible as to copy good manners. Neither do I think that Plato would have dis- played so much vigor in delivering his 'philosophical doctrines, and so often have soared to the matter and diction of poetry,
LONGINUS 2653
had he not strenuously entered the lists, even with Homer, and disputed the palm with him, like some undistinguished champion that matches himself with one who has already engrossed the admiration of the w^orld. The attack was perhaps too rash, the opposition perhaps had too much the air of enmity, but yet it could not fail of some advantage, for, as Hesiod says: —
"Such brave contention works the good of men.*
And, assuredly, glorious are the efforts, worthy our highest ambition the crown in this contest for pre-eminence of fame, wherein even to be worsted by the heroes of former days is un- attended with dishonor.
Wherefore, whenever we, too, are engaged in a work which requires grandeur of style and exalted sentiments, it were good to raise in ourselves such reflections as these : — How in this mat- ter would Homer, as the case may be, or Plato, or Demosthenes have raised their thoughts ? Or, if it be historical, how would Thucydides ? For these persons, being set before us, and appear- ing, as it were, in bright array, as patterns for our imitation, will in some degree raise our souls to the standard we have pictured to our imaginations. It will be yet of greater use if to the pre- ceding reflections we add these: What would Homer or Demos- thenes have thought of this piece; or how would they have been affected by it ? For of a truth it is no light contest we engage in when we set before us such a tribunal and such an auditory to adjudicate iipon our own performances; and are possessed with the idea, though but in imagination, that we are submitting our writings to the scrutiny of such distinguished characters, who are at once both our judges and witnesses. There is yet another motive which may yield still more powerful incitements, if we ask ourselves, " What would all posterity think of me if they heard these writings of mine recited ? " But if any one, in the moments of composing, should apprehend that his performance may not be able to survive him and endure, the conceptions of a soul so affected must needs be crude and imperfect, like things born out of due season, so that they can never attain to the praise
of future ages.
Chapter xiii. and xiv. complete.
2654 LONGINUvS
LIBERTY AND GREATNESS
rN CONSIDERATION of your desire for useful information, my dear- est Terentianus, I shall not hesitate to add an elucidation of that remaining question which was recently proposed by a certain philosopher. ^^ I wonder,'' said he, "and not I alone, but doubtless many others also, how it happens that in the age we live in there are many men eminently endowed with talents for persuasion and public speaking, remarkable for shrewdness and readiness, and, above all, expert in the arts which give grace and sweetness to language; but that there are now none at all, or Very few, who are distinguished for loftiness and grandeur of 5tyle. So great and universal is the dearth of genuine eloquence ihat prevails in this age. Must we believe at last that there is truth in that oft-repeated observation, that democracy is the kindly nurse of sublime genius, with whose strength alone truly powerful orators flourish, and disappear as it declines? For liberty, say they, is able to supply • nutriment to the lofty con- ceptions of great minds and feed their aspirations, and, at the same time, to foster the flame of mutual emulation and stimulate ambition for pre-eminence — nay, further, that the mental excel- lences of orators are whetted continually by reason of the re- wards proposed in free, states; that they are made, as it were, to give out fire by collision, and naturally exhibit the light of liberty in their oratorical efforts. But we of the present day," continued he, " seem to be trained from our childhood to absolute slavery, having- been all but swathed in its customs and institutes, and never allowed to taste of that most copious fountain of all that is admirable and attractive in eloquence — I mean liberty — and hence it is that we turn out to be nothing but pompous flat- terers.'' This, he said, was the cause why we see that all other attainments may be found in menials, but never yet a slave be- come an orator. His spirit being effectually broken, the timorous vassal will still be uppermost; the habit of subjection continually overawes and beats down his genius. For, according to Homer ("Odyssey," I. 322): —
®Jove fixed it certain that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away."
*As then," said he, "(if what I have heard deserves credit), the cages in which what are called pigmies are kept, not only
LONGINUS 2655
prevent the growtn of those who are inclosed in them, but con- tract their dimensions by reason of the confinement in which their whole bodies are placed; so slavery of every kind, even the mildest, one might declare to be the cage and common prison of the mind. ^* Now here I rejoined: It is easy and characteristic of human nature to find fault with the existing state of things, whatever it be; but I would have you consider whether, in some degree, this corruption of genius is not owing to the profound peace which reigns throughout the world, but much more to the well- known war which our lusts are waging within us universally; and, moreover, to those mental foes that have invaded the pres- ent age, and waste and ravage all before them. For avarice (that disease of which the whole world is sick beyond a cure), aided by voluptuousness, holds us in abject thraldrom ; or, rather, if I may so express it, drowns us body and mind. For the love of money is the canker of the soul's greatness, and the love of pleasure corrodes every generous sentiment. I have, indeed, thought much upon it; but, after all, judge it impossible for them that set their hearts upon, or, to speak more truly, that deify unbounded riches, to preserve their souls from the infection of all those vices which are firmly allied to them. For riches that know no bounds and restraint bring with them profuseness, their close-leagued and, as they call it, dogging attendant; and while wealth unbars the gates of cities, and opens the doors of houses, profuseness gets in at the same time, and takes up a joint residence. And when they have remained awhile in our prin- ciples and conduct, they build their nests there (in the language of philosophy), and speedily proceeding to propagate their species, they hatch arrogance, pride, and luxury — no spurious brood, but their genuine offspring. If these children of wealth be fostered and suffered to reach maturity, they quickly engender in our souls those inexorable tyrants, — insolence, injustice, and impu- dence. When men are thus fallen, what I have mentioned must needs result from their depravity. They can no longer lift up their eyes to anything above themselves, nor feel any concern for reputation; but the corruption of every principle must needs be gradually accomplished by such a scries of vices; and the nobler faculties of the soul decay and wither, and lose all the fire of emulation, when men neglect the cultivation of their immortal parts, and suffer the mortal and worthless t(i engross all their care and admiration.
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For he that nas received a bribe to pervert judgment is in- capable of forming an unbiased and sound decision in matters pertaining to equity and honor. For it must needs be that one corrupted by gifts should be influenced by self-interest in judg- ing of what is just and honorable. And when the whole tenor of our several lives is guided only by corruption, by a desire for the death of others, and schemes to creep into their wills; when we are ready to barter our lives for paltry gains, led captive, one and all, by the thirst for lucre — can we expect, in such a gen- eral corruption, so contagious a depravity, that there should be found one unbiased and unperverted judge that can discriminate what is truly great, or will stand the test of time, uninfluenced in his decisions by the lust of gain ? But if this is the case, perhaps it is better for such as we are to be held in subjection than to be free; for, be sure, if such rapacious desires were suffered to prey upon others without restraint, like wild beasts let out of confinement, they would set the world on fire with the mischiefs they would occasion. Upon the whole, then, I have shown that the bane of true genius in the present day is that dissolution of morals which, with few exceptions, prevails uni- versally among men, who, in all they do or undertake, seek only applause and self-gratification, without a thought of that public utility which cannot be too zealously pursued, or too highly
valued.
Concluding essay, Chapter xliv. complete.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891)
iHE^Biglow Papers ^^ of 1846-48 immortalized Lowell, Those who admire most his later work in the upper walks of literary criticism have not demonstrated to the satisfaction of the public at large — which in every such case is the court of last resort — that Lowell did not surpass himself for a lifetime in them. He was transported out of himself by the events of the decade of the Mexican War, and his hot indignation at the manner in which that weak republic was overrun drove him to humor in simple despair of doing the subject justice by serious denunciation. When he makes Mr. Biglow quote the patriotic editor of the time, we can see the white heat of Lowell's indignation under the pretense of humor in such lines as these: —
<*I du believe wutever trash
'11 keep the people in blindness, — Thet we the Mexicnns can thrash
Right inter brotherly kindness, Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n' ball
Air good-will's strongest magnets, Thet peace, to make it stick at all.
Must be druv in with bag^ets.*
This whole essay, "The Pious Editor's Creed,'* both in its prose and in its still more effective doggerel verse, remains unsurpassed in its field, and one generation after another which hears the cant and wit- nesses the crimes by which greed supports rapacity, will thank Lowell that when the press and the pulpit were alike committed to the spe- cies of ** civilization *' which goes out " with a Bible in one hand and a revolver in the other," he had the courage and the spirit of human sympathy which transcended all restrictions of provincialism and spoke for the universal rights of mankind. Of the second series of " Big- low Papers '> which he wrote when the whole country was paying the penalty for the Mexican conquest, it is unnecessary to speak. He lived to regret, as every other American of his moral plane must regret, that the prophetic indignation he felt in '48 became a part of the subcon- sciousness of that higher general intellect which is as enduring as the race and as inflexible in its retributions as the great principles which VII— 167
2658 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
control the movement of the tides and direct the course of the hur- ricane. Had he lived a century later, Lowell might have become a very great poet. But his sympathies with the world-struggles of his time tempted him always to use his poetical faculty as a weapon, where otherwise it might have been used as a lamp. " The Vision of Sir LaunfaP* is an admirable poem, but it is as far surpassed in force by the best of his political poems as his * Biglow Papers >^ sur- pass in reality the critical essays of his later years. It would be invidious and unjustifiable to say that one who had written so much and such meritorious verse is at his best in his prose, but it is cer- tainly true that Lowell never sacrificed the critical instinct to the poetic ; and of the critical faculties prose is not only the natural, but the only natural vehicle of expression.
Lowell was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 226., 18 19. Graduating at Harvard College in 1838, he published three years later "A Year's Life,'' and followed it up in 1844 with a second book of verse. Others followed in 1848, and at intervals until 1876. «The Vision of Sir Launfal» in 1845, «A Fable for Critics» in 1848, and the « Biglow Papers'' in 1846-48, had given him full assurance of an enduring repu- tation, and when Longfellow resigned his professorship at Harvard, Lowell became his successor. From 1857 to 1862 he edited the Atlantic Monthly, and from 1863 to 1872 the North American Review. From 1877 to 1885 he remained abroad as minister to Spain and to Great Britain. After his return he delivered a course of lectures on the <^ English Dramatists " at the Lowell Institute. Besides lecturing and speaking on subjects of popular interest, he continued to take the most active interest in politics until his death, August 12th, 1891. With George William Curtis and William Cullen Bryant, he gives the best illustration we have had in the United States of the power of the « Scholar in Politics."' From the time he wrote the ^^ Biglow Pa- pers" until his death, he carried at the point of his single pen at least as much power as the greatest newspaper in the country. He made as many mistakes in using it as most men make in learning to real- ize their capacities and responsibilities; but it is his chief glory, as it must be of every efficient man, that he did not allow the dread of mistakes or the shame of failure to prevent him from doing his best to the top of his bent. He was essentially a New Englander, and a great New Englander. When continental America produces a man representing to itself Lowell's relation to New England, we shall '.ertainly have a man indeed.
W. V. B.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2659
THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED
At the special instance of Mr. Biglow, I preface the following satire with an extract from a sermon preached during the past summer, from Ezekiel xxxiv. 2 : << Son of man, prophesy agamst the shepherds of Israel. >> Since the Sabbath on which this discourse was delivered, the editor of the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss has tmaccountably absented himself from our house of worship.
n T KNOW of no SO responsible position as that of the pubhc jour- I nalist. The editor of our day bears the same relation to his time that the clerk bore to the age before the invention of printing. Indeed, the position which he holds is that which the clergyman should hold even now. But the clergyman chooses to walk off to the extreme edge of the world, and to throw such seed as he has clear over into that darkness which he calls the Next Life. As if next did not mean nearest, and as if any life were nearer than that immediately present one which boils and eddies all around him at the caucus, the ratification meeting, and the polls! Who taught him to exhort men to prepare for eternity, as for some future era of which the present forms no integral part ? The furrow which Time is even now turning runs through the Everlasting, and in that must he plant, or nowhere. Yet he would fain believe and teach that we are go- ing to have more of eternity than we .have now. This "going" of his is like that of th? auctioneer, on which " gone " follows before we have made up our minds to bid, — in which manner, not three months back, I lost an excellent copy of Chappelow on Job. So it has come to pass that the preacher, instead of being a living force, has faded into an emblematic figure at christenings, wed- dings, and funerals. Or, if he exercise any other function, it is as keeper and feeder of certain theologic dogmas, which, when occasion offers, he unkennels with a staboy ! * to bark and bite as it is their nature to,* whence that reproach of odium theologicunt has arisen.
*■ Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the editor mounts daily, some- times with a congregation of fifty thousand within reach of his coice, and never so much as a nodder, even, among them! And from what a Bible can he choose his text, — a Bible which needs no translation, and which no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the laity, — the open volume of the world, upon which with a pen of sunshine or destroving fire, the inspired Present is even now
2660 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
writing the annals of God! Methinks the editor who should understand his calling, and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title of T:otfj.ijv Xawv, which Homer bestows upon princes. He would be the Moses of our nineteenth century, and whereas the old Sinai, silent now, is but a coninion mountain stared at by the elegant tourist and crawled over by the hammering geologist, he must find his tables of the new law here among factories and cities in this Wilderness of Sin (Numbers xxxiii. 12) called Prog- ress of Civilization, and be the captain of our Exodus into the Canaan of a truer social order.
*^ Nevertheless, our editor will not come so far within even the shadow of Sinai as Mahomet did, but chooses rather to construe Moses by Joe Smith. He takes up the crook, not that the sheep may be fed, but that he may never want a warm woolen suit and a joint of mutton.
Immenior, O, fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum!
For which reason I would derive the name editor not so much from edo, to publish, as from cdo, to eat, that being the peculiar profession to which he esteems himself called. He blows up the flames of political discord for no other occasion than that he may thereby handily boil his own pot. I believe there are two thou- sand of these mutton-loving shepherds in the United States and of these how many have even the dimmest perception of their immense power, and the duties consequent thereon ? Here and there, haply, one. Nine hundred and ninety-nine labor to im- press upon the people the great principles of Tweedledum, and other nine hundred and ninety-nine preach with equal earnest- ness the gospel according to Tweedledee.** — H. W.]
I du believe in Freedom's cause,
Ez fur away ez Paris is; I love to see her stick her claws
In them infarnal Pharisees* It 's wal enough agin a king
To dror resolves an' triggers,— But libbaty's a kind o' thing
That don't agree with niggers.
I 'iu believe the people want A tax on tea an' coffees,
Thet nothin' s.in't extravyguat»-— Purvidin' I'm in office;
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 266 J
Fer I hev loved my country sence
My eye-teeth filled their sockets An' Uncle Sam I reverence,
Partic'larly his pockets.
I du believe in any plan
O' levyin' the taxes, Ez long ez, like a lumberman,
I git jest wut I axes; I go free-trade thru thick an' thin,
Because it kind o'rouses The folks to vote, — an' keeps us in
Our quiet customhouses.
I du believe it's wise an' good
To sen' out furrin missions, Thet is, on sartin understood
An' orthydox conditions; — I mean nine thousan' dolls, per ann.,
Nine thousan' more fer outfit. An' me to recommend a man
The place 'ould jest about fit.
I du believe in special ways
O' prayin' an' convartin'; The bread comes back in many days.
An' buttered, tu, fer sartin; — I mean in preyin' till one busts
On wut the party chooses. An' in convartin' public trusts
To very privit uses.
I du believe hard coin the stuff
Fer 'lectioneers to spout on; The people's oilers soft enough
To make hard money out on; Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his.
An' gives a good-sized junk to all, I don't care how hard money is,
Ez long ez mine's paid punctooal.
I du believe with all my soul
In the gret Press's freedom, To pint the pco]ile to the goal
An' in the traces lead 'em;
2662 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes At my fat contracts squintin',
An' withered be the nose thet pokes Inter the gov'ment printin'!
I du believe thet I should give
Wut's his'n unto Cassar, Fer it's by him I move an' live,
Frum him my bread an' cheese air; I du believe thet all o' me
Doth bear his souperscription, — Will, conscience, honor, honesty,
An' things o' thet description.
I du believe in prayer an' praise
To him thet hez the grantin' O' jobs, — in every thin' thet pays,
But most of all in Cantin'; This doth my cup with marcies fill.
This lays all thought o' sin to rest, - I don't believe in princerple,
But, O, I du in interest.
I du believe in bein' this
Or thet, ez it may happen One way or t'other hendiest is
To ketch the people nappin'; It ain't by princerples nor men
My preudunt course is steadied, — I scent wich pays the best, an' then
Go into it baldheaded.
I du believe thet holdin* slaves
Comes nat'ral tu a Presidunt, Let 'lone the rowdedow it saves
To hev a wal-broke precedunt; Fer anj'- office, small or gret,
I couldn't ax with no face. Without I'd ben, thru dry an' wet,
Th' unrizzest kind o' doughface.
I du believe wutever trash
'11 keep the people in blindness, —
Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash Right inter brotherly kindness.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2663
Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n' balJ Air good-will's strongest magnets,
Thet peace, to make it stick at all, Must be druv in with bagnets.
In short, I firmly du believe
In Humbug generally, Fer it's a thing that I perceive
To hev a solid vally; This heth my faithful shepherd ben,
In pasturs sweet heth led me. An' this '11 keep the people green
To feed ez they hev fed me.
[I subjoin here another passage from my before-mentioned discourse : —
« Wonderful to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the news- paper. To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of a strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet show, on whose stage, narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in little. Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown paper wrapper!
<* Hither to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback or dromedary back, in the pouch of the Indian runner, or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out anything distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on the coast of England. That other, in the gray surtout and cocked hat, is Na- poleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At tn«t spot, where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an immense mass meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite bran- dishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others as minute as he are gazing in open-mouthud admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufllet of smoke and dust is a revo- lution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with
2664 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the slippery- stage into the dark Beyond.
"Yes, the little show box has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the suowman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also.
<< Think of it : for three dollars a year I buy a season ticket to this gfreat Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose scene shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.
* Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes as I am tearing off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth and as sudden poverty; — I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate me from mankind as a spectator of their puppet pranks, another supervenes, in which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them ? Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage ? And, strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me informed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins ? But to none of us does the Pres- ent (even if for a moment discerned as such) continue miraculous. We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, in which a vision was let down to me from heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter for a beggar's broken victuals.*^ — H. W.J
Complete. Number 6 of « Biglow Papers.**
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
3665
ON PARADISAICAL FASHIONS FOR WOMEN {^'^ John^^ speaks)
FASHION, being the art of those who must purchase notice at some cheaper rate than that of being beautiful, loves to do rash and extravagant things. She must be forever new, or she becomes insipid. If to-day she have been courteous, she will be rude to-morrow; if to-day thinks her over-refined, to- morrow will wonder at seeing her relapsed into a semisavage state. A few years ago, certain elaborate and amorphous structures might be seen moving about the streets, in the whole of which the only symptom of animated nature to be discerned was in the movable feet and ankles which conveyed them along. Now, even that sign of vitality has vanished; the amorphous structures move about as usual, but their motive principle is as mysterious as that of Maelzel's chess player. My own theory is that a dwarf is con- cealed somewhere within. They may be engines employed for economical purposes by the civic authorities, as their use has been conjectured by an ingenious foreigner, who observed our manners attentively, to be the collection of those particles of mud and dust which are fine enough to elude the birchen brooms of the police, whose duty it is to cleanse the streets. There is more plausibility in this theory, as they are actually provided with a cloth train or skirt of various colors, which seems very well adapted to this end. A city poet, remarkable for the boldness of his metaphorical imagery, has given them the name of "women," though from so nice an analogy as hitherto to have eluded my keenest researches.
(« /'///■//>» responds)
It must have been the same who gave the title of * full dress " to the half dress worn now by females of the better sort at par- ties, the sole object of which seems to be to prove the wearer's claim to rank with the genus mamuiifcriB. One-half of the hu- man race, I see, is resolved to get rid of the most apparent token of our great ancestors' fall, and is rapidly receding to a paradi- saical simplicity of vesture. Already have the shoulders emerged from tlieir superstitious enthrallmcnt, and their bold example will no doubt be rapidly followed by equally spirited demonstra- tions from the rest of the body impolitic. For the sake of con-
2666 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
sistency we must suppose that train oil will soon elbow the ices from the supper table. But a truce to this cynical vein. It is, nevertheless, mournful, that women, who stint not in large as- semblies to show that, to the eyes of strangers which the holy privacy of home is not deemed pure enough to look upon, would yet grow crimson with modest horror, through the whole vast extent of their uncovered superficies, if one but dared to call by its dear English name that which, in the loved one, is the type of all maidenhood and sweetest retirement, — in the wife, of all chastity and whitest thoughts, — and in the mother, of all that is most tender and bounteous. On such a bosom, methinks, a rose would wither, and the snowy petals of a lily drop away in silent, sorrowful reproof. We have grown too polite for what is holiest, noblest, and kindest in the social relations of life; but, alas! to blush, to conceal, to lie, to envy, to sneer, to be illiberal, — these trench not on the bounds of any modesty, human or divine. Yes, our English, which for centuries has been the mother tongue of honest frankness, and the chosen phrase of freedom, is become so slavish and emasculate, that its glorious Bacons, Taylors, and ]\Iil- tons would find their outspoken and erect natures inapt to walk in its fetters, golden, indeed, and of cunningest Paris workman- ship, but whose galling the soul is not nice enough to discern from that of baser metal. The wild singing brook has been civilized; the graceful rudeness of its banks has been pared away to give place to smooth-clipped turf; the bright pebbles, which would not let it pass without the tribute of some new music, have been raked out; and it has become a straight, sluggish canal.
From « Conversations on the Poets.*
SOME ADVANTAGES OP POVERTY (* John ^'* speaks)
PERHAPS actual want may be inconsistent with that serenity of mind which is needful to the highest and noblest exercise of the creative power; but T am not ready to allow that poverty is so. Few can dignify it like our so admirable prose poet, whose tales are an honor even to th-e illustrious language they are written in; few can draw such rich revenues of wise humf'^ness from it as our beloved R. C. ; few can win a smile from it by his Lambish humor, and that generous courtesy which
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2667
transmutes his fourpence into a bank note in the beggar's eyes, like S. ; but there is none for whom it has not some kind lesson. Poverty is a rare mistress for the poet. She alone can teach him what a cheap thing delight is; to be had of every man, woman, and child he meets; to be gathered from every tree, shrub, and flower; nay, to be bought of the surly northwestern wind himself, by the easily paid installments of a cheerful, unhaggling spirit. Who knov/s the true taste of buns, but the boy who receives the annual godsend of one with election day ? Whoever really went to the theatre, but Kit Nubbles ? Who feels what a fireside is, but the little desolate barefooted Ruths, who glean the broken laths and waste splinters after the carpenters have had a full harvest ? Who believes that his cup is overflowing, but he who has rarely seen anything but the dry bottom of it ? Poverty is the only seasoner of felicity. Except she be the cook, the bread is sour and heavy, and the joint tough or overdone. As brisk exercise is the cheapest and warmest overcoat for the body, so is poverty for the heart. But it must be independent, and not of Panurge's mind, — that to owe is a heroic virtue. Debt is like an ingenious mechanical executioner I have read of some- where, which presented the image of a fair woman standing upon a pedestal of three steps. When the victim mounted the first, she opened her arms; at the second, she began to close them slowly around him; and at the third, she locked him in her iron embrace forever.
On the other hand, however, poverty has its bad side. Pov- erty in one hour's time shall transport a man from the warm and fruitful climate of sworn brotherhood with the world into the bare, bleak, desert, and polar ice field of distant country cousin- ship; and the world's whole duty of man towards him becomes on a sudden the necessity of staving off asking him to dinner. Then, for the first time, he gets an insight into the efficacy of buttons, and discovers, to his great surprise, that the world has one at each pocket. This gives him an excellent hint for a son- net to a button, comparing it to the dragon of the Hesperidcs, in which he gets no further than the end of the second quatrain, finding it impossible lo think of anybody or anything analogous to Hercules in his victory over the monster. Besides, he now learns that there are no golden apples to be guarded, the world assuring him on its honor that it has enormous sums to pay and not a cent to meet them with. In a fit of inspired despair he
2668 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
writes an elegy, for the first two stanzas of which (having learned economy) he uses up the two quatrains already adjusted for his sonnet. By employing the extremely simple process of deduction invented by the modern expounders of old myths, he finds that Hercules and Oon^ are identical, and that the same word in the Syro-Phoenician language imports a dragon and a button. The rest of the elegy is made easy by merely assuming the other steps of the proposition, as every expounder of old myths has a clear right to do, by a rule of logic founded on the usage of the best writers in that department. He therefore considers the heart in the poetical light of a pocket or garden of Hesperides, buttoned up tight against all intruders. As Scripture is always popular, he ends by comparing it also to that box which Jehoiada eet at the gate of the Temple, which had a hole in the top ample enough to admit the largest coins, though you might shake till you were tired without getting the smallest one out of it. Hav- ing now commenced author, we may as well leave him; for, at that lowest ebb of fortune, the bare, muddy flats of poverty lie exposed, and the tide must soon turn again.
(« F/ii7?p » repHes)
That poverty may be of use to the poet, as you have said, may be granted, without allowing that it must come to the actual pinch and gripe of want with him. The man of genius surely needs it not as a spur, for his calling haunts him from childhood up. He knows that he has that to say that will make the great heart of the universe beat with a more joyous peacefulness and an evener motion. As he grows to man's estate, the sense of a duty imposed on him by nature, and of a necessary obedience to heavenly messengers, which the world neither sees nor ac- knowledges, grows stronger and stronger. The exceeding bright- ness of his countenance weaves a crown around his head out of the thick air of earth; but earthlings cannot see it. He tells his errand, and the world turns its hard face upon him and says, ^* Thou art a drone in my busy hive; why doest thou not some- thing ? * Alas ! when the winter season comes, the world will find that he had been storing honey for it from heavenly flowers, for the famishing heart to feed upon. He must elbow through the dust and throng of the market, when he should be listening to the still, small voice of God; he must blaspheme his high nature, and harden his heart to a touchstone *:o ring gold upon,
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2669
when it is bursting- with the unutterable agony of a heavenly errand neglected, — that bitterest feeling of having "once had wings. " The world has at last acknowledged his sovereignty, and crowned him with a crown of thorns. Thomson, in one of his letters, says: —
^ The ^eat fat doctor of Bath told me that poets should be kept poor, the more to animate their genius. This is like the cruel cus- tom of putting a bird's eyes out, that it may sing the sweeter."
The world plays the great fat doctor very well. Milton tells us that: —
" Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise To scorn delights and live laborious days'*;
but the greater part of mankind, having more sympathy with the body than with its heavenly tenant, seem to derive the word "fame'* from the Latin ^'- fames?'' They would have the al- leged temperate habits of the chameleon held up to poets, as that of the busy bee is to good little Jackies and Tommies, But it may well be doubted whether a forced Pythagoreanisra would lead to the same happy results as a willing one. The system has, moreover, been often exaggerated into the lamentablest fa- naticism. A contempt of the body has been gradually engendered in the soul, which has sometimes overpersuaded her to break her way out, as in Chatterton, — or to carry her zeal to the ex- tent of not eating at all, and so forcing- the spirit by slowly wasting away the flesh, as in Otway and others. This species of devotion, moreover, seems to meet with the hearty approbation of the reading public, who usually commemorate such by the rather incongruous ceremony of placing a huge monument to mark the resting place of that very body whose entire subjection by sudden conquest or gradual overthrow they had regarded with so much satisfaction. In England, men of this profession seem to be erected into a distinct caste or guild and the practice of its mysteries is restrained by statute to geniuses and operatives; for an unprincipled vagrant named Cavanagh was sentenced, a few years ago, to the treadmill, for pretending to live without eating,
he having no license so to do.
From * Couversatloiifl cm the Poets.*
2670 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
LAMB'S GOOD NATURE
THK sweet lovingness of Lamb's nature fitted him for a good critic; but there were knotty quirks in the grain of his mind, which seemed, indeed, when polished by refined studies, little less than beauties, and which we cannot help loving, but which led him to the worship of strange gods, and with the more scrupulous punctuality that the mass were of another per- suasion. No field is so small or so barren but there will be grazing enough in it to keep a hobby in excellent case. Lamb's love was of too rambling and widespreading a kind to be limited by the narrow trellises which satisfy a common nature. It stretched out its feelers and twined them around everything within its reach, clipping with its tender and delicate green the fair tree and unsightly stump alike. Everything that he loved was, for the time, his ideal of loveliness. Even tobacco, when he was taking leave of it, became the very "crown of perfumes,** and he affirmed: —
* Roses and violets but toys For the greener sort of boys, Or for greener damsels meant.*
In this, and in the finer glimpses of his humor, and in the antique richness of his style in the best pai'ts, he reminds me of Emerson; but he had not the divine eye of our American poet, nor his deep transparency and majestic simpleness of language, full of images that seem like remembrance-flowers dropped from be- tween the pages of Bacon, or Montaigne, or Browne, or Herbert; reminding us of all felicitous seasons in our own lives, and yet infused with a congenial virtue from the magic leaves between
which they had been stored. *
From « Conversations on the Poets. »
PROPHETS OF THE NEW DISPENSATION
POETS are the forerunners and prophets of changes in the moral world. Driven by their fine nature to search into and reverently contemplate the universal laws of soul, they find some fragment of the broken tables of God's law, and inter- pret it, half conscious of its mighty import. While philosophers
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2671
are wrangling, and politicians playing at snapdragon with the destinies of millions, the poet, in the silent deeps of his soul, lis- tens to those mysterious pulses which, from one central heart, send life and beauty through the finest veins of the universe, and utters truths to be sneered at, perchance, by contemporaries, but which become religion to posterity. Not unwisely ordered is that eternal destiny which renders the seer despised of men, since theieby he is but the more surely taught to lay his head meekly upon the mother-breast of Nature, and hearken to the musical soft beating of her bounteous heart.
That Poesy, save as she can soar nearer to the blissful throne of the Supreme Beauty, is of no more use than all other beauti- ful things are, we are fain to grant. That she does not add to the outward wealth of the body, and that she is only so much more excellent than any bodily gift, as spirit is more excellent than matter, we must also yield. But, inasmuch as all beautiful things are direct messages and revelations of himself, given us by our Father, and as Poesy is the searcher out and interpreter of all these, tracing by her inborn sympathy the invisible nerves which bind them harmoniously together, she is to be revered and cherished. The poet has a fresher memory of Eden, and of the path leading back thereto, than other men; so that we might almost deem him to have been conceived, at least, if not born and nursed, beneath the ambrosial shadow of those dimly re- membered bowers, and to have had his infant ears filled with the divine converse of angels, who then talked face to face with his sires, as with beloved younger brethren, and of whose golden v/ords only the music remained to him, vibrating forever in his soul, and making him yearn to have all sounds of earth har- monize therewith. In the poet's lofty heart Truth hangs her aerie, and there Love flowers, scattering thence her winged seeds over all the earth with every wind of heaven. In all ages the poet's fiery words have goaded men to remember and regain their ancient freedom, and, when they had regained it, have tempered it with a love of beauty, so as that it should accord with the freedom of nature, and be as unmovably eternal as that. The dreams of poets are morning dreams, coming to them in tlie early dawn and daybrcaking of great truths, and are surely ful- filled at last. They repeat them, as children do, and all Chris- tendom, if it be not too busy with (juarrcling about the meaning of creeds, which have no meaning at all, listens with a shrug of
2672 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
the shoulders and a smile of pitying incredulity; for reformers are always madmen in their own age, and infallible sa.ints in the next.
We love to go back to the writings of our old poets, for we find in them the tender germs of many a thought which now stands like a huge oak in the inward world, an ornament and a shelter. We cannot help reading with awful interest what has been written or rudely scrawled upon the walls of this our earthly prison house, by former dwellers therein. From that which centuries have established, too, we may draw true prin- ciples of judgment for the poetry of our own day. A right knowledge and apprehension of the past teaches humbleness and self-sustainment to the present. Showing us what has been, it also reveals what can be done. Progress is Janus-faced, look- ing to the bygone as well as to the coming; and Radicalism should not so much busy itself with lopping off the dead or seeming dead limbs, as with clearing away that poisonous rot- tenness around the roots, from which the tree has drawn the principle of death into its sap. A love of the beautiful and har- monious, which must be the guide and forerunner to every on- ward movement of humanity, is created and cherished more surely by pointing out what beauty dwells in anything, even the most deformed (for there is something in that also, else it could not even be), than by searching out and railing at all the foul- nesses in nature. Not till we have patiently studied beauty can we safely venture to look at defects, for not till then can we do it in that spirit of earnest love, which gives more than it takes av/ay. Exultingly as we hail all signs of progress, we venerate the past also. The tendrils of the heart, like those of ivy, cling but the more closely to what they have clung to long, and even when that which they entwine crumbles beneath them, they still run greenly over the ruin, and beautify those defects which they cannot hide. The past, as well as the present, molds the future, and the features of some remote progenitor will revive again freshly in the latest offspring of the womb of time. Our earth hangs well-nigh silent now, amid the chorus of her sister orbs, and not till past and present move harmoniously together will music once more vibrate on this long silent chord in the sym- phony of the universe.
From an essay in the Pioneer of 1843.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2673
LOVING AND SINGING
AS LOVE is the highest and holiest of all feelings, so those songs are best in which love is the essence. All poetry must rest on love for a foundation, or it will only last so long as the bad passions it appeals to, and which it is the end of true poesy to root out. If there be not in it a love of man, there must at least be a love of nature, which lies next below it, and which, as is the nature of all beauty, will lead its convert up- ward to that nobler and wider sympathy. True poetry is but the perfect reflex of true knowledge, and true knowledge is spir- itual knowledge, which comes only of love, and which, when it has solved the mystery of one, even the smallest effluence of the eternal beauty, which surrounds us like an atmosphere, becomes a clew leading to the heart of the seeming labyrinth. All our sympathies lie in such close neighborhood, that when music is drawn from one string, all the rest vibrate in sweet accord. As in the womb the brain of the child changes, with a steady rise^ through a likeness to that of one animal and another, till it is perfected in that of man, the highest animal, so in this life, which is but as a womb wherein we are shaping to be born in the next, we are led upward from love to love till we arrive at the love of God, which is the highest love. Many things unseal the springs of tenderness in us ere the full glory of our nature gushes forth to the one benign spirit which interprets for us all mystery, and is the key to unlock all the most secret shrines of beauty. Woman was given us to love chiefly to this end, that the sereneness and strength which the soul wins from that full sympathy with one, might teach it the more divine excellence of a sympathy with all, and that it was man's heart only which God shaped in his own image, which it can only rightly emblem in an all-surrounding love. Therefore, we put first those songs which tell of love, since we see in them not an outpouring of selfish and solitary passion, but an indication of that beautiful instinct which prompts the heart of, every man to turn toward its fellows with a smile, and to recognize its master even in the disguise of clay; and we confess that the sight of the rudest and simplest love verses in the corner of a village newspaper oftcner brings tears of delight into our eyes than awakens a sense of the ludicrous. . . . vii— 168
2674 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The songs of our great poets are unspeakably precious. In them find vent those irrepressible utterances of homely fireside humanity, inconsistent with the loftier aim and self-forgetting enthusiasm of a great poem, which preserve the finer and purer sensibilities from wilting and withering under the black frost of am- bition. The faint records of flitting impulses, we light upon them sometimes imbedded round the bases of the basaltic columns of the epic or the drama, like heedless insects or tender ferns which had fallen in while those gigantic crystals were slowly shaping themselves in the molten entrails of the soul all aglow with the hidden fires of inspiration, or like the tracks of birds from far-off climes, which had lighted upon the ductile mass ere it had hard- ened into eternal rock. They make the lives of the masters of the lyre encouragements and helps to us, by teaching us humbly to appreciate and sympathize with, as men, those whom we should else almost have worshiped as beings of a higher order. In Shakespeare's dramas we watch with awe the struggles and triumphs and defeats, which seem almost triumphs, of his unmatched soul; — in his songs we can yet feel the beating of a simple, warm heart, ^he mate of which can be found under the first homespun frock you meet on the highroad. He who, instead of carefully phicking the fruit from the tree of knowledge, as others are fain to, shook down whole showers of leaves and ' twigs and fruit at once ; who tossed down systems of morality and philosophy by the handful; who wooed nature as a superior, and who carpeted the very earth beneath the delicate feet of his fancy with such flowers of poesy as bloom but once in a hundred years, — this vast and divine genius in his songs and his unequaled sonnets (which are but epic songs, songs written, as it were, for an organ or rather ocean accom- paniment), shows all the humbleness, and wavering, and self- distrust, with which the weakness of the flesh tempers souls of the boldest aspiration and most unshaken self-help, as if to re- mind them gently of that brotherhood to assert and dignify whose claims they were sent forth as apostles.
From the Pioneer of 1845
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 3675
POETRY AND RELIGION
" Infantine, Familiar, clasp of things divine*
AN author's piety cannot be proved from the regular occur- rence of certain decorums and respectabilities of religion in his works, but from a feeling which permeates the whole. I have read books in which the name of God was never once so much as alluded to, which yet irresistibly persuaded me of the writer's faith in him and childlike love of him. And I have read others, where that blessed name with a parenthetical and sys- tematic piety, made part of every sentence, and only impressed me like the constantly recurring figures upon calico. There is no intentional piety about Chaucer, no French collar-and-wrist- band morality, too common in our day. Now, certain days of the week, and certain men, seem to claim a monopoly in religion. It is something quite too costly and precious to make part of every day's furniture. We must not carry it into the street or the market, lest it get soiled. We doff it and hang it up as easily as a Sunday suit. The Ancients esteemed it sacrilege to touch what was set apart for the gods. Many of our own time imitate that ethnic scrupulousness, and carefully forbear religion, yet are deemed pious men, too. In Chaucer, you will find a natural piety everywhere shining through, mildly and equably, like a lamp set in an alabaster vase. The wise man maintains a hospitable mind. He scruples not to entertain thoughts, no matter how strange and foreign they may be, and to ask news of them of realms which he has never explored. He has no fear of their stirring any treason under his own roof. Chaucer apparently acted upon this principle. He loved speculation, and, when he was running down some theological dogma, he docs not mind leaping the church inclosure, and pursuing his prey till it takes refuge under the cassock of the priest himself. But, though he seems not to set much store by forms and outward observances, he is quite too near the days of wonder and belief and earnest- ness not to be truly religious.
The earliest poetry of all countries is sacred poetry, or that in which the idea of God predominates and is developed. The first effort at speech which man's nature makes in all tongues is, to pronounce the wora "Father." Reverence is the foundation of all poetry. From reverence the spirit climbs on to love, and
2676 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
thence beholds all things. No matter in what Scythian fashion these first recognitions of something above and beyond the soul are uttered, they contain the germs of psalms and prophecies. Whether, for a while, the immortal guest rests satisfied with a Fetich or an Apollo, it has already grasped the clew which leads unerringly to the very highest idea. For reverence is the most keen-eyed and exacting of all the faculties, and, if there be the least flaw in its idol, it will kneel no longer. From wood it rises to gold and ivory; from these, to the yet simpler and more majestic marble ; and, planting its foot upon that, it leaps upward to the infinite and invisible. Let our external worship be paid to what gods you will, the soul is restless and dissatisfied until she has soared into the higher region of that true piety in whose presence creeds and forms become mere husks and straw. Al- ways in her intimate recesses the soul builds an altar to the un- known God, and it is here that Poesy makes her sacrifices and officiates as authorized priestess. When I assume reverence, then, as the very primal essence and life of poetry, I claim for it a nobler stirps than it has been the fashion to allow it. Beyond Adam runs back its illustrious genealogy. It stood with Uriel in the sun, and looked down over the battlements of heaven with the angelic guards. In short, it is no other than the religious sentiment itself. That is poetry which makes sorrow lovely, and joy solemn to us, and reveals to us the holiness of things. Faith casts herself upon her neck as upon a sister's. She shows us what glimpses we get of life's spiritual face. What she looks on becomes miraculous, though it be but the dust of the wayside; and miracles become but as dust, for their simpleness. There is nothing noble without her; with her there can be nothing mean. What songs the Druids sang within the sacred circuit of Stone- henge we can barely conjecture; but those forlorn stones doubt- less echoed with appeals to a higher something; and are not even now without their sanctity, since they chronicle a nation's desire after God. Whether those forest priests worshiped the strangely beautiful element of fire, or if the pilgrim Belief pitched her tent and for a night rested in some ruder and bleaker creed, there we may yet trace the light footsteps of Poesy, as she led her sister onward to fairer fields, and streams flowing nearer to the oracle of God.
From « Conversations on the Poets. » Second Conversation, « Chaucer. »
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SIR JOHN LUBBOCK.
she has soared into the higher region oi that t ty in whose
presence cfeeds and forms become mere husks and straw. Al- ways in her intimate recesses the soul builds an altar to the un Icnown Goci — "^ it is here that Poesy makes her sacrifices and ■■" •■ ^ ' '"'od priestess. When I assume reverence, then,
essence and life of poetry, I claim for it a \\Ts. 'hrPT! \h'^ fr!-',''v""n tn nllow it Beyond
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4
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK
(1834-)
'iR John Lubbock has written a number of the most pleasantly instructive essays that could well be imagined. He is a member of the British Parliament, President of the Institute of Bankers, President of the Linnean Society of Great Britain, Trustee of the British Museum, Vice-President of the Royal Society, and the inventor of an admirable system of identifying ants by splotches of paint on their backs. A man of such diversified usefulness could not have expected to escape reproach, and Sir John can hardly have been surprised if his discoveries of the almost miraculous intelligence shown in the management of the ant hills he has kept under glass for ob- servation, excited something of the same incredulity which rewarded Ruber's discovery of the intellectual operations of ant life. Lubbock's "Ants, Bees, and "Wasps," published in 1882, and his book on "The Senses, Instinct, and Intelligence of Animals," published six years later, made him a general favorite as a writer of popular science. But this popularity has been far surpassed by his moral essays col- lected and given coherency under the title of " The Pleasures of Life." Few moralists have equaled him in usefulness. "The Pleas- ures of Life" is still running through one edition after another, and it is doubtful if its circulation has been equaled by any novel pub- lished since it was issued, — a proof, if proof were needed, that the public is fonder of nothing than of being preached to by the right person in the right way.
2678 SIR JOHN LUBBOCK
A SONG OF BOOKS
« Oh for a booke and a shadie nooke, Eyther in-a-doore or out; With the grene leaves whispering overhede, Or the streete cryes all about. Where I male reade all at my ease, Both of the newe and olde; For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke, Is better to me than golde.*^
— Old English Song.
OF ALL the privileges we enjoy in this nineteenth century, there is none, perhaps, for which we ought to be more thankful than for the easier access to books.
The debt we owe to books was well expressed by Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, author of ^^ Philobiblon,^^ published as long ago as 1473, and the earliest English treatise on the delights of literature: ^* These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if inves- tigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mis- take them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.*^
This feeling that books are real friends is constantly present to all who love reading.
**I have friends,*^ said Petrarch, ^* whose society is extremely agreeable to me; they are of all ages and of every country. They have distinguished themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honors for their knowledge of the sci- ences. It is easy to gain access to them, for they are always at my service, and I admit them to my company, and dismiss them from it, whenever I please. They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question I ask them. Some relate to me the events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of nature. Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits; while others give fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to restrain my desires, and to depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in short, the various ave- nues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their information I
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK 2679
may safely rely in all emergencies. In return for all their serv- ices, they only ask me to accommodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation, where they may repose in peace; for these friends are more delighted by the tranquillity of retirement than with the tumults of society.'*
" He that loveth a book,'* says Isaac Barrow, <* will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, so in all fortunes. "
Southey took a rather more melancholy view: —
* My days among the dead are pass'd, Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they. With whom I converse day by day.*
Imagine, in the words of Aikin, " that we had it in our power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the most inter- esting topics — what an inestimable privilege should we think it! — how superior to all common enjoyments! But in a well- furnished library we, in fact, possess this power. We can ques- tion Xenophon and Caesar on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress."
"Books," says Jeremy Collier, "are a guide in youth and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things; compose our cares and our passions; and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have noth- ing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation."
Cicero described a room without books as a body without a soul. But it is by no means necessary to be a philosopher to love reading.
Sir John Hcrschel tells an amusing anecdote illustrating the pleasure derived from a book, not assuredly of the first order.
268o SIR JOHN LUBBOCK
In a certain village the blacksmith had got hold of Richardson's novel, "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded," and used to sit on his anvil in the long summer evenings and read it aloud to a large and attentive audience. It is by no means a short book, but they fairly listened to it all. " At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily, according to the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and, procuring the church keys, actually set the par- ish bells ringing. *
* The lover of reading, " says Leigh Hunt, * will derive agree- able terror from Sir Bertram and the Haunted Chamber; will as- sent with delighted reason to every sentence in Mrs. Barbauld's Essay; will feel himself wandering into solitudes with Gray; shake honest hands with Sir Roger de Coverley; be ready to embrace Parson Adams, and to chuck Pounce out of the window instead of the hat; will travel with Marco Polo and Mungo Park; stay at home with Thomson; retire with Cowley; be industrious with Hutton; sympathizing with Gay and Mrs. Inchbald; laughing with (and at) Buncle; melancholy, and forlorn, and self- restored with the shipwrecked mariner of Defoe."
Carlyle has wisely said that a collection of books is a real university.
The importance of books has been appreciated in many quar- ters where we might least expect it. Among the hardy Norse- men runes were supposed to be endowed with miraculous power. There is an Arabic proverb, that " a wise man's day is worth a fool's life," and, though it rather perhaps reflects the spirit of the Califs than of the Sultans, that " the ink of science is more pre- cious than the blood of the martyrs."
Confucius is said to have described himself as a man who * in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgot his food, who in the joy of its attainment forgot his sorrows, and did not even perceive that old age was coming on."
Yet, if this could be said by the Chinese and the Arabs, what language can be strong enough to express the gratitude we ought to feel for the advantages we enjoy! We do not appreciate, I think, our good fortune in belonging to the nineteenth century. Sometimes, indeed, one may be inclined to wish that one had not lived quite so soon, and to long for a glimpse of the books, even the school books, of one hundred years hence. A hundred years
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK 268]
ago not only were books extremely expensive and cumbrous, many of the most delightful books were still uncreated — such as the works of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, and Trollope, not to mention living authors. How much more inter- esting science has become, especially if I were to mention only one name, through the genius of Darwin! Renan has character- ized this as a most amusing century; I should rather have de- scribed it as most interesting: presenting us with an endless vista of absorbing problems, with infinite opportunities; with more than the excitements, and less of the dangers, which sur- rounded our less fortunate ancestors.
Reading, indeed, is by no means necessarily study. Far from it. ** I put,** says Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his excellent article on the "Choice of Books," ** I put the poetic and emotional side of literature as the most needed for daily use."
In the prologue to the " Legends of Goode Women, " Chaucer says : —
"And as for me, though that I konne but lyte, On bokes for to rede I me delyte, And to him give I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have him in reverence, So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon. But yt be seldome on the holy day, Save, certynly, when that the monthe of May Is comen, and that I here the foules synge, And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge, Farewel my boke, and my devocion."
But I doubt whether, if he had enjoyed our advantages, he could have been so certain of tearing himself away even in the month of May.
Macaulay, who had all that wealth and fame, rank and talents could give, yet, we are told, derived his greatest happiness from books. Sir G. Trevelyan, in his charming biography says that — * of the feelings which Macaulay entertained towards the great minds of bygone ages it is not for any one except himself to speak. He has told us how his debt to them was incalculable; how they guided him to truth; how they filled his mind with noble and graceful images; how they stood by him in all vicissitudes — comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, companions in solitude, the old friends who are never seen with new faces; who are the
2 682 SIR JOHN LUBBOCK
same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. Great as were the honors and possessions which Macaulay acquired by his pen, all who knew him were well aware that the titles and re- wards which he gained by his own works were as nothing in the balance as compared with the pleasure he derived from the works of others. ^^
There was no society in London so agreeable that Macaulay would have preferred it at breakfast or at dinner <<to the com- pany of Sterne or Fielding, Horace Walpole or Boswell.'*
The love of reading which Gibbon declared he would not ex- change for all the treasures of India was, in fact, with Macaulay ** a main element of happiness in one of the happiest lives that it has ever fallen to the lot of the biographer to record."
** History,* says Fuller, "maketh a young man to be old with- out either wrinkles or gray hair, privileging him with the experi- ence of age without either the infirmities or the inconveniences thereof. *
So delightful, indeed, are our books that we must be careful not to neglect other duties for them; in cultivating the mind we must not neglect the body.
To the lover of literature or science exercise often presents itself as an irksome duty, and many a one has felt like * the fair pupil of Ascham, who, while the horns were sounding and dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel with eyes riveted to that im- mortal page which tells how meekly and bravely the first martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weeping jailor.*
Still, as the late Lord Derby justly observed, those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness.
Books are now so cheap as to be within the reach of almost every one. This was not always so. It is quite a recent bless- ing. Mr. Ireland, to whose charming little * Book Lover's En- chiridion,* in common with every lover of reading, I am greatly indebted, tells us that when a boy he was so delighted with White's "Natural History of Selborne,* that in order to possess a copy of his own he actually copied out the whole work.
Mary Lamb gives a pathetic description of a studious boy lingering at a bookstall: —
** I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall. And read, as he'd devour it all; Which, when the stallman did espy,
SIR JOHK LUBBOCK 26S3
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
*You, sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look.*
The boy passed slowly on, and with a sigh
He wished he never had been taught to read,
Then of the old churl's books he should have no need."
Such snatches of literature have, indeed, a special and peculiar charm. This is, I believe, partly due to the very fact of their being brief. Many readers, I think, miss much of the pleasure of reading by forcing themselves to dwell too long continuously on one subject. In a long railway journey, for instance, many persons take only a single book. The consequence is that, unless it is a story, after half an hour or an hour they are quite tired of it. Whereas, if they had two, or still better three, on diflerent subjects, and one of them being of an amusing character, they would probably find that by changing as soon as they felt at all weary, they would come back again and again to each with re- newed zest, and hour after hour would pass pleasantly away. Every one, of course, must judge for himself, but such at least is my experience.
I quite agree, therefore, with Lord Iddesleigh, as to the charm of desultory reading, but the wider the field the more important that we should benefit by the very best books in each class. Not that we need confine ourselves to them, but that we should commence with them, and they will certainly lead us on to others. There are, of course, some books which we must read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. But these are exceptions. As regards by far the larger number, it is probably better to read them quickly, dwelling only on the best and most important passages. In this way, no doubt, we shall lose much, but wc gain more by ranging over a wider field. We may, in fact, I think, apply to reading Lord Brougham's wise dictum as regards education, and say that it is well to read everything of something, and some- thing of everything. In this way only we can ascertain the bent of our own tastes, for it is a general, though not, of course, an invariable rule, that we profit little by books which we do not enjoy.
Every one, however, may suit himself. The variety is endless.
We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the
•earth. Wc may travel round the world with Caotain Cook or
Darwin, with Kingsley or Ruskin, who will show us much more.
2684 SIR JOHN LUBBOCK
perhaps, than ever we should see for ourselves. The world itself has uo limits for us; Humboldt and Herschel will carry us far away to the mysterious nebulae, far beyond the sun and even the stars; time has no more bounds than space; history stretches out behind us, and geology will carry us back for millions of years before the creation of man, even to the origin of the material universe itself. We are not limited even to one plane of thought. Aristotle and Plato will transport us into a sphere none the less delightful because it requires some training to appreciate it. We may make a library, if we do but rightly use it, a true paradise on earth, a garden of Eden without its one drawback, for all is open to us, including and especially the fruit of the tree of knowledge for which we are told that our first mother sacrificed all the rest. Here we may read the most important histories, the most exciting volumes of travels and adventures, the most interesting stories, the most beautiful poems; we may meet the most eminent statesmen and poets and philosophers, benefit by the ideas of the greatest thinkers, and enjoy all the greatest creations of human genius.
Complete. From «The Pleasures of Life.»
THE HAPPINESS OF DUTY
EMERSON closes his ^* Conduct of Life '^ with a striking allegory. The young Mortal enters the Hall of the Firmament. The Gods are sitting there, and he is alone with them. They pour on him gifts and blessings, and beckon him to their thrones. But between him and them suddenly appear snowstorms of illu- sions. He imagines himself in a vast crowd, whose behests he fancies he must obey. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, and sways this way and that. What is he that he should resist ? He lets himself be carried about. How can he think or act for himself ? But the clouds lift, and there are the Gods still sitting on their thrones; they alone with him alone.
^* The great man,** he elsewhere says, "is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the serenity of solitude.*
We may all, if we will, secure peace of mind for ourselves.
* Men seek retreats,** says Marcus Aurelius, * houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to de-" sire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of th»
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK 2685
most common sort of men ; for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire, than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity.'*
Happy, indeed, is the man who has such a sanctuary in his own soul. " He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good ; and he who is good is happy. '*
But we cannot expect to be happy if we do not lead pure and useful lives. To be good company for ourselves we must store our minds well; fill them with happy and pure thoughts; with pleasant memories of the past, and reasonable hopes for the fu- ture. We must, as far as may be, protect ourselves from self- reproach, from care, and from anxiety. We shall make our lives pure and happy by resisting evil, by placing restraint upon our appetites, and perhaps even more by strengthening and develop- ing our tendencies to good. We must be careful, then, how we choose our thoughts. The soul is dyed by its thoughts; we can- not keep our minds pure if we allow them to dwell on detailed accounts of crime and sin. Peace of mind, as Ruskin beautifully observes, ** must come in its own time, as the waters settle them- selves into clearness as well as quietness; you can no more filter your mind into purity than you can compress it into calmness; you must keep it pure if you would have it pure, and throw no stones into it if you would have it quiet.**
The penalty of injustice, said Socrates, is not death or stripes, but the fatal necessity of becoming more and more unjust. Few men have led a wiser or more virtuous life than Socrates him- self, of whom Xenophon gives us the following description: ** To me, being such as I have described him, so pious that he did nothing without the sanction of the gods; so just, that he wronged no man even in the most trifling affair, but was of service in the most important matters to those who enjoyed his society; so temperate that he never preferred pleasure to virtue; so wise, that he never erred in distinguishing better from worse; need- ing no counsel from others, but being sufficient in himself to discriminate between them; so able to explain and settle such questions by argument; and so capable of discerning the charac- ter of others, of confuting those who were in error, and of ex- horting them to virtue and honor, he seemed to be Buch as the
2686 SIR JOHN LUBBOCK
best and happiest of men would be. But if any one disapproves of my opinion, let him compare the conduct of others with that of Socrates, and determine accordingly.'*
Marcus Aurelius again has drawn for us a most instructive lesson in his character of Antoninus : ^^ Do everything as a disci- ple of Antoninus. Remember his constancy in every act which was conformable to reason, his evenness in all things, his piety, the serenity of his countenance, his sweetness, his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to understand things; how he would never let anything pass without having first carefully examined it and clearly understood it; how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return; how he did noth- ing in a hurry; how he listened not to calumnies, and how ex- act an examiner of manners and actions he was; not given to reproach people, nor timid, nor suspicious, nor a sophist; with how little he was satisfied, such as lodging, bed, dress, food, serv- ants; how laborious and patient; how sparing he was in his diet; his firmness and uniformity in his friendships; how he tole- rated freedom of speech in those who opposed his opinions; the pleasure that he had when any man showed him anything bet- ter, and how pious he was without superstition. Imitate all this that thou mayest have as good a conscience, when thy last hour comes, as he had."
Such peace of mind is, indeed, an inestimable boon, a rich re- ward of duty fulfilled. Well, then, does Epictetus ask, " Is there no reward ? Do you seek a reward greater than that of doing what is good and just ? At Olympia you wish for nothing more, but it seems to you enough to be crowned at the games. Does it, then, seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be good and happy ? *
From "The Pleasures of Life.»
LUCIAN
(C. I20-r. 200 A. D.)
frciAN, the most interesting of all Greek writers of prose satire, was born at Samosata, in Syria, about 120A. D. It appears from his own account of himself that his father was poor and that when a boy he served as apprentice to a sculptor, from whom he ran away after receiving a beating. In his old age he lived in Egypt and held office as Keeper of Records or Master of the Rolls in that country. He died probably about the year 200 A. D. This is as doubtful as everything else that concerns his life. His writings which have survived in abundance are almost wholly humorous or satirical. He suggested themes for Swift and the author of « Baron Munchausen " among Moderns, as well as for many who have openly borrowed his style. He excelled in the dialogue, especially in dia- logue which enabled him to put into the mouths of famous persons sarcastic or humorous comment on the follies and superstitions of the day. He saw that the polytheism which had been a popular religion in southern Europe and Egypt was decadent and near its end. In his "Dialogues of the Dead" and his "Dialogues of the Gods,* he ridicules the religion of the people, while in other Dialogues he is even less merciful towards the professional philosophers who culti- vated long beards and attempted to live without work on the strength of their assumed superiority. Lucian is one of the last writers of Greek prose which can be described as classical. He is sometimes criticized severely for impurities of style, but he writes with ease, and, in proof of the interest he has managed to excite and hold, his admirers can point to one hundred and twenty-four of his books and prose treatises which have survived, besides his epigrams and poems.
THAT BIBLIOMANIACS SHOULD READ THEIR OWN BOOKS
How can you be expected to distinji^^uish those books which are old and valuable from those which are not, unless by their beinj^ thumbed and worm-eaten; for which purpose you do well to call to your aid a council of moths, otherwise no accurate judgment can ever be formed by you. But, if I should grant that you arc not unacquainted with the taste of Caliinus, or the
26S8 LUCIAN
industrious Atticus, of what use, I pray, can those beauties be to you, which you can no more enjoy than a blind man those of his mistress ? You examine some authors very carefully, even more than enough, and some you skim slightly over with a single glance of your eye. But what can it all signify, when you can be no judge of the merit or demerit of the work ? when you are ignorant of the scope of the writer ? what arrangement he has proposed to himself, where he has happily succeeded to a nicety, and v/here his diction appears vapid and adulterate ? Or do you pretend to the art of criticism without any previous study ? If so, you must have been presented, like the shepherd, with a branch of laurel from the Muses. But I believe you never once heard the trickling of Helicon, where the goddesses have fixed their abode. You never were a neighbor of theirs in the days of your youth, nor have the least recollection of any such beings. I do not say that the Muses have not condescended to visit a homely shepherd, sunburned, and roughly clad; but to such a person as you (Venus, the goddess of Elegance, will excuse my speaking more plainly), to such a man as you, I am confident, they will never come near. Instead of a present of laurel, you would be more likely to get a good beating with mallow. Their Holmus and their Hippocrene they would choose to keep unpolluted for thirsty flocks and the pure lips of shepherds. Impudent and audacious as you are, you will hardly presume to say that you derive any advantage from education, or have any more than out- side acquaintance with authors. I have never heard the name of your schoolmaster, nor of any of your schoolfellows. But all the benefits of education, you think, may be obtained by having plenty of books. Very well; go on; collect all the manuscripts of De- mosthenes, to which add the books of Thucydides, which the former is reported to have copied fairly over no less than eight times with his own hand. If you had all the books, which Sylla sent home from Athens, how much wiser, can you suppose, they would make you, even if you should sleep upon them, or wear them round your body ? An ape, the proverb says, is still an ape, though decorated with a golden collar. You have always a book in your hand, and are continually reading, but what then ? What are you more than the ass moving his ears at the sound of the lyre ? Truly if the possession of books would make a man a scholar, they could never be sold for their worth, and we poor fellows going to market would make no figure at all. We could
LUCIAN 26S9
not pretend to vie in knowledge with the booksellers, because we have not so many books. Yet, if you examine them, you may possibly find some of them hardly more learned than yourself, equally ignorant, and inelegant, scarce seeing any difference be- tween right and wrong. And yet what is your handful of authors, which you purchase of them, when compared to the multitudes, which they are handling night and day ? I want to know what good reason you can assign for your conduct; unless you can be- lieve that, when books lie on a shelf, they make the shelf as learned as themselves. Answer me a question or two, if you please. Or rather give me a nod, to show your assent or dissent, when you have heard what I am going to say. If a man un- skilled in music should possess the pipes of Timotheus, or those which cost Ismenias five talents at Corinth, would that make him a piper ? Being ignorant of their use, the possession of the pipes would be of no avail. Could it ? You nod very properly, mean- ing no. For the pipe of Marsyas, or Olympus, would not enable a man to play without first learning music. The bow and arrows of a Hector would not make a Philoctetes. Do you think they would? No; you say no. For the very same reason a person ignorant of navigation, though master of the finest ship, and the best appointed, could no more direct it to a port than a man ignorant of the equestrian art can make any figure on horseback, though mounted on the finest steed in the world. You allow what I say to be true. Be candid then, and do the same by what I have further to observe; an illiterate man, like you, by purchas- ing a great number of books, only makes his ignorance the more conspicuous, and the more an object of derision. What, no nod of assent ? Can you deny it ? It is a clear case, for everybody asks what a dog has to do with a bath. Not long ago there was in Asia a rich man who had the misfortune to lose his feet, in consequence, I believe, of having been obliged to travel through the snow. To remedy which loss as well as he could, he pro- cured a pair of wooden feet, which he fastened to the stumps, and made a shift to crawl about by leaning on a servant. But the ridiculous part of the story was, that he made a point of hav- ing always the handsomest shoes, and those of the very newest fashion, to adorn his blocks, — his feet I mean. 1 tliink your conduct is not very unlike his.
From the trauslation of John Carr, 1779. VII — 169
MARTIN LUTHER
(1483-1546)
I^ARTiN Luther was born at Eisleben, Prussian Saxony, Novem- ber loth, 1483. His father was a slate cutter by trade, but Luther, by reason of his destination for the Church, became one of the most highly educated men of the time. After graduating at the University of Erfurt, he entered the Augustinian monastery in that town and in 1507 was consecrated a priest. A year later he be- came a professor of Philosophy in the University of Wittenberg. His career as a controversial theologian dates from October 31st, 15 17, when he posted on the church door at Wittenberg, his ninety-five theses against indulgences. His translation of the Bible which greatly influenced the German language was completed in 1532 and finally published in 1534. Besides his sermons and theological writings, he wrote hymns and fables, as well as a number of short essays and treatises on various subjects. He died at Eisleben, February iSth, 1546, after a life of almost continuous struggle, which is still an active influence, not merely in denominational religion, but in international politics. In fact it may be pointed out as one of the most signifi- cant single facts of Luther's life that it marks the line between the international politics of the Middle Ages and of modern times.
THAT UNNECESSARY IGNORANCE IS CRIMINAL
Now if thou hast a child that is fit to receive instruction, and art able to hold him to it and dost not, but goest thy way and carest not what shall become of the secular govern" ment, its laws, its peace, etc., thou warrest against the secular government, as much as in thee lies, like the Turk, yea, like the Devil himself. For thou withholdest from the kingdom, princi- pality, country, city, a redeemer, comfort, corner stone, helper, and savior. And on thy account the emperor loses both sword and crown ; the country loses safeguard and freedom, and thou art the man through whose fault (as much as in thee lies) no man shall hold his body, wife, child, house, home, and goods in safety. Rather thou sacrificest all these without ruth in the shambles,
MARTIN LUTHER 269I
and givest cause that men shall become mere beasts, and at last devour one another. This all thou wilt assuredly do, if thou withdraw thy child from so wholesome a condition, for the belly's sake. Now art thou not a pretty man and a useful in the world who makest daily use of the kingdom and its peace, and by way of thanks, in return, robbest the same of thy son, and deliverest him up to avarice, and laborest with all diligence to this end, that there may be no man who shall help maintain the kingdom, law, and peace; but that all may go to wreck, notwithstanding thou thyself possessest and boldest body and life, goods and honor by means of said kingdom ?
I will say nothing here of how fine a pleasure it is for a man to be learned, albeit he have never an office; so that he can read all manner of things by himself at home, talk and converse with learned people, travel and act in foreign lands. For per- adventure there be few who will be moved by such delights. But seeing thou art so bent upon manj non and victual, look here and see how many and how great go jds God has founded upon schools and scholars, so that thou shait no more despise learning and art by reason of poverty. Behold ! emperors and kings must have chancellors and scribes, counselors, jurists, and scholars. There is no prince but he must have chancellors, jurists, coun- selors, scholars, and scribes; so likewise, all counts, lords, cities, castles must have syndics, city clerks, and other learned men; nay, there is not a nobleman but must have a scribe. Reckon up, now, how many kings, princes, counts, lords, cities, and towns, etc. Where will they find learned men three years hence, seeing that here and there already a want is felt ? Truly I think kings will have to become jurists, and princes chancellors, counts and lords will have to become scribes, and burgomasters sacristans.
Therefore, I hold that never was there a better time to study than now; not only for the reason that the art is now so abun- dant and so cheap, but also because great wealth and honor must needs ensue, and they that study now will be men of price; inso- much that two princes and three cities shall tear one another for a single scholar. For look above or around thee and thou wilt find that innumerable offices wait for learned men, before ten years shall have sped ; and that few are beingf educated for the same.
Besides honest gain, they have, also, honor. For chancellors, city clerks, jurists, and people in office, must sit with those who
2692 MARTIN LUTHER
are placed on high, and help counsel and govern. And they, in fact, are the lords of this world, although they are not so in re- spect of person, birth, and rank.
Solomon himself mentions that a poor man once saved a city, by his wisdom, against a mighty king. Not that I would have, herewith, warriors, troopers, and what belongs to strife done away, or despised and rejected. They also, where they are obedient, help to preserve peace and all things with their fist. Each has his honor before God, as well as his place and work.
On the other hand, there are found certain scratchers who conceit that the title of Writer is scarce worthy to be named or heard. Well, then, regard not that, but think on this wise: these good people must have their amusement and their jest. Leave them their jest, but remain thou, nevertheless, a writer before God and the world. If they scratch long, thou shalt see that they honor, notwithstanding, the pen above all things; that they place it upon hat and helmet, as if they would confess, by their action, that the pen is the top of the world, without which they can neither be equipped for battle nor go about in peace; much less scratch so securely. For they also have need of the peace which the emperors, preachers, and teachers (the lawyers) teach and maintain. Wherefore thou seest that they place our imple- ment, the dear pen, uppermost. And with reason, since they gird their own implement, the sword, about the thighs; there it hangs fitly and well for their work ; but it would not beseem the head ; there must hover the plume. If, then, they have sinned against thee, they herewith expiate the offense, and thou must forgive them.
There be some that deem the office of a writer to be an easy and trivial office; but to ride in armor, to endure heat, cold, dust, thirst, and other inconvenience, they think to be laborious. Yea! that is the old, vulgar, daily tune; that no one sees where the shoe pinches another. Every one feels only his own troubles, and stares at the ease of others. True it is, it would be difficult for me to ride in armor; but then, on the other hand, I would like to see the *rider who should sit me still the whole day long and look into a book, though he were not compelled to care for aught, to invent or think or read. Ask a chancery clerk, a preacher or an orator, what kind of work writing and ha- ranguing is ? Ask a schoolmaster what kind of work is teach- ing and bringing up of boys ? The pen is light, it is true, and
MARTIN LUTHER 2693
among all trauts no tool so easily furnished as that of the writ- ing trade, for it needeth only a goose's wing, of which one shall everywhere find a sufficiency, gratis. Nevertheless, in this em- ployment, the best piece of the human body (as the head) and the noblest member (as the tongue) and the highest work (as speech) must take part and labor most; while, in others, either the fist or the feet or the back, or members of that class alone work; and they that pursue them may sing merrily the while, and jest freely, which a writer cannot do. Three fingers do the work (so they say of writers), but the whole body and soul must co-operate.
I have heard of the worthy and beloved Emperor Maximilian, how, when the great boobies complained that he employed so many writers for missions and other purposes, he is reported to have said: "What shall I do ? They will not suffer themselves to be used in this way, therefore I must employ writers.'* And fur- ther: "Knights I can create, but doctors I cannot create.'* Sc have I likewise heard of a fine nobleman, that he said: "I wil^ let my son study. It is no great art to hang two legs over a steed and be a rider; he shall soon learn me that; and he shall be fine and well-spoken.'*
They say, and it is true, the pope was once a pupil too. There- fore despise me not the fellows who say panem propter Dciim before the doors and sing the bread song. Thou hearest, as this psalm says, great princes and lords sing. I, too, have been one of these fellows, and have received bread at the houses, especially at Eisenach, my native city. Although, afterward, my dear father maintained me, with all love and faith, in the high school at Er- furt, and, by his sore sweat and labor, has helped me to what I have become, — still I have been a beggar at the doors of the rich, and, according to this psalm, have attained so far by means of the pen, that now I would not compound with the Turkish emperor, to have his wealth and forego my art. Yea, I would not take for it the wealth of tlie world many times multiplied, and yet, without doubt, I had never attained to it, had I not chanced upon a school and the writers' trade.
Therefore, let thy son study, nothing doubting, and though he should beg his bread the while, yet shalt thou give to our Lord God a fine piece of wood out of which he can whittle thee a lord. And be not disturbed that vulgar niggards contemn the art so disdainfully, and say: Aha! if my son can write German
2694 MARTIN LUTHER
and read and cipher, he knows enough; I will have him a mer- chant. They shall soon become so tame that they will be fain to dig with their fingers, ten yards deep in the earth, for a scholar. For my merchant will not be a merchant long, when law and preaching fail. That know I for certain; we theologians and lawyers must remain, or all must go down with us together. It cannot be otherwise. When theologians go, then goes the word of God, and remains nothing but the heathen, yea! mere devils. When jurists go, then goes justice together with peace, and remains only murder, robbery, outrage, force, yea! mere wild beasts. But what the merchant shall earn and win, when peace is gone, I will leave it to his books to inform him. And how much profit all his wealth shall be to him when preaching fails, his conscience, I trow, shall declare to him.
I will say briefly of a diligent, pious schoolteacher or magis- ter, or of whomsoever it is, that faithfully brings up boys and in- structs them, that such an one can never be sufficiently recom- pensed or paid with money; as also the heathen Aristotle says. Yet is this calling so shamefully despised among us as though it were altogether naught. And we call ourselves Christians!
And if I must or could relinquish the office of preacher and other matters, there is no of^ce I would more willingly have than that of schoolmaster or teacher of boys. For I know that this work, next to the office of preacher, is the most profitable, the greatest, and the best. Besides, I know not even which is the best of the two. For it is hard to make old dogs tame and old rogues upright; at which task, nevertheless, the preach- er's office labors, and often labors in vain. But young trees be more easily bent and trained, howbeit some should break in the effort. Beloved! count it one of the highest virtues upon earth, to educate faithfully the children of others, which so few, and
scarcely any, do by their own.
From a discourse on the « Furtherance of Schools, » etc.
SIR CHARLES LYELL
(1797-1875)
IR Charles Lyell was born at Kinnordy, Forfarshire, Scot- land, November i4tb, 1797. He took his degree at Oxford in 18 1 9 and began practice at the bar, but from his boyhood he had had a strong leaning towards scientific research which drew him under the influence of Cuvier, Humboldt, and other great investi- gators, who were just beginning to rid science of the limitations im- posed on it by the Middle Ages. Lyell's researches in geology gave them eflfective support and made him one of the founders of geology as a true science. His works include "Principles of Geology,'* 1830- 1833; « Travels in North America,*' 1845; « The Antiquity of Man,» 1863; and " The Student's Elements of Geology,** 1871. He died at London, February 226., 1875.
THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF LISBON
IN- NO part of the volcanic region of southern Europe has so tre- mendous an earthquake occurred in modern times as that
which began on the first of November, 1755, at Lisbon. A sound of thunder was heard underground, and immediately after- wards a violent shock threw down the greater part of that city. In the course of about six minutes, sixty thousand persons per- ished. The sea first retired and laid the bar dry; it then rolled in, rising fifty feet above its ordinary level. The mountains of Arrabida, Estrella, Julio, Marvan, and Cintra, being some of the largest in Portugal, were impetuously shaken, as it were, from their very foundations; and some of them opened at their sum- mits, which were split and rent in a wonderful manner, huge masses of them being thrown down into the subjacent valleys. Flames are related to have issued from these mountains, which are supposed to have been electric; they are also said to have smoked; but vast clouds of dust may have given rise to this ap- pearance.
The most extraordinary circumstance which occurred at Lisbon during the catastrophe, was the subsidence of a new quay, built
2696 SIR CHARLES LYELL'
entirely of marble, at an immense expense. A gfreat concourse of people had collected there for safety, as a spot where they might be beyond the reach of falling ruins; but suddenly the quay sank down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. A great number of boats and small vessels anchored near it, all full of people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these wrecks ever rose again to the surface, and the water in the place where the quay had stood is stated, in many accounts, to be unfathomable; but Whitehurst says he ascertained it to be one hundred fathoms.
In this case, we must either suppose that a certain tract sank down into a subterranean hollow, which would cause a ^* fault *^ in the strata to the depth of six hundred feet, or we may infer, as some have done, from the entire disappearance of the substances engulfed, that a chasm opened and closed again. Yet in adopt- ing this latter hypothesis, we must suppose that the upper part of the chasm, to the depth of one hundred fathoms, remained open after the shock. According to the observations made at Lisbon, in 1837, by Mr. Sharpe, the destroying effects of this earthquake were confined to the tertiary strata, and were most violent on the blue clay, on which the lower part of the city is constructed. Not a building, he says, on the secondary limestone or the basalt was injured.
The great area over which this Lisbon earthquake extended is very remarkable. The movement was most violent in Spain, Portugal, and the north of Africa; but nearly the whole of Eu- rope, and even the West Indies, felt the shock on the same day. A seaport called St. Ubes, about twenty miles south of Lisbon, was engulfed. At Algiers and Fez, in Africa, the agitation of the earth was equally violent; and at the distance of eight leagues from Morocco, a village with the inhabitants, to the number of about eight or ten thousand persons, together with all their cattle, were swallowed up. Soon after, the earth closed again over them.
The shock was felt at sea on the deck of a ship to the west of Lisbon, and produced very much the same sensation as on dry land. Off St. Lucar, the captain of the ship Nancy felt his vessel so violently shaken, that he thought she had struck the ground, but, on heaving the lead, found a great depth of water. Captain Clark, from Denia, in latitude 36° 24' N., between nine and ten in the morning, had his ship shaken and strained as if
SIR CHARLES LYELL 2697
she had struck upon a rock. Another ship forty leagues west of St. Vincent experienced so violent a concussion that the men were thrown a foot and a half perpendicularly up from the deck. In Antigua and Barbadoes, as also in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy, tremors and slight oscil- lations of the ground were felt.
The agitation of lakes, rivers, and springs in Great Britain was remarkable. At Loch Lomond, in Scotland, for example, the water, without the least apparent cause, rose against its banks, and then subsided below its usual level. The greatest perpen- dicular heio-ht of this swell was two feet four inches. It is said that the movement of this earthquake was undulatory, and that it traveled at the rate of twenty miles a minute. A great wave swept over the coast of Spain, and is said to have been sixty feet high at Cadiz. At Tangier, in Africa, it rose and fell eigh- teen times on the coast; at Funchal, in Madeira, it rose full fif- teen feet perpendicular above high-water mark, although the tide, which ebbs and flows there seven feet, was then at half -ebb. Be- sides entering the city and committing great havoc, it overflowed other seaports in the island. At Kinsale, in Ireland, a body of water rushed into the harbor, whirled round several vessels, and poured into the market place.
It was before stated that the sea first retired at Lisbon; and this retreat of the ocean from the shore at the commencement of an earthquake, and its subsequent return in a violent wave, is a common occurrence. In order to account for the phenomenon, Michell imagined a subsidence at the bottom of the sea from the giving way of the roof of some cavity, in consequence of a vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. vSuch condensa- tion, he observes, might be the first effect of the introduction of a large body of water into fissures and cavities already filled with steam, before there had been sufficient time for the heat of the incandescent lava to turn so large a supply of water into steam, which, being soon accomplished, causes a greater explosion.
JOHN LYLY
(c. 1 554-1606)
t>»A
lUPHUES, OR THE ANATOMY OF WiT,» by Johti Lyly, is responsi- ble for the word " Euphuism '^ to indicate what Saintsbury calls << conceited and precious language in general." Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy,^* published in 1621, more than forty years after Lyly wrote "Euphues,** is another noted example of the same style. Lyly was born in Kent, England, about 1554. At Oxford, where he took his first degree in 1573, he was known as a <* noted wit** whose genius, it was said, * naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry, as if Apollo had given him a wreath of his own bays, without snatch- ing or struggling.** Lyly wrote a number of plays and followed the "Anatomy of Wit** with his ^< Euphues and his England** in 1580. In 1589 he published a tract entitled, "Pappe with an Hatchet, a/tas a Figge for My Godsonne; or Crack Me This Nut; or A Countrie Cuffe,** etc., as his contribution to the celebrated Martin Marprelate controversies. He died in neglect in 1606. His burial is registered on November 20th of that year at St. Bartholomew the Less, in London. His work belongs largely to the curiosities of literature ; but in spite of its worst affectation, it is frequently interesting in itself, and always so as an illustration of the eccentricities of intellect which accompany such great crises in history as that which developed in the Puritan revolution against the Stuarts.
A COOLING CARD FOR ALL FOND LOVERS
IT IS a world to see how commonly we are blinded with the collusions of women, and more enticed by their ornaments
being artificial than their proportion being natural. I loathe almost to think on their ointments and apothecary drugs, the sleeking of their faces, and all their slibber sauces, which bring quasiness to the stomach, and disquiet to the mind.
Take from them their periwigs, their paintings, their jewels, their roules, their bolsterings, and thou shalt soon perceive that a woman is the least part of herself. When they be once robbed of their robes, then will they appear so odious, so ugly, so men-
JOHN LYLY 2699
strous, that thou wilt rather think them serpents than samts, and so like hags that thou wilt fear rather to be enchanted than enamored. Look in their closets, and there shalt thou find an apothecary's shop of sweet confections, a surgeon's box of sundry salves, a peddler's pack of new fangles. ... If every one of these things severally be not of force to move thee, yet all of them jointly should mortify thee.
Moreover, to make thee the more stronger to strive against these sirens, and more subtle to deceive these tame serpents, my counsel is that thou have more strings to thy bow than one. It is safe riding at tv^^o anchors; a fire divided in twain burneth slower; a fountain running into many rivers is of less force; the mind enamored on two women is less affected with desire, and less infected with despair; one love expelleth another, and the remem- brance of the latter quencheth the concupiscence of the first.
Yet if thou be so weak, being bewitched with their wiles, that thou hast neither will to eschew nor wit to avoid their company; if thou be either so wicked that thou wilt not, or so wedded that thou canst not, abstain from their glances, yet at the least dissemble thy grief. If thou be as hot as mount ^tna, feign thyself as cold as the hill Caucasus, carry two faces in one hood, cover thy flaming fancy with feigned ashes, show thyself sound when thou art rotten, let thy hue be merry when thy heart is melancholy, bear a pleasant countenance with a pined conscience, a painted sheath with a leaden dagger. Thus dissembling thy grief, thou mayest recur thy disease. Love creepeth in by stealth, and by stealth slideth away.
Let every one loathe his lady, and be ashamed to be her serv- ant. It is riches and ease that nourisheth affection; it is play, wine, and wantonness, that feedeth a lover as fat as a fool; re- frain from all such meats as shall provoke thine appetite, and all such means as may allure thy mind to folly. Take clear water for strong wine; brown bread for fine manchet; beef and brews for quail and partridge; for ease, labor; for pleasure, pain; for surfeiting, hunger; for sleep, watching; for the fellowship of ladies, the company of philosophers. If thou say to me. Physi- cian heal thyself, I answer that I am meetly well purged of that disea^, and yet was I never more willing to cure myself than to comfort my friend. And seeing the cause that made in rae so cold a devotion should make in thee also as frozen a de- sire, I hope thou wilt be as ready to providy a salve as thou
2 700 JOHN LYLY
wast hasty in seeking a sore. And yet, Philautus, I would not
that all women should take pepper in the nose, in that I have
disclosed the legerdemains of a few; for well I know none will
wince except they be galled, neither any be offended unless she
be guilty. Therefore I earnestly desire thee that thou show this
cooling card to none, except thou show also this, my defense, to
them all. For although I weigh nothing the ill-will of light
housewives, yet would I be loath to lose the good-will of honest
matrons. Thus being ready to go to Athens, and ready there to
entertain thee whensoever thou shalt repair thither, I bid thee
farewell, and fly women.
From Arber's reprint, 1579.
HOW THE LIFE OF A YOUNG MAN SHOULD BE LED
THERE are three things which cause perfection in man, Nature, Reason Use. Reason I call Discipline, Use, Exercise. If any one of these branches want, certainly the tree of virtue must needs wither. For Nature without discipline is of small force, and discipline without Nature more feeble; if exercise or study be void of any of these, it availeth nothing. For as in tilling of the ground and husbandry, there is first chosen a fertile soil, then a cunning sower, then good seed, even so must we compare Nature to the fat earth, the expert husbandman to the schoolmaster, the faculties and sciences to the piire seeds. If this order had not been in our predecessors, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and whosoever was renowned in Greece, for the glory of wisdom, they had never been eternized for wise men, neither canonized, as it were, for saints, among those that study sciences. It is therefore a most evident sign of God's singular favor towards him that is endowed with all these qualities without the least of which man is most miserable. But if there be any one that thinketh wit not necessary to the obtaining of wisdom, after he hath gotten the way to virtue by industry and exercise, he is a heretic in my opinion, touching the true faith of learning, for if Nature play not her part, in vain is labor, and, as I said before, if study be not employed, in vain is Nature. Sloth turneth the edge of wit; study sharpeneth the mind; a thing, be it never so easy, is hard to the (idle) ; a thing, be it never so hard, is easy to the wit well employed. And most plainly we may see in many things the efficacy of industry and labor.
JOHN LYLY 2701
The little drop of rain pierceth hard marble; iron with often handlings is worn to nothing. Besides this, Industry shovveth her- self in other things: the fertile soil if it be never tilled doth wax barren, and that which is most noble by nature is made most vile by negligence. What tree if it be not topped beareth any fruit ? What vine if it be not pruned bringeth forth grapes ? Is not the strength of the body turned to weakness with too much delicacy; were not Milo his arms bra wnf alien for want of wrest- ling ? Moreover by labor the fierce unicorn is tamed, the wildest falcon is reclaimed, the greatest bulwark is sacked. It is well answered of that man of Thessaly, who being demanded who among the Thessalians were reputed most vile, those, said he, that live at quiet and ease, never giving themselves to martial affairs. But what should one use many words in a thing already proved ? It is custom, use, and exercise that bringeth a young man to virtue, and virtue to his perfection. Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Spar- tans, did nourish two whelps both of one sire and one dam. But after a sundry manner, for the one he framed to hunt, and the other to lie always in the chimney's end at the porridge pot. Afterward calhng the Lacedaemonians into one assembly he said: To the attaining of virtue, ye Lacedaemonians, education, indus- try, and exercise is the most noblest means, the truth of which I will make manifest unto you by trial; then bringing forth the whelps, and setting down there a pot and a hare, the one ran at the hare, the other to the porridge pot. The Lacedaemonians scarce understanding this mystery, he said: Both of these be of one sire and one dam, but you see how education altcrcth nature.
Complete. From Arber's reprint of 1579.
LORD LYTTON (Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, Baron Lytton)
(1803-1873)
PS AN orator, dramatist, poet, politician, and novelist, "Bulwer Lytton * acquitted himself with credit, winning his chief celebrity and perhaps his greatest usefulness by the long list of novels which continue to be read in spite of the disapproval of Thackeray whose usually mild temper was stirred almost to virulence by everything << Bui wig >> did. But Thackeray to the contrary notwith- standing, several of these novels have already vindicated their places as classics, and at least one of them, ** The Last Days of Pompeii,*^ has taken almost as strong a hold on popular favor as the higher and more artistic fiction of Scott himself. As an essayist. Lord Lyt- ton is at his best. He writes easily and gracefully, is always inter- esting and is frequently surprising in the novelty, if not in the originality, of his thought. As a poet, he lacked only a very little of high excellence ; but in the useful translations of Horace, in which he attempts to represent the original rhythm of that most melodious of the Augustan lyric poets, he shows that this little is an inherent de- fect in his sense of time in language. Such failures at his climaxes are not altogether rare even in his prose; but in view of his excel- lencies, no one who follows him long will remember them against him. He was a "Conservative* in politics, and the violent animosi- ties which some of his celebrated contemporaries wreaked upon him were largely a result of political partisanship, which his works have long ago outlived.
THE SANGUINE TEMPERAMENT
WE ARE always disposed to envy the man of a hopeful tem- per; but a hopeful temper, where it so predominates as to be the conspicuous attribute, is seldom accompanied with prudence, and therefore seldom attended with worldly suc- cess. It is the hopeful temper that predominates in g-amblers, in speculators, in political dreamers, in enthusiasts of all kinds. Endeavoring many years ago to dissuade a friend of mine from
LORD LYTTON 2703
the roulette table, I stated all the chances which calculators sum up in favor ok the table against the gamester. He answered gayly, " Why look to the dark side of the question ? I never do ! ^ And so, of course, he was ruined. I observe, in reading history and biography, that the men who have been singularly unfortunate have for the most part been singularly hopeful. This was remarkably the case with Charles I. It startles one to see in Clarendon how often he is led into his most fatal actions by a sanguine belief that fate will humor the die for him. Every day a projector lays before you some ingenious device for ex- tracting sunbeams from ci:cumbers with the most sanguine expectation that the age has just arrived at the certainty that his cucumber alone can enlighten it. The late Mr. Robert Owen remained to the last as sure of converting the world to his schemes for upsetting it as if he had never known a disappoint- ment. When, a short time before his death, that amiable logician, after rejecting all the evidences of nature and all the arguments of sages in support of the soul's immortality, accepted that creed on the authority of a mahogany table, the spirit of one of George IV. 's portly brothers, evidently wishing to secure so illustrious a convert, took care to rap out " Yes '* when Mr. Owen asked if he should bring his plans before parliament, and to sustain his new faith in a heaven by promising him that within a year his old hope of reforming the earth should be realized. Had his Royal Highness told him that he could never square the circle of life by a social parallelogram, I greatly fear that Mr. Owen would have remained a materialist, and declared table rapping to be a glaring imposture.
In my recollections of school and college, I remember that, as between two youths of equal ability and ambition, the odds of success in rivalry were always in favor of the one least sanguincly confident of succeeding, and obviously for this reason: He who distrusts the security of chance takes more pains to effect the safety which results from labor. To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: " Leave no stone unturned."
As all men, however, have in their natures a certain degree of hope, so he is the wisest who husbands it with the most care. When you are engaged in any undertaking in which success de- pends partly on skill, partly on luck, always presuppose that the luck may go against you, for the presupposition redoubles all
2704 LORD LYTTON
your efforts to obtain the advantages that belong to skill. Hope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be so pre- pared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will call you lucky.
At whist, a game into which, of all games needing great skill, perhaps luck enters most, indifferent players, or even good players who have drunk too much wine, will back some run of luck upon system, and are sure to lose at the year's end. The most win- ning player I ever knew was a good but not a first-rate player, and, playing small stakes, though alv/ays the same stakes, he made a very handsome yearly income. He took up whist as a profession instead of the bar, saying ingenuously, " At the bar, if I devoted myself to it, I think I could make the same yearly sum with pains, which at whist I make with pleasure. I prefer pleasure to pain when the reward is equal, and I choose whist.* Well, this gentleman made it a rule never to bet, even though his partner were a B. or a C. (the two finest players in England, now living since the empire of India has lost us General A.), and his adversaries any Y. Z. at the foot of the alphabet. " For, * said he, * in betting on games and rubbers, chance gets an ad- vantage over the odds in favor of skill. My object is to win at the year's end, and the player who wins at the year's end is not the man who has won the most games and rubbers, but the man who in winning has made the greatest number of points, and who in losing has lost the fewest. Now if I, playing for, say, 10 s. a point, with B. or C. for my partner, take a ^5 bet on the rub- ber, X. and Y. may have four by honors twice running; and grant that I save two points in the rubber by skill, losing six points instead of eight points, still I have the bet of j£^ to pay all the same; the poinds aie saved by the skill of the playing, but the rubbers are lost by the chance of the cards.'*
Adhering to this rule, abridging the chances of the cards, concentrating his thoughts on the chances in favor of skill, this whist player, steady and safe, but without any of those inspirations which distinguish the first-rate from the second-rate player, made, I say, regularly a handsome income out of whist; and I do not believe that any first-rate whist player who takes bets can say the same, no matter what stakes he plays.
In life as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Plav the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill.
LORD LYTTON 2705
But, unhappily, life is not like the whist table; you have it not at your option whether to cut in or not; cut in and play your hand you must. Now, talking of proverbs, " What must be must." It is one thing to be the braggadocio of hope, and it is another thing to be the craven of fear. A good general before fighting a battle in which he cannot choose his ground — to which he is compelled, will he, nill he — makes all the provisions left in his power, and then, since ^' what must be must," never re- veals to his soldiers any fear of the issue. Before it comes to the fight, it is mapping and planning. When the fight begins, it is " Forward, and St. George ! "
An old poet. Lord Brook, has two striking lines, which I will quote and then qualify: —
" For power is proud till it look down on fear. Though only safe by ever looking there.*
No, not safe by ever looking there, but by looking there — at the right moment.
Before you commence anything, provide as if all hope were against you. When you must set about it, act as if there were not such a thing as fear. When you have taken all precautions as to skill in the circumstances against which you can provide, dismiss from consideration all circumstances dependent on luck which you cannot control. When you can't choose your ground, it is '* Forward, and St. George ! " But look for no help from St. George unless you have taken the same pains he did in training his horse and his dogs before he fought with the dragon. In short, hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.
There is a quality in man often mistaken for a hopeful temperament, though in fact it is the normal acquisition of that experience which is hope's sternest corrective, — the quality of self-confidence.
As we advance in years, hope diminishes and self-confidence . increases. Trials have taught us what we can do, am] trained us to calculate with serene accuracy on the probable results Hope, which has so much to do with gaming, has nothing to do with arithmetic. And as we live on, we find that for all which really belongs to the insurance against loss, we had better consult the actuary than stake against the croupier. VII — 170
2706 LORD LYTTON
"Fortune,* saith a fine Latin proverb, ** lends much at inter- est, but gives a fee simple to none. " According to the security you offer to her, Fortune makes her loans easy or ruinous.
Self-confidence is not hope; it is the self -judgment of your own internal forces, in their relation to the world without, which results from the failures of many hopes, and the nonrealization of many fears; for the two classes of things that rnost rarely happen to us are the things we hoped for and the things we dreaded. But there is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name, and we call it patience. "Patience,® says Vauvenargues, "is only hope pro- longed.'* It is that kind of hope which belongs to the highest order of mind, and is so essential to the enterprise of genius that Buffon calls genius itself "a long patience,** as Helvetius calls it " a sustained attention. * Patience, indeed, is the soul of speculation, " and the scope of all speculation is the performance of some action or thing to be done.'* This is the true form of hope that remained at the bottom of Pandora's Box; the more restless images or simulacra of the consolatory sustainer must have flown away among the earliest pinions that dispersed into
air at the opening of the lid.
Complete. From «Caxtoniana.*
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON SHY PEOPLE
To MORAL excellence there are two rewards, neither of which is bestowed by the loud huzzas of the populace; one within the conscience — one far out of reach, beyond the stars. But for intellectual excellence, man asks first a test, and next a reward, in the praise of his fellowmen.
Therefore the love of human approbation is at the root of all those sustained labors by which man works out his ideal of intellectual excellence; at least so generally that we need not care to count the exceptions. During the later stages of a great career, that love of approbation, in a mind well disciplined, often ceases to be perceptible, chiefly because it has become too habit- ually familiar to retain distinctness. We are, then, as little acutely sensible of the pervading force of the motive, as, while in health, we are sensible of the beats of our pulse and the cir-
LORD LYTTON 2707
culation of our blood. But there it still is, no less — there, in the pulse, in the blood. A cynic or a misanthrope may disown it; but if he have genius, and the genius urge him to address men even in vindication of misanthropy and cynicism, he is inevitably courting the approbation which he pretends to scorn. As Cicero says with quiet irony, ^* The authors who affect contempt for a name in the world put their names to the books which they in- vite the world to read.** But to return to my starting point, the desire of approbation will be accompanied by that nervous susceptibility which, however well disguised, is inseparable from the vibrating oscillation between hope and fear. And this nerv- ousness in things not made mechanically familiar by long practice will be in proportion to the height of a man's own standard of excellence, and the care with which he measures the difficulties that interpose between a cherished conception and a worthy execution of design.
Out of this nervousness comes the shyness common to all youth, where it aspires to excel and fears to fail.
It follows from what I have said that those races are the most active, have accomplished the greatest marvels of energy, and, on the whole, exhibit the highest standard of public honesty in administrative departments, to which the national character of shyness is generally accorded, distinct from its false counterfeit- pride.
For the best guarantee for honesty is a constant sense of re- sponsibility, and that sense is rendered lively and acute by a certain anxious diffidence of self, which is — Shyness. And again, it is that diffidence which makes men take pains to win and de- serve success — stimulates energy and sustains perseverance.
The Turk is proud, not shy; he walks the world, or rather lets the world walk by him, serene in his self-esteem. The Red Indian is proud, not shy; his dignity admits of no dysopia — is never embarrassed nor taken by surprise. But the Turk and the Red Indian do not improve; and when civilization approaches them, it is rather to corrupt than to enlighten. The British race are shy to a proverb. And what shore does not bear the stamp of their footstep ? What boundary in the regions of intellect has yet satisfied their ardor of progress ? Ascham's ideal of perfect- ness is in the mind of the whole nation.
To desire to do something, not only as well as it can be done, but better than we can do it — to feel to exaggeration all our
2708 LORD LYTTON
own natural deficiencies toward the doing of it — to resolve by redoubled energy and perseverance to extract from art whatever may supply those deficiencies in nature — this is the surest way to become great — this is the character of the English race — this should be the character of an English genius.
But he who thus feels, thus desires, and thus resolves, will keep free from rust those mainsprings of action — the sensibility to shame, and the yearning toward perfection. It is the elasticity of the watchspring that renders it the essential principle to the mechanism of the watch; but elasticity is only the property of solid bodies to recover, after yielding to pressure, their former shape. The mind which retains to the last youth's quick suscep- tibility to disgrace and to glory retains to the last the power to resume the shape that it wore in youth. Cynicism is old at twenty. Impudence has no elasticity. If you care no more than the grasshopper for the favor of gods and the reverence of men, your heart has the age of Tithonus, though your cheek have the bloom of Achilles. But if, even alone in your room or a desert, you could still blush or turn pale at the thought of a stain on your honor — if your crest still could rise, your pulse quicken, at the flash of some noble thought or brave deed — then you have the heart of Achilles, though at the age of Tithonus. There is certain august shamefacedness — the Romans called it Pudor — which, under hairs white as snow, preserves the aspect of youth to all personations of honor, of valor, of genius.
From «Caxtoniana.'*
READERS AND WRITERS
READING without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book on which the thought settles for definite end in knowledge than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king's garden none to the butterfly.
Youths who are destined for active careers, or ambitious of distinction in such forms of literature as require freshness of in- vention or originality of thought, should avoid the habit of in- tense study for many hours at a stretch. There is a point in all tension of the intellect beyond which effort is only waste of strength. Fresh ideas do not readily spring up within a weary
LORD LYTTON 2709
brain; and whatever exhausts the mind not only enfeebles its power, but narrows its scope. We often see men who have overread at college entering upon life as languidly as if they were about to leave it. They have not the vigor to cope with their own generation; for their own generation is young, and they have wasted the nervous energy which supplies the sinews of war to youth in its contests for fame or fortune.
Study with regularity, at settled hours. Those in the forenoon are the best, if they can be secured. The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the way he has made at the end of a twelve- month.
He is seldom overworked who can contrive to be in advance of his work. If you have three weeks before you to learn some- thing which a man of average quickness could learn in a week, learn it the first week, and not in the third. Business dispatched is business well done, but business hurried is business ill done.
In learning what others have thought, it is well to keep in practice the power to think for oneself; when an author has added to your knowledge, pause and consider if you can add noth- ing to his.
Be not contented to have learned a problem by heart; try and deduce from it a corollary not in the book.
Spare no pains in collecting details before you generalize; but it is only when details are generalized that a truth is grasped. The tendency to generalize is universal with all men who achieve great success, whether in art, literature, or action. The habit of generalizing, though at first gained with care and caution, secures, by practice, a comprehensiveness of judgment and a promptitude of decision which seem to the crowd like the intuitions of genius. And, indeed, nothing more distinguishes the man of genius from the mere man of talent than the facility of generalizing the vari- ous details, each of which demands the aptitude of a special talent, but all of which can be only gathered into a single whole by the grasp of a mind which may have no special aptitude for any.
Invention implies the power of generalization, for an invention i% but the combining of many details known before into a new whole, and for new results.
Upon any given point, contradictory evidence seldom puzzles the man who has mastered the laws of evidence, but he knows
2 7IO LORD LYTTON
little of the laws of evidence who has not studied the unwritten law of the human heart; and without this last knowledge a man of action will not attain to the practical, nor will a poet achieve the ideal.
He who has no sympathy never knows the human heart; but the obtrusive parade of sympathy is incompatible with dignity of character in a man, or with dignity of style in a writer. Of all the virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or universal benevolence.
In science, address the few; in literature, the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgment on the few. But the few and the many are not necessarily the few and the many of the passing time; for discoverers in science have not unoften, in their own day, had the few against them, and writers the most permanently popular not unfrequently found, in their ovn day, a frigid reception from the many. By the few, I mean those who must ever remain the few, from whose dicta, we, the multi- tude, take fame upon trust; by the many, I mean those who con- stitute the multitude in the long run. We take the fame of a Harvey or a Newton upon trust, from the verdict of the few in successive generations; but the few could never persuade us to take poets and novelists on trust. We, the many, judge for our- selves of Shakespeare and Cervantes.
He who addresses the abstract reason addresses an audience that must forever be limited to the few; he who addresses the passions, the feelings, the humors, which we all have in common, addresses an audience that must forever compose the many. But either writer, in proportion to his ultimate renown, embodies some new truth, and new truths require new generations for cordial welcome. This much I would say meanwhile: Doubt the permanent fame of any work of science which makes immediate reputation with the ignorant multitude; doubt the permanent fame of any work of imagination which is at once applauded by a conventional clique that styles itself ^^ the critical few. *
Complete. From «Caxtoniana.»
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
(1830-)
:Carthy's "History of Our Own Times,** published in 1878- 1880, won him an honorable place among the prose writers of his generation, and he has increased his reputation by his work as an essayist. He has been long a favorite contributor to the leading English reviews, chiefly on subjects which require histor- ical research. He was born at Cork, Ireland, November 22d, 1830, and has been not less prominent in the politics of the Irish Home Rule movement than in literature. On the fall of Parnell in 1890, McCar- thy succeeded to the leadership of the Irish Parliamentary party and acquitted himself with credit. Besides the " History of Our Own Times,'* he has published, among other books, the <* History of the Four Georges.** 1884; « The Epoch of Reform.** 1882; and a number of novels, several in collaboration with Mrs. Campbell-Praed.
THE LAST OF THE NAPOLEONS
Now that the weapon of a naked savage has struck down in a nameless skirmish the last of the eldest branch of the Bonapartes, and the first of the race who ever fell upon a field of battle, men's eyes are not unnaturally turned again upon one who often commanded their gaze before, but who seemed of late days to have passed from their notice forever, — the man whom strange chance has placed at the head of the Napoleon family. It seems in keeping with the pitiless irony of fate which has always pursued the Bonaparte dynasty — a fate as stern as the fabled destiny of the Pelopids — that the death of Prince Louis Napoleon should place whatever remains of succession at the feet ^ the man whom neither he nor his mother loved overmuch, at t^ie feet of the Esau or rather the Ishmael of the house, Prince Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte (Jdromc), better known as Prince Napoleon, better known still in the argot of history as Plon-Plon. Prince Napoleon is the son of that somewhat feather- headed king of Westphalia who is chiefly conspicuous for his
2 712 JUSTIN McCarthy
marriage with Miss Patterson of Baltimore — she who died but the other day — and for his exclamation at the battle of Water- loo : * Brother, here should perish all who bear the name of Bona- parte!*' an heroic exclamation which did not prevent him from escaping- from the field and living till i860. Westphalia Jerome was the youngest brother of the first Napoleon; but as the great Napoleon did what he liked with the succession, and set aside his other brothers when they displeased him, the year 1852 saw his son the heir presumptive to the imperial crown. The birth of the poor lad who died last June in Zululand took away from him the succession to a great and apparently firmly established empire; his death has given him the headship of a fallen house, and put him nominally in command of a powerless party.
Prince Napoleon is one of the strangest figures of modern history. His career has been one long riddle unexplained as yet. No man in Europe has been more misunderstood, and few have been more disliked; no man had better chances of success than he, and no man ever made less use of his chances. To-day finds him as much a puzzle alike to his friends and his enemies as he was thirty years ago when he first swore allegiance to a French Republic. He has been described by a witty critic as a Caesar out of place. But the epigram would have been much truer which described him as an unemployed Antony. The marvelous capability for doing the right thing at the right time which char- acterized Caesar never was the property of Prince Napoleon. He has rather been conspicuous all his life for doing the right thing at the wrong moment. And now, close to his sixtieth year, he, the strangest evolution of the race Bonaparte, remains just where he was when he started, having succeeded in convincing the world first that he was a fool, then that he was a man of genius, with- out winning any success either from his folly or his intellect. Among the many witty and bitter things that the Prince Napo- leon has said about the members of his own family, one saying deserves especial remembrance — his epigrammatic observation that his cousin the Emperor took in the world twice: first, when he made the world believe that he was an idiot; and secondly, when he made it believe he was a statesman. The epigram would apply almost as well to its author as to its object.
This is his portrait, drawn by the hand of a bitter enemy: — * He is of a tall form, but with his neck sinking between his shoulders; his waist is fast disappearing before the irruption of
JUSTIN McCarthy 2713
corpulency; his gait is heavy and undignified; he is short-sighted, and his glance is an oblique one. His general appearance re- minds you of the elder Bonaparte, the one whom MM. Thiers and Marco Saint-Hilaire, Troplong and Havin, and likewise M. Prud- homme style He Grand Homme,* but it reminds you still more of Otho or Vitellius, and somewhat also of the common mask of * Punch.*** Such a description as this gives no real idea of the appearance of the man or of the quality of character to be in- ferred from a study of his face, Flandrin's famous portrait gave another and a truer view of his nature. Strangely like the first Napoleon was it, so like that it would have passed in the eyes of most spectators as a picture of the Little Corporal. A more attentive observer would have assumed it to be a study of the Great Emperor after Leipsic or Waterloo, for there was stamped on the sensuous face a look of sullen discontent, of a disappoint- ment that did not often belong to the features of the first of the Bonapartes. It was the face of a Napoleon without success, of a Napoleon who had not found his chance, who had waited too long for his Marengo. It was the face of a Napoleon com- pelled by strange fate to inaction; it was the face of Prince Na- poleon.
There can be little doubt that his genius, his far-sighted political intelligence, and his power of appreciating the relative values of nations, might have made his assistance of great serv- ice to Napoleon III., if Napoleon III. had seen fit to profit by it more often. It is true that Prince Napoleon's political judgment generally led him to different conclusions from those evolved from the Tuileries, and it must be admitted that his opinions generally ran counter to those of the majority upon most great questions; but events have almost invariably justified Prince Napoleon, and showed that his Imperial cousin would have done wiser in listening to his single voice than to any clamor of public opinion. When Prince Napoleon went over to America during the Civil War, to judge the question on its native ground, hearing the cause discussed in New York salons, in re- unions of Boston Abolitionists, and in the not altogether impartial atmosphere of General Beauregard's tent, he had the sense to see that the North was sure to win in the end; and he saw this at a time when the Emperor was moving heaven and earth to induce England to aid him in supporting by arms the cause of the South and slavery Prince Napoleon was also strongly opposed
2714 JUSTIN McCarthy
to the Mexican intervention. He knew the temper of the Amer- ican people too well to fancy that they would suffer Napoleon to carry out his dearly cherished infringement of what has come to be called the Monroe Doctrine, but which is really the doctrine suggested to and impressed upon President Monroe by George Canning. The sequel of that most disastrous undertaking thor- oughly justified his views. Upon all the great European ques- tions, too, he showed a shrewd and foreseeing mind. He believed in Italy, he supported the cause of Poland, he foresaw the down- fall of Austria, and we have it on his own authority that he strongly objected to the action of the French government with regard to Rome, and attributed to that action the result of the war with Prussia. Moreover, he was a free-trader long before the Emperor could be induced to believe that the doctrine was an essential law of political economy. It may be asked why a man who showed such capacity for statesmanship as to foresee the result of all the great political crises during his time should yet have received such little honor for his prophecies, not only in his own country, but everywhere else. The truth doubtless is that Prince Napoleon's character is marred not only by his bad temper and his proverbially bitter tongue, which make it impossible, or next to impossible, for him to get on with any one or for any one to get on with him — faults which caused him to fling up the Algerian administration, and brought him back to France from so many important missions — but by a worse defect than either of these, a fatal want of energy. He lacks the proud patience which is so essential to true success, and he is disposed, when people decline to see things as he sees them, to give up in disgust, and let them learn by experience the wisdom of councils he had not himself the energy to do battle for. There is in him a great deal of the nature of Byron's Sardanapalus who, while having no small share of the stuff that heroes are made of, fritters away his life in purposeless inaction and aimless pleasures. In aimless pleasures, indeed, a good deal of Prince Napoleon's life has been passed. Witness his purpose- less wanderings in his yacht all over the world, wanderings which made wits inquire if the prince was qualifying to be a teacher of geography in case of any unexpected reverse to the Napoleon family. Witness, too, his endeavor to live the life of a Roman in modern Paris. Hence the villa, Diomede, which most visitors to Paris have seen, and where, according to rumor, the
JUSTIN McCarthy 27(5
Pompeian walls saw scenes Roman enough to have satisfied the taste of the Arbiter Elcganticu. But the Pompeian dwelling was not a success. The Prince attempted baths after the Roman fashion, and they made the house too damp to live in; and gradually he got tired of his toy and of playing at being a Roman, and the villa Diomede was abandoned. Those who saw the Palais Royal when it was Prince Napoleon's might well have wondered why a man with such a house should want to be anything better than a Bonaparte prince in an Orleanist palace. To do justice to the Prince, the palace showed that its temporary owner was a man of refined taste and high culture, both in art and letters. I quote an account of the Palais Royal written while the Bonaparte dynasty still swayed the fortunes of France: —
" His Palais Royal is one of the most tasteful and elegant abodes belonging to a European prince. The stranger in Paris who is for- tunate enough to obtain admission to it — and, indeed, admission is easy to procure — must be sadly wanting in taste if he does not ad- mire the treasures of art and vertu which are laid up there, and the easy graceful manner of their arrangement. Nothing of the show- place is breathed there ; no rules, no conditions, no watchful, dogging lackeys or sentinels make the visitor uncomfortable. Once admitted, the stranger goes where he will, and admires and examines what he pleases. He finds there curiosities and relics, medals and statues, bronzes and stones, from every land in which history or romance takes any interest; he gazes on the latest artistic successes — Dore's magnificent lights and shadows, Gerome's audacious nudities; he ob- serves autograph collections of value inestimable; he notices that on the tables, here and there, lie the newest triumphs or sensations of literature, — the poem that every one is just talking of, the play that fills the theatres, George Sand's last novel, Renan's new volume, Tainc's freshest criticism; he is impressed everywhere with the con- viction that he is in the house of a man of high culture and active intellect, who keeps up with the progress of the world in arts, and letters and politics." .
Some slight sfjlution of the enigma of the Prince's life is per. haps to be found in the following lines, written by him in the Revue des deux Mondes a few years back: —
"I have always had for the Emperor, my cousin, a thorough devo- tion, of which I think I have given him snlTicicnt proofs by the frank- ness of my conduct, even by the very opposition I have shown to
2716 JUSTIN McCarthy
many acts of his government — a thankless role, which rarely confers power and influence, and which exposes its supporter to every kind of calumny. I found my only satisfaction in the sentiment of duty accomplished. My personal role, sometimes effaced, sometimes pre- ponderating, has always had the same aim, — the greatness of France, to be obtained by the alliance of the Napoleons with democratic ideas."
Prince Napoleon has always been persistently disbelieved; it never seems to have entered into the minds of his enemies that he could possibly speak the truth. Yet the course of his life has been generally in accordance with his own statements, and his declaration that the aim of his life has ever been the greatness of France, to be obtained by the union of Bonapartism and De- mocracy, has never been belied by any action of his career. In- deed, it is to this strange faith in an impossible combination that his unsuccess might very fairly be attributed. His Bonapartism has injured him with the Democrats, his Democracy with the Bonapartes. The result has been that want of power and in- fluence over which his deeply disappointed ambition was com- pelled to utter one cry in the confession of faith we have quoted.
From the Gentleman's Magazine.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
(Baron Macaulay)
(1800- 1859)
^v!5|^^^ AN essayist Macaulay constitutes a class of his own. He has had many imitators, but as his prose style depends for its success on the same ear for rhythm (musical time) he shows in his ballads, he can be successfully imitated only by those who, with his almost miraculous memory for detailed facts, have also the « ear » which will enable them to balance their clauses as he does in musical antithesis. What in him is a triumph over the natural be- comes when others fail to achieve it, obviously disagreeable and un- natural. Whether or not we may agree with Morley that imitation of Macaulay and Carlyle has been a calamity to English literature, we cannot fail to recognize that Macaulay himself is one of the world's great masters of style. It may be denied with reason, that it is * Eng- lish ** style. In any strict or evolutionary sense it is not. The English of King Alfred, which is as good in its way as that of Macaulay, illustrates the genius of a language whose spirit expresses itself with greatest force in direct and independent sentences, each inclosing a single definite idea. English, however, has become very largely Lat- inized since Alfred's time, and it is in a Latin style that Macaulay expresses himself. He has been called the greatest nineteenth-century disciple of the school of Cicero, and he had no one to dispute the title with him except Taine, his younger contemporary and admirer. For flexibility, for capacity to marshal the largest possible number of facts, and to carry them through the most rapid military evolutions in the least possible compass, these great commanders of language have no superiors in modern times. An incident of their method is an almost irresistible tendency to sacrifice to the necessary manoeuvering of their clauses much that is valued by less brilliant writers. Macaulay, him- self, seems to have recognized this, for he generally takes pains to sum up the evidence against his own position with a formidable showing of impartiality ; but when all is said, he remains in his essays the most brilliant, admirable, and convincing of all special pleaders. Of his * History," it is only necessary to say here that he did not cease to be
2718 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
an essayist in becoming a historian, but used the same style and the same methods which he had developed as a critical reviewer. If we are to make the necessary distinction between a genuine essay and a critical review, we must look for Macaulay's essays as episodes of his reviews rather than in the completeness of the reviews them- selves. Some of his most celebrated reviews consist of several essays, each complying with the Greek rule of completeness by having ^<a beginning, a middle, and an end,* while the review itself begins no- where in particular and ends only with the exhaustion of the space in the magazine he had to fill. Thus, if we take the review of Southey's edition of "Pilgrim's Progress," written by Macaulay for the Edinburgh Review in 182 1, we have in it one of the most ad- mirable essays in the English language or any other; but it does not begin until the fourth paragraph of the review — the whole intro- duction to which consists of a comment on the attractions of a par- ticular edition of the book. Another incident of Macaulay's style as a critical reviewer is what becomes on occasion an almost intolerable insolence, — as when he showed his unquestionable superiority over the unfortunate and by no means unmeritorious Montgomery, or when, perhaps, after refreshing his own memory from the Greek grammar, he proceeded to expose Croker's unguarded pretensions to extraor- dinary scholarship. Such peculiarities as this, however, are peculiari- ties of Macaulay's time and of the profession of the critical reviewer which he followed as an amateur. His idiosyncrasies are all amiable. He is good-natured as a rule and an admirer of everything that is most admirable, a hater of cant, and sham, a lover of freedom and justice. He was a great Liberal, who might have been an extreme Conservative had he been born a lord; or the greatest Radical of the century, if the English aristocracy, always quick to recognize and conciliate menacing merit, had not adopted him as a favorite. He was born at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, October 25th, 1800. After leaving the University of Cambridge where he was educated, he was called to the bar in 1826, and four years later began a bril- liant political career by entering Parliament, where he served for many years. At various times he was a member of the Supreme Council in India, Secretary-at-War in the English Cabinet, and Pay- master General. Two years before his death, which occurred Decem- ber 28th, 1859, he was raised to the peerage as « Baron Macaulay." As a poet, orator, and essayist, he illustrates the extraordinary com- mand of language which depends fundamentally on a high develop- ment, not merely of the intellectual faculties of co-ordination, but on a corresponding development of the musical sense which makes pos- sible a knowledge of the intrinsic harmonies of language. Macaulay's ballads are closer in their music and in their form to the genuine
THOMAS BABINGTOK MACAULAY 2719
epic style of the popular ballads he imitates than the work of almost any one else who has attempted to succeed in this difficult field. His speeches have the same simplicity of diction and the same m.usical movement which found its freest illustration in the ballads. The " antithesis *^ which he has been accused of indulging at the expense of accuracy is a development of the natural laws of the mind in lan- guage, and especially of the natural laws of poetical expression. Ma- caulay is at times a statesman, frequently a philosopher, and, if we except times when he is at his worst as a critical reviewer, we may say, without great danger of overstatement, that he is always essen- tially a poet, — the Shakespeare of the English historical essay.
W. V. B. •
JOHN BUNYAN AND THE « PILGRIM'S PROGRESS"
THIS is an eminently beautiful and splendid edition of a book which well deserves all that the printer and the engraver can do for it. The life of Bunyan is, of course, not a per- formance which can add much to the literary reputation of such a writer as Mr. Southey; but it is written in excellent English, and, for the most part, in an excellent spirit. Mr. Southey pro- pounds, we need not say, many opinions from which we altogether dissent ; and his attempts to excuse the odious persecution to which Bunyan was subjected have sometimes moved our indignation. But we will avoid this topic. We are at present much more in- clined to join in paying homage to the genius of a great man than to engage in a controversy concerning church government and toleration.
We must not pass without notice the engravings with which this beautiful volume is decorated. Some of Mr. Heath's wood cuts are admirably designed and executed. Mr. Martin's illustra- tions do not please us quite so well. His Valley of the Shadow of Death is not that Valley of the Shadow of Death which Bun- yan imagined. At all events, it is not that dark and horrible glen which has from childhood been in our mind's eye. The valley is a cavern; the quagmire is a lake; the straiglit path runs zigzag; and Christian appears like a speck in the darkness of the immense vault. We miss, too, those hideous forms which make so striking a part of the description of Bunyan, and which Salvator Rosa would have loved to draw. It is with unfeigned
37 20 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
diffidence that we pronounce judgment on any question relating to the art of painting. But it appears to us that Mr. Martin has not of late been fortunate in his choice of subjects. He should never have attempted to illustrate the ^^ Paradise Lost. " There can be no two manners more directly opposed to each other than the manner of his painting and the manner of Mil- ton's poetry. Those things which are mere accessories in the descriptions become the principal objects in the pictures; and those figures which are most prominent in the descriptions can be detected in the pictures only by a very close scrutiny, Mr. Martin has succeeded perfectly in representing the pillars and candelabrums of Pandemonium. But he has forgotten that Milton's Pandemonium is merely the background to Satan, In the picture, the Archangel is scarcely visible amidst the endless colonnades of his infernal palace. Milton's Paradise, again, is merely the background to his Adam and Eve, But in Mr. Mar- tin's picture the landscape is everything. Adam, Eve, and Raphael attract much less notice than the lake and the mountains, the gigantic flowers, and the giraffes which feed upon them. We have read, we forget where, that James II. sat to Verelst, the great flower painter. When the performance was finished, his Majesty appeared in the midst of sunflowers and tulips, which completely drew away all attention from the central figure. All who looked at the portrait took it for a flower piece, Mr. Mar- tin, we think, introduces his immeasurable spaces, his innumerable multitudes, his gorgeous prodigies of architecture and landscape, almost as unseasonably as Verelst introduced his flower pots and nosegays. If Mr. Martin were to paint Lear in the storm, the blazing sky, the sheets of rain, the swollen torrents, and the toss- ing forest, would draw away all the attention from the agonies of the insulted king and father. If he were to paint the death of Lear, the old man, asking the bystanders to undo his button, would be thrown into the shade by a vast blaze of pavilions, stand- ards, armor, and herald's coats. He would illustrate the " Orlando Furioso '^ well, the " Orlando Innamorato '^ still better, the "Arabian Nights '' best of all. Fairy palaces and gardens, porticoes of agate, and groves flowering with emeralds and rubies, inhabited by people for whom nobody cares, these are his proper domain. He would succeed admirably in the enchanted ground of Alcina, or the mansion of Aladdin. But he should avoid Milton and Bunyan.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2711
The characteristic peculiarity of the " Pilgfrim's Progress * is, that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong hu- man interest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many thousands with tears. There are some good allegories in Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit by Addison. In these performances there is, perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as in the "Pilgrim's Progress.** But the pleasure which is produced by the ** Vision of Mirza, '* or the ^* Vision of Theodore," the Genealogy of Wit, or the contest between Rest and Labor, is exactly similar to the pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's odes, or from a canto of "Hudibras. '* It is a pleasure which belongs wholly to the understanding, and in which the feelings have no part whatever. Nay, even Spenser himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory ititeresting. It was in vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House of Pride, and the House of Temperance. One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of the " Faery Queene.* We become sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly Sins, and long^ for the society of plain men and women. Of the persons who read the first canto, not one in ton reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, which are said to have been destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less stout than that of a commentator would have held out to the end.
It is not so with the " Pilgrim's Progress. *^ That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were desultorv, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favor of the " Pilgrim's Progress. " That work, he said, was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of Scotland the " Pilgrim's Progress " is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the " Pilgrim's Progress" is a g'reatcr favorite than ''Jack the Giant-Killcr. " Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which lie has gone backward and fr)rward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius VII— 171
2722 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
— that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recol- lections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting place, no turnstile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket gate, and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruc- tion ; the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it ; the Interpreter's house, and all its fair shows ; the prisoner in the iron cage; the palace, at the doors of which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of which walked persons clothed all in gold; the cross and the sepulchre; the steep hill and the pleasant arbor; the stately front of the House Beautiful by the wayside; the low green valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and covered with flocks, all are as well known to us as the sights of our own street. Then we come to the narrow place where ApoUyon strode right across the whole breadth of the way, to stop the journey of Christian, and where afterwards the pillar was set up to testify how bravely the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of the precipices on both sides falls blacker and blacker. The clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard through the darkness. The wa}^ hardly discernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes, to terrify the adven- turer. Thence he goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark valley, he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones and ashes of those whom they had slain.
Then the road .passes straight on through a waste moor, till at length the towers of a distant city appear before the traveler; and soon he is in the midst of the innumerable multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and Britain Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth.
Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant river which is bordered on both sides by fruit trees. On the left side branches off the path leading to that horrible castle, the
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2723
courtyard of which is paved with the skulls of pilgrims; and right onward are the sheepfolds and orchards of the Delectable Moun- tains.
From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green arbor. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl on the other side of that black and cold river over which there is no bridge.
All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, — giants and hobgoblins, ill-favored ones and shining ones; the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money; the black man in the bright vesture; Mr. Worldly- Wiseman and my Lord Hategood; Mr. Talkative and Mrs. Timor- ous,— are all actually existing beings to us. We follow the trav- elers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer that ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. We have not an Othello, but jealousy; not an lago, but perfidy; not a Brutus, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative, that per- sonifications, when he dealt with them, became men. A dialogue between two qualities in his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human beings in most plays. In this respect the genius of Bunyan bore a great resemblance to that of a man who had very little else in common with him, Percy Bysshe Shelley. The strong imagination of Shelley made him an idolater in his own despite. Out of the most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, metaphysical system, he made a gorgeous Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and life-like forms. He turned atheism itself into a mythology, rich with visions as glori- ous as the gods that live in the marble of Phidias, or the virgin saints that smile on us from the canvas of Murillo. The Spirit i>f Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They took shape and color. They were no longer mere words, but " intelligible forms*;
^724 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
*^ fair humanities '^ ; objects of love, of adoration, or of fear. As there can be no stronger signs of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty than that tendency which was so common among the writers of the French school to turn images into abstractions, — Venus, for example, into Love, Minerva into Wisdom, Mars into War, and Bacchus into Festivity, — so there can be no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical than a disposition to reverse this abstracting process, and to make individuals out of generalities. Some of the metaphysical and ethical theories of Shelley were certainly most absurd and pernicious. But we doubt whether any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree the highest quali- ties of the great ancient masters. The words Bard and Inspira- tion, which seem so cold and affected when applied to other modern writers, have a perfect propriety when applied to him. He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art, but an inspiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he might not improbably have given to the world some great work of the very highest rank in design and execution. But, alas!
j(U) Ad<pvt.'i ij3a p6ov iKluffs diva Tov Mwffacg (^llov avdpa^ rov ou A^ujj.(pa[<Tiv dne^d^
But we must return to Bunyan. The " Pilgrim's Progress " un- doubtedly is not a perfect allegory. The types are often incon- sistent with each other; and sometimes the allegorical disguise is altogether thrown off. The river, for example, is emblematic of death, and we are told that every human being must pass through the river. But Faithful does not pass through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's birthright, and about his own convictions of sin, as Bunyan might have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels at the House Beautiful cate- chise Christiana's boys, as any good ladies might catechise any boys at a Sunday school. But we do not believe that any man, whatever might be his genius, and whatever his good luck, could long continue a figurative history without falling into many in- consistencies. We are sure that inconsistencies, scarcely less gross than the worst into which Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the shortest and most elaborate allegories of the Spectator and the Rambler. The « Tale of a Tub » and the « History of John Bull '' swarm with similar errors, if the name of error can be properly
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2725
applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not easy to make a simile go on all fours. But we believe that no human ingenuity could produce such a centiped as a long allegory, in which the correspondence between the outward sign and the thing signified should be exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, ancient or modern, has yet achieved the adventure. The best thing, on the whole, that an allegorist can do, is to present to his readers a succession of analogies, each of which may separately be striking and happy, without looking very nicely to see whether they har- monize with each other. This Bunyan has done; and, though a minute scrutiny may detect inconsistencies in every page of his tale, the general effect which the tale produces on all persons, learned and unlearned, proves that he has done well. The pas- sages which it is most difficult to defend are those in which he altogether drops the allegory, and puts into the mouth of his pil- grims religious ejaculations and disquisitions, better suited to his own pulpit at Bedford or Reading than to the Enchanted Ground of the Interpreter's Garden. Yet even these passages, though we will not undertake to defend them against the objections of critics, we feel that we could ill spare. We feel that the story owes much of its charm to these occasional glimpses of solemn and affecting subjects, which will not be hidden, which force them- selves through the veil, and appear before us in their native aspect. The effect is not unlike that which is said to have been produced on the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen flaming through his mask, and giving life and expression to what would else have been an inanimate and uninteresting dis- guise.
It is very amusing and very instructive to compare the ^* Pil- grim's Progress" with the "Grace Abounding.*' The latter work is, indeed, one of the most remarkable pieces of autobiography in the world. It is a full and open confession of the fancies which passed through the mind of an illiterate man, whose affections were warm, whose nerves were irritable, whose imagination was ungovernable, and who was imder the influence of the strongest religious excitement. In whatever age Bunyan had lived, the history of his feelings would, in all probability, have been very curious. But the time in which his lot was cast was the time of a great stirring of the human mind. A tremendous burst of public feeling, produced by the tyranny of the hierarchy, menaced the clJ ecclesiastical institutions with destruction. To the gloomy
2726 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
regularity of one intolerant church had succeeded the license of innumerable sects, drunk with the sweet and heady must of their new liberty. Fanaticism, engendered by persecution and destined to engender fresh persecution in turn, spread rapidly through so- ciety. Even the strongest and most commanding minds were not proof against this strange taint. Any time might have produced George Fox and James Naylor. But to one time alone belong the frantic delusions of such a statesman as Vane, and the hys- terical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell.
The history of Bunyan is the history of a most excitable mind in an age of excitement. By most of his biographers he has been treated with gross injustice. They have understood in a popular sense all those strong terms of self-condemnation which he employed in a theological sense. They have, therefore, repre- sented him as an abandoned wretch, reclaimed by means almost miraculous ; or, to use their favorite metaphor, " as a brand plucked from the burning. ^^ Mr. Ivimey calls him the depraved Bunyan, and the wicked tinker of Elstow. Surely Mr. Ivimey ought to have been too familiar with the bitter accusations which the most pious people are in the habit of bringing against themselves to understand literally all the strong expressions which are to be found in the ^* Grace Abounding. ^^ It is quite clear, as Mr. Southey most justly remarks, that Mr. Bunyan never was a vicious man. He married very early; and he solemnly declares that he was strictly faithful to his wife. He does not appear to have been a drunkard. He owns, indeed, that when a boy, he never spoke without an oath. But a single admonition cured him of this bad habit for life; and the cure must have been wrought early: for at eighteen he was in the Army of the Parliament; and if he had carried the vice of profaneness into that service, he would doubtless have received something more than an admonition from Sergeant Bind-their-kings-in-chains, or Captain Hew-Agag-in- pieces-before-the-Lord. Bell ringing, and playing at hockey on Sundays, seem to have been the worst vices of this depraved tinker. They would have passed for virtues with Archbishop Laud. It is quite clear that from a very early age Bunyan was a man of a .strict life and of a tender conscience. ** He had been,*^ sa3:'s Mr. Southey, "a blackguard." Even this we think too hard a censure. Bunyan was not, we admit, so fine a gentle- man as Lord Digby; yet he was a blackguard no otherwise than as every tinker that ever lived has been a blackguard. Indeed,
THOSLA.S BABINGTON MACAULAY 2777
Mr. Southey acknowledges this: "Such he might have been ex pected to be by his birth, breeding, and vocation. Scarcely, in- deed, by possibility, could he have been otherwise.* A man whose manners and sentiments are decidedly below those of his class deserves to be called a blackguard. But it is surely unfair to apply so strong a word of reproach to one who is only what the great mass of every community must inevitably be.
Those horrible internal conflicts which Bunyan has described with so much power of language prove, not that he was a worse man than his neighbors, but that his mind was constantly occu- pied by religious considerations, that his fervor exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagination exercised despotic power over his body and mind. He heard voices from heaven; he saw strange visions of distant hills, pleasant and sunny as his own Delectable Mountains; from those seats he was shut out, and placed in a dark and horrible wilderness, where he wandered through ice and snow, striving to make his way into the happy region of light. At one time he was seized with an inclination to work miracles. At another time he thought himself actually possessed by the devil. He could distinguish the blasphemous whispers. He felt his infernal enemy pulling at his clothes be- hind him. He spurned with his feet, and struck with his hands, at the destroyer. Sometimes he was tempted to sell his part in the salvation of mankind. Sometimes a violent impulse urged him to start up from his food, to fall on his knees, and break forth into prayer. At length he fancied that he had committed the unpardonable sin. His agony convulsed his robust frame. He was, he says, as if his breastbone would split; and this he took for a sign that he was destined to burst asunder like Judas. The agitation of his nerves made all his movements tremulous; and this trembling, he supposed, was a visible mark of his repro- bation, like that which had been set on Cain. At one time, indeed, an encouraging voice seemed to rush in at the window, like the noise of wind, but very pleasant, and commanded, as he says, a great calm in his soul. At another time, a word of com- fort "was spoke loud unto him; it showed a great word; it seemed to be writ in great letters." But these intervals of ease were short. His state, during two years and a half, was gener- ally the most horrible that the human mind can imagine. " I walked," says he, with his own peculiar eloquence, "to a neigh- boring town; and sat down upon a scltlc in the street, and fell
27*8 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
into a very deep pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought me to; and, after long musing, I lifted up my head; but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me light; and as if the very stones in the streets and tiles upon the houses did band themselves against me. Me- thought that they all combined together to banish me out of the world! I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had sinned against the Savior. Oh, how happy now was every creature over I! for they stood fast, and kept their station. But I was gone and lost. ^^ Scarcely any madhouse could produce an instance of delusion so strong, or of misery so acute.
It was through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, over- hung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blas- phemy and lamentation, and passing amidst quagmires, snares, and pitfalls, close by the very mouth of hell, that Bunyan jour- neyed to that bright and fruitful land of Beulah, in which he sojourned during the latter days of his pilgrimage. The only trace which his cruel sufferings and temptations seem to have left behind them, was an affectionate compassion for those who were still in the state in which he had once been. Religion has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in his alle- gory. The feeling which predominates through the whole book is a feeling of tenderness for weak, timid, and harassed minds. The character of Mr. Fearing, of Mr, Feeble- Mind, of Mr. De- spondency and his daughter. Miss Muchafraid; the account of poor Littlefaith, who was robbed by the three thieves of his spending money; the description of Christian's terror in the dun- geons of Giant Despair, and in his passage through the river, all clearly show how strong a sympathy Bunyan felt, after his own mind had become clear and cheerful, for persons afflicted with religious melancholy.
Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Calvinists, admits that, if Calvinism had never worn a blacker appearance than in Bun- yan's works, it would never have become a term of reproach. In fact, those works of Bunyan with which we are acquainted, are by no means more Calvinistic than the homilies of the Church of England. The moderation of his opinions on the sub- ject of predestination, gave offense to some zealous persons. We have seen an absurd allegory, the heroine of which is named Hephzibah, written by some raving supralapsarian preacher, who
TIIOM.\S EABINGTON MACAULAY 2729
was dissatisfied with the mild theology of the " Pilgrim's Prog- ress." In this foolish book, if we recollect rightly, the Inter- preter is called the Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. Mr. Southey tells us that the Catholics had also their ** Pilgrim's Progress " without a Giant Pope, in which the Inter- preter is the Director, and the House Beautiful, Grace's Hall. It is surely a remarkable proof of the power of Bunyan's genius, that two religious parties, both of which regarded his opinions as heterodox, should have had recourse to him for assistance.
There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the " Pil- grim's Progress,'^ which can be fully comprehended and enjoyed only by persons familiar with the history of the times through which Bunyan lived. The character of Mr. Greatheart, the guide, is an example. His fighting is, of course, allegorical; but the allegory is not strictly preserved. He delivers a sermon on imputed righteousness to his companions; and, soon after, he gives battle to Giant Grim, who had taken upon him to back the lions. He expounds the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to the household and guests of Gaius; and then sallies out to attack Slaygood, who was of the nature of flesh eaters, in his den. These are inconsistencies; but they are inconsistencies which add, we think, to the interest of the narrative. We have not the least doubt that Bunyan had in view some stout old Greatheart of Naseby and Worcester, who prayed with his men before he drilled them; who knew the spiritual state of every dragoon in his troop; and who, with the praises of God in his mouth, and a two-edged sword in his hand, had turned to flight, on many fields of battle, the swearing, drunken bravoes of Rupert and Lunsford.
Every age produces such men as By-ends. But the middle of the seventeenth century was eminently prolific of such men. Mr. Southey thinks that the satire was aimed at some particular individual; and this seems by no means improbable. At all events, Bunyan must have known many of those hypocrites who followed religion only when religion walked in silver slippers, when the sun shone, and when the people applauded. Indeed, he might have easily found all the kindred of By-ends among the public men of his time. He might have found among the peers, ray Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, and my Lord Fair-speech; in the House of Commons, Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Anything, and Mr. Facing-both-ways; nor would ** tlie parson of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues," have been wanting. The town
2730 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
of Bedford probably contained more than one politician, who, after contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the strumpets; and more than one priest who, during repeated changes in the dis- cipline and doctrines of the church, had remained constant to nothing but his benefice.
One of the most remarkable passages in the " Pilgrim's Prog- ress,'* is that in which the proceedings against Faithful are de- scribed. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were conducted under Charles II. The license given to the witnesses for the prosecu- tion, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancor of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms preliminary to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord Hategood performs the office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs himself could have per- formed it : —
^'^ Judge — Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee ?
^^ Faithful — May I speak a few words in my own defense?
'-'■Judge — Sirrah, Sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say.®
No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times ^* sinned up to it still, '* and even went beyond it. The imaginary trial of Faithful before a jury composed of personified vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the real trial of Lady Alice Lisle before that tri- bunal where all the vices sat in the person of Jeffries.
The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invalu- able as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2731
magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain workingmen, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we could so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted Eng- lish language; no book which shows so well how rich that lan- guage is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.
Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose. Lord Roscommon's " Essay on Translated Verse," and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's "Essay on Poetry,** appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth cen- tury, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the "Paradise Lost,'* the other the "Pilgrim's Progress.**
Complete. From the Edinburgh Review, 1831. On Southey's edition of the
<< Pilgrim's Progress.*
THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS
ON THE thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewelry and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhi- bited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which be- long to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the tal- ents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days wncn the founda- tions of the constitution were laid; or far av/ay, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshiping strange gods, and writing strange characters from
2 732 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, accord- ing to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and the ladies of the princely house of Oude.
The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus; the hall which had resounded with acclama- tions at the inauguration of thirty kings ; the hall which had wit- nessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were mar- shaled by the heralds under the Garter King-at-arms. The judges, in their vestments of state, attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House, as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the way — Lord Heathfield, recently en- nobled for his memorable defense of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the king. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by such an audience as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous realm, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated around the queen the fair-haired young daughters of the house of Brunswick. There the ambassa- dors of great kings and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres; and
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2733
when, before a senate which had still some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labors in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition ; a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still pre- cious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne, had in secret plighted his faith. There, too, was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hang- ings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westmin- ster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
The sergeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was, indeed, not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, ex- cept virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indi- cated also habitual self-possession and self-respect; a high and intellectual forehead; a brow pensive, but not gloomy; a moutli of inflexible decision; a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the great picture in the Council Chamber at Calcutta, Mens cequa in arduis: such was the as- pect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.
His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were after- wards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession : the bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards
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Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the more humane and elo- quent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and Plomer, who, nearly twenty years later, successfully conducted in the same high court the defense of Lord Melville, and subse^ quently became Vice Chancellor and Master of the Rolls.
But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for the Commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous elo- quence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his ex- cellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But, in spite of the ab- sence of these two distinguished members of the Lower House, the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There stood Fox and Sheri- dan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, — ignorant, indeed, or negligent of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in aptitude of comprehension and richness of im- agination superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exer- cise, his face beaming with intelligence and spirit — the in- genious, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the youngest manager pass un- noticed. At an age when most of those who distinguished them- selves in life are still contending for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in parlia- ment. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his im- blemished honor. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone, —
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2735
culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigor of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost. The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. This ceremony occupied two whole days, and was rendered less tedious than it would otherwise have been, by the silver voice and just emphasis of Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near rela- tion of the amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings of the court were occupied by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought and a splendor of diction which more than satisfied the highly-raised expectation of the audience, he described the character and institutions of the natives of India; recounted the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had originated; and set forth the constitution of the company and of the English presidencies. Having thus at- tempted to communicate to his hearers an idea of Eastern society, as vivid as that which existed in his own mind, he proceeded to arraign the administration of Hastings, as systematically con- ducted in defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted ad- miration even from the stern and hostile chancellor; and, for a moment, seemed to pierce even the resolute heart of the defend- ant. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and per- haps not unwilling to display their taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs and screams were heard; and Mrs, Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At length the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded — "Therefore," said he, "hath it with all confidence been ordered by the Commons of Great Brit- ain, that I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misde- meanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons House of Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honor he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of Ipdia, whose rights
2 73^ THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
V
he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all ! '*
When the deep murmur of various emotions had subsided, Mr. Fox rose to address the lords respecting the course of pro- ceeding to be followed. The wish of the accuser was, that the court would bring to a close the investigation of the first charge before the second was opened. The wish of Hastings and his counsel was, that the managers should open all the charges, and produce all the evidence for the prosecution, before the defense began. The lords retired to their own house, to consider the question. The chancellor took the side of Hastings. Lord Loughborough, who was now in opposition, supported the demand of the managers. The division showed which way the inclina- tion of the tribunal leaned. A majority of near three to one decided in favor of the course for which Hastings contended.
When the court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened the charge respecting Cheyte Sing, and several days were spent in reading papers and hearing witnesses. The next article was that relating to the Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded. His sparkling and highly-finished declamation lasted two days; but the hall was crowded to suffocation during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his father might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of gener- ous admiration !
June was now far advanced. The session could not last much longer, and the progress which had been made in the impeach- ment was not very satisfactory. There were twenty charges. On two only of these had even the case for the prosecution been heard; and it was now a year since Hastings had been admitted to bail.
The interest taken by the public in the trial was great when the court began to sit, and rose to the height when Sheridan spoke on the charge relating to the Begums. From that time the excitement went down fast. The spectacle had lost the at- traction of novelty. The great displays of rhetoric were ovei.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2737
TThat was oehind was not of a nature to entice men of letters from their books in the morning, or to tempt ladies who had left the masquerade at two, to be out of bed before eight. There remained examinations and cross-examinations. There re- mained statements of accounts. There remained the reading of papers, filled with words unintelligible to English ears, — with lacs and crores, zemindars and aumils, sunnuds and perwannahs, jaghires and nuzzurs. There remained bickerings, not always carried on with the best taste or with the best temper, between the managers of the impeachment and the counsel for the de- fense, particularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law. There remained the endless marches and countermarches of the peers between their house and the hall; for as often as a point of law was to be discussed their lordships retired to discuss it apart; and the consequence was, as the late Lord Stanhope wittily said, that the judges walked and the trial stood still.
It is to be added, that in the spring of 1788, when the trial commenced, no important question, either of domestic or foreign policy, excited the public mind. The proceeding in Westminster Hall, therefore, naturally excited most of the attention of parlia- ment and of the public. It was the one great event of that season. But in the following year, the king's illness, the debates on the regency, the expectation of a change of ministry, com- pletely diverted public attention from Indian affairs; and within a fortnight after George III. had returned thanks in St. Paul's for his recovery, the States-general of France met at Versailles. In the midst of the agitation produced by those events, the im- peachment was for a time almost forgotten.
The trial in the hall went on languidly. In the session of 1788, when the proceedings had the interest of novelty, and when the peers had little other business before tlicm, only thirty-five days were given to the impeachment. In 17S9, the Regency Bill occupied the Upper House till the session was far advanced. When the king recovered, the circuits were beginning. The judges left town; the lords waited for the return of the oracles of jurisprudence; and the consequence was, that during the whole year only seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. It was clear that the matter would be protracted to a length unprecedented in the annals of criminal law.
In truth, it is impossible to deny that impeachment, though it is a fine ceremony, and though it may have been useful in the ni — 17a
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seventeenth century, is not a proceeding from which much good can now be expected. Whatever confidence may be placed in the decisions of the peers on an appeal arising out of ordinary litigation, it is certain that no man has the least confidence in their impartiality, when a great public functionary, charged with a great state crime, is brought to their bar. They are all poli- ticians. There is hardly one among them, whose vote on an impeachment may not be confidently predicted before a witness has been examined; and even were it possible to rely on their justice, they would still be quite unfit to try such a cause as that of Hastings. They sit only during half the year. They have to transact much legislative and much judicial business. The law lords, whose advice is required to guide the unlearned majority, are employed daily in administering justice elsewhere. It is impossible, therefore, that during a busy session, the Upper House should give more than a few days to an impeachment. To expect that their lordships would give up partridge shooting, in order to bring the greatest delinquent to speedy justice, or to relieve accused innocence by speedy acquittal, would be unrea- sonable indeed. A well constituted tribunal, sitting regularly six days in the week, and nine hours in the day, would have finished the trial of Hastings in less than three months. The lords had not finished their work in seven years.
The result ceased to be a matter of doubt, from the time when the lords resolved that they would be guided by the rules of evidence which are received in inferior courts of the realm. Those rules, it is well known, exclude much information which would be quite sufficient to determine the conduct of any rea- sonable man, in the most important transactions of private life. Those rules, at every assizes, save scores of culprits, whom judges, jury, and spectators, firmly believed to be guilty. But when those rules were rigidly applied to oflfenses committed many years before, at the distance of many thousand miles, con- viction was, of course, out of the question. We do not blame the accused and his counsel for availing themselves of every legal advantage in order to obtain an acquittal. But it is clear that an acquittal so obtained cannot be pleaded in bar of the judgment of history.
Several attempts were made by the friends of Hastings to put a stop to the trial. In 1789 they proposed a vote of censure upon Burke, for some violent language which he had used
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2739
respecting the death of Nuncomar, and the connection between Hastings and Impey. Burke was then unpopular in the last degree both with the House and with the country. The asperity and indecency of some expressions which he had used during the debates on the Regency had annoyed even his warmest friends. The vote of censure was carried, and those who had moved it hoped that the managers would resign in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what he considered as the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over his personal feel- ings. He received the censure of the House with dignity and meekness, and declared that no personal mortification or humilia- tion should induce him to flinch from the sacred duty which he had undertaken.
In the following year, the parliament was dissolved; and the friends of Hastings entertained a hope that the new House of Commons might not be disposed to go on with the impeachment. They began by maintaining that the whole proceeding was ter- minated by the dissolution. Defeated on this point, they made a direct motion that the impeachment should be dropped ; but they were defeated by the combined forces of the government and the opposition. It was, however, resolved that, for the sake of expedition, many of the articles should be withdrawn. In truth, had not some such measure been adopted, the trial would have lasted till the defendant was in his grave.
At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced, nearly eight years after Hastings had been brought by the sergeant-at-arms of the Commons to the bar of the lords. On the last day of this great procedure, the public curiosity, long suspended, seemed to be revived. Anxiety about the judgment there could be none; for it had been fully ascertained that there was a great majority for the defendant. But many wished to see the pageant, and the hall was as much crowded as on the first day. But those, who having been present on the first day, now bore a part in the proceedings of the last, were few, and most of those few were altered men.
As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had taken place before one generation, and the judgment was pronounced by another. The spectator could not look at the woolsack, or at the .red benchefi of the peers, or at the green benches of the Com- mons, without seeing something that reminded him of the insta- bility of all human tbius^-j — of the instability of power, and
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fame, and life, of the more lamentable instability of friendship. The great seal was borne before Lord Loughborough, who, when the trial commenced, was a fierce opponent of Mr. Pitt's government, and who was now a member of that government; while Thurlow, who presided in the court when it first sat, estranged from all his old allies, sat scowling among the junior barons. Of a hundred and sixty nobles who walked in the pro- cession on the first day, sixty had been laid in their family vaults. Still more affecting must have been the sight of the managers' box. What had become of that fair fellowship, so closely bound together by public and private ties, so resplendent with every talent and accomplishment ? It had been scattered by calamities more bitter than the bitterness of death. The great chiefs were still living, and still in the full vigor of their genius. But their friendship was at an end. It had been vio- lently and publicly dissolved with tears and stormy reproaches. If those men, once so dear to each other, were now compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment, they met as strangers whom public business had brought together, and behaved to each other with cold and distant civility. Burke had in his vortex whirled away Windham. Fox had been followed by Sheridan and Grey.
Only twenty-nine peers voted. Of these only six found Has- tings guilty, on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. On other charges the majority in his favor was still greater. On some he was unanimously absolved. He was then called to the bar, informed from the woolsack that the lords had acquitted him, and solemnly discharged. He bowed respect- fully, and retired.
From the review of Gleig's «Life of Hastings. » Edinburgh Review, 1841.
SAMUEL JOHNSON IN GRUB STREET
NEVER, since literature became a calling in England, had it been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson took up his residence in London. In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently rewarded by the government. The least that he could expect was a pen- sion or a sinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude for poli- tics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 27 ri
treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. It would be easy, on the other hand, to name several writers of the nineteenth century of whom the least successful has received forty thousand pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary part of the dreary interval which separated two ages of prosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not begun to flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered as a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and minis- ters of state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose reputation was established, and whose works were popular, such an author as Thomson, whose " Seasons " were in every library, such an author as Fielding, whose *^ Pasquin " had had a greater run than any drama since "The Beggar's Opera, ^* was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cook shop underground, where he could wipe his hands after his greasy meal, on the back of a Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations and pri- vations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn a name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied for em- ployment measured with scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and exclaimed, " You had better get a porter's knot, and CciTTy trunks.'* Nor was the advice bad; for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet.
Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any literary connection from which he could expect more than bread for the day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during this time of trial. * Harry Hervey, '* said the old philosopher many years later, ** was a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey I shall love him. " At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts which were made more agreeable by contrast But in general he dined, and thouglit that he dined well, on six penny- worth of meat, and a pennyworth of bread, at an alehouse near Drury Lane.
The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper and his de- portment. Ills manners liad never been courtly. They now be- came almost savage. Being frequently under the necessity of
2 742 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a perfect sloven. Being- often very hungry when he sat down to his meals, he con- tracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and alamode beef shops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was fortunate to have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on his fore- head. The affronts which his poverty emboldened stupid and low- minded men to offer to him would have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly pro- voked into striking those who had taken liberties with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian Library.
About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular employment from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who was proprie- tor and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. That journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long existence, was the only periodical work in the kingdom which then had what would now be called a large circulation. It was, indeed, the chief source of parliamentary intelligence. It was not then safe, even during recess, to publish an account of the proceedings of either House, without some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain his readers with what he called *^ Reports of the Debates of the Sen- ate of Lilliput. *' France was Blefuscu; London was Milendo; pounds were sprugs; the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac Sec- retary of State; Lord Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad; and William Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches was, during several years, the business of Johnson. He was gen- erally furnished with notes, meagre, indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been said ; but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence both for the ministry and for opposition. He was
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2743
himself a Tory, not from rational conviction — for his serious opinion was that one form of government was just as good or as bad as another — but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman circus against the Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much talk about the villainies of the Whigs, and the dangers of the Church, that he had become a furious partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had insisted on being taken to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as any Staffordshire squire in the congre- gation. The work which had been begun in the nursery had been completed by the university. Pembroke, when Johnson re- sided there, was one of the most Jacobital colleges in Oxford. The prejudices which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd than those of his own Tom Tempest. Charles IL and James IL were two of the best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor creature who never did, said, or wrote anything in- dicating more than the ordinary capacity of an old woman, was a prodigy of parts and learning over whose tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden deserved no more honorable name than that of "the zealot of rebellion.^* Even the ship money, condemned not less decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to have been an unconstitutional impost. Under a government, the mildest that had ever been known in the world, — under a government which allowed to the people an unprecedented lib- erty of speech and action, — he fancied that he was a slave; he assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and re- gretted the lost freedom and happiness of those golden days in which a writer who had taken but one-tenth part of the license allowed to him would have been pilloried, mangled with shears, whipped at the cart's tail, and flung into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and stockjobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and continental connections. He long had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion which he could not remember the commencement, but which, he owned, had prob- ably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner debates on great party questions were likely to be reported by a r-'nn whof" judgment was so much disordered by party spirit.
2744 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
A show of fairness was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the magazine. But Johnson long afterwards owned that, though he had saved appearances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it; and, in fact, every passage which has lived, every passage which bears the marks of his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of the opposition.
A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labors, he published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of the age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in London had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which over- hung the streets of Rome. Pope's admirable imitations of Hor- ace's ^* Satires ^* and ^* Epistles ^^ had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The enterprise was bold, and yet judicious, for between Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly than between Pope and Horace.
Johnson's **' London* appeared without his name in May, 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem : but the sale was rapid, and the success complete. A sec- ond edition was required within a week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature. It ought to be remembered, to the honor of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He made inquiries about the author of ^* London.*' Such a man, he said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet. The attempt failed; and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack.
It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the generation which was going out, and the most eminent writer of the generation which was coming in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving pamphleteers and index makers. Among Johnson's associates at this time may be
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2745
mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket; who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober; and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk: Hoole, sumamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the board where he sat crosslegged: and the penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night with literary and theo- logical conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the most re- markable of the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue rib- ands in St. James's Square, and who had lain with fifty pounds' weight of iron on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hun- ger with some scraps of broken meat, and lay down to rest under the piazza of Covent Garden in warm weather, ' and, in cold weather, as near as he could get to the furnace of a glasshouse. Yet, in his misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson ; and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the west of England, lived there as he had lived every- where, and, in 1743, died, penniless and heartbroken, in Bristol jail.
Extract from Samuel Johnson, in the Encyclopedia BrlLnnnica, December, 1856. Reprinted in Macaulay's " MLscclUineous Writings."
2 746 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
ADDISON AND HIS FRIENDS
TO THE influence which Addison derived from his literary- talents, was added all the influence which arises from character. The world, always ready to think the worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to make one exception. Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But faction itself could not deny that Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to his early friends; that his integrity was without stain; that his whole deportment indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; that, in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal was tempered by a regard for truth, hu- manity, and social decorum; that no outrage could ever provoke him to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman; and that his only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness.
He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his time; and much of his popularity he owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his friends lamented. That timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his talents to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted that envy which woiild otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favorite with the public as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, and of pity; and such were the feelings which Addison inspired. Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation, declared with one voice that it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary Montagu said that she had known all the wits, and that Addison was the best company in the world. The malignant Pope was forced to own that there was a charm in Addison's talk which could be found nowhere else. Swift, when burning with animosity against the Whigs, could not but confess to Stella, that, after all, he had never known any associate so agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively con- versation, said, that the conversation of Addison was at once the most polite, and the most mirthful, that could be imagined; — that it was Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite something which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of serious conversation, said,
THOMA? BABINGTON MACAULAY 2747
that when Addison was at his ease, he went on in a noble strain of thought and lang-uage, so as to chain the attention of every hearer. Nor were his great colloquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which appeared in his conversation. At the same time, it would be too much to say that he was wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, in- separable from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know how to blame. If his first attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone, "assented with civil leer, '* and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice we should, we think, have guessed from his works. The Tatler's criticisms on Mr, Softly's sonnet, and the Spectator's dialogue with the politician, who is so zealous for the honor of Lady Q-p-t-s, are excellent specimens of this innocent mischief.
Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. As soon as he entered a large company, as soon as he saw an unknown face his lips were sealed, and his manners became constrained. None who met him only in great assemblies, would have been able to believe that he was the same man who had often kept a few friends listening and laughing round a table, from the time when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's in Covent Gar- den struck four. Yet, even at such a table, he was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it was necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase, think aloud. "There is no such thing," he used to say, " as real conversation, but between two persons. **
This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor un- amiable, led Addison into the two most serious faults which can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that age re- garded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadillos; and was so far from being a mark of ill breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost all thf biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we '-'hould no more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he wore a long wig and a sword.
I
2748 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature, we must as- cribe another fault which generally arises from a very different cause. He became a little too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of admirers to whom he was as a king or rather as a god. All these men were far inferior to him in ability, and some of them had very serious faults. Nor did those faults escape his observation; for, if ever there was an eye which saw through and through men, it was the eye of Addison. But with the keenest observation, and the finest sense of the ridicu- lous, he had a large charity. The feeling with which he looked on most of his humble companions was one of benevolence, slightly tinctured with contempt. He was at perfect ease in their company; he was grateful for their devoted attachment; and he loaded them with benefits. Their veneration for him appears to have exceeded that with which Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation to turn such a head, or deprave such a heart as Addison's. But it must in candor be admitted, that he contracted some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by any person who is so unfortu- nate as to be the oracle of a small literary coterie.
One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell, a young templar of some literature, and a distant relation of Addi- son. There was at this time no stain on the character of Bud- gell, and it is not improbable that his career would have been prosperous and honorable, if the life of his cousin had been pro- longed. But when the master was laid in the grave, the dis- ciple broke loose from all restraint; descended rapidly from one degree of vice and misery to another; ruined his fortune by follies; attempted to repair it by crimes; and at length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man, gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affection and veneration for Addison; and recorded those feelings* in the last lines which he traced before he hid himself from infamy under London Bridge.
Another of Addison's favorite companions was Ambrose Phil- ips, a good Whig and a middling poet, who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called after his name, "Namby-Pamby. ^^ But the most remark- able members of the little senate, as Pope long afterwards called it, were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell.
Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had been together at the Charter House and at Oxford; but circumstances
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2749
had Luea, for a time, separated them widely. Steele had left college without taking a degree, had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had written a religious treat- ise and se/eral comedies. He was one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting; in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety and honor; in practice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a spunging house, or drank himself into a fever. Addison re- garded Steele with kindness not unmingled with scorn, — tried, with little success, to keep him out of scrapes, introducing him to the great, procured a good place for him, corrected his plays, and, though by no means rich, lent him large sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a letter dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary transac- tions probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private transactions which took place a hundred and twenty years ago are proved by stronger evidence than this. But we can by no means agree with those who condemn Addison's severity. The most amiable of mankind may well be moved to indignation, when what he has earned hardly, and lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the pur- pose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion. We will illustrate our meaning by an example, which is not the less striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's "Amelia," is represented as the most benevolent of human beings; yet he takes in execution, not only the goods, but the person of his friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure because he has been informed that Booth, while yjleading poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, has been buying fine jewelry, and setting up a coach. No person who is well acquainted with Steele's life and correspond-
2750 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
ence, can doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, was something like this: A letter comes to Addison, imploring help in pathetic terms, and promising reforma- tion and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares that he has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. He determines to deny himself some medals which are wanting to his series of the Twelve Caesars; to put off buying the new edition of ^' Bayle's Dictionary, '^ and to wear his old sword and buckles another year. In this way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under champagne, Burgundy, and pyramids of sweet- meats. Is it strange that a man whose kindness is thus abused, should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due to him ?
From the Edinburgh Review, 1843.
MILTON AND DANTE
POETRY, which relates to the beings of another world, ought to to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque, indeed, beyond any that was ever written. Its effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault indeed on the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of his poem, which, as we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. Still it is a fault. His supernatural agents excite an interest; but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk with his ghosts and demons without any emotions of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily in their company. His angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly execution- ers. His dead men are merely living men in strange situations. The scene which passes between the poet and Facinata is justly celebrated. Still, Facinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Facinata would have been at an auto da //. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2751
composure, the lover for whose affections she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates ? The feelings which give the pas- sage its charm would suit the streets of Florence, as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory.
The Spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have just enough in common with human nature to be intelligible to human be- ings. Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions and veiled in mysterious gloom.
Perhaps the gods and demons of ^schylus may best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the vague- ness and tenor of the Oriental character; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. His legends seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticoes, in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque laby- rinths of eternal granite, in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favorite gods are those of the elder generations, — the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, — the gigantic Titans and the in- exorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. He bears undoubt- edly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we 6nd the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture. He is rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses, that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere.
2 752 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
The misht of his intellectual nature is victorious over the ex- tremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake and the marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of unintermittent misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, requir- ing no support from anything external, nor even from hope itself!
To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add, that the poetry of these great men has, in a considerable degree, taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of the inex- perienced, by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more completely, though undesignedly, colored by their per- sonal feelings.
The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by lofti- ness of thought; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the ^^ Divine Comedy ^^ we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is, perhaps, no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of the earth nor the hope of heaven could dispel it. It twined every consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, " a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness ! *' The gloom of his character discolors all the passions of men and all the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise and the glories of the Eternal Throne! All the portraits of him are singularly charac- teristic. No person can look on the features, noble even to rug- gedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip,
*
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2753
and doubt that they belonged to a man too proud and too sensi- tive to be happy.
Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men, by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come ; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription, facetiously termed the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, had set a mark on the poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by name to the hatred of a profli- gate court and an inconstant people ! Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman, were now the favorite writers of the sovereign and the public. It was a loathsome herd — which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of "Comus, ** grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene — to be chatted at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rabble of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappoint- ments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to dis- turb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His tem- per was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was, when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in tlie prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinc- tions and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be — when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die!
From the review of Sumner's translation of Milton's *' Treatise on Christian
Doctrine." Edinburgh Review, 1825.
VII— 173
2 7^4 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAUI^AY
THE GENIUS OF MIRABEAU
WE HAVE never met with so vivid and interesting a picture of the National Assembly as that which M. Dumont has set before us. His Mirabeau, in particular, is incompara- ble. All the former Mirabeaus were daubs in comparison. Some were merely painted from the imagination, others were gross caricatures; this is the very individual, neither god nor demon, but a man, a Frenchman, a Frenchman cf the eighteenth century, with great talents, with strong passions, depraved by bad educa- tion, surrounded by temptations of every kind, made desperate at one time by disgrace, and then again intoxicated by fame. All his opposite and seemingly inconsistent qualities are in this re- presentation so blended together as to make up a harmoniou;'; and natural whole. Till now, Mirabeau wae to us, and, we be- lieve, to most readers of history, not a man, but a string of an- titheses. Henceforth he will be a real human being, a remarkabb and eccentric being indeed, but perfectly conceivable.
He was fond, M. Dunr.ont tells us, of giving oc^d compound nicknames. Thus, M. de , Lafayette was Grandison-Cromwell ; the King of Prussia was Alar ic-Cottin ; D'Espremenil was Crispin- Catiline. We think that Mirabeau himself might be described, after his own fashion, as a Wilkes-Chatham. He had Wilkes's sensuality, Wilkes's levity, Wilkes's insensibility to shame. Like Wilkes, he had brought on himself the censure even of men of pleasure by the peculiar grossness of his immorality, and by the obscenity of his writings. Like Wilkes, he was heedless, not only of the laws of morality, but of the laws of honor. Yet he af- fected, like Wilkes, to unite the character of the demagogue to that of the fine gentleman. Like Wilkes, he conciliated, by his good-humor and his high spirits, the regard of many who despised his character. Like Wilkes, he was hideously ugly; like Wilkes, he made a jest of his own ugliness; and, like Wilkes, he was, in spite of Lis ugliness, very attentive to his dress, and very success- ful in affairs of gallantry.
Resembling Wilkes in the lower and grosser parts of his char- acter, he had, in his higher qualities, some affinities to Chatham. His eloquence, as far as we can judge of it, bore no inconsidera- ble resemblance to that of the great English minister. He was not eminently successful in long set speeches. He was not, on
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2755
the other hand, a close and ready debater. Sudden burrts, which seemed to be the effect of inspiration; short sentences, which came like lightning", dazzling, burning, striking down everything before them; sentences which, spoken at critical moments, decided the fate of great questions; sentences which at once became proverbs; sentences which everybody still knows by heart; in these chiefly lay the oratorical power both of Chatham and of Mirabeau. There have been far greater speakers and far greater statesmen than either of them; but we doubt whether any men have, in modern times, exercised such vast personal influence over stormy and divided assemblies. The power of both was as much moral as intellectual. In true dignity of character, in private and pub- lic virtue, it may seem absurd to institute any comparison be- tween them; but they had the same haughtiness and vehemence of temper. In their language and manner there was a disdain- ful self-confidence, an imperiousness, a fierceness of passion, be- fore which all common minds quailed. Even Murray and Charles Townshend, thciigh intellectually not inferior to Chatham, w6\'*» always cowed by ...m. Barnave, in the same manner, though t'ne best debater in the National Assembly, flinched bfci.ore the energy of Mirabeau. Men, except in bad novels, are not all good or all evil. It can scarcely be denied that the virtue of Lord Chatham was a little theatrical. On the other hand, there was in Mira- beau, not indeed anything deserving the name of virtue, but that imperfect substitute for virtue which is found in almost all supe- rior minds, a sensibility to the beautiful and the good, which sometimes amounted to sincere enthusiasm, and which, mingled with the desire of admiration, sometimes gave to his character a lustre resembling the lustre of true goodness; as the " faded splen- dor wan " which lingered round the fallen archangel, resembled ihe exceeding brightness of those spirits who had kept their first
estate.
From a review of Dnmont's <* Recollections of Mirabeau." lidinburgh Review, 1843.
HISTORY AS AN EVOLUTION
BISHOP Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant, and laying down theories as to the whole internal structure of the vast animal, from the phenomena of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the geologists; but it is very
2756 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
applicable to those historians who write as if the body politic were homogeneous, who look only on the surface of affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organization which lies deep below.
In the works of such writers as these, England at the close of the Seven Years' War, is in the highest state of prosperity. At the close of the American war, she is in a miserable and de- graded condition; as if the people were not on the whole as rich, as well governed, and as well educated, at the latter period as at the former. We have read books called histories of England, under the reign of George II., in which the rise of Methodism is not even mentioned. A hundred years hence this breed of authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it should still exist, the late ministerial interregnum will be described in terms which will seem to imply that all government was at an end; that the social contract was annulled, and that the hand of every man was against his neighbor, until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet educed order out of the chaos of anarchy. We are quite certain that misconceptions as gross prevail at this moment, re- specting many important parts of our annals.
The effect of historical reading is analogous in, many respects, to that produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, is transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of man- ners. But men may travel far, and return with minds as con- tracted as if they had never stirred from their own market town. In the same manner, men may know the ^dates of many battles, and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be no wiser. Most people look at past times, as princes look at foreign coun- tries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our is- land amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has hunted with the master of the staghounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and a knight of the garter installed ; has cantered along Regent Street; has visited St. Paul's, and noted down its dimen- sions, and has then departed, thinking that he has seen England, He has, in fact, seen a few public buildings, public men, and pub- lic ceremonies. But of the vast and complex system of society, of the fine shades of national character, of the practical operation of government and laws, he knows nothing. He who would under- stand these things rightly must not confine his observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordinary men as they
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 275^
appear in their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of the exchange and the coffee- house. He must obtain admittance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring even the retreats of misery. He v/ho wishes to understand the condition of mankind in former ages, must proceed on the same principle. If he attend only to public transactions, to wars, congresses, and debates, his studies will be as unprofitable as the travels of those imperial, royal, and serene sovereigns, who form their judgment of our island from having gone in state to a few fine sights, and from having held formal conferences with a few great officers.
The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authen- ticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious selection, rejec- tion, and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative, a due subordina- tion is observed; some transactions are prominent, others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is increased or dimin- ished, not according to the dignity of the persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. He shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant for his notice, which is not too insignif- icant to illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of educa- tion, and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described, but will be made intimately known to us. The changes of manners will be indicated, not merely by a few general phrases, or a few extracts from statistical documents, but by appropriate images presented in every line.
If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England, he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would intersperse the details which are the charm of historical romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful painted window, which was made by an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by liis master. It is so far superior to every other in the church, that, according to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed himself from mortification.
2758 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those fragments of truth which historians have scornfully thrown behind them, in a manner which may well excite their envy. He has constructed out of their gleanings works which, even considered as histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But a truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the novelist has appropriated. The history of the government and the history of the people would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they can be ex- hibited justly, in inseparable conjunction and intermixture. We should not then have to look for the wars and votes of the Puri- tans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology in <* Old Mortality ** ; for one half of King James in Hume, and for the other half in «The Fortunes of Nigel. »
The early part of our imaginary history would be rich with coloring from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find ourselves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as those who rode with Ctiaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest — from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw; from the throne of the legate to the chimney corner where the begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders — the stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory, and the high mass in its chapel — the manor house, with its hunting and hawk- ing— the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold — would give truth and life to the repre- sentation. We should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the importance of the privileged burgher, and the fierce and haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of the degraded villain. The revival of letters would not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. We should discern, in innumerable particu- lars, the fermentation of mind, the eager appetite for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the fifteenth century. In the Reformation v*^e should see, not merely a schism which changed the ecclesiastical constitution of England, and the mutual relations of the European powers, but a moral war which raged in every family, which set the father against the son, and the son against the father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should have the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his savage and imperious old age. We should per^^eive the gradua'' progress of selfish and tyrannical
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2759
passions, in a mind not naturally insensible or ungenerotis; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness, and in all her strength, surrounded by the handsome favorites whom she never trusted, and the wise old statesmen, whom she never dis- missed, uniting in herself the most contradictory qualities of both her parents — the coquetry, the caprice, the petty malice of Anne — the haughty and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesita- tion in saying, that a great artist might produce a portrait of this remarkable woman, at least as striking as that in the novel of Kenilworth, without employing a single trait not authenticated by ample testimony.* In the meantime, we should see arts culti- vated, wealth accumulated, the conveniences of life improved. We should see the keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them, gradually giving place to the halla of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his hut more commodiously furnished. We should see those opinions and feelings which pro- duced the great struggle against the house of Stuart, slowly growing up in the bosom of private families, before they mani- fested themselves in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil war. Those skirmishes, on which Clarendon dwells so minutely, would be told, as Thucydides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. They are merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness of the swear- ing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the royal cause — the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the Independent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans — the valor, the policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these ungraceful disguises, the dreams of the raving Fifth Monarchyman, the dreams, scarcely less wild, of the philosopliic republican — all these would enter into the representation, and render it at once more exact and more striking.
•See the portrait by Crccii cUewherc in tliis work.
2760 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
The instruction derived from history thus written would be of a vivid and practical character. It would be received by the im- agination as well as by the reason. It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and most mo- mentous revolutions seem to come upon them like supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which ordinarily proceed far before their progress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely necessary to the progno- sis of political events. A narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as a medical treatise which should pass by all the symp- toms attendant on the early stage of a disease, and mention only what occurs when the patient is beyond the reach of remedies.
From a review of Neele's << Romance of History, » Edinburgh Review, 1828.
MONTGOMERY'S SATAN.
THE Day of Judgment is to be described, — and a roaring cata- ract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous sub- ject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wiz- ard phantoms. Racing hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire clouds. The white waves gallop. Shadowy worlds career around. The red and raging eye of Imagination is then forbid- den to pry further. But further Mr. Robert Montgomery per- sists in prying. The stars bound through the airy roar. The unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of Eternity then begin to advance. The world glares in fiery slumber. A car comes forward driven by living thunder.
« Creation shudders with sublime dismay, And in a blazing tempest whirls away."
And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks its writer with the master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described over and over again, in terms which would require some qualifi- cation if used respecting ® Paradise Lost ! * It is too much that
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2761
this patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what, when new, was, for the most part, but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we think of a system, by means of which verses like those which we have quoted — verses fit only for the poet's cor- ner of the Morning Post — can produce emolument and fame ? The circulation of this writer's poetry has been greater than that of Southey's "Roderick,*^ and beyond all comparison greater than that of Carey's *^ Dante," or of the best works of Coleridge. Thus encouraged, Mr. Robert Montgomery has favored the pub- lic with volume after volume. We have given so much space to the examination of his first and most popular performance, that we have none to spare for his * Universal Prayer," and his smaller poems, which, as the puffing journals tell us, would alone con- stitute a sufficient title to literary immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication, entitled " Satan. "
This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of acclamation. But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions so unfounded, so impudent, and so successful, had aroused a spirit of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accord- ingly, " Satan " has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts of the puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We shall, therefore, be very concise.
Of the two poems, we rather prefer that on the ** Omnipres- ence of the Deity," for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank one bad book above another. * Marry, this is somewhat. This is rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason." "Satan" is a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six thousand lines of blank verse, concern- ing geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatri- cal amusements, Sir Walter Scott's novels, Lord Byron's poetry, and Mr. Martin's pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural, particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to learn, that, whatever may be thouglit of those performances on earth, they giv« full satisfaction in Pandemo- nium, and that he is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various thrones and dominions very happily.
The motto to the poem of " Satan " is taken from the Book of Job: "Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the
2762 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
earth, and walking up and down in it.* And certainly, Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to locomotion, ^^ Satan '* has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told us, that ^* the prince of darkness is a gentle- man ^* ; but we had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault is, that he is something of a twaddle, and far too liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character which Origen anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, that so old an offender should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong dispositions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we must say, that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, to his preach- ing tone. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit, or alter, about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of ^^ Gabriel. ^^ The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel.
We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at random — neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and moralizes thereon as follows; —
Music and pomp their mingling spirit shed Around me; beauties in their cloud-like robes Shine forth, — a scenic paradise, it glares Intoxication through the reeling sense Of flushed enjoyment. In the motley host Three prime gradations may be ranked: the first, To mount upon the wings of Shakespeare's mind, And win a flash of his Promethean thought, — To smile and weep, to shudder and achieve A round of passionate omnipotence, Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe, Convened to hear romantic harlots sing. On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze, While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire; The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem, With their corroded figures, rayless glance
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2763
And death-like struggle of decaying age,
Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp
Set forth to satirize the human kind! —
How fine a prospect for demoniac view!
* Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!*
Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry.'*
Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert
Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain
to individuals, literature must be purified of this taint. And, to
show that we are not actuated by any feelings of personal
enmity towards him, we hereby give notice, that, as soon as any
book shall, by means of puffing, reach a second edition, our
intention is, to do unto the writer of it as we have done unto
Mr. Robert Montgomery,
From a review of Montgomery's poems.
Edinburgh Review, 1830.
ON GLADSTONE'S "CHURCH AND STATE »
WE THINK that government, like eveiy other contrivance of human wisdom, from the highest to the lowest, is likely to answer its main end best when it is constructed with a single view to that end. Mr. Gladstone, who loves Plato, will not quarrel with us for illustrating our proposition, after Plato's fashion, from the most familiar objects. Take cutlery, for exam- ple. A blade which is designed both to shave and to carve will certainly not shave so well as a razor or carve so well as a carv- ing knife. An academy of painting, which should also be a bank, would in all probability exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A gas company, which should also be an infant school society, would, we apprehend, light the streets ill, and teach the children ill. On the principle, we think that government should be organized solely with a view to its main end; and that no part of its efficiency for that end should be sacrificed in order to promote any other end, however excellent.
But does it follow from hence that governments ought never to promote any other end than their main end ? In no wise. Though it is desirable that every institution should have a main end, and should be so formed as to be in tlie highest degree effi- cient for that main end; yet if, without any sacrifice of its efficiency for that end, it can promote any other good end, it ought to do
2764 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
SO. Thus, the end for which a hospital is built is the relief of the sick, not the beautifying of the street. To sacrifice the health of the sick to splendor of architectual effect — to place the build- ing in a bad air only that it may present a more commanding front to a great public place — to make the wards hotter or cooler than they ought to be, in order that the columns and windows of the exterior may please the passers-by, would be monstrous. But if, without any sacrifice of the chief object, the hospital can be made an ornament to the metropolis, it would be absurd not to make it so.
In the same manner, if a government can, without any sacri- fice of its main end, promote any other good end, it ought to do so. The encouragement of the fine arts, for example, is by no means the main end of government; and it would be absurd, in constituting a government, to bestow a thought on the question whether it would be a government likely to train Raphaels and Domenichinos. But it by no means follows tha.t it is improper for a government to form a national gallery of pictures. The same may be said of patronage bestowed on learned men — of the publication of archives — of the collecting of libraries, menag- eries, plants, fossils, antiques — of journeys and voyages for pur- poses of geographical discovery or astronomical observation. It is not for these ends that government is constituted. But it may well happen that a government may have at its command resources which will enable it, without any injury to its main end, to serve these collateral ends far more effectually than any individual or any voluntary association could do. If so, government ought to serve these collateral ends.
It is still more evidently the duty of government to pro- mote — always in subordination to its main end — everything which is useful as a means for the attaining of that main end. The improvement of steam navigation, for example, is by no means a primary object of government. But as steam vessels are useful for the purpose of national defense, and for the pur- pose of facilitating intercourse between distant provinces, and thereby consolidating the force of the empire, it may be the bounden duty of government to encourage ingenious men to perfect an invention which so directly tends to make the State more efficient for its great primary end.
Now, on both these grounds, the instruction of the people may with propriety engage the care of the government. That
f
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2765
the people should be well educated is in itself a good thing; and the State ought therefore to promote this object, if it can do so without any sacrifice of its primary object. The education of the people, conducted on those principles of morality which are common to all the forms of Christianity, is highly valuable as a means of promoting the main end for which government exists; and is on this ground an object well deserving the attention of rulers. We will not at present go into the general question of education, but will confine our remarks to the subject which is more imme- diately before us, namely, the religious instruction of the people. We may illustrate our view of the policy which govern- ments ought to pursue with respect to religious instruction, by recurring to the analogy of a hospital. Religious instruction is not the main end for which a hospital is built; and to intro- duce into a hospital any regulations prejudicial to the health of the patients, on the plea of promoting their spiritual improve- ment— to send a ranting preacher to a man who has just been ordered by the physician to lie quiet and try to get a little sleep — to impose a strict observance of Lent on a convalescent who has been advised to eat heartily of nourishing food — to direct, as the bigoted Pius V. actually did, that no medical as- sistance should be given to any person who declined spiritual attendance — would be the most extravagant folly. Yet it by no means follows that it would not be right to have a chaplain to attend the sick, and to pay such a chaplain out of the hospital funds. Whether it will be proper to have such a chaplain at all, and of what religious persuasion such a chaplain ought to be, must depend on circumstances. There may be a town in which it would be impossible to set up a good hospital without the help of people of different opinions. And religious parties may run so high that, though people of different opinions are willing to contribute for the relief of the sick, they will not concur in the choice of any one chaplain. The High Churchmen insist that, if there is a paid chaplain, he shall be a High Churchman. The Evangelicals stickle for an Evangelical. Plere it would evidently be absurd and cruel to let a useful and humane design, about which all are agreed, fall to the ground, because all cannot agree about something else. The governors must either appoint two chaplains, and pay them both, or they must appoint none; and every one of them must, in his individual capacity, do what he can for the purpose of providing the sick with such religious
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instruction and consolation as will, in his opinion, be most useful to them.
We should say the same of government. Government is not an institution for the propagation of religion any more than St. George's Hospital is an institution for the propagation of religion. And the most absurd and pernicious consequences would follow, if government should pursue, as its primary end, that which can never be more than its secondary end; though intrinsically more important than its primary end. But a government which con- siders the religious instruction of the people as its secondary end, and follows out that principle faithfully, will, we think, be likely to do much good, and little harm.
We will rapidly run over some of the consequences to which this principle leads, and point out how it solves some problems which, on Mr. Gladstone's hypothesis, admit of no satisfactory solution.
All persecution directed against the persons or property of men is, on our principle, obviously indefensible. For the protec- tion of the persons and property of men being the primary end of government, and religious instruction only a secondary end, to secure the people from heresy by making their lives, their limbs, or their estates insecure, would be to sacrifice the primary end to the secondary end. It would be as absurd as it would be in the governors of a hospital to direct that the wounds of all Arian and Socinian patients should be dressed in such a way as to make them fester.
Again, on our principles, all civil disabilities on account of re- ligious opinions are indefensible. For all such disabilities make government less efficient for its main end; they limit its choice of able men for the administration and defense of the State; they alienate from it the hearts of the sufferers; they deprive it of a part of its effective strength in all contests with foreign na- tions. Such a course is as absurd as it would be in the gov- ernors of a hospital to reject an able surgeon because he is a Universal Restitutionist, and to send a bungler to operate because he is perfectly orthodox.
Again, on our principles, no government ought to press on the people religious instruction, however sound, in such a man- ner as to excite among them discontents dangerous to public order. For here again government would sacrifice its primary end to an end intrinsically, indeed, of the highest importance,
!
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2767
but still only a secondary end of government, as government. This rule at once disposes of the difficulty about India — a difficulty of which Mr. Gladstone can get rid only by putting in an imaginary discharge in order to set aside an imaginary obligation. There is assuredly no country where it is more de- sirable that Christianity should be propagated. But there is no country in which the government is so completely disqualified for the task. By using our power in order to make proselytes, we should produce the dissolution of society, and bring utter ruin on all those interests for the protection of which govern- ment exists. Here the secondary end is, at present, inconsistent with the primary end, and must therefore be abandoned. Chris- tian instruction given by individuals and voluntary societies may do much good. Given by the government, it would do unmixed harm. At the same time, we quite agree with Mr. Gladstone in thinking that the English authorities in India ought not to par- ticipate in any idolatrous rite; and, indeed, we are fully satisfied that all such participation is not only unchristian, but also un- wise and most undignified.
Supposing the circumstances of a country to be such that the government may with propriety, on our principles, give religious instruction to a people, the next question is, what religion shall be taught ? Bishop Warburton answers. The religion of the ma- jority. And we so far agree with him, that we can scarcely con- ceive any circumstances in which it would be proper to establish, as the one exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the mi- nority. Such a preference could hardly be given without excit- ing most serious discontent, and endangering those interests the protection of which is the first object of government. But we never can admit that a ruler can be justified in assisting to spread a system of opinions solely because that system is pleasing to the majority. On the other hand, we cannot agree with Mr. Glad- stone, who would, of course, answer that the only religion which a ruler ought to propagate is the religion of his own conscience. In truth, this is an impossibility. And, as we have sliown, Mr. Gladstone himself, whenever he supports a grant of money to the Church of England, is really assisting to propagate, not the pre- cise religion of his own conscience, but some one or more, he knows not how many or which, of the innumerable religions wliich lie between the confines of Pelagianism and those of Antinomi- anism, and between the confines of Popery and those of Presby-
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terianism. In our opinion, that religious instruction which the ruler ought, in his public capacity, to patronize, is the instruction from which he, in his conscience, believes that the people will learn most good with the smallest mixture of evil. And thus it is not necessarily his own religion that he will select. He will, of course, believe that his own religion is unmixedly good. But the question which he has to consider is, not how much good his religion contains, but how much good the people will learn, if in- struction is given them in that religion. He may prefer the doc- trines and government of the Church of England to those of the Church of Scotland. But if he knows that a Scotch congregation will listen with deep attention and respect while an Erskine or a Chalmers set before them the foundamental doctrines of Chris- tianity, and that the glimpse of a cassock or a single line of a liturgy would be the signal for hooting and riot, and would prob- ably bring stools and brickbats about the ears of the minister, he acts wisely if he conveys religious knowledge to the Scotch rather by means of that imperfect Church, as he may think it, from which they will learn much, than by means of that perfect Church, from which they will learn nothing. The only end of teaching is, that men may learn; and it is idle to talk of the duty of teachmg truth in ways which only cause men to cling more firmly to falsehood.
On these principles we conceive that a statesman, who might be far, indeed, from regarding the Church of England with the reverence which Mr. Gladstone feels for her, might yet firmly op- pose all attempts to destroy her. Such a statesman may be far too well acquainted with her origin to look upon her with super- stitious awe. He may know that she sprang from a compromise huddled up between the eager zeal of reformers and the selfish- ness of greedy, ambitious, and time-serving politicians. He may find in every page of her annals ample cause for censure. He may feel that he could not, with ease to his conscience, subscribe to all her articles. He may regret that all the attempts which have been made to open her gates to large classes of nonconformists should have failed. Her episcopal polity he may consider as of purely human institution. He cannot defend her on the ground that she possesses the apostolical succession ; for he does not know whether that succession may not be altogether a fable. He can- not defend her on the ground of her unity; for he knows that her frontier sects are niuch more remote from each other than
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2769
one frontier is from the Church of Rome, or the other from the Church of Geneva. But he may think that she teaches more truth with less alloy of error than would be taught by those who, if she were swept away, would occupy the vacant space. He may think that the effect produced by her beautiful services and by her pulpits on the national mind, is, on the whole, highly benefi- cial. He may think that her civilizing influence is usefully felt in remote districts. He may think that, if she were destroyed, a large portion of those who now compose her congregations would neglect all religious duties; and that a still larger part would fall under the influence of spiritual mountebanks, hungry for gain or drunk with fanaticism. While he would with pleasure admit that all the qualities of Christian pastors are to be found in large measure within the existing body of dissenting ministers, he would perhaps be inclined to think that the standard of intellectual and moral character among that exemplary class of men may have been raised to its present high point and maintained there by the indirect influence of the Establishment. And he may be by no means satisfied that, if the Church were at once swept away, the place of our Sumners and Whateleys would be supplied by Doddridges and Halls. He may think that the advantages which we have described are obtained, or might, if the existing system were slightly modified, be obtained, without any sacrifice of the paramount objects which all governments ought to have chiefly in view. Nay, he may be of opinion that an institution, so deeply fixed in the hearts and minds of millions, could not be subverted without loosening and shaking all the foundations of civil society. With at least equal case he would find reason for supporting the Church of Scotland. Nor would he be under the necessity of resorting to any contract to justify the connection of two re- ligious establishments with one government. He would think scruples on that head frivolous in any person who is zealous for a Church, of which both Dr. Herbert Marsh and Dr. Daniel Wil- son are bishops. Indeed, he would gladly follow out his princi- ples much further. He would have been willing to vote in 1825 for Lord Francis Egcrton's resolution, that it is expedient to give a public maintenance to the Catholic clergy of Ireland; and he would deeply regret that no such measure was adopted in 1839.
In this way, we conceive, a statesman might, on our princi- ples, satisfy himself that it would be in the highest degree inex- vn — 174
2770 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
pedient to abolish the Church, either of England or of Scotland.
But if there were, in any part of the world, a national church regarded as heretical by four-fifths of the nation committed to its care — a Church established and maintained by the sword — a Church producing twice as many riots as conversions — a Church which, though possessing great wealth and power, and though long backed by persecuting laws, had, in the course of many gener- ations, been found unable to propagate its doctrines, and barely able to maintain its ground — a Church so odious, that fraud and violence, when used against its clear rights of property, were generally regarded as fair play — a Church whose ministers were preaching to desolate walls, and with difficulty obtaining their lawful subsistence by the help of bayonets — such a Church, on our principles, could not, we must own, be defended. We should say that the State which allied itself with such a Church, post- poned the primary end of government to the secondary ; and that the consequences had been such as any sagacious observer would have predicted. Neither the primary nor the secondary end is attained. The temporal and spiritual interests of the people suf- fer alike. The minds of men, instead of being drawn to the Church, are alienated from the State. The magistrate, after sacri- ficing order, peace, union, all the interests which it is his first duty to protect, for the purpose of promoting pure religion, is forced, after the experience of centuries, to admit that he has really been promoting error. The sounder the doctrines of such a Church — the more absurd and noxious the superstition by which those doctrines are opposed — the stronger are the arguments against the policy which has deprived a good cause of its natural advantages. Those who preach to rulers the duty of employing power to propagate truth would do well to remember that false- hood, though no match for truth alone, has often been found more than a match for truth and power together.
A statesman, judging on our principles, would pronounce with- out hesitation that a Church, such as we have last described, never ought to have been set up. Further than this we v.'ill not venture to speak for him. He would doubtless remember that the world is full of institutions which, though they never ought to have been set up, yet having been set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down; and that it is often wise in practice to be content with the mitigation of an abuse which, looking at it in the abstract, we might feel impatient to destroy.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 277 1
We have done; and nothing remains but that we part from Mr. Gladstone with the courtesy of antagonists who bear no mal- ice. We dissent from his opinions, but we admire his talents; we respect his integrity and benevolence; and we hope that he will not suffer political avocations so entirely to engross him as to leave him no leisure for literature and philosophy.
From a review of Gladstone's «The State; Its Relations with the Church,* 1839.
MACHIAVELLI
■1 T 7E DOUBT whether any name in literary history be so gen- YY erally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider. The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original inventor of perjury; that, before the publication of his fatal "Prince,** there had never been a hypo- crite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue or a convenient crime. One writer gravely assures us, that Maurice of Saxony learned all his fraudulent policy from that execrable volume. Another remarks, that since it was translated into Turkish, the Sultans have been more addicted than formerly to the custom of strangling their brothers. Our own foolish Lord Lyttleton charges the poor Florentine with the manifold treasons of the House of Guise, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Several authors have hinted that the Gunpowder Plot is to be primarily attributed to his doctrines, and seem to think that his effigy ought to be substituted for that of Guy Fawkes, in those proces- sions by which the ingenuous youth of England annually com- memorate the preservation of the Three Estates. The Church of Rome has pronounced his works accursed things. Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave — and out of his Christian name a synonym for the devil.
It is indeed scarcely possible for any person, not well ac- quainted with the history and literature of Italy, to read, without horror and amazement, the celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the name of Machiavelli. Such a display of wickadness, naked, yet not ashamed, such cool, j<idicious, scien-
2 772 THOMAS BABINGTON MACATJLAY
tific atrocity, seem rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow, without the disg-uise of some palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms of all political science.
It is not strange that ordinary readers should regard the author of such a book as the most depraved and shameless of human beings. Wise men, however, have always been inclined to look with great suspicion on the angels and demons of the multitude; and in the present instance, several circumstances have led even superficial observers to question the justice of the vulgar decision. It is notorious that Machiavelli was, through life, a zealous republican. In the same year in which he com- posed his manual of Kingcraft, he suffered imprisonment and torture in the cause of public liberty. It seems inconceivable that the martyr of freedom should have designedly acted as the apostle of tyranny. Several eminent writers have, therefore, endeavored to detect, in this unfortunate performance, some con- cealed meaning more consistent with the character and conduct of the author than that which appears at the first glance.
One hypothesis is, that Machiavelli intended to practice on the young Lorenzo de Medici a fraud, similar to that which Sunderland is said to have employed against our James II., — that he urged his pupil to violent and perfidious measures, as the surest means of accelerating the moment of deliverance and revenge. Another supposition, which Lord Bacon seems to coun- tenance is, that the treatise was merely a piece of grave irony, intended to warn nations against the arts of ambitious men. It would be easy to show that neither of these solutions is con- sistent with many passages in * The Prince *^ itself. But the most decisive refutation is that which is furnished by the other works of Machiavelli. In all the writings which he gave to the public, and in all those which the research of editors has, in the course of three centuries, discovered — in his comedies, designed for the entertainment of the multitude — in his comments on Livy, intended for the perusal of the most enthitsiastic patriots of Florence — in his "History,** ascribed to one of the most amiable and estimable of the popes — in his public dispatches — in his private memoranda, the same obliquity of moral principle for which * The Prince * is so severely censured, is more or less di*
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2773
cernible. We doubt whether it would be possible to. find, in all the many volumes of his compositions, a single expression indi- cating that dissimulation and treachery had ever struck him as discreditable.
After this it may seem ridiculous to say, that we are ac- quainted with few writings which exhibit so much elevation of sentiment, so pure and warm a zeal for the public good, or so just a view of the duties and rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from <* The Prince * itself we could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at first, per- fectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma, — a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, — selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his most confidential spy; the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed by an ardent schoolboy on the death of Leon- idas. An act of dexterous perfidy, and an act of patriotic self- devotion, call forth the same kind and the same degree of respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the writer seems at once to be morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two char- acters altogether dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely joined, but interwoven. They are the warp and the woof of his mind; and their combination, like that of the variegated threads in shot silk, gives to the whole texture a glancing and ever-changing appearance. The explanation might have been easy, if he had been a very weak or a very affected man. But he was evidently neither the one nor the other. His works prove beyond all contradiction, that his understanding was strong, his taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely keen.
This is strange — and yet the strangest is behind. There is no reason whatever to think, that those amongst whom he lived saw anything shocking or incongruous in his writings. Abundant proofs remain of the high estimation in which both his works and his person were held by the most respectable among his contemporaries. Clement VII. patronized the publication of those very books which the council of Trent, in the following genera- tion, pronounced unfit for the perusal of Christians. Some mem- bers of the dcmocratical party censured the secretary for
2774 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
dedicating ^* The Prince * to a patron who bore the unpopular name of Medici. But to those immoral doctrines, which have since called forth such severe reprehensions, no exception appears to have been taken. The cry against them was first raised be- yond the Alps — and seems to have been heard with amazement in Italy. The earliest assailant, as far as we are aware, was a countryman of our own. Cardinal Pole. The author of the ^^Anti- Machiavelli ** was a French Protestant.
It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of those times, that we must seek for the real explana- tion of what seems most mysterious in the life and writings of this remarkable man.
Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scru- ples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals, with their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their an- cestors. Nor is this all. Posterity, that high court of appeal which is never tired of eulogizing its own justice and discern- ment, acts, on such occasions, like a Roman dictator after a gen- eral mutiny. Finding the delinquents too numerous to be all punished, it selects some of them at hazard to bear the whole penalty of an offense in which they are not more deeply impli- cated than those who escape. Whether decimation be a con- venient mode of military execution, we known not; but we solemnly protest against the introduction of such a principle into the philosophy of history.
In the present instance, the lot has fallen on Machiavelli: a man whose public conduct was upright and honorable, whose views of morality, where they differed from those of the persons around him, seem to have differed for the better, and whose only fault was, that, having adopted some of the maxims then gener- ally received, he arranged them more luminously, and expressed them more forcibly than any other writer.
From the review of Perier's Edition of « Machiavelli. » Edinburg Review, 1827.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
(1469-1527)
'achiavelli, whose <* Prince'* is one of the most celebrated books in the prose literature of Europe was born at Flor- ence, Italy, May 3d, 1469. His family was noble, and though it had fallen into decay and poverty, he was educated as liberally as the times allowed. He was a classical scholar of extensive attain- ment, a poet and historian as well as an essayist. Had he not writ- ten "The Prince » his name might be held in high repute, as indeed it might at any rate if several of the chapters which make that work deservedly infamous could have been cut out of it before its publica- tion. In « The Prince *> in giving his views of the proper political management of a state he justifies as a rule of conduct the common political practices of his day. It has been said in excusing him that he represented the manners of his age, btit it is quite true, and notori ous as it is true, that what he recommends with such flagrancy is practiced in modern politics even beyond the flagrancy of his recom. mendation. It is as inevitable in politics as embezzlement is in the circulation of money and robbery in the exchange of commodities' but while civilization will recognize and deal with its existence as a fact, the whole object of civilization is to minimize its power for evil and if possible to eradicate it. In the measure in which civilization fails of this, it degenerates into an expression of that mere barbaric desire to take all possible advantage which as it expresses itself in the fraud which precedes violence is often called " Machiavellism.** Morally unsound and on this point intellectually defective. Machiavelli had great powers of mind and as he used them in politics for the uni- fication of Italy he has come into greatly increased favor with his countrymen during the second half of the nineteenth century. He died at Florence. June 22d. 1527. His principal works besides "The Prince** are a "History of Florence.** a treatise on the "Art of War •> and " Discourses ** on Livy and on government.
2776 NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
WHETHER PRINCES OUGHT TO BE FAITHFUL TO THEIR
ENGAGEMENTS
IT IS unquestionably very praiseworthy in princes to be faithful to their engagements; but among those of the present day,
who have been distinguished for great exploits^ few indeed have been remarkable for this virtue, or have scrupled to de- ceive others who may have relied on their good faith.
It should, therefore, be known, that there are two ways of de- ciding any contest; the one by laws, the other by force. The first is peculiar to men, the second to beasts; but when laws are not sufficiently powerful, it is necessary to recur to force; a prince ought therefore to understand how to use both these descriptions of arms. This doctrine is admirably illustrated to us by the ancient poets in the allegorical history of the education of Achilles, and many other princes of antiquity, by the centaur Chiron, who, under the double form of man and beast, taught those who were destined to govern, that it was their duty to use by turns the arms adapted to both these natures, seeing that one without the other, cannot be of any durable advantage. Now, as a prince must learn how to act the part of a beast sometimes, he should make the fox and the lion his patterns. The first can but feebly defend himself against the wolf, and the latter readily falls into such snares as are laid for him. From the fox, therefore, a prince will learn dexterity, in avoiding snares; and from the lion, how to employ his strength to keep the wolves in awe. But they who entirely rely upon the lion's strength, will not always meet with success; in other words a prudent prince cannot and ought not to keep his word, except when he can do it without injury to himself, or when the circumstances under which he contracted the engage- ment still exist.
I should be cautious in inculcating such a precept if all men were good; but as the generality of mankind are wicked, and ever ready to break their words, a prince should not pique him- self in keeping his more scrupulously, especially as it is always easy to justify a breach of faith on his part. I could give numer- ous proofs of this, and show numberless engagements and treaties :/. which have been violated by the treachery of princes, and that those who enacted the part of the fox, have always succeeded best in their affairs. It is necessary, however, to disguise the
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
3777
appearance of craft, and thoroughly to understand the art of feigTi- ing and dissembling; for men are generally so simple and so weak, that he who wishes to deceive easily finds dupes.
One example, taken from the history of our own times, will be sufficient. Pope Alexander VI. played during his whole life a game of deception; and notwithstanding his faithless conduct was extremely well known, his artifices always proved successful. Oaths and protestations cost him nothing; never did a prince so often break his word or pay less regard to his engagements This was because he so well understood this chapter in the art of government.
It is not necessary, however, for a prince to possess all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is indispensable that he should appear to have them. I will even venture to affirm, that it is sometimes dangerous to use though it is always useful to seem to possess them. A prince should earnestly endeavor to gain the reputation of kindness, clemency, piety, justice, and fidel- ity to his engagements. He ought to possess all these good qualities, but still retain such power over himself as to display their opposites whenever it may be expedient. I maintain that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot with impunity exer cise all the virtues, because his own self-preservation will often compel him to violate the laws of charity, religion, and humanity. He should habituate himself to bend easily to the various circum- stances which may from time to time surround him. In a word, it v.'ill be as useful to him to persevere in the path of rectitude, while he feels no inconvenience in doing so, as to know how to deviate from it when circumstances dictate such a course. He should make it a rule above all things, never to utter anything which does not breathe of kindness, justice, good faith, and piety; this last quality it is most important for him to appear to pos- sess, as men in general judge more from appearance than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetra- tion. Every one sees your exterior, but few can discern what you have in your heart; and those few dare not oppose the voice of the multitude, who have the majesty of their prince on their side. Now, in forming a judgment of the minds of men, and more especially of princes, as we cannot recur to any tri- bunal, we must attend only to results. Let it then be the prince's chief care to maintain his authority; the means he em- ployes, be what they may, will, for this purpose, always appear
277S NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
honorable and meet applause; for the vulgar are ever caught by appearances, and judge only by the event. And as the world is chiefly composed of such as are called the vulgar, the voice of the few is seldom or never heard or regarded.
There is a prince now alive (whose name it may not be pro- per to mention) who ever preaches the doctrines of peace and good faith; but if he had observed either the one or the other, he would long ago have lost both his reputation and dominions.
Complete. From «The Prince, » chap, xviii.
HOW FAR FORTUNE INFLUENCES THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD, AND HOW FAR SHE MAY BE RESISTED
1KNOW that several have thought, and many still are of the opinion, that all sublunary events are governed either by Di- vine Providence or by chance, in such a manner that human wisdom has no share in their direction; and hence they infer that man should abstain from interfering with their course, and leave everything to its natural tendency.
The revolutions which in our times are of such frequent re- currence, seem to support this doctrine, and I own, that I, myself, am almost inclined to favor such opinions, particularly when I consider how far those events surpass all human conjecture; yet, as we confessedly possess a free will, it must, I think, be allowed, that chance does not so far govern the world as to leave no prov- ince for the exercise of human prudence.
For my own part, I cannot help comparing the blind power of chance to a rapid river, which, having overflowed its banks, inundates the plain, uproots trees, carries away houses and lands, and sweeps all before it in its destructive progress; everybody flies possessing neither resolution nor power to oppose its fury. But this should not discourage us, when the river has returned within its natural limits from constructing dikes and banks to prevent a recurrence of similar disasters. It is the same with Fortune; she exercises her power when we oppose no barrier to her progress.
If we cast our eyes on Italy, which has been the theatre of these revolutions, and consider the causes by which they have been provoked, we shall find it to be a defenseless country. If she had been properly fortified like Germany, Spain, or France,
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI 2779
such inundations of foreigners would never have happened, or at least their irruptions would have been attended with less devasta- tion.
Let this suffice in general concerning the necessity of oppos- ing fortune. But to descend to particulars. It is no uncommon thing to see a prince fall from prosperity to adversity, without our being able to attribute his fate to any change in conduct or character; for, as I have already shown at large, he who relies solely on Fortune, must be ruined inevitably whenever she aban- dons him.
Those princes who adapt their conduct to circumstances are rarely unfortunate. Fortune is only changeable to those who cannot conform themselves to the varying exigencies of the times; for we see different men take different courses to obtain the end they have in view ; for instance, in pursuit of riches or glory, one prosecutes his object at random, the other with caution and pru- dence ; one employs art, the other force ; one is impetuosity itself, the other all patience; means by which each may severally suc- ceed. It also happens that of two who follow the same route, one may arrive at his destination, and the other fail; and that if two other persons, whose dispositions are diametrically opposite, pursue the same object by wholly different means, yet both shall equally prosper; which is entirely owing to the temper of the times, which always prove favorable or adverse, according as men conform to them.
Circumstances also frequently decide whether a prince con- ducts himself well or ill on any particular occasion. There are times when an extraordinary degree of prudence is necessary, there are others when the prince should know how to trust some things to chance; but there is nothing more difficult than sud- denly to change his conduct and character, sometimes from ina- bility to resist his old habits and inclinations, at others, from want of resolution to quit a course in which he had always been suc- cessful.
Julius 11., who was of a fiery and violent disposition, suc- ceeded in all his enterprises; doubtless, because a prince of such a character was best adapted to the circumstances under which the church was then governed by this pontiff. Witness his first invasion of the territory of Bologna, in the life of John Benti- voglio, which gave great umbrage to tlie Venetians and the kings of France and Spain, but none of them dared to interfere. The
278o NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
first, because they did not feel themselves strong enough to cope with a pontiff of his character; Spain, because she was engaged in the conquest of Naples; and France, besides having an inter- est in keeping fair with Julius, wished still to humble the Ve- netians, so that she, without hesitation, granted the pope all the assistance he required.
Julius II., therefore, by a precipitate mode of proceeding, suc- ceeded in an enterprise which could not have been accomplished by cool and deliberate measures. He would unquestionably have failed had he given Spain and the Venetians time to reflect on his designs, and if he had allowed France the opportunity of amusing him by excuses and delays.
Julius II. displayed in all his enterprises the same character of violence, and his successes have in that respect fully justi- fied; but he did not, perhaps, live long enough to experience the inconstancy of fortune, for had an occasion unexpectedly occurred in which it would have been necessary to act with pru- dence and circumspection, he would infallibly have been ruined, in consequence of that impetuosity and inflexibility of character which wholly governed him.
From all these circumstances we may conclude, that those who cannot change their system when occasion requires it, will no doubt continue prosperous as long as they glide with the stream of Fortune; but when that turns against them, they are ruined, from not being able to follow that blind goddess, through all her variations.
Besides, I think that it is better to be bold than too circum. spect; because Fortune is of a sex that likes not a tardy wooer, and repulses all who are not ardent ; she declares also, more fre- quently, in favor of those who are young, because they are bold
and enterprising.
Complete. From «The Prince, » chap. xxv.
HENRY MACKENZIE
(1745-1831)
!he Lounger, edited by Henry Mackenzie, has the distinction of being among the first of British periodicals to recognize the genius of Robert Burns. Mackenzie is an essayist of the school of Steele and Addison, and although some of his critics have been at unnecessary pains to say that he is << in no wise a great writer, >> he is often entertaining and frequently useful. He wrote, besides his essays, several novels, including « The Man of the World,* "Julia de Boubigne.» and « The Man of Feeling. » The latter work became celebrated and is still remembered. Mackenzie was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, in August, 1745. He died there January 14th, 1831.
AN OLD COUNTRYHOUSE AND AN OLD LADY
I HAVE long cultivated a talent very fortunate for a man of my disposition, that of traveling in my easy-chair; of transport- ing myself, without stirring from my parlor, to distant places and to absent friends; of drawing scenes in my mind's eye, and of peopling them with the groups of fancy, or the society of re- membrance. When I have sometimes lately felt the dreariness of the town, deserted by my acquaintance; when I have returned from the coffeehouse, where the boxes were unoccupied, and strolled out from my accustomed walk, which even the lame beg- gar had left, I was fain to shut myself up in my room, order a dish of my best tea (for there is a sort of melancholy which dis- poses one to make much of oneself), and calling up the pow- ers of memory and imagination, leave the solitary town for a solitude more interesting, which my younger days enjoyed in the country, which I think, and if I am wrong I do not wish to be undeceived, was the most Elysian spot in the world.
'Twas at an old lady's, a relation and godmother of mine, where a particular incident occasioned my being left during the vacation of two successive seasons. Her house was formed out of the remains of an old Gothic castle, of which one tower wns
3782 HENRY MACKENZIE
still almost entire ; it was tenanted by kindly daws and swallows. Beneath, in a modernized part of the house, resided the mistress of the mansion. The house was skirted by a few majestic elms and beeches, and the stumps of several others showed that once they had been more numerous. To the west a clump of firs covered a rugged rocky dell, where the rooks claimed a prescrip- tive seigniory. Through this a dashing rivulet forced its way, which afterwards grew quiet in its progress, and gurgling gently through a piece of downy meadow ground, crossed the bottom of the garden, where a little rustic paling inclosed a washing green, and a wicker seat, fronting the south, was placed for the accom- modation of the old lady, whose lesser tour, when her fields did not require a visit, used to terminate in this spot. Here, too, were ranged the hives for her bees, whose hum, in a still warm sunshine, soothed the good old lady's indolence, while their pro- verbial industry was sometimes quoted for the instruction of her washers. The brook ran brawling through some underwood on %h.e outside of the garden, and soon after formed a little cascade, which fell into the river that winded through a valley in front of the house. "When haymaking or harvest was going on, my godmother took her long stick in her hand, and overlooked the labors of the mowers or reapers; though I believe there was lit- tle thrift in the superintendency, as the visit generally cost her a draught of beer or a dram, to encourage their diligence.
Within doors she had so able an assistant, that her labor was little. In that department an old manservant was her minister, the father of my Peter, who serves me not the less faithfully that we have gathered nuts together in my godmother's hazel bank. This old butler (I call him by his title of honor, though in truth he had many subordinate offices) had originally enlisted with her husband, who went into the army a youth (though he afterwards married and became a country gentleman), had been his servant abroad, and attended him during his last illness at home. His best hat, which he wore on Sundays, with a scarlet waistcoat of his master, had still a cockade in it.
Her husband's books were in a room at the top of a screw staircase, which had scarce been opened since his death; but her own library, for Sabbath or rainy days, was ranged in a little book press in the parlor. It consisted, so far as I can remember, of several volumes of sermons, a Concordance, Thomas k Kem- pis, Antoninus's "Meditations," the works of the author of tiie
HENRY MACKENZIE 2783
^^ Whole Duty of Man,** and a translation of Boethius; the orig-inal editions of the Spectator and Guardian, Cowley's " Poems ** (of which I had lost a volume soon after I first came about her house), Baker's " Chronicle,'* Burnet's " History of His Own Times," Lamb's '^^ Royal Cookery,** Abercromby's ^* Scots Warriors,** and Nisbet's "Heraldry.**
The subject of the last-mentioned book was my godmother's strong ground; and she could disentangle a point of genealogy beyond any one I ever knew. She had an excellent memory for anecdotes, and her stories, though sometimes long, were never tiresome; for she had been a woman of great beauty and accom- plishment in her youth, and had kept such company as made the drama of her stories respectable and interesting. She spoke fre- quently of such of her own family as she remembered w^hen a child, but scarcely ever of those she had lost, though one could see that she thought of them often. She had buried a beloved husband and four children. Her youngest, Edward, **her beauti- ful, her brave,'* fell in Flanders, and was not entombed with his ancestors. His picture, done when a child, an artless red and white portrait, smelling at a nosegay, but very like withal, hung at her bedside, and his sword and gorget were crossed under it. When she spoke of a soldier, it was in a style above her usual simplicity; there was a sort of swell in her language, which some- times a tear (for her age had not lost the privilege of tears) made still more eloquent. She kept her sorrows, like her devo- tions that solaced them, sacred to herself. They threw nothing of gloom over her deportment; a gentle shade only, like the fleckered clolids of summer, that increase, not diminish, the be- nignity of the season.
She had few neighbors, and still fewer visitors; but her re- ception of such as did visit her was cordial in the extreme. She pressed a little too much, perhaps; but there was so much heart and good-will in her importunity, as made her good things seem better than those of any other table. Nor was her attention confined only to the good fare of her guests, though it might have flattered her vanity more than that of most exhibitors of good dinners, because the cookery was generally directed by lier- self. Their servants lived as well in her hall, and their horses in her stable. She looked after the airing of their sheets, and saw their fires mended if the night was cold. Her old butler, who rose betimes, would never suffer anybody to mount his horse fasting.
2784 HENRY MACKENZIE
The parson of the parish was her guest every Sunday, and said prayers in the evening. To say truth, he was no great genius, nor much of a scholar. I believe my godmother knew rather more of divinity than he did; but she received from him information of another sort, — he told her who were the poor, the sick, the dying of the parish, and she had some assistance, some comfort for them all.
I could draw the old lady at this moment! dressed in gray, with a clean white hood nicely plaited (for she was somewhat finical about the neatness of her person), sitting in her straight- backed elbowchair, which stood in a large window, scooped out of the thickness of the ancient wall. The middle panes of the window were of painted glass — the story of Joseph and his brethren. On the outside waved a honeysuckle tree, which often threw its shade across her book or her work; but she would not allow it to be cut down. ** It has stood there many a day," said she, ^^ and we old inhabitants should bear with one another, '^ Methinks I see her thus seated, her spectacles on, but raised a little on her brow for a pause of explanation, their shagreen case laid between the leaves of a silver-clasped family Bible. On one side, her bell and snuffbox; on the other, her knitting apparatus in a blue damask bag. Between her and the fire an old Spanish pointer, that had formerly been her son Edward's, teased, but not teased out of his gravity, by a little terrier of mine. All this is before me, and I am a hundred miles from town, its inhabitants, and its business. In town I may have seen such a figure; but the country scenery around, like the tasteful frame of an excellent picture, gives it a heightening, a relief, which it would lose in any other situation.
Some of my readers, perhaps, will look with little relish on the portrait. I know it is an egotism in me to talk of its value ; but over this dish of tea, and in such a temper of mind, one is given to egotism. It will be only adding another to say that when I recall the rural scene of the good old lady's abode, her simple, her innocent, her useful employments, the afflictions she sustained in this world, the comforts she drew from another, I feel a serenity of soul, a benignity of affections, which I am sure confer happiness, and, I think, must promote virtue.
Complete. From the Lounger.
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
(1765-1832)
4r James Mackintosh was born at Aldourie, Scotland, Octo- ber 24th, 1765. He was educated for the bar, and in 1795 began the practice of his profession in London. In 1803 he went to India in the government service, and in 1806 became Judge of the Court of Vice -Admiralty at Bombay. Returning to England, he entered Parliament where he rendered civilization the distinguished service of contributing to shape the policy under which England abandoned the coercive ideas ot Lord North in her treatment of Canada and Australia, and virtually erected them into independent states, voluntarily recognizing English sovereignty. Mackintosh died in 1832. Among his more celebrated works are the << Vindiciae Gallicae,'* which he published in 1791 as a reply to Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution " ; his " Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy,'^ which appeared in the seventh edition of the Encyclo- paedia Britannica; his "History of the Revolution in England in 1688," and his " Essays -^ which are written with much strength and dignity. He was not only a philosopher, historian, essayist, and pub- licist, but also a most effective orator; and his speech in defense of Peltier is one of the most celebrated of British forensic orations.
ON THE GENIUS OF BACON
" ¥ jisTORY," says Lcrd Bacon," is natural, civil or ecclesiastical, \~\ or literary; whereof of the first three I allow as extant, the fourth I note as deficient. For no man hath pro- pounded to himself the general state of learning, to be described and represented from age to age, as many have done the works of nature, and the state civil and ecclesiastical ; without which the history of the world seemeth to me to be as the statue of Polyphemus with his eye out; that part being wanting which doth most show the spirit and life of the person. And yet I am not ignorant that in divers particular sciences, as of the jurisconsults, the mathematicians, the rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are set down some small memorials of the schools, — of authors of books; 30 likewise come barren relations touching the invention of arts vii— 175
2786 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH ,
or usages. But a just story of learning, containing- the antiqui- ties and originals of knowledges, and their sects, their inventions, their traditions, their divers administrations and managings, their oppositions, decays, depressions, oblivions, removes, with the causes and occasions of them, and all other events concerning learning throughout the ages of the world, I may truly afhrm to be want- ing. The use and end of which work I do not so much, design for curiosity, or satisfaction of those who are lovers of learning, but chiefly for a more serious and grave purpose, which is this, in few words, ^ that it will make learned men wise in the use and administration of learning. ^ '*
Though there are passages in the writings of Lord Bacon more splendid than the above, few, probably, better display the union of all the qualities which characterized his philosophical genius. He has in general inspired a fervor of admiration which vents itself in indiscriminate praise, and is very ad- verse to a calm examination of the character of his under- standing, which was very peculiar, and on that account described with more than ordinary imperfection, by that unfortunately vague and weak part of language which attempts to distinguish the varieties of mental superiority. To this cause it may be as- cribed, that perhaps no great man has been either more igno- rantly censured, or more uninstructively commended. It is easy to describe his transcendent merit in general terms of commenda- tion ; for some of his great qualities lie on the surface of his writ- ings. But that in which he most excelled all other men was the range and compass of his intellectual view and the power of contemplating many and distant objects together without indis- tinctness or confusion, which he himself has called the ^discur- sive '* or ^* comprehensive '^ understanding. This wide-ranging intellect was illuminated by the brightest Fancy that ever con- tented itself with the office of only ministering to Reason; and from this singular relation of the two grand faculties of man, it has resulted that his philosophy, though illustrated still more than adorned by the utmost splendor of imagery, continues still subject to the undivided supremacy of Intellect. In the midst of all the prodigality of an imagination which, had it been independent, would have been poetical, his opinions remained severely rational
It is not so easy to conceive, or at least to describe, other equally essential elements of his greatness, and conditions of his success. His is probably a single instance of a mind which, in
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH 2787
philosophizing, always reaches the point of elevation whence the whole prospect is commanded, without ever rising to such a dis- tance as to lose a distinct perception of every part of it. It is, perhaps, not less singular, that his philosophy should be founded at once on disregard for the authority or men, and on reverence for the boundaries prescribed by nature to human inquiry; that he who thought so little of what man had done hoped so highly of what he could do; that so daring an innovator in science should be so wholly exempt from the love of singularity or para- dox ; and that the same man who renounced imaginary provinces in the empire of science, and withdrew its landmarks within the limits of experience, should also exhort posterity to push their conquests to its utmost verge, with a boldness which will be fully justified only by the discoveries of ages from which we are yet far distant.
No man ever united a more poetical style to a less poetical philosophy. One great end of his discipline is to prevent mysti- cism and fanaticism from obstructing the pursuit of truth. With a less brilliant fancy, he would have had a mind less qualified for philosophical inquiry. His fancy gave him that power of illustrative metaphor, by which he seemed to have invented again the part of language which respects philosophy; and it rendered new truths more distinctly visible even to his own eye, in their bright clothing of imagery. Without it, he must, like others, have been driven to the fabrication of uncouth technical terms, which repel the mind, either by vulgarity or pedantry, instead of gently leading it to novelties in science, through agreeable analogies with objects already familiar. A considerable portion, doubtless, of the courage with which he undertook the reforma- tion of philosophy, was caught from the general spirit of his ex- traordinary age, when the mind of Europe was yet agitated by the joy and pride of emancipation from long bondage. The beautiful mythology, and the poetical history of the ancient world, — not yet become trivial or pedantic, — appeared before his eyes in all their freshness and lustre. To the general reader they were then a discovery as recent as the world disclosed by Columbus. The ancient literature, on which his imagination looked back for illustration, had then as much the charm of novelty as that rising philosophy through which his reason dared to look onward to some of the last periods in its unceasing and resistless course.
In order to form a just estimate of this wonderful person, it is essential to fix steadily in our minds, what he was not, — what
2 788 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
he did not do, — and what he professed neither to be, nor to do. He was not what is called a metaphysician: his plans for the improvement of science were not inferred by abstract reasoning from any of those primary principles to which the philosphers of Greece struggled to fasten their systems. Hence he has been treated as empirical and superficial by those who take to them- selves the exclusive name of profound speculators. He was not, on the other hand, a mathematician, an astronomer, a physi- ologist, a chemist. He was not eminently conversant with the par- ticular truths of any of those sciences which existed in his time. For this reason he was underrated even by men themselves of the highest merit, and by some who had acquired the most just reputation, by adding new facts to the stock of certain knowl- edge. It is not, therefore, very surprising to find that Harvey, " though the friend as well as physician of Bacon, though he es- teemed him much for his wit and style, would not allow him to be a great philosopher ** ; but said to Aubrey, *^ He writes phi- losophy like a Lord Chancellor, *^ — ^* in derision, ** — as the honest biographer thinks fit expressly to add. On the same ground, though in a manner not so agreeable to the nature of his own claims on reputation, Mr. Hume has decided that Bacon was not so great a man as Galileo, because he was not so great an as- tronomer. The same sort of injustice to his memory has been more often committed than avowed, by professors of the exact and the experimental sciences, who are accustomed to regard, as the sole test of service to Knowledge, a palpable addition to her store. It is very true that he made no discoveries; but his life was em- ployed in teaching the method by which discoveries are made. This distinction was early observed by that ingenious poet and ami- able man on whom we, by our unmerited neglect, have taken too severe a revenge, for the exaggerated praises bestowed on him by our ancestors: —
* Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last. The barren wilderness he passed Did on the very border stand Of the blest promised land;
And from the mountain top of his exalted wit, Saw it himself, and showed us if
The writings of Bacon do not even abound with remarks so capable of being separated from the mass of previous knowledge and reflection, that they can be called new. This, at least, is
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH 2789
very far from their greatest distinction ; and where such remarks occur, they are presented more often as examples of his general method than as important on their own separate account. In physics, which presented the principal field for discovery, and which owe all that they are, or can be, to his method and spirit, the experiments and observations which he either made or regis- tered, form the least valuable part of his writings, and have fur- nished some cultivators of that science with an opportunity for an ungrateful triumph over his mistakes. The scattered remarks, on the other hand, of a moral nature, where absolute novelty is precluded by the nature of the subject, manifest most strongly both the superior force and the original bent of his understand- ing. We more properly contrast than compare the experiments in the " Natural History" with the moral and political observations which enrich the <* Advancement of Learning,'^ the speeches, the letters, the " History of Henry VH.,** and, above all, the " Essays,'* a book which, though it has been praised with equal fervor by Voltaire, Johnson, and Burke, has never been characterized with such exact justice and such exquisite felicity of expression as in the discourse of Mr. Stewart. It will serve still more distinctly to mark the natural tendency of his mind, to observe that his moral and political reflections relate to these practical subjects, considered in their most practical point of view; and that he has seldom or never attempted to reduce to theory the infinite par- ticulars of that *' civil knowledge,'' which, as he himself tells us, is, " of all others, most immersed in matter, and hardliest reduced to axiom."
His mind, indeed, was formed and exercised in the affairs of the world; his genius was eminently civil. His understanding was peculiarly fitted for questions of legislation and of policy; though his character was not an instrument well qualified to execute the dictates of his reason. The same civil wisdom which distinguishes his judgments on human affairs may also be traced through his reformation of philosophy. It is a practical judg- ment applied to science. What he effected was reform in the maxims of state, — a reform which had always before been un- successfully pursued in the republic of letters. It is not derived from metaphysical reasoning, nor from scientific detail, but from a species of intellectual prudence, which, on the practical ground of failure and disajjpointment in the prevalent modes of pursu- ing knowiedg-e, builds the necessity of alteration, and inculcates
2790 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
the advantage of administering the sciences on other principles. It is an error to represent him either as imputing fallacy to the syllogistic method, or as professing his principle of induction to be a discovery. The rules and forms of argument will always form an important part of the art of logic; and the method of induction, which is the art of discovery, was so far from being unknown to Aristotle, that it was often faithfully pursued by that great observer. What Bacon aimed at, he accomplished; which was, not to discover new principles, but to excite a new spirit, and to render observation and experiment the predomi- nant characteristics of philosophy. It is for this reason that Bacon could not have been the author of a system or the founder of a sect. He did not deliver opinions; he taught modes of philoso- phizing. His early immersion in civil affairs fitted him for this species of scientific reformation. His political course, though in itself unhappy, probably conduced to the success, and certainly influenced the character, of the contemplative part of his life. Had it not been for his active habits, it is likely that the ped- antry and quaintness of his age would have still more deeply corrupted his significant and majestic style. The force of the illustrations which he takes from his experience of ordinary life is often as remarkable as the beauty of those which he so hap- pily borrows from his study of antiquity. But if we have caught the leading principle of his intellectual character, we must attrib- ute effects still deeper and more extensive, to his familiarity with the active world. It guarded him against vain subtlety and against all speculation that was either visionary or fruitless. It preserved him from the reigning prejudices of contemplative men, and from undue preference to particular parts of knowl- edge. If he had been exclusively bred in the cloister or the schools, he might not have had courage enough to reform their abuses. It seems necessary that he should have been so placed as to look on science in the free spirit of an intelligent specta- tor. Without the pride of professors, or the bigotry of their followers, he surveyed from the world the studies which reigned in the schools; and, trying them by their fruits, he saw that they were barren, and therefore pronounced that they were unsound. He himself seems, indeed, to have indicated as clearly as modesty would allow, in a case that concerned himself, and where he departed from an universal and almost natural senti- ment, that he regarded scholastic seclusion, then more unsocial
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH 2791
and rigorous than it now can be, as a hindrance in the pursuit of knowledge. In one of the noblest passages of his writings, the conclusion of the "Interpretation of Nature," he tells us that; "There is no composition of estate or society, nor order or quality of persons, which have not some point of contrariety towards true knowledge; that monarchies incline wits to profit and pleasure; commonwealths to glory and vanity; universities to sophistry and affectation; cloisters to fables and unprofitable subtlety; study at large to variety; and that it is hard to say whether mixture of contemplations with an active life, or retir- ing wholly to contemplations, do disable or hinder the mind more. "
But, though he was thus free from the prejudices of a science, a school, or a sect, other prejudices of a lower nature, and belonging only to the inferior class of those who conduct civil affairs, have been ascribed to him by encomiasts as well as by opponents. He has been said to consider the great end of science to be the increase of the outward accommodations and enjoyments of human life; we cannot see any foundation for this charge. In laboring, indeed, to correct the direction of study, and to withdraw it from these unprofitable subtleties, it was necessary to attract it powerfully towards outward acts and works. He no doubt duly valued "the dignity of this end, the endowment of man's life with new commodities'^; and he strik- ingly observes that the most poetical people of the world had admitted the inventors of the useful and manual arts among the highest beings in their beautiful mythology. Had he lived to the age of Watt and Davy, he would not have been of the vul- gar and contracted mind of those who cease to admire grand exertions of intellect, because they are useful to mankind; but he would certainly have considered their great works rather as tests of the progress of knowledge than as parts of its highest end. His important questions to the doctors of his time were: "Is truth ever barren ? Are we the richer by one poor invention, by reason of all the learning that hath been these many hun- dred years?" His judgment, we may also hear from himself: " Francis Bacon thought in this manner. The knowledge whereof the world is now possessed, especially that of nature, extendeth not to magnitude and certainty of works." He found knowledge barren; he left it fertile. He did not underrate the utility of particular inventions; but it is evident that he valued them most,
2792 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
as beingf themselves among the highest exertions of stiperioT intellect, — as being monuments of the progress of knowledge,— as being the bands of that alliance between action and specula^ tion, wherefrom spring an appeal to experience and utility, checking the proneness of the philosopher to extreme refine^ nients, while teaching men to revere, and exciting them to pur- sue science by these splendid proofs of its beneficial power. Had he seen the change in this respect, which, produced chiefly in his own country by the pirit of his philosophy, has made some degree of science almost necessary to the subsistence and fortune of large bodies of men, he would assuredly have re- garded it as an additional security for the future growth of the human understanding. He taught, as he tells us, the means, not of the "amplification of the power of one man over his country, nor of the amplification of the power of that country over other nations, but the amplification of the power and king- dom of mankind over the world, '^ — «a restitution of man to the sovereignty of nature, ^^ — "and the enlarging the bounds of human empire to the effecting all things possible." — From the enlargement of reason, he did not separate the growth of virtue, for he thought that " truth and goodness were one, differing but as the seal and the print; for truth prints goodness.*
As civil history teaches statesmen to profit by the faults of their predecessors, he proposes that the history of philosophy should teach, by example, "learned men to become wise in the administration of learning.'^ Early immersed in civil affairs, and deeply imbued with their spirit, his mind in this place contem- plates science only through the analogy of government, sund con- siders principles of philosophizing as the easiest maxims of policy for the guidance of reason. It seems also that in describ- ing the objects of a history of philosophy, and the utility to be derived from it, he discloses the principle of his own exertions in behalf of knowledge; — whereby a reform in its method and maxims, justified by the experience of their injurious effects, is conducted with a judgment analogous to that civil prudence which guides a wise lawgiver. If (as may not improperly be concluded from this passage) the reformation of science was sug- gested to Lord Bacon by a review of the history of philosophy, it must be owned that his outline of that history has a very important relation to the general character of his philosophical genius. The smallest circumstances attendant on that outline
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH 2793
serve to illustrate the powers and habits of thought which dis- tinguished its author. It is an example of his faculty of antici- pating, — not insulated facts or single discoveries, — but (what from its complexity and refinement seem much more to defy the power of prophecy) the tendencies of study, and the modes of thinking, which were to prevail in distant generations, that the parts which he had chosen to unfold or enforce in the Latin versions are those which a thinker of the present age would deem both most excellent and most arduous in a history of phi- losophy;— "the causes of literary revolutions; the study of con- temporary writers, not merely as the most authentic sources of information, but as enabling the historian to preserve in his own description the peculiar color of every age, and to recall its lit- erary genius from the dead.'* This outline has the uncommon distinction of being at once original and complete. In this prov- ince, Bacon had no forerunner; and the most successful fol- lower will be he who most faithfully observes his precepts.
Here, as in every province of knowledge, he concludes his review of the performances and prospects of the human under- standing, by considering their subservience to the grand purpose of improving the condition, the faculties, and the nature of man, without which, indeed, science would be no more than a beautiful ornament, and literature would rank no higher than a liberal amusement. Yet it must be acknowledged that he rather per- ceived than felt the connection of Truth and Good. Whether he lived too early to have sufficient experience of the moral benefit of civilization, or his mind had early acquired too exclusive an interest in science to look frequently beyond its advancement; or whether the infirmities and calamities of his life had blijrhted his feelings, and turned away his eyes from the active world; — to whatever cause we may ascribe the defect, certain it is that his works want one excellence of the highest kind, which they would have possessed if he had habitually represented the ad- vancement of knowledge as the most effectual means of realizing the hopes of benevolence for the human race.
^ Complete. From the Edinburgh Review,
VoL XXVI.
JAMES MADISON
(1751-1836)
JAMES Madison, fourth President of the United States, weo born at Port Conway, Virginia, March i6th, 175 1. His place as an essayist is determined by the fact that he was asso- ciated with Hamilton and Jay in writing the papers of the Federalist (1787-88). Twenty-nine of the eighty-five essays in the series are by Madison, five by Jay, and the rest by Hamilton. Madison's style is clear and forcible. He had no intention of attempting to be en- tertaining, and no one is likely to read many of the Federalist essays merely for amusement; but Madison did through these essays more than was done by any other writer, except Hamilton, to bring about the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and they will always be studied by those who wish to have a definite understanding of the principles underlying American institutions. Madison was a man of thorough intellectual training and wide reading. He graduated at Princeton College in 1771 and was almost immediately drawn into the movement which culminated in the Revolution. He was a mem- ber of the Continental Congress, of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and of the Federal Congress from 1789 to 1797. The Virginia Resolutions of 1798, which represented a sharply defined issue with the views of the Federalist, were drawn by him; but as Madison in- terpreted them they did not trouble him with any sense of incon- sistency, and he resented a subsequent attempt to base the theory of Nullification upon them. His authorship of them led to his choice as Secretary of State under Jefferson, and to his election to the Presi- dency as Jefferson's successor (1809-17). He died at Montpelier, Orange County, Virginia, June 28th, 1836.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE POWERS PROPOSED TO BE VESTED
IN THE UNION
THE constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under tv/o general points of view. The first relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the govern- ment, including the restraints imposed on the states. The second, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribu- tion of this power among its several branches.
JAMES MADISON 2795
Under the first view of the subject, two important questions arise: 1. Whether any part of the powers transferred to the gen- eral government be unnecessary or improper. 2. Whether tho entire mass of them be dangerous to the portion of jurisdiction left in the several states.
Is the aggregate power of the general government greater than ought to have been vested in it ? This is the first ques- tion.
It cannot have escaped those, who have attended with candor to the arguments employed against the extensive powers of the government, that the authors of them have very little considered how far these powers were necessary means of attaining a neces- sary end. They have chosen rather to dwell on the incon- veniences which must be unavoidably blended with all political advantages; and on the possible abuses which must be incident to every power or trust, of which a beneficial use can be made. This method of handling the subject cannot impose on the good sense of the people of America. It may display the subtlety of the writer; it may open a boundless field for rhetoric and decla- mation ; it may inflame the passions of the unthinking. But cool and candid people will at once reflect that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the greater, not the perfect good; and that in every political institu- tion, a power to advance the public happiness involves a discre- tion which may be misapplied and abused. They will see, therefore, that in all cases where power is to be conferred, the point first to be decided is whether such a power be necessary to the public good; as the next will be, in case of an affirmative decision, to guard as eflfectually as possible against a perversion of the power to the public detriment.
That we may form a correct judgment on this subject, it will be proper to review the several powers conferred on the govern- ment of the union; and that this may be more conveniently done, they may be reduced into different classes, as they relate to the following different objects: i. Security against foreign danger; 2. Regulation of the intercourse with foreign nations; 3. Main- tenance of harmony and proper intercourse among the states; 4. Certain miscellaneous objects of general utility; 5. Restraint of the states from certain injurious acts; 6. Provisions for giving due efficacy to all these powers.
12796 JAMES MADISON
The powers falling within the first class are those of declar- ing war and granting letters of marquCj of providing armies and fleets, of regulating and calling forth the militia, of levying and borrowing money.
Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American union. The powers requisite for attaining it must be effectually confided to the federal councils.
Is the power of declaring war necessary ? No man will answer this question in the negative. It would be superfluous, therefore, to enter into a proof of the affirmative. The existing confedera- tion establishes this power in the most ample form.
Is the power of raising armies and equipping fleets necessary ? This is involved in the foregoing power. It is involved in the power of self-defense.
But was it necessary to give an indefinite power of raising troops, as well as providing fleets; and of maintaining both in peace, as well as in war ?
The answer to these questions has been too far anticipated, in another place, to admit an extensive discussion of them in this place. The answer, indeed, seems to be so obvious and conclusive as scarcely to justify such a discussion in any place. With what color of propriety could the force necessary for defense be limited, by those who cannot limit the force of offense ? If a federal constitution could chain the ambition, or set bounds to the exer- tions of all other nations, then, indeed, might it prudently chain the discretion of its own government, and set bounds to the exer- tions for its own safety.
How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the prepara- tions and establishments of every hostile nation ? The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of at- tack. They will, in fact, be ever determined by these rules, and by no other. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is v^orse than in vain, because it plants in the constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions. If one nation maintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for the service of ambition or revenge, it obliges the most pacific nations, who may be within the reach of its enterprises, to take corresponding precautions. The fifteenth centun'^ was the
1)
JAMES MADISON 2797
unhappy epoch of military establishments in time of peace. They were introduced by Charles VII. of France. All Europe has fol- lowed, or been forced into the example. Had the example not been followed by other nations, all Europe must long" ago have worn the chains of a universal monarch. Were every nation, ex- cept France, now to disband its peace establishment, the same event might follow. The veteran legions of Rome were an over- match for the undisciplined valor of all other nations, and rendered her mistress of the world.
Not less true is it that the liberties of Rome proved the final victim to her military triumphs, and that the liberties of Europe, as far as they ever existed, have, with few exceptions, been the price of her military establishments. A standing force, therefore, is a dangerous, at the same time that it may be a necessary, pro- vision. On the smallest scale it has its inconveniences. On an extensive scale its consequences may be fatal. On any scale, it is an object of laudable circumspection and precaution. A wise nation will combine all these considerations; and whilst it does not rashly preclude itself from any resource which may become essential to its safety, will exert all its prudence in diminishing both the necessity and the danger of resorting to one, which may be inauspicious to its liberties.
The clearest marks of this prudence are stamped on the pro- posed constitution. The union itself, which it cements and secures, destroys every pretext for a military establishment which could be dangerous. America united, with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture, to foreign ambition, than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. It was remarked, on a former occasion, that the want of this pretext had saved the liberties of one nation in Europe. Being rendered, by her in- sular situation, and her maritime resources, impregnable to the armies of her neighbors, the rulers of Great Britain have never been able, by real or artificial dangers, to cheat the public into an extensive peace establishment. The distance of the United States from the powerful nations of the world gives them the same happy security. A dangerous establishment can never be necessary or plausible, so long as they continue a united people. But let it never for a moment be forgotten that they are in- debted for this advantage to their union alone. The moment of its dissolution will be the date of a new order of things. The
2798 JAMES MADISON
fears of the weaker or the ambition of the stronger states or confederacies will set the same example in the New as Charles VII. did in the Old World. The example will be followed here, from the same motives which produced universal imitation there. Instead of deriving from our situation the precious advantage which Great Britain has derived from hers, the face of America will b^ but a copy of that of the continent of Europe. It will present liberty everywhere crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes. The fortunes of disunited America will be even more disastrous than those of Europe. The sources of evil in the Matter are confined to her own limits. No superior powers of another quarter of the globe, intrigue among her rival nations, inflame their mutual animosities, and render them the instru- ments of foreign ambition, jealousy, and revenge. In America the miseries springing from her internal jealousies, contentions, and wars, would form a part only of her lot. A plentiful addi- tion of evils would have their source in that relation in which Europe stands to this quarter of the earth, and which no other quarter of the earth bears to Europe.
This picture of the consequences of disunion cannot be too highly colored, or too often exhibited. Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the union of America, and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.
From the Federalist
SIR HENRY JAMES SUMNER MAINE
(1822-1888)
'iR Henry Maine, one of the ablest legal essayists of the nine- teenth century, was especially noted for his lectures and essays on International Law. He was born August 15th, 1S22, and educated at Cambridge University, where he became Regius Professor of Civil Law in 1847. This position he held for seven years. From 1869 to 1878 he was Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford. In 1887 he returned to Cambridge as Whewell Professor of International Law, but his usefulness was cut short by his death the next year (February 3d, 1888). Among his most notable works are "Ancient Law,'^ "Village Communities,'^ " Popvalar Government,* "Early History of Institutions, '> and " International Law,*' — the latter, published in 1888, being his last work.
THE LAW OF NATIONS
THERE has been a difference of opinion among writers concern- ing the foundation of the Law of Nations. It has been considered by some as a mere system of positive institutions, founded upon consent and usage; while others have insisted that it was essentially the same as the Law of Nature, applied to the conduct of nations, in the character of moral persons, susceptible of obligations and laws. We are not to adopt either of these theories as exclusively true. The most useful and practical part of the Law of Nations is, no doubt, instituted or positive law, founded on usage, consent, and agreement. But it would be im- proper to separate this law entirely from natural jurisprudence, and not to consider it as deriving much of its force and dignity from the same principles of right reason, the same views of the nature and constitution of man, and the same sanction of Divine revelation, as those from which the science of morality is deduced. There is a natural and a positive Law of Nations. By the former every state, in its relations with other states, is bound to conduct itself with justice, good faith, and benevolence; and this applica- tion of the Law of Nature has been called by Vattel the neccs-
28oO SIR HENRY JAMES SUMNER MAINE
sary Law of Nations, because nations are bound by the Law of Nature to observe it; and it is termed by others the internal Law of Nations, because it is obligatory upon them in point of conscience. We ought not, therefore, to separate the science of public law from that of ethics, nor encourage the dangerous sug- gestion that governments are not so strictly bound by the obliga- tions of truth, justice, and humanity, in relation to other powers, as they are in the management of their own local concerns.
States, or bodies politic, are to be considered as moral persons, having a public will, capable and free to do right and wrong, in- asmuch as they are collections of individuals, each of whom car- ries with him into the service of the community the same binding law of morality and religion which ought to control his conduct in private life. The Law of Nations is a complex system, com- posed of various ingredients. It consists of general principles of right and jiistice, equally suitable to the government of individ- uals in a state of natural equality, and to the relations and con- duct of nations; of a collection of usages, customs, and opinions, the growth of civilization and commerce; and of a code of posi- tive law.
In the absence of these latter regulations, the intercourse and conduct of nations are to be governed by principles fairly to be deduced from the rights and duties of nations, and the nature of moral obligation; and we have the authority of the lawyers of antiquity, and of some of the first masters in the modern school of public law, for placing the moral obligation of nations and of individuals on similar grounds, and for considering individual and national morality as parts of one and the same science. The Law of Nations, so far as it is founded on the principles of Natural Law, is equally binding in every age and upon all man- kind. But the Christian nations of Europe, and their descend- ants on this side of the Atlantic, by the vast superiority of their attainments in arts, and science, and commerce, as well as in policy and government; and, above all, by the brighter light, the more certain truths, and the more definite sanction which Chris- tianity has communicated to the ethical jurisprudence of the An- cients, have established a Law of Nations peculiar to themselves. They form together a community of Nations united by religion, manners, morals, humanity, and science, and united also by the mutual advantages of commercial intercourse, by the habit of forming alliances and treaties with each other, of interchanging
:
SIR HENRY JAMES SUMNER MAINE 2801
embassadors, and of studying and recognizing the same writers and systems of public law.
This Jus Gentium of the Imperial jurisconsults is identical with the Law of Nature, or Natural Law, of many modem ethical and juridical writers; and both are, in fact, the law of God, made known somewhat dimly to the whole human race at all times, and set forth with unmistakable certainty and transcendent power in his revealed will. This is, in truth, the highest law by which moral beings can be governed; highest in its Lawgiver, who is omnipotent over each individual man, as well as over societies and states; highest in the absolute perfection of the rules which it contains; highest in the absolute cogency of the commands which it utters; highest in the absolute obligation of duties which it enforces; highest in the absolute certainty and irresistible coercive power of the sanctions which it wields, and which operate upon the deepest spiritual nature of every human being.
In more ancient times, and to a great extent even at this day, in that Eastern portion of the world in which so much of the usages of earlier mankind still survive, systems of religion and systems of morals, generally drawing with them some system of laws, gain currency by their own moral influence; certain minds being naturally predisposed to receive them acquiesce in them even with enthusiasm. Mr. Justice Stephen, in the con- troversial work which he calls " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," has an eloquent passage on the subject. " The sources of religion lie hid from us. All that we know is, that now and again in the course of ages some one sets to music the tune which is haunting millions of ears. It is caught up here and there, and repeated till the chorus is thundered out by a body of singers able to drown all discords and to force the vast unmusical mass to listen to them. Such results as these come not by observa- tion, but when they do come they carry away as with a flood and hurry in their own directicm all the laws and customs of those whom they affect." What is here said of religion is true to a certain extent of morality. In the East a body of new moral ideas is sure in time to produce a string of legal rules; and it is said by those who know India and its natives well that the production of what for want of a better name we must call a Code is a favorite occupation with learned and active minds,
though of course in a country which nowadays follows to a great VII— 176
28o2 SIR HENRY JAMES SUMNER MAINE
extent the morality (though not the faith) of Christian Europe, and receives new laws from a regularly constituted Legislature, the enthusiasm for new moral doctrines is ever growing feebler and the demand for legal rules accommodated to them is becom- ing less. Now, International Law was a Code in the same sense in which many Eastern collections of rules were Codes. It was founded on a new morality, that which had been discovered in the supposed Law of Nature, and in some minds it excited unbounded enthusiasm.
The same process had previously been followed in Europe as regards Roman Civil Law. We may not quite understand the admiration which the technical part of the Roman Law inspired, but of the fact there is no doubt. This process by which laws extended themselves had not quite died out when the inter- national jurists appeared, and in point of fact their system of rules was received by the world very much as a system of law founded on morals is received to this day in the East. No doubt it fell on soil prepared for it. The literate classes, the scholars, great parts of the clergy, and the sovereigns and states- men of Europe accepted it, and the result was an instant decay of the worst atrocities of war. Indeed, it is only necessary to look at the earliest authorities on International Law, in the ** De Jure Belli et Pacis ^^ of Grotius for example, to see that the Law of Nations is essentially a moral, and, to some extent, a religious, system. The appeal of Grotius is almost as frequent to morals and religion as to precedent, and no doubt it is these portions of the book, which to us have become almost common- place or which seem irrelevant, which gained for it much of the authority which it ultimately obtained.
From Lecture II. of « International Law."
PAUL HENRI MALLET
(1730-1807)
allet's " Northern Antiquities,*' which was translated into English by Bishop Percy in 1770, gave the general public its first idea of the rich treasures of the Scandinavian Sagas and Eddas. The mythology of the Northern tribes, preserved chietiy in Icelandic, is second only to the myths of Greece in beauty, while in strength it frequently surpasses them. Mallet lived before mythol- ogy became a science, and he is sometimes sharply criticized by those who are more ready to express critical opinion than they are to appreciate merit; but he undoubtedly has great merit both as a scholar and a writer, and his works on Scandinavian myths and cus- toms are never likely to be wholly out of date. He was born at Geneva. Switzerland, in 1730. and educated there. In 1752 he became professor of Literature in the Academy at Copenhagen, and in 1755 published his introduction to the ** History of Denmark,*' following it in 1756 with a second part entitled " Monuments of the Mythology and the Poetry of the Celts, and More Particularly of the Ancient Scandi- navians.'* This is the work which, as translated by Bishop Percy under the title of "Northern Antiquities," has become an English classic, largely through its own intrinsic merit, but to a considerable extent, no doubt, through the excellence of Percy's style. In 1760 Mallet returned to Geneva and became professor of History there. He was strongly opposed to the French Revolutionists, and in 1792 was obliged to leave Geneva on account of political persectitions which kept him in exile until 1801. He returned in that year and dif'd at Geneva. February 8th. 1807.
CIVILIZATION AND THE EARLIEST LITERATURE
MANKIND, everywhere essentially the same, have been always led to poetical composition prior to that ot prose. This seems at present the reverse of the natural order; but we think so either through our prejudices, or for want i.^f puttiuj^ ourselves in the place of a people who arc ignorant of the art of writing. Pleasing sounds and the attractions of harniuny would iirike at first every ear; but song could not long subsist without
2804 PAUL HENRI MALLET
poetry. No sooner was it observed how these two united pow- ers fixed and impressed those images on the mind, which the memory was desirous of retaining, than they acquired a new degree of esteem, especially among such as aspired to a lasting fame. Verse was made use of to preserve the memory of re^ markable events and great actions. The laws of a people, theii religious ceremonies and rural labors were also recorded in num. bers, because these are subjects which, consisting of a great variety of particulars, might easily fall into oblivion. Hence it was that Greece could already boast of a Homer, a Hesiod, and of many other poets, several ages before Pherecydes had written in prose. Hence among the Gauls and other Celtic nations there were poems composed on all subjects from the earliest ages, which the Druids, who were appointed to educate the youth, frequently employed twenty years in teaching them to repeat. This custom, rendered sacred by its high antiquity, which ever commands respect from the people, was in force many ages after the art of writing had pointed out a more per- fect method of preserving the memorials of human knowledge. In like manner the Scandinavians for a long time applied their Runic letters only to the senseless purposes above mentioned; nor did they, during so many years, ever think of committing to writing those verses with which their memories were loaded; and it is probable that they only v/rote down a small quantity of them at last. The idea of making a book never entered into the heads of those fierce warriors, who knew no medium be- tween the violent exercises and fatigues of war or hunting and a stupid lethargic state of inaction. Among the innumerable advantages which accrued to the Northern nations from the intro- duction of the Christian religion, that of teaching them to apply the knowledge of letters to useful purposes is not the least valu- able.' Nor could a motive less sacred have eradicated that habit- ual and barbarous prejudice which caused them to neglect so admirable a secret. The churches and monasteries were at least so many asylums where this secret was preserved, while the ferocity of manners which prevailed in the Dark Ages tended again to consign it to oblivion.
So long as paganism prevailed in the North, the use of letters being very limited, it is no paradox to say that verse was a necessary medium of knowledge, and the poet an essential officer of the state. And if it requires a peculiar and uncommon
PAUL HENRI MALLET 2S05
jjenius to excel in this art, the professors of it would, of course, acquire a very high degree of esteem and respect. All the his- torical monuments of the North are full of the honors paid this order of men, both by princes and people; nor can the annals of poetry produce any age or country which reflects more glory and lustre upon it. The ancient chronicles constantly represent the kings of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as attended by one or more Skalds; for this was the name they gave their poets. They were more especially honored and caressed at the courts of those princes who distinguished themselves by their great actions and passion for glory. Harold Harfagr, for instance, placed them at his feasts above all the officers of his court. Many princes in- trusted them both in peace and war with commissions of the utmost importance. They never set out on any considerable ex- pedition without some of them in their train. Hakon, Earl of Norway, had five celebrated Skalds along witli him in that fa- mous battle, when warriors of Jomsburg were defeated; and his- tory records that they sung each an ode to animate the soldiers before they engaged. But they enjoyed another advantage, which would be more the envy of the poets of these days. They were rewarded for the poems they composed in honor of the kings and heroes with magnificent presents; we never find the Skald sing- ing his verses at the courts of princes without being recompensed with golden rings, glittering arms, and rich apparel. Thcjr re- spect for this order of men often extended so far as to remit the punishment of crimes they had committed, on condition they sued out their pardon in verse. In a word, the poetic art was held in such high estimation that great lords and even kings did not dis- dain to cultivate it with the utmost pains themselves. Ragnvald, carl of the Orkney Islands, passed for a very able poet; lie boasts himself in a song of his which is still extant, that he knew how to compose verses on all subjects. Ragnar Lodbrok was no less distinguished for his skill in poetry than in war and navigation. Many of his poems were long preserved in the North, and may be found inserted in the history of his life; and it is well known that he died no less like a poet than a hero.
The respect, however, which the Northern nations paid to their Skalds was not owing to the nobility of their extraction. A people whose object was glory could not fail of showing a great deference to those who both piiblished it abroad and con- signed it to futurity, let their origin be what it would. A prince
2So6 PAUL HENRI MALLET
or illustrious warrior oftentimes exposed his life with so much intrepidity, only to be praised by his Skald, who was both the witness and judge of his bravery. It is affirmed that this kind of men, although poets, were never guilty of flattery, and never lavished their praises on heroes and kings themselves, unless their gallant exploits were quite incontestable. Hence arose the custom of always bringing them into the scene of action: Olaf, king of Norway, placing three of them one day around him in battle, cried out with spirit: ^* You shall not relate what you have only heard, but what you are eyewitnesses of yourselves ! * The same poets usually recited their verses themselves at solemn festivals and in great assemblies. But the subject of these poems was not confined to one single event, such as a victory or some generous action; it was frequently a genealogical his- tory of all the kings of the country, deduced down from the gods to the reigning prince, who always derived his origin from them. These poems were, according to Tacitus, the only annals of the Germans. They had great numbers of them, which were not wholly forgotten in the eighth century; since Einhard relates that Charlemagne caused them to be committed to writ- ing. ^* And even learnt himself, '* adds the historian, " the rude and ancient songs in which the exploits and the wars of the first princes were celebrated.*^ In poems of the same kind con- sisted for many ages all the history of the Scandinavians. A bard named Thiodolf celebrated in his verses the exploits of Harold and thirty of his predecessors; another called Eyvind composed an historical poem which went back as far as Odin. Such are the sources whence Saxo drew his materials for the first six or seven books of his ^^ History, ** and he might doubtless have deiived great assistance from them, if he had not happened to live in an age wholly destitute of that exact skill in criticism which knows how to separate facts from the fictions with which they are blended.
The necessity there was for poets, the natural attractions of the art itself, and those it derived from the manners of the age, greatly multiplied the number of Skalds. An ancient Icelandic manuscript has preserved a list of all such as distinguished themselves in the three northern kingdoms, from the reign of Ragnar Lodbrok to that of Valdemar II. They are in number two hundred and thirty, among whom we find more than one crowned head. But what is not less remarkable is, that the
PAUL HENRI MALLET 2807
greatest part of them are natives of Iceland. The reader has, doubtless, by this time, observed that we are indebted to that is- land for almost all the historical monuments of the northern na- tions now remaining. It cannot easily be accounted for how it came to pass that a people, disjoined from the rest of the world, few in number, depressed by poverty, and situated in so unfavor- able a climate, should be capable, in those Dark Ages, of mani- festing such a taste for literature, and should even rise to the perception of the more refined mental pleasures. While they were heathen, the Icelandic annalists were always deemed the best in the North. After they had embraced the Christian faith, they were the first who thought of unraveling the chaos of ancient history, who collected the old poems, digested the chronicles into a regular form, and applied themselves to rescue from obliv- ion the traditions of their pagan theology. Were we better informed of certain particulars relating to the state of the North during those remote ages, we might possibly find the cause of this phenomenon either in the poverty of the inhabitants of Ice- land, which drove them to seek their fortune at the neighboring courts, or in the success of their first bards, which excited their emulation, and at the same time prepossessed strangers in their favor; or lastly, in the nature of their republican government, in which the talent of oratory and the reputation of superior sense and capacity are the direct roads to respect and preferment.
The style of these ancient poems is very enigmatical and figurative, very remote from the common language, and for that reason, grand, but tumid; sublime, but obscure. If it be the character of poetry to have nothing in common with prose, if the language of the gods ought to be quite different from that of men, if everything should be expressed by imagery, figures, hy- perboles, and allegories, the Scandinavians may rank in the high- est class of poets; nor is this unaccountable. The soaring flights of fancy may possibly more peculiarly belong to a rude and un- cultivated thin to a civilized people. The great objects of nature strike more forcibly on rude imaginations. Their passions are not impaired by the constraint of laws and education. The paucity of their ideas and the barrenness of their language oblige them to borrow from all nature images fit to clothe their conceptions in. How should abstract terms and reflex ideas, which so much enervate our poetry, be found in theirs ? They could seldom have been met with in their most familiar conversations. The
28o8 PAUL HENRI MALLET
moment the soul, reflecting on its own operations, recurs fnwards, and detaches itself from exterior objects, the imagination loses its energy, the passions their activity, the mind becomes severe, and requires ideas rather than sensations; language then becomes precise and cautious, and poetry, being no longer the child of pure passion, is able to affect but feebly. If it be asked what is become of that magic power which the Ancients attributed to this art, it may be well said to exist no more. The poetry of the modern languages is nothing more than reasoning in rhyme, ad- dressed to the understanding, but very little to the heart. No longer essentially connected with religion, politics, or morality, it is at present, if I may so say, a mere private art, an amusement that attains its end when it has gained the cold approbation of a few select judges.
From « Northern Antiquities.*
THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS
(1 766- 1 834)
HE first chapter of Malthus's work on the " Principle of Popu- lation" is perhaps the most celebrated essay ever written on an economic topic. In it he defines his famous theory of <* The Ratios of the Increase of Population and Food," — a theory which is severely logical from its premises, — which omits, however, the most important of all premises in dealing with human affairs, — the fact that the human intellect operates at its best, under its high- est tension, when subjected to its supremest necessities, and that the possibilities of its efficient activities are indefinable, if not absolutely limitless. While no one has found a vitiating flaw in the Malthusian ratios, considered merely as a piece of logic, the activity of the creative intellect has been such in the century since he published his « Essay on Population." that though the increase of population throughout the civilized world has been far greater than it ever was since statistics began to be kept, "world politics" at the close of the century depend largely on finding a satisfactory means of distribut- ing a so-called " surplus " of bread stuffs, which is sure to result in years when modern machinery applied to agriculture is favored by average conditions of heat and moisture. It was impossible for Malthus to include in his calculation of ratios such phenomena as the steam plow, the improved reaper and binder, and all the machin- ery of production and distribution which depends upon steam and electricity; but while his logic too largely ignored the benePcent spirit of the really educated human intellect and ignored altogether the creative results of this spirit manifesting itself in scientific dis- covery and invention, the same moral and intellectual impulses which controlled him in reaching his conclusions are still always a potent and frequently the decisive factor in government and in trade. He was born near Guildford, Surrey, February 17th. 1766. After gradua-
' ting at Cambridge, he took orders in the English Established Church and nettled as a curate in Surrey, where he wrote his first essay on the •Principle of Population" (1798). In 1803 he followed it with a
' revised and amended version, under the title of an *' Essay on Popu- lation." This work became immediately popular with the English Conservatives, though Malthus himself was a Whig. He wrote also •The Nature and Progress of Rent" (1815), and "Political Economy" (1820). His death occurred at St. Catharine's, near Bath. December a3d. 1834. W. V. B.
28 lO THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS
RATIOS OF THE INCREASE OF POPULATION AND FOOD
IN AN inquiry concerning the improvement of society, the mode of conducting the subject which naturally presents itself, is:
I. To investigate the causes that have hitherto impeded the progress of mankind towards happiness; and,
2. To examine the probability of the total or partial removal of these causes in future.
To enter fully into this question, and to enumerate all the causes that have hitherto influenced human improvement, would be much beyond the power of an individual. The principal object of the present essay is to examine the effects of one great cause intimately united with the very nature of man; which, though it has been constantly and powerfully operating since the commencement of society, has been little noticed by the writers who have treated this subject. The facts which establish the existence of this cause have, indeed, been repeatedly stated and acknowledged; but its natural and necessary effects have been almost totally overlooked; though probably among these effects may be reckoned a very considerable portion of that vice and misery, and of that unequal distribution of the bounties of nature, which it has been the unceasing object of the enlightened philan- thropist in all ages to correct.
The cause to which I allude is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.
It is observed by Dr. Franklin that there is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only, as for instance with fennel; and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from one nation only, as for instance with Englishmen.
This is incontrovertibly true. Through the animal and vege- table kingdoms Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand; but has been compar- atively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious,
THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS 2811
all-pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law; and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.
In plants and irrational animals, the view of the subject is simple. They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the in- crease of their species; and this instinct is interrupted by no doubts about providing for their offspring. Wherever therefore there is liberty, the power of increase is exerted; and the super- abundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment.
The effects of this check on man are more complicated. Im- pelled to the increase of his species by an equally powerful in- stinct, reason interrupts his career, and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for whom he cannot provide the means of support. If he attend to this natural suggestion, the restriction too frequently produces vice. If he hear it not, the human race will be constantly endeavoring to increase beyond the means of subsistence. But as, by that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, population can never actually increase beyond the lowest nourishment capable of sup- porting it, a strong check on population, from the difficulty of ac- quiring food, must be constantly in operation. This difficulty must fall somewhere, and must necessarily be severely felt in some or other of the various forms of misery, or the fear of mis- ery, by a large portion of mankind.
That population has this constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence, and that it is kept to its necessary level by these causes, will sufficiently appear from a review of the dif- ferent states of society in which man has existed. But before we proceed to this review, the subject will, perhaps, be seen in a clearer light, if we endeavor to ascertain what would be the nat- ural increase of population, if left to exert itself with perfect freedom ; and what might be expected to be the rate of increase in the productions of the earth, under the most favorable circum- stances of human industry.
It will be allowed that no country has hitherto been known where the manners were so pure and simple, and the means of subsistence so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to early marriages from the difficulty of providing for a family, and that no waste of the human species has been occasioned by
28 1 2 THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS
vicious customs, by towns, by unhealthy occupations, or too severe labor. Consequently, in no state that we have yet known has the power of population been left to exert itself with perfect freedom.
Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dic- tate of nature and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman; and where there were no impediments of any kind in the way of a union to which such an attachment would lead, and no causes of depopulation afterwards, the increase of the human species would be evidently much greater than any in- crease which has been hitherto known.
In the northern states of America, where the means of sub- fjistence have been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states of Europe, the population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in less than twenty-five years. Yet even during these periods, in some of the towns, the deaths exceeded the births, — a circumstance which clearly proves that in those parts of the country which supplied this deficiency the increase must have been much more rapid than the general average.
In the back settlements, where the sole employment is agri- culture, and vicious customs and unwholesome occupations are little known, the population has been found to double itself in fifteen years. Even this extraordinary rate of increase is prob- ably short of the utmost power of population. Very severe labor is requisite to clear a fresh country; such situations are not in general considered as particularly healthy; and the inhabitants, probably, are occasionally subject to the incursions of the In- dians, which may destroy some lives, or at any rate diminish the fruits of their industry.
According to a table of Euler, calculated on a mortality of r in 36, if the births be to the deaths in the proportion of 3 to I, the period of doubling will be only 12 years and 4-5ths. And this proportion is not only a possible supposition, but has actu- ally occurred for short periods in more countries than one.
Sir William Petty supposes a doubling possible in so short a time as ten years.
But to be perfectly sure that we are far within the truth, we will take the slowest of these rates of increase, a rate in which all concurring testimonies agree, and which has been repeatedly ascertained to be from procreation only.
THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS 2813
It may safely be pronounced, therefore, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio.
The rate according to which the productions of the earth may be supposed to increase, it will not be so easy to determine. Of this, however, we may be perfectly certain, that the ratio of their increase must be totally of a different nature from the ratio of the increase of population. A thousand millions are just as easily doubled every twenty-five years by the power of population as a thousand. But the food to support the increase from the greater number will by no means be obtained with the same facility. Man is necessarily confined in room. When acre has been added to acre till all the fertile land is occupied, the yearly increase of food must depend upon the amelioration of the land already in possession. This is a fund, which, from ' the nature of all soils, instead of increasing, must be gradually diminishing. But popu- lation, could it be supplied with food, would go on with unex- hausted vigor; and the increase of one period would furnish the power of a greater increase the next, and this without any limit.
From the accounts we have of China and Japan, it may be fairly doubted whether the best-directed efforts of human in- dustry could double the produce of these countries even once in any number of years. There are many parts of the globe, indeed, hitherto uncultivated, and almost unoccupied ; but the right of exterminating, or driving into a corner where they must starve, even the inhabitants of these thinly peopled regions, will be ques- tioned in a moral view. The process of improving their minds and directing their industry would necessarily be slow; and dur- ing this time, as population would regularly keep pace with the increasing produce, it would rarely happen that a great degree of knowledge and industry would have to operate at once upon rich unappropriated soil. Even where this might take place, as it does sometimes in new colonies, a geometrical ratio increases with such extraordinary rapidity, that the advantage could not last long. If the United States of America continue increasing, which they certainly will do, though not with the same rapidity as formerly, the Indians will be driven further and further back into the country, till the whole race is ultimately exterminated, and the territory is incapable of further extension.
These observations are, in a degree, applicable to all the parts of the earth, where the soil is imperfectly cultivated. To exter-
2814 THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS
minate the inhabitants of the greatest part of Asia and Africa is a thought that could not be admitted for a moment. To civilize and direct the industry of the various tribes of Tartars and Ne- groes would certainly be a work of considerable time, and of vari- able and uncertain success.
Europe is by no means so fully peopled as it might be. In Europe there is the fairest chance that human industry may re- ceive its best direction. The science of agriculture has been much studied in England and Scotland; and there is still a great portion of uncultivated land in these countries. Let us consider at what rate the produce of this island might be supposed to in- crease under circumstances the most favorable to improvement.
If it be allowed that by the best possible policy, and great encouragements to agriculture, the average produce of the island could be doubled in the twenty-five years, it will be allowing, probably, a greater increase than could with reason be expected.
In the next twenty-five years it is impossible to suppose that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge of the properties of land. The improvement of the barren parts would be a work of time and labor; and it must be evident to those who have the slightest acquaintance with agricultural subjects, that in proportion as cultivation extended, the additions that could yearly be made to the former average produce must be gradually and regularly diminishing. That we may be the better able to compare the increase of population and food, let us make a supposition, which, without pretending to ac- curacy, is clearly more favorable to the power of production in the earth than any experience we have had of its quantities will warrant.
Let us suppose that the yearly additions which might be made to the former average produce, instead of decreasing, which they certainly would do, were to remain the same; and that the pro- duce of this island might be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the island like a garden.
If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, and if it be allowed that the subsistence for man which the earth affords might be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present produces, this will be supposing a rate of
THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS 2815
increase much greater than wc can imagine that any possible ex- ertions of mankind could make it.
It may be fairly pronounced, therefore, that, considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, un- der circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.
The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when brought together, will be very striking. Let us call the population of this island eleven millions; and suppose the pres- ent produce equal to the easy support of such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be twenty-two millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsist- ence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years, the population would be forty-four millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of thirty- three millions. In the next period the population would be eighty-eight millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of half of that number. And, at the conclusion of the first century, the population would be a hundred and seventy-six millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of fifty-five mil- lions, leaving a population of a hundred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for.
Taking the whole earth, instead of this island, emi^ation would, of course, be excluded; and, supposing the present popu- lation equal to a thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers i, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and sub- sistence as I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the popu- lation would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the dif- ference would be almost incalculable.
In this supposition no limits whatever are placed to the pro- duce of the earth. It may increase forever, and be greater than any assignable quantity; yet still the power of population being in every period so much superior, the increase of the human species can only be kept down to the level of the means of sub- sistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon the greater power.
Chapter i. in " Essay on the Principle of Population'* complete.
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
(Fourteenth Century)
'iR John Mandeville's "Travels'^ (i3S7-7i) occupies an impor- tant place in English prose literature, because it makes the connection clear between modern English and those Middle- English dialects which resulted from the influence of the Danish and Norman invasions. Where Mandeville was born is not known and it has not been decided that such a person really existed at all; but if the name is a pseudonym, no trace of the real name of the author of this remarkable book has been found. According to Mandeville's own account, he was *' born and bred in England of the town of St. Albans.^' His << Travels ^^ began in 1322 and included Turkey, Ar- menia, Tartary, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, India, and other coun- tries, such as the ^< Realms of Prester John,'> which may be described best as not accurately identified. Mandeville's reputation for verac- ity has helped to bring all other <' traveler's tales *> under suspicion, but he is often far more interesting than more accurate cosmogra- phers, while his << Travels'^ is so firmly established as a necessary part of every antiquarian's library, and as a book of general interest , | to all who love the quaint and improbable that it may fairly be described as beyond the reach of criticism.
A MOHAMMEDAN ON CHRISTIAN VICES
I SHALL tell you what the Soudan told me upon a day, in his chamber. He let voiden out of his chamber all manner of men, lords, and other; for he would speak with me in coun- sel. And there he asked me how the Christian men governed 'em in our country. And I said [to] him, ^< Right well, thonked be God. » And he said [to] me, « Truly nay, for ye Christian men ne reckon right not how untruly to serve God. Ye should given ensample to the lewed people for to do well, and ye given 'em ensample to don evil. For the commons, upon festival days, when they shoulden go to church to serve God, then gon they to taverns, and ben there in gluttony all the day and all night, and eaten and drinken, as beasts that have no reason, and wit not when they have enow. And therewithal they ben so proud, that they knowen not how to ben clothed; now long, now short.
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 2817
now strait, now large, now sworded, now daggered, and in all manner guises. They shoulden ben simple, meek, and true, and full of alms-deed, as Jesu was, in whom they trow; but they ben all the contrary, and ever inclined to the evil, and to don evil. And they been so covetous, that for a little silver they sellen 'eir daughters, 'eir sisters, and 'eir own wives, to putten 'em to lechery. And one withdraweth the wife of another; and none of 'em holdeth faith to another, but they defoulen 'eir law, that Jesu Christ betook 'em keep for 'eir salvation. And thus for 'eir sins, han [have] they lost all this lond that we holden. For 'eir sins here, hath God taken 'em in our bonds, not only by strength of ourself, but for 'eir sins. For we knowen well in very sooth, that when ye serve God, God will help you; and when he is with you, no man may be against you. And that know we well by our prophecies, that Christian men shall winnen this lond again out of our bonds, when they serven God more devoutly. But as long as they ben of foul and unclean living (as they ben now), we have no dread of 'em in no kind; for here God will not helpen 'em in no wise.*
And then I asked him how he knew the state of Christian men. And he answered me, that he knew all the state of the commons also by his messengers, that he sent to all londs, in manner as they were merchants of precious stones, of cloths of gold, and of other things, for to knowen the manner of every coimtry amongs Christian men. And then he let clepe in all the lords that he made voiden first out of his chamber; and there he showed me four that were great lords in the country, that tolden me of my country, and of many other Christian countries, as well as if they had been of the same country; and they spak French right well, and the Soudan also, whereof I had great marvel. Alas, that it is great slander to our faith and to our laws, when folk that ben withouten law shall reproven us, and undernemen us of our sins. And they that shoulden ben converted to Christ and to the law of Jesu, by our good example and by our acceptaljle life to God, ben through our wickedness and evil living, far fro us; and strangers fro the holy and very belief shall thus appellcn us and holden us for wicked levirs and cursed. And truly they say sooth. For the Saracens ben good and faithful. For they kecpcn entirely the commandment of the holy book Alcoran, that God sent 'em by his messager Mahomet; to the which, as they saycn, St. Gabriel, the angel, oftentimc told the wiH of God.
VII— 177 From his «Travela.»
2818 SIR JOHN MANDKVIIvI^K
THE DEVIL'S HEAD IN THE VALLEY PERILOUS
BESIDE that isle of Mistorak, upon the left side, nigh to the river Phison, is a marvellous thing. There is a vale be- tween the mountains, that dureth nigh a four mile. And some clepen it the Vale Enchanted, some clepen it the Vale of Devils, and some clepen it the Vale Perilous; in that vale hearen men oftentime great tempests and thunders, and great murmurs and noises, all day and nights; and great noise as it were sound of tabors and of nakeres and trumps, as though it were of a great feast. This vale is all full of devils, and hath been always. And men say there, that it is one of the entries of hell. In that vale is plenty of gold and silver; wherefore many misbelieving men, and many Christian men also, gon in oftentime, for to have of the treasure that there is, but few comen again ; and namely, of the misbelieving men, ne of the Christian men nouther, for they ben anon strangled of devils. And in mid place of ttat vale, under a rock, is an head of the visage of the devil bodily, full horrible and dreadful to see; and it showeth not but the head, to the shoulders. But there is no man in the world so hardy, Christian man ne other, but that he would ben adrad for to behold it; and that it would seemen him to die for dread; so is it hideous for to behold. For he beholdeth every man so sharply with dreadful eyen that ben evermore moving and sparkling as fire, and changeth and steereth so often in divers manner, with so horrible countenance, that no man dare not nighen towards him. And fro him cometh smoke and stink, and fire, and so much abomination, that unethe no man may there endure. But the good Christian men, that been stable in the faith, entren well withouten peril: for they will first shriven 'em, and marken hem with the token of the Holy Cross; so that the fiends ne han no power over 'em. But albeit that they ben withouten peril, zit natheles ne ben they not withouten dread, when that they seen the devils visibly and bodily all about 'em, that maken full many divers assauts and menaces in air and in earth, and agasten 'em with strokes of thunder-blasts and of tempests. And the most dread is, that God will taken vengeance then, of that men han misdone again his will. And ye should understand that when my fellows and I weren in that vale, we weren in great thought whether that we dursten putten our bodies in aventure, to gon in or non, in the protection of God. And some of our fellows accordeden to enter, and some noght.
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 28 1 9
So there were with us two worthy men, friars minors that :vcra of Lombard}', that said, that if any man would enter, they would go in with us. And when they had said so, upon the ^^racious trust of God and of 'em, we let sing mass; and made every man to be shriven and houseld; and then we entered fourteen per- sons; but at our going out, we were but nine. And so we wisten never, whether that our fellows were lost, or elles turned again for dread; but we ne saw them never after; and tho were two men of Greece and three of Spain; and our other fellows that would not go in with us, they went by another coast to ben before us, and so they were. And thus W3 passed that perilous vale, and found therein gold and silver, and precious stones, and rich jewels great plenty, both here and there, as us seemed; but whether that it was, as us seemed, I wot nere; for I touched none, because that the devils be so subtle to make a thing to seem otherwise than it is, for to deceive mankind; and therefore I touched none; and also because that I would not be put out of my devotion: for I was more devout than ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends, that I saw in divers figures; and also for the great multitude of dead bodies that I saw there lying by the way, by all the vale, as though there had been a battle between two kings, and the mightiest of the country, and that the greater part had been discomfitted and slain. And I trow that unethe should any country have so much people within him, as lay slain in that vale, as us thought; the which was an hideous sight to seen. And I marvelled much, that there were so many, and the bodies all whole withoutcn rotting. But I trow that fiends made them seem to be so whole, withouten rotting. But that might not be to my avys, that so many should have entered so newly, ne so many newly slain, without stinking and rotting. And many of them were i.i habit of Christian men; but I trow well that it were of such that went in for covetyse of the treasure that was there, and had overmuch feebleness in faith; so that their hearts ne might not endure in the belief for dread. And therefore were we the more devout a great deal; and yet we were cast down, and beaten down many times to the hard earth, by winds and thun- ders, and tempests; but evermore, God, of his grace, helped us. And so we passed that perilous vale, without peril, and without incumbrance. Thanked be Almighty God.
From his « Travels."
AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS
(c. 330-r. 395 A. D.)
}he <* History of Rome/' written by Ammianus Marcellinus, con- sisted of thirty-one books beginning with the period of the accession of Nerva and extending to the death of Valens. The eighteen books which survive begin with the seventeenth year of the reign of Constantine and do not go beyond the year 378. Gibbon calls Marcellinus an << accurate and faithful guide who com- posed the history of his own time without indulging the prejudices and passion which usually affect the mind of a contemporary*^ — cer- tainly a high compliment which few historians have deserved. Mar- cellinus was born at Antioch in Syria and began life as a soldier, entering the service of the Emperor Constantius in the year 350, and serving under him several campaigns. He also accompanied the expedition of the Emperor Julian into Persia. After leaving the army he went to Rome and devoted the rest of his life chiefly to his *^ History. >* Little or nothing is known of him beyond this, except that he was still living as late as the year 380 A. D. The dates of his birth and death are both conjectural.
LUXURY OF ROMAN DECADENCE
THE greatness of Rome was founded on the rare and almost incredible alliance of virtue and of fortune. The long pe- riod of her infancy was employed in a laborious struggle against the tribes of Italy, the neighbors and enemies of the ris- ing city. In the strength and ardor of youth she sustained the storms of war, carried her victorious arms beyond the seas and mountains, and brought home triumphant laurels from every country of the globe. At length, verging towards old age, and sometimes conquering by the terror only of her name, she sought the blessings of ease and tranquillity. The venerable city, which "had trampled on the necks of the fiercest nations, and established a system of laws, the perpetual guardians of justice and freedom, was content, like a wise and wealthy parent, to devolve on the Caesars, her favorite sons, the care of governing her ample patri-
AMMIAXUS MARCELLINUS 282 1
rnony. A secure and profound peace, such as had been once en- joyed in the reign of Numa, succeeded to the tumults of a re- public; while Rome was still adored as the queen of the earth; and the subject nations still reverenced the name of the people and the majesty of the senate. But this native splendor is de- graded and sullied by the conduct of some nobles, who, unmind- ful of their own dignity and of that of their country, assume an unbounded license of vice and folly. They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames; and curiously select or invent the most lofty and sonorous appellations. Rebur- rus or Fabunius, Pagonius or Tarrasius, which may impress the ears of the vulgar with astonishment and respect. From a vain ambition of perpetuating their memory, they affect to multiply their likeness in statues of bronze and marble ; nor are they satis- fied unless those statues are covered with plates of gold; an hon- orable distinction first granted to Acilius the consul, after he had subdued, by his arms and counsels, the power of King Antiochus. The ostentation of displaying, of magnifying perhaps, the rent roll of the estates which they possess in all the provinces, from the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just resentment of every man who recollects that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the delicacy of their food or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occa- sionally discover the under garments, and rich tunics, embroid- ered with the figures of various animals. Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets with the same impetuous speed as if they traveled with post horses; and the example of the senators is boldly im- itated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman people. If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet any of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express their affection by a tender embrace; while they proudly decline the salutations
3822 AMMIANUS MARCELLINtJS
of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire above the honor of kissing their hands or their knees. As soon as they have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume their rings and the other ensigns of their dignity; select from their private wardrobe of the finest linen such as might suiSce for a dozen persons, the garments the most agree- able to their fancy, and maintain till their departure the same haughty demeanor, which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements; they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. If at any time, but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail, in their painted galleys, from the Lucrine lake to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and Cayeta, they compare their own ex- peditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet, should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded um- brellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal darkness. In these journeys into the country the whole body of the household march with their master. In the same manner as the cavalry and in- fantry, the heavy and light-armed troops, the advanced guard and the rear, are marshaled by the skill of their military leaders; so the domestic officers, who bear a rod as an ensign of authority, distribute and arrange the numerous train of slaves and attend- ants. The baggage and wardrobe move in the front, and are immediately followed by a multitude of cooks and inferior min- isters, employed in the service of the kitchens and of the table. The main body is composed of a promiscuous crowd of slaves, increased by the accidental concourse of idle or independent plebeians. The rear is closed by the favorite band of eunuchs, distributed from age to youth, according to the order of senior- ity. Their numbers and their deformity excite the horror of the indignant spectators. In the exercise of domestic jurisdiction, * the nobles of Rome express an exquisite sensibility for any per- sonal injury, and a contemptuous indifference to the rest of the human species. When they have called for warm water, if a slave has been tardy in his obedience, he is instantly chastised with three hundred lashes; but should the same slave commit a
AMMIAimS MARCELLINUS 2823
Tvillful murder, the master will mildly observe that he is a worth- less fellow, but that, if he repeats the ofiEense, he shall not escape punishment. Hospitality was formerly the virtue of the Romans, and every stranger who could plead either merit or misfortune was relieved or rewarded by their generosity. At present, if a foreigner, perhaps of no contemptible rank, is introduced to one of the proud and wealthy senators, he is welcomed, indeed, in the first audience, with such warm professions, and such kind in- quiries, that he retires enchanted with the affability of his illus- trious friend, and full of regret that he had so long delayed his journey to Rome, the native seat of manners as well of empire. Secure of a favorable reception, he repeats his visit the ensuing day, and is mortified by the discovery that his person, his name, and his country are already forgotten. If he still has resolution to persevere, he is gradually numbered in the train of depend- ents, and obtains the permission to pay his assiduous and un- profitable court to a haughty patron, incapable of gratitude or friendship, who scarcely deigns to remark his presence, his de- parture, or his return. Whenever the rich prepare a solemn and popular entertainment; whenever they celebrate, with profuse and pernicious luxury, their private banquets, the choice of the guests is the subject of anxious deliberation. The modest, the sober, and the learned are seldom preferred; and the recommendators, who are commonly swayed by interested motives, have the ad- dress to insert, in the list of invitations, the obscure names of the most worthless of mankind. But the frequent and familiar companions of the great are those parasites who practice the most useful of all arts, the art of flattery; who eagerly applaud each word and every action of their immortal patron; gaze with rapture on his marble columns and variegated pavements; and strenuously praise the pomp and elegance, which he is taught to consider as a part of his personal merit. At the Roman tables, the birds, the squirrels, or the fish, which appear of an uncom- mon size, are contemplated with curious attention; a pair of scales is accurately applied to ascertain their real weight; and, while the more rational guests are disgusted by the vain and tedious repetition, notaries are summoned to attest, by an authentic record, the truth of such a marvelous event. Another method of introduction into the houses and society of the great is derived from the profession of gaming, or, as it is more politely styled, of play. The confederates are united by a strict and indissoluble
2824 AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS
bond of friendship, or rather of conspiracy; a superior degree of skill in the Tesserarian art (which may be interpreted the game of dice and tables) is a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of that sublime science, who in a supper, or assembly, is placed below a magistrate, displays in his countenance the sur- prise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when he was refused the pretorship by the votes of a capricious peo- ple. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the curiosity of the nobles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study; and the only books which they peruse are the ^^ Sat- ires'' of Juvenal and the verbose and fabulous histories of Marius Maximus, The libraries which they have inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary sepulchres, from the light of day. But the costly instruments of the theatre, flutes, and enormous lyres, and hydraulic organs, are constructed for their use ; and the harmony of vocal and instrumental music is incessantly repeated in the palaces of Rome. In those palaces, sound is preferred to sense, and the care of the body to that of the mind. It is al- lowed, as a salutary maxim, that the light and frivolous sus- picion of a contagious malady is of sufficient weight to excuse the visits of the most intimate friends; and even the servants, who are despatched to make the decent inquiries, are not suffered to return home till they have undergone the ceremony of a pre- vious ablution. Yet this selfish and unmanly delicacy occasionally yields to the more imperious passion of avarice. The prospect of gain will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleto; every sentiment of arrogance and dignity is subdued by the hopes of an inheritance, or even of a legacy; and a wealthy childless citizen is the most powerful of the Romans. The art of obtain- ing the signature of a favorable testament, and sometimes of hastening the moment of its execution, is perfectly understood, and it has happened that, in the same house, though in different apartments, a husband and a wife, with the laudable design of overreaching each other, have summoned their respective lawyers, to declare, at the same time, their mutual but contradictory in- tentions. The distress which follows, and chastises extravagant luxury, often reduces the great to the use of the most humiliat- ing expedients; when they desire to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the slave in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume the royal and tragic declamation of the grandsons of Hercules. If the demand
AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS 2825
is repeated, they readily procure some ti^usty sycophant, instructed to maintain a charge of poison, or magic, against the insolent creditor, who is seldom released from prison till he has signed a discharge of the whole debt. These vices, which degrade the moral character of the Romans, are mixed with a puerile supersti- tion that disgraces their understanding. They listen with confi- dence to the predictions of haruspices, who pretend to read, in the entrails of victims, the signs of future greatness and pros- perity; and there are many who do not presume either to bathe, or to dine, or to appear in public, till they have diligently consulted, according to the rules of astrology, the situation of Mercury and the aspect of the moon. It is singular enough that this vain credulity may often be discovered among the profane skeptics, who impiously doubt or deny the existence of a celestial power.
HARRIET MARTINEAU
(1802-1876)
Iarriet Martineau was one of the most noted of the intel- lectual women of England who flourished during the first half of the nineteenth century. She was one of the first English women to attempt the career of a professional writer on po- litical and economic subjects, — a field in which she became noted both in England and America at the too heavy expense of losing the per- manent popularity she might have won had she devoted her really remarkable intellect to subjects which would not have tended so strongly to develop her aggressiveness at the expense of her amia- bility. She was born at Norwich, England, June 12th, 1802. In her youth she was greatly influenced by the writings of Dr. Priestley, and later on she came within the sphere of Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill, whose theories she illustrated in a series of tales. As she entitled these, "Illustrations of Political Economy,'' they were naturally viewed with distrust by publishers, but when finally she secured a publisher on terms very disadvantageous to herself, the sale of her stories is de- scribed as having been "enormous.'' This success encouraged a new series as, "Illustrations of Taxation." In 1834 she visited the United States, and after her return published two books on the subject of American manners, which did not increase her popularity in this country. One of her critics, speaking with much reserve, says that in these books she does not show " her usual calmness and judi- cial common sense." No such reserve was shown in contemporaneous American resentment of her opinions of Americans as she saw them. She wrote a number of novels and a considerable number of essays, besides translating and condensing the "Philosophy" of Comte. She died in Westmoreland, June 27th, 1876, — her celebrated brother. Rev. James Martineau, who was only three years her junior, surviving her until the very close of the century (1900). Miss Martineau's ability is unquestionable, and perhaps her severity, when it grows excessive, is to be accounted for by the subconsciousness of her physical infirmi- ties. She never possessed the senses of taste and smell, and as she became very deaf at the age of sixteen, she was compelled to depend on her single sense of sight in the exercise of her human sympathies.
HARRIET MARTINEAU 2827
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
WE MAY be called paradoxical ourselves if we say (but it is true) that never was anything more of a piece than the mind and life, the surroundings, the utterances, and the acts of this wonderfully sane yet thoroughly inconsistent being. His tall, broad, muscular, active frame was characteris- tic; and so was his head, with the strange elevation of the eye- brows, which expresses self-will as strongly in some cases as astonishment in others. Those eyebrows, mounting up till they comprehended a good portion of the forehead, have been ob- served in many more paradoxical persons than one. Then there was the retreating but broad forehead, showing the deficiency of reasoning and speculative power, with the preponderance of im- agination, and a huge passion for destruction. The massive self- love and self-will carried up his head to something more than a dignified bearing — even to one of arrogance. His vivid and quick eye, and the thoughtful mouth, were fine, and his whole air was that of a man distinguished in his own eyes certainly, but also in those of others. Tradition reports that he was hand- some in his youth. In age he was more. The first question about him usually was why, with his frame, and his courage, and his politics, and his social position, he was not in the army. One reply might be that he could neither obey nor co-operate; another was that his godfather. General Powell, wished it, and Landor therefore preferred something else. As for that something else — his father offered him ^400 a year to study law, and reside in the Temple for that purpose, whereas he would give him only j£iso if he would not; and of course he took the ^150, and went as far as he well could from the Tem- ple,— that is, to Swansea. Warwick was his native place. He was born in the best house in the city, where the fine old gar- den, with its noble elms and horse-chestnuts, might have influ- enced his imagination, so as to have something to do possibly with his subsequent abode in Italy. His motlicr was of the ancient family of Savage; and hereditary estates lay about him in Staffordshire and Warwickshire, which had been in the posses- sion of the family for nearly seven centuries. These he sold to shift himself to Wales; and nowhere did his spirit of destructive waywardness break out more painluUy than in the sale of those
2828 HARRIET MARTINEAU
old estates, and his treatment of the new. He employed many- scores of laborers on his Welsh estates, made roads and planted, and built a house which cost him ;^8,ooo. He set his heart upon game preserving (of all pursuits for a democratic republican), and had at times twenty keepers out upon the hills at night, watching his grouse; but, with twelve thousand acres of land, he never saw a grouse on his table. His tenants cheated him, he declared, and destroyed his plantations; and, though he got rid of them, he left, not only Wales but Great Britain, in wrath. Then the steward in charge of his house cheated him, when he not only got rid of the steward, but had his splendid new house pulled down — out of consideration, he declared, for his son's future ease and convenience, in being rid of so vexatious a property. ! His flatterers called this an act of characteristic indignation. To others it appeared that his republican and self-governing doc- i trines came rather strangely from one who could not rule his | own affairs and his own people; and who, finding his failure, could do nothing better than lay waste the whole scene.
He had obtained some of his scholarship at Rugby, and some- what more at Oxford, — where, however, his stay was short. Having fired a gun in the quadrangle of his college, he was rusticated; and, instead of returning, published a volume of poems, when he was only eighteen. While at Swahsea he studied and wrote ^^Gebir." On the invasion of Spain, he determined to be a soldier on his own account, raised a small troop at his own expense, and was the first Englishman who landed in aid of the Spaniards. He was rewarded for this aid, and for a gift of money, by the thanks of the Supreme Junta, and by the rank of Colonel on his return to England; but he sent back his com- mission and the record of thanks when Ferdinand set aside the Constitution. Among many good political acts, perhaps none was better than this. At thirty-six years of age he married a French lady of good family; and a few years after, in 18 18, fixed his residence in Italy, — first in the Palazzo Medici, in Florence, and when obliged to leave it, in a charming villa two miles off. That Villa Gherardesca was built by Michael Angelo. Few British travelers in Italy fail to go and see Fiesole; and while Landor lived there, he was the prey of lion hunters, — as he vehemently complained on occasion of the feud between him and N. P. Wil- lis, the American, who lost a MS. confided to him for his opinion. Such a subordination of the full, ripe scholar and discourser to
HARRIET MARTINEAU 28^9
the shallow, flippant sketcher by the wayside mig-ht seem to de- serve such a result; but it did not tend to reconcile Landor to lion hunters. While in Italy, he sent to English newspapers, and especially to the Examiner, frequent comments on passing- events in the political world, in the form of letters or of verse. He was collecting pictures all the while ; and when he returned to England to pass the rest of his days, as he supposed, he left the bulk of his collection in his villa, for his son's benefit, bringing only a few gems wherewith to adorn such a modest ;-esidence as he now intended to have in his own country. That residence was in St. James's Square, Bath, where he became an octogena- rian, living for awhile in peace and quiet — still commenting on men and measures through the Liberal papers, and putting forth, in his eightieth year, the little volume called " Last Fruit from an Old Tree." The spectacle of a vigorous, vivid, undaunted old age, true to the aims and convictions of youth, is always a fine one; and it was warmly felt to be so in Landor's case. His prejudices mattered less, when human affairs went on maturing themselves in spite of them; and many of his complaints were silenced in the best possible way, — by the reform of the abuses which he, with some unnecessary violence, denounced. He, for his part, talked less about killing kings; and his steady assertion of the claims of the humble fell in better with the spirit of the time, after years had inaugurated the works of peace. About many matters of political principle and practice he was right, while yet the majority of society were wrong; and it would be too much to require that he should be wholly right in doctrine and fact, or very angelic in his way of enforcing his convictions. Nature did not make him a logician, and if we were ever disappointed at not finding him one, the fault was our own. She made him brave, though wayward; an egotist in his method, but with the good of mankind for his aim. He was passionate and prejudiced, but usually in some great cause, and on the right side of it; though there was a deplorable excep- tion to that general rule in the particular instance of defamation which broke up the repose and dignity of his latter days, and caused his self-exile from England for the remnant of his life. This brief notice of the painful fact is enough for truth and jus- tice. As for the rest, he was of aristocratic birth, fortune, and education, with democracy for his political aim, and poverty and helplessness for his clients. All this would have made Walter
2S30 HARRIET MARTINEAU
Savage Landor a remarkable man in his generation, apart from his services to literature; but when we recall some of his works — such pictures as that of the English officer shot at the Pyra- mids— such criticisms as in his ^^ Pentameron '^ — and discourses so elevating and so heart-moving as some which he has put into the mouths of heroes, sages, scholarly and noble women, and saintly and knightly men, we feel that our cumulative obligations to him are very great, and that his death is a prominent incident
of the time.
From « Biographical Sketches.**
KARL MARX
(1818-1883)
■KL Marx, perhaps the most celebrated of the German social- a istic economists, whose writings so powerfully exaggerated l2 the tendencies of the last quarter of the nineteenth century towards centralization, was born at Treves, in Prussia, May 5th, 1818. At the universities of Bonn and Berlin he studied history, juris- prudence, and philosophy; and it was not until 1843, after he had been expelled from Germany for his revolutionary tendencies, that he began his systematic study of sociology and political economy. After his exile from Germany in 1843, he took up his residence in Paris; but the German government had sufficient influence to secure his expulsion from France, and he lived in Brussels until 1848. In that year he returned to Germany to take part in the revolutionary movement of "Young Germany, '^ on the failure of which he went again into exile, settling finally in London, where he died March 14th, 1883. His chief work is « Capital » («Das Kapital»), 1867.
THE BU\nNG AND SELLING OF LABOR-POWER
THE change of value that occurs in the case of money intended to be converted into capital cannot take place in the money itself, since in its function of means of purchase and of pay- ment it does no more than realize the price of the commodity it buys or pays for; and, as hard cash, it is value petrified, never varying. Just as little can it originate in the second act of cir- culation, the resale of the commodity, which does no more than transform the article from its bodily form back again into its mtiney-iorm. The change must, therefore, take place in the com- modity bought by the first act, M — C, but not in its value, for iquivalents are exchanged, and the commodity is paid for at its full value. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that the :hange originates in the use-value, as such, of the commodity; *. f., in its consumption. In order to be able to extract value from the con>>umplion of the commodity, our friend Moneybags must be s>o lucky as to find within the sphere of circulation in the
2832 KARL MARX
market a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar prop- erty of being a source of value whose actual consumption, there- fore, is itself an embodiment of labor, and consequently a crea- tion of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labor or labor-power.
By labor-power or capacity for labor is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use- value of any description.
But, in order that our owner of money may be able to find labor-power offered for sale as a commodity, various conditions must first be fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which result from its own nature. On this assumption labor -power can appear upon the market as a commodity, only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labor-power it is, offers it for sale or sells it as a commodity. In order that he may be able to do this, he must have at his disposal, must be the untram- meled owner of his capacity for labor; i. e., of his person. He and the owner of money meet in the market and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone — that one is buyer, the other seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law. The continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the labor-power should sell it only for a definite period; for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly look upon his labor-power as his own property, his own commodity; and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it.
The second essential condition to the owner of money finding labor-power in the market as a commodity is this: that the laborer, instead of being in the position to sell commodities in which his labor is incorporated, must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labor-power which exists only in his living self.
In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other than labor-power, he must, of course, have the means of produc- tion, as raw material, implements, etc. No boots can be made
I
KARL MARX 2833
without leather. He requires also the means of subsistence. Nobody, not even "a musician of the future,** can live upon future products, or upon use-values in an unfinished state; and, ever since the first moment of his appearance on the world's stage, man always has been, and must still be, a consumer both before and while he is producing. In a society where all prod- ucts assume the form of commodities, these commodities must be sold after they have been produced; it is only after their sale that they can serve in satisfying the requirements of their pro- ducer. The time necessary for their sale is superadded to that necessary for their production.
For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free laborer — free in the double sense : that as a free man he can dispose of his labor-power as his own commodity, and that, on the other hand, he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realization of his labor-power.
The minimum limit of the value of labor-power is determined by the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the laborer cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by the value of those means of subsistence that are physically indis- pensable. If the price of labor-power fall to this minimum it falls below its value, since under such circumstances it can be main- tained and developed only in a crippled state. But the value of every commodity is determined by the labor-time requisite to turn it out so as to be of normal quality.
It is a very cheap sort of sentimentality which declares this method of determining the value of labor -power — a method pre- scribed by the very nature of the case — to be a brutal method, and which wails with Rossi that ** to comprehend capacity for labor {puissance de travail) at the same time that we make ab- straction from the means of subsistence of the laborers during the process of production, is to comprehend a phantom (Jtre de raison). When we speak of labor, or capacity for labor, we speak at the same time of the laborer and his means of subsistence, of laborer and wages. " When we speak of capacity for labor, we do not speak <jf luljor any more than when we speak of ca- pacity for digestion we speak of digestion. Tlie latter process re- (juires something more than a good stomach. Wlicn we speak of capacity for labor, we do not abstract from the necessary means
of subsistence. On the contrary, their value is expressed in its vij— 178
3834 KARL MARX
value. If his capacity for labor remains unsold, the laborer de- rives no benefit from it; but rather he will feel it to be a cruel, nature-imposed necessity that this capacity has cost for its pro- duction a definite amount of the means of subsistence, and that it will continue to do so for its reproduction. He will then agree with Sismondi, " that capacity for labor ... is nothing un- less it is sold."
From « Capitalist Production. »
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE (1805-1872)
Irederick Denison Maurice, professor of English Literattire and History in King's College, and afterwards of Moral Phi- losophy at Cambridge, was born in England in 1805. He studied both at Cambridge and Oxford, and began life as a curate in the Church of England. His most notable work, however, was done in literature and in education. He held the chair of Theology, as well as of Literature, at King's College. Queen's College was founded by him, and he was also largely instrumental in founding the Working- men's College of London. He became professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge in 1866, and died in 1872. Besides his essays he wrote a number of philosophical works and treatises.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS
I HAVE proposed to speak to you this evening on the Friendship of Books. I have some fear that an age of reading is not always favorable to the cultivation of this friendship. I do not mean that we are in any special danger of looking upon them as enemies. That is no doubt the temptation of some persons. I have known both boys and men who have looked at books with a kind of rage and hatred, as if they were the natural foes of the human species. I am far from thinking that these were bad boys or bad men; nor were they stupid. Some of them I have found very intelligent, and have learned much from them. I could trace the dislike in some cases to a cause which I thought honorable. The dogs and horses which they did care about, and were always on good terms with, they regarded as living crea- tures, who could receive affection, and in some measure could re- turn it. Their horses could carry them over hills and moors; their dogs had been out with them from morning till night, and took interest in the pursuit that was interesting them. Books seemed to them dead things in stiff bindings, that might bo pat- ted or caressed ever so much, and would take no notice, that
2836 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
knew nothing of toil or pleasure, of hill or stubble field, of sun- rise or sunsetting, of the earnest chase or the feast after it. Was it not better to leave them on the shelves which seemed to be made for them ? Was it not treating them most respectfully not to finger or soil them, but to secure the services of a housemaid who should occasionally dust them ?
I frankly own that I have great sympathy with these feelings, and with those who entertain them. If books are only dead things, if they do not speak to one, or answer one when one speaks to them, if they have nothing to do with the common things that we are busy with, — with the sky over our head, and the ground under our feet, — I think that they had better stay on the shelves ; I think any horse or dog, or tree or flower, is a bet- ter companion for human beings than they are. And therefore I say again, it is not with those who count them enemies that I find fault. They have much to say for themselves; if their premises are right, they are right in their conclusions. What I regret is, that many of us spend much of our time in reading books, and in talking of books — that we like nothing worse than the reputation of being indifferent to them, and nothing better than the reputation of knowing a great deal about them; and yet that, after all, we do not know them in the same way as we know our fellow-creatures, not even in the way we know any dumb animal that we walk with or play with. This is a great misfortune, in my opinion, and one which I am afraid is increas- ing as what we call " the taste for literature * increases. I can- not enter into all the different reasons which lead me to think so, nor can I trace the evil to its source. But I will mention one characteristic of the reading in our times, which must have much to do with it.
A large part of our reading is given to reviews and maga- zines and newspapers. Now I am certain that these must have a very important use. We should all of us be trying to find out what the use of them is, because it is clear that we are bom into an age in which they exercise great power; and that fact must bring a great responsibility not only upon those who wield the power, but upon us who have to see that it does us good, and not hurt. But whatever good effects works of this kind may have produced, we certainly are not able to make them our friends. Perhaps you will wonder that I should say that a news- paper or a review is a much less awful thing than a quarto or
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 4837
a folio — I mean, of course, to those who are not going them- selves to be cut up in it, but only to have the pleasure of see- ing their friends and neighbors cut up. Moreover, the writer of the newspaper or magazine or review commonly assumes an off- hand, dashing air. He has a number of colloquial phrases and stock jests which seem intended to put us at our ease. He speaks in a loud, rattling tone, like one who wishes to shake hands the first time you meet him. But then, when you stretch out your hand, what is it you meet ? Not that of a man, but of a shadow, of something that calls itself "We." Be friends with a "We!" How is that possible? If the mist is scattered, if we discover that there is an actual human being there, then the case is altered altogether. If Lord Jeffrey, or Mr. Macaulay, or Sir James Stephen publishes articles which he has written in a re- view, with his name affixed to them, or if a " Times correspond- ent " whom, in our superstition, we had supposed to be one of the fairies or genii that descend from some other world to our planet, appears with an ordinary name, and dressed like a mortal, why, then we feel we are on fair terms. A person is presenting himself to us, one who may have a right to judge us, but who is willing to be tried himself by his peers. That, you see, is be- cause the We has become an I. All his apparent dignity is dis- solved; we can recognize him as a fellow-creature.
Now, I do not say this the least in condemnation of reviewers, or of any person who, for any reasons whatever, thinks it better to call himself We than I. I only say that there is no friendship under such conditions as this; that we never can make any book our friend until we look upon it as the work of an I. It is the principle which I hope to maintain throughout this lecture, and therefore I begin with stating it at once. I want to speak to you about a few books which exhibit very trans- parently, I think, what sort of a person he was who wrote them, which show him to us. I think we shall find that there is the charm of the book, the worth of the book. He may be writing about a great many things, but tliere is a man who writes, and when you get acquainted with that man you get acquainted with the book. It is no more a collection of letters and leaves; it is a friend.
I mean to speak entirely, or almost entirely, of English books. And I shall begin with a writer who seems to offer a great exception to the lemark I have just made. If I thought he was
2838 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
really an exception I should be much puzzled, or rather I should give up my position altogether. For since he is the greatest and the best known of all English authors, for him to be an instance against me would be a clear proof that I was wrong. We con- tinually hear this observation : " William Shakespeare is not to h& found in any of his plays." It is his great and wonderful dis- tinction that he is not. Othello speaks his word, Hamlet his, Bottom, the weaver, his; Desdemona, Imogen, Portia, each her word. But Shakespeare does not intrude himself into any of their places; he does not want us to know what he thought about this matter or that. If you look into one corner or another for him, he is not there. It would appear, then, according to my maxim, as if Shakespeare could never be his reader's friend. It would appear as if he were the great precedent for all news- paper writers and reviewers, as if he were overlooking mankind just as they do, and had the best possible right to describe him- self as a We, and not as an I.
Well, that sounds very plausible, and, like everything that sounds plausible, there is a truth at the bottom of it. But that the truth is not this, I think the feeling and judgment of the people of England (I might say of the continents of Europe and of America) might convince you without any arguments of mine. For they have been so sure that there was a William Shakes- peare, they were so certain that he had a local habitation and a name, that they have rummaged parish registers, hunted Doctors' Commons for wills, made pilgrimages to Stratford-upon-Avon, put together traditions about old houses and shops, that they might make, if possible, some clear image of him in their minds. I do not know that they have succeeded very well. The facts of his biography are few. A good deal of imagination has been needed to put them together, and to fill up the blanks in them. I do not suppose registers, or wills, or old houses, will give many more answers concerning him. But that only shows, I think, how very clear a witness his own works give, even when the outward information is ever so scanty, of the man that he was, and of the characteristics which distinguished him from his fel- lows. If you ask me how I reconcile this assertion with the undoubted fact that he does not put himself forward as other dramatists do, and give his own opinions instead of allowing the persons of his drama to utter theirs, I should answer: Have you found that the man who is in the greatest hurry to tell you all
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 2839
"lat he thinks about all possible things is the friend that is best worth knowing ? Have you found that the one who talked most about himself and his own doings is the most worth knowing ? Do you not generally become rather exhausted with men of his kind ? Do not you say sometimes, in Shakespeare's own words, or rather in Falstaff's, "I do see to the bottom of this same Justice Shallow; he has told me all he has to tell. There is no reserve in him, nothing that is worth searching after * ? On the other hand, have you not met with some men who very rarely spoke about their own impressions and thoughts, who seldom laid down the law, and yet who you were sure had a fund of wisdom within, and who made you partakers of it by the light which they threw on the earth in which they were dwelling, especially by the kindly, humorous, pathetic way in which they interested you about your fellowmen, and made you acquainted with them ? I do not say that this is the only class of friends which one would wish for. One likes to have some who in quiet moments are more directly communicative about their own sufferings and Struggles. But certainly you would not say that men of the other class are not very pleasant and very profitable. Of this class Shakespeare is the most remarkable specimen. Instead of being a reviewer who sits above the universe, and applies his own narrow rules to the members of it, he throws himself with the heartiest and most genial sympathy into the feelings of all, he understands their position and circumstances, he perceives how each must have been affected by them. Instead of being a big, imaginary We, he is so much of a man himself that he can enter into the manhood of people who are the furthest off from him, and with whom he has the least to do. And so, I believe, his books may become most valuable friends to us — to us especially who ought to be acquainted with what is going on with all kinds of people. Evcr>' now and then, I think (especially, perhaps, in the characters 01 Hamlet and of Prospero), one discovers signs how Shakespeare as an individual man had fought and suffered. I quite admit, however, that his main work is not to do this, but to help us in knowing ourselves — the past history of our land, the people we are continually meeting. And any book that does this is surely a friend.
Before I leave Shakespeare, I would speak of the way in which he made friends with books. Perhaps I can do it best by com- paring his use of them with the use which was made of them by
2840 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
a very clever and accomplished contemporary of his. Ben Jon- son, though he was the son of a bricklayer, made himself a thor- oughly good Latin and Greek scholar. He read the best Latin books, and the commentaries which illustrated them; he wrote two plays on subjects taken from Roman history. Very striking subjects they were. The hero of one was Catiline, who tried to overthrow the social order of the republic; the hero of the other was Sejanus, who represents, by his grandeur and his fall, the very character and spirit of the empire in the days of Tiberius. In dealing with these subjects Ben Jonson had the help of two of the greatest Roman authors, both of them possessing remark- able powers of narration, one of them a man of earnest char- acter, subtle insight, deep reflection. Though few men in his day understood these authors, and the government and circumstances of Rome, better than Jonson, though he was a skillful and expe- rienced playwriter, most readers are glad when they have got Catiline and Sejanus fairly done with. They do not find that they have received any distinct impressions from them of Roman life ; to learn what it was they must go to the authors whom he has copied. Shakespeare wrote three plays on Roman subjects: " Co- riolanus,* "Julius Caesar,*^ * Antony and Cleopatra.'^ He knew very little of Latin, and the materials he had to work with were a tolerable translation of Livy's * History,^* and a capital one of Plutarch's " Lives. ** "With no aid but these, and his knowledge of Warwickshire peasants and London citizens, he has taught us more of the Romans, he has made us more at home in their city, and at their fireside, than the best historians who lived upon the soil are able to do. Jonson studied their books; Shakespeare made friends of them. He did just the same with our old chronicles. He read of King John, of Richard II., of John of Gaunt, of Harry of Lancaster, of Hotspur and Owen Glendower, of the good Humphrey of Gloucester, and the dark Cardinal Beaufort, of Wolsey and Catherine. He read of them, and they stood up before him, real armed men, or graceful, sorrowing women. Instead of being dead letters, they all became living persons; not appearing in solitary grandeur, but forming groups; not each with a fixed, immovable nature, but acted upon and educated by all the circumstances of their times; not dwelling in an imaginary world, but warmed by the sun of Italy, or pinched by the chilly nights of Denmark — essentially men such as a/e to be found in all countries and in all ages, and therefore
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 2841
exhibiting all the varieties of temperament and constitution which belong to each age and to each country.
Shakespeare's mind was formed in an age when men were at work, and when they wanted books to explain and illustrate their work. He lived on into another, when men began to value books for their own sakes. James I., who was called a Solomon (and who would have deserved that name if Solomon had not consid- ered that his wisdom was given him that he might rule his sub- jects well, and if James had not supposed that his was given for every purpose except that), was the great promoter of this wor- ship of books. But they did not speak to Englishmen of that which was going on around them as they had done in Elizabeth's time. Learned people drew a line about themselves, and signified to common people who had business that they must keep their distance. Still there were many influences which counteracted this tendency. One man, who was not free from it by any means, helped to check it by opening to his fellows a new and real world. Lord Bacon found that 'hey knew the secrets of nature only through books, that they did not come freely and directly into contact with them; he showed them how they might converse with the things they saw, how they might know them as they were in themselves, instead of only seeing them distorted by the^'r spectacles. That was a great work to do; and as I said, it was never more wanted than just at this time, when men were in danger of falling so much in love with the letters in books as to forget into what a universe of mysteries God had put his crea- ture man that he might search them out. Bacon reverenced the study of nature more than he did the study of man; and no won- der! For he found out what a beautiful order there was in na- ture; and though I believe he looked for an order in human af- fairs too, and sometimes discerned, and always wished for it, yet there is no denying that he had a keen eye for the disorders and wrongdoings of his fellowmen, and that he rather reconciled himself to them than sought to remedy them. I refer to him, because I fancy that many have a notion of his books on the in- terpretation of nature as very valuable for scientific men, and his books on morals and politics as very wise for statesmen and men of the world, but not as friends. They form this notion because they suppose that the more we knew of Bacon himself, the less «ympalhy we should have with him. I should be sorry to hold this opinion, because I owe him immense gratitude; and I could
2842 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
not cherish it if I thought of him, even as the sagest of book- makers, and not as a human being. I should be sorry to hold it, because if I did not find in him a man who deserved reverence and love, I should not feel either the indignation or the sorrow which I desire to feel for his misdoings. Niebuhr said of Cicero that he knew his faults as well as anybody, but that he felt as much grieved when people spoke of them as if he were his brother. That is the right way to feel about great men who are departed, and I do not think that an Englishman should feel otherwise about Bacon. It is hard to measure the exact criminality of his acts; one of the truest sentences ever passed on them was his own. His words are faithful transcripts of both his strength and weakness. There are some, especially of his dedications, which one cannot read without a sense of burning shame; there are passages in the very treatises which those dedications introduce that it does one's heart good to remember, and which we are inwardly sure must have come from the heart of him who put them into language. He does not give us at all the genial im- pressions of other men which Shakespeare gives, but he detects very shrewd tricks which we practice upon ourselves. His worldly wisdom is what we have most to dread, lest he should make us contented with the wrong in ourselves and in the society about us, and should teach us to admire low models. But if we apply to our moral pursuits the zeal for truth, and the method of seek- ing it and of escaping from our own conceits, which he imparts to us in his physical lessons, if we consider his own errors, and his punishment for tolerating and embracing the base maxims of his time, we shall find him all the safer as a guide because we have felt with him as a friend. When we do that we can always appeal from the man to himself; we can say: "Thank you heart- ily for what you have said to me; but there were clouds about you when you were here; you did not always walk with straight feet, and with your eyes turned to the light. Now you know better, and I will make use of what you tell me, as well as of all that I can learn about your doings, as warnings to keep me from wandering to the right or to the left.*
I might speak of other books in this bookish time of James I., which many of us have found valuable and genial friends; as, for instance, the poems of George Herbert, which nobody that ever reads them can think of merely as poems; they are so completely the utterances of the heart of an aflfectionate, faithful, earnest
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 2843
man, they speak so directly to whatever is best in ourselves, and give us such friendly and kindly admonitions about what is worst. But I must go on to the next period, which was a period of ac- tion and strife, when men could no more regard writing books, or even reading them, as an amusement; when the past must be studied for the sake of the present, or not at all. John Milton belongs to that time. He was the most learned of all our poets, the one who from his childhood upwards was a devourer of Greek and Latin books, of the romances of the Middle Ages, of French and Italian poetry, above all of the Hebrew scriptures. All these became his friends; for all of them connected themselves with the thoughts that occupied men in his own time, with the deep religious and political controversies which were about to bring on a civil war. Many persons think that the side which he took in that war must hinder us from making his books our friends; that we may esteem him as a great poet, but that we cannot meet him cordially as a man. No one is more likely to entertain that opinion than an English clergyman, for Milton dealt his blows unsparingly enough, and we come in for at least our full share of them. I know all that, and yet I must confess that I have found him a friend, and a very valuable friend, even when I have differed from him most and he has made me smart most. It does not strike me that on the whole we profit most by the friends who flatter us. We may be stirred up to the recollection of our duty by those who speak stern and terrible words of us, and of our class. If we are persuaded that they are utterly wrong in condemning the institutions to which we are attached, we may often admit that they are very right in condemning us for the sins which hinder men from seeing the worth of those in- stitutions. I do not know any one who makes us feel more than Milton does the grandeur of the ends which we ought to keep always before us, and therefore our own pettiness and want of courage and nobleness in pursuing them. I believe he failed to discern many of the intermediate relations wliich God has estab- lished between himself and us; but I know no one who teaches us more habitually that disobedience to the Divine Will is the seat of all misery to men. I would rather converse with him as a friend than talk of him as a poet; because then we put our selves into a position to receive the best wisdom which he has to give us, and that wisdom helps to purge away whatever dross is mingled with it; whereas if we merely contemplate him at a dis-
2844 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
tance as a great genius, we shall receive some powerful influence from him, but we shall not be in a condition to compare one thing that he says to us with another. And to say the truth, I do not know what genius is, except it be that which begets some life in those who come in contact with it, which kindles some warmth in them. If there is genius in a poem, it must have been first in the poet; and if it was in the poet, it must have been because he was not a stock or a stone, but a breathing and suffering man. And there is no writer whose books more force upon us the thought of him as a person than Milton's. There are few passages in his prose writings, full as they are of gor- geous passages, more beautiful than that in which he defends him- self from the charge of entering from choice or vanity into controversies, by alleging the far different object and kind of writ- ing to which from his youth upwards he had desired to devote himself. And in his latest poem of ^ Samson Agonistes,'^ where what he had learned from the playwriters of Greece is wonder- fully raised, and mellowed, and interpreted by what he had learned from the Old Testament, he himself speaks to us in every line. He transfers himself to the prison of Samson in Gaza; he is the blind, downcast, broken man whom God appears to have cast off. The thought of God as the Deliverer gives him a consolation which nothing else can give; he looks forward to some triumph which God will give to his race, as the only hope for himself.
I have dwelt some time upon these *' friends,*^ because Shakes- peare, Bacon, Milton, are the greatest names in our literature, and therefore it was important for my purpose to show you that their books do fulfill the purpose which I have said all books ought to fulfill. I might very fairly have gone back, and spoken to you of older writers than these. I might have spoken of the time of our Edward III., and have given you some proofs that our first poet, Chaucer, was a cordial, genial, friendly man, who could tell us a great many things which we want to know about his own time, and could also break down the barrier between his time and ours, and make us feel that, though our dress may be very much unlike theirs, and our houses a good deal better, and our language a little less French, yet that on the whole our fathers worked at much the same trades as we do, fell into the same kind of sins, looked up at the same skies, had the same wants in their hearts, and required that they should be satisfied in the same way. I might have spoken to you also of some of
PTiEDERICK DENISON MAURICE 284$
the men who flourished at the time of the Reformation — of Latimer for instance, whose broad, simple, humorous sermons ad- dress themselves to all the common sympathies of Englishmen, and are as free from starch and buckram as any one could wish. I might have spoken to you also of some of Shakespeare's con- temporaries, especially of that delightful and instructive compan- ion, Spenser's ^* Faery Queene,'^ which makes us feel that without stepping a yard from our native English ground, or deserting any of our common occupations, we may be, aye, and must be, engaged in a great fight with invisible enemies, and that we have invisi- ble champions on our side. But as I have not time to speak of many books to-night, I have passed over these and have begun at once with those which, for one reason or another, people are most likely to think of as having claims upon their respect rather than upon their friendship. That must be my reason too for not dwelling upon a book belonging to Milton's time, which many people would at once recognize as a delightful friend; I mean Izaak Walton's ** Angler. '* Knowing nothing of his craft, I should only betray my ignorance by entering upon it, and should lessen the pleasure which some of you, I dare say, have received from its quiet descriptions and devout reflections. But I am glad to re- member that there is such a book in our libraries, even if I un- derstand very little of it, because it is one of the links between the life of the woods and streams and the life of the study, which it would be a great misfortune for us to lose.
A link between this age and the one that follows it is found in Thomas Fuller, one of the liveliest, and yet, in the inmost heart of him, one of the most serious writers one can meet with. I speak of this writer partly because there is no one who is so resolute that we should treat him as a friend, and not as a solemn dictator. By some imexpectcd jest, or comical turn of expression, he disappoints your purpose of receiving his words as if they were fixed in print, and asserts his right to talk with you, and convey his subtle wisdom in his own quaint and peculiar dialect.
Fuller uses his wit to make his reader a friend. The writers of Charles II.'s court used their wit to prove that there could be no such thing as friendship with cither books or men, that it was altogether a ridiculous obsolete sentiment. They established their point so far as they themselves were concerned; one has no right to ask of them what they had not to give. Hut their pun- ishment is a singular one. They wished to pass for men of the
2846 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
world, and not for vulgar bookwrights. We are obliged to re- gard them as bookwrights simply, and not as men at all. There is one exception. John Dryden stands apart from the men whose vices infected him, not merely because his style in prose and verse was immeasurably more vigorous than theirs, but be- cause his confused life and his evil companions did not utterly destroy his heart. I do not know that one could make the writ- ings of John Dryden friends; so many of the very cleverest of them are bitter satires, containing a great deal of shrewd obser- vation, sometimes just, as well as severe, but certainly not bind- ing us by any strong ties of affection to their author. Yet there is such a tragedy in the history of a mind so full of power as his, and so unable to guide itself amidst the shoals and quick- sands of his time, that I believe we need not, and that we can- not, speak of him merely with the admiration which is due to his gifts; we must feel for him somewhat of the pity that is akin to love. Mr. Macaulay charges Dryden with changing his religion chiefly that he might get a pension from James II. I do not believe that was his motive, or that the lesson from his life would be worth as much as it is if it had been. If we com- pare his " Religio Laici, ^* which he wrote in his former, with his ^* Hind and Panther,^* which expressed his later opinions, I think we may perceive that his mind was unhinged, that he found nothinof fixed or certain in heaven or earth, and that he drifted naturally wherever the tide of events carried him. That is the fate which may befall many who have no right to be described as mercenary time-servers.
However, one is glad to escape from this age, which had become a very detestable one, and to find ourselves in one which, though not exemplary for goodness, produced books of which we can very well make friends. If you take up the Spec- tator, or the Guardian, your first feeling is that the writers in it wish to cultivate your friendship. They have thrown off the stiff manners of those who reckon it their chief business to write books; at the same time they do not affect to be men of the world despising books. Their object is to bring books and peo- ple of the world into a good understanding with each other; to make fine ladies and gentlemen somewhat wiser and better be- haved by feeding them with good and wholesome literature; to show the student what things are going on about him, that he may not be a mere pedant and recluse. I do not mean that
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 2847
this was the deliberate purpose of Addison and Steele. It was .he natural effect of their position that they took this course. They had been educated as scholars; they entered into civil life, and became members of parliament. The two characters were mixed in them; and when they wrote books they could not help showing- that they knew something of men. The two men were well fitted to work together. Addison had the calmer and clearer intellect; he had inherited a respect for English faith and mor- ality. Steele, with a more wavering conduct, had perhaps even more reverence in his inmost heart for goodness. Between them they appeared just formed to give a turn to the mind of their age ; not presenting to society a very heroical standard, but rais- ing it far above the level to which it had sunk, and is apt to sink. The Spectator and the Guardian have sometimes been called the beginning of our periodical literature. Perhaps they are; but they are very unlike what we describe by that name in our day. There is no We in them. Though the papers have letters of the alphabet, and not names, put to them, and though they profess to be members of a club, each writer calls himself I. You can hardly conceive what a difference it would make in the pleasure with which you read any paper, if the singular pronoun were changed for the plural. The good humor of the writing would evaporate immediately. You would no longer find that you were in the presence of a kindly, friendly observer, who was going about with you and pointing out to you this folly of the town, and that pleasant characteristic of a country gentleman's life. All would be the dry, hard criticism of some distant being, who did not take you into his counsels at all, but merely told you what you were to think or not to think. And with the good humor, what we call the humor when we do not prefix the ad- jective to it would also disappear. Mr. Thackeray, the most competent person possible for such a task, has introduced Addi- son and Steele among the humorists of England, and has shown very clearly both how the humor of the one differed from that of the other, and how unlike both were to Dean Swift, who is the best and most perfect specimen of ill humor — that is so to say, of a man of the keenest intellect and the most exquisite clearness of expression, who is utterly out of sorts with the world and with himself. Addison is on good terms with both. He amuses himself with people, not because he dislikes them, but because he likes them, and is not discomposed by theit
2848 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
absurdities. He does not go very far down into the hearts of them; he never discovers any of the deeper necessities which there are in human beings. But everything that is upon the surface of their lives, and all the little cross-currents which dis- turb them, no one sees so accurately, or describes so gracefully. In certain moods of our mind, therefore, we have here a most agreeable friend, one who tasks us to no great effort, who does not set us on encountering any terrible evils, or carrying for- ward any high purpose, but whom one must always admire for his quietness and composure; who can teach us to observe a multitude of things that we should else pass by, and reminds us that in man's life, as in nature, there are days of calm and sun- shine as well as of storm.
But though one may have a very pleasant and useful conver- sation with this kind-hearted Spectator now and then, I do not think that such conversation would brace one to the hard work of life, or would enable one to sympathize with those who are engaged in it. We must remember that a very considerable majority of the world do not ride in coaches, as nearly all those we read of in the Spectator do: that to earn bread by the sweat of the brow is the common heritage of the sons of Adam, and that it is a great misfortune not to understand that necessity, even if circumstances have exempted us from it. For that reason some of us may welcome another friend, far less happy and genial than Addison, often very rough and crossgrained, with rude inward affection. Old Samuel Johnson had none of Addison's soft train- ing. He had nothing to do with the House of Commons, except as a contraband reporter; he had not the remotest chance of be- ing a secretary of state even if he had not been a fierce Tory, and in the reign of George II. all but a Jacobite. With only booksellers for his patrons, obliged to seek his bread from hand to mouth by writing for them what they prescribed, with a bad (digestion, a temper anything but serene, a faith certainly as earnest as Addison's, but which contemplated its objects on the dark and not on the sunny side, he offers the greatest contrast one can conceive to the happy well-conditioned man of whom I have just been speaking. The opposition between them is all the more remarkable because the Rambler was formed on the model of the Spectator, and because Johnson as much as Ad- dison belongs to what ought to be called the club period of Eng- lish literature. I do not suppose any one will be bold enough
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 2849
to vindicate that name, be it good or evil, for our day, merely because gentlemen are now able to eat solitary dinners, hear news, and sleep over newspapers and magazines, in very magnifi- cent houses in Pall Mall. The genuine dub, though its ""ocality might be in some dark alley out of Fleet Street, was surely that in which men of different occupations after the toil of the day met to exchange thoughts. In that world Johnson flourished even more than Addison. The latter is accused by Pope of giving his little senate laws; but Johnson's senate contained many great men who yet listened to his oracles with reverence. And those oracles were not delivered in sentences of three clauses ending in a long word in " tion, " like those papers in the Rambler which are so well parodied in the " Rejected Addresses. " I think that young men ought, undoubtedly, to be early warned of these pompous sentences, not because it is worse to imitate this style than any other, — for we have no business to imitate any (our style must be our own, or it is worth nothing), — but because it is par- ticularly easy to catch this habit of writing, and to fancy there is substance when there is only wind. But I cannot admit that Johnson's most inflated sentences contain mere wind. He had something to put into them: they did express what he felt, and what he was, better than simpler, more English, more agreeable ones would have done. He adopted them naturally; they are part of himself; if we want to be acquainted with him, we must not find fault with them. And when he is describing scenes as in " Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia,** he is often quite free and pic- turesque ; when he is writing about business, as in his ** Falkland Island,'* he does not let his eloquence, which in that book is often very splendid, hinder him from being pointed and direct in his blows. He falls into what some people call King Cambyses* vein chiefly when he is moralizing on the condition of the world, and the disappointment of all man's hopes and projects in it. In his club, no one could speak with more straightness, wasting no words, but bringing out the thing he wants to say in the strongest and most distinct dress that coiild be found. One may not agree in half of the opinions he expresses, and may think that he delivers them very dogmatically. If one looked either at his writings or at Boswell's life of him merely as books, one would go away very discontented and very angry; but when one thinks of both a.<i ex- hibiting to us a man, the case becomes altr)gcl]icr dilTercnt. We are all greatly indebted, I think, f.- ^Tt• rr.rlyle, for having deter- vii — 179
2850 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
mined that we should contemplate Johnson in this way, and not chiefly as a critic or a lexicographer. We may judge of him in those characters very differently ; but in himself Mr. Carlyle has shown most clearly that he deserves our sympathy and our reverence.
There were two members of Johnson's club to each of whom he was sincerely attached, and who were attached to each other, though in their habits, occupations, talents, modes of thinking, they were as unlike him, and unlike each other, as any two men could be. They had, indeed, a common origin — Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke were both Irishmen. But Goldsmith carried his country about with him wherever he went; he was always blundering, and reckless, and good-natured. Burke only showed where he had been born by his zeal for the improvement of his country whenever her affairs came under discussion. I believe that these two men, with the vast differences that there are be- tween them, may both become our friends, and that we shall not thoroughly enjoy the *^ Deserted Village,*^ or the ^^ Vicar of Wake- field,* or the ^^ Speeches on American Taxation,*^ or the "Reflec- tions on the French Revolution, '^ unless they do. All Goldsmith's friends were always scolding him, laughing at him, and learning from him. They found that he had a fund of knowledge which he had picked up they could not tell how, but apparently by sym- pathizing with all the people that he came into contact with, and so getting to be really acquainted with them. He compiled his- tories without much learning about the people he was writing of: yet he did not make them false or foolish, because he had more notion than many diligent historians have of what men must be like in any latitudes. In his poetry he never goes out of his depth; he speaks of things which he has seen and felt himself, and so it tells us of him if it does not tell us of much else. In spite of all his troubles, he is as good-natured as Addison; only he mixed with a different class of people from Addison, and can tell us of country vicars and their wives and daughters, though he may not know much of a Sir Roger de Coverley. His books, I think, must be always pleasant, as well as profitable friends, provided we do not expect from them, as we ought not to ex- pect from any friend, more than they profess to give.
Burke is a friend of another order. Johnson said of him that if you met him under a gateway in a shower of rain, you must perceive that he was a remarkable man. I do not think we can take up the most insignificant fragment of the most insignificant
FREDERICK DENI50N MAURICE 285 1
Speech or pamphlet he ever put forth without arriving- at the same conviction. But he does what is better than make us ac- knowledge him as a remarkable man. He makes us acknowledge that we are small men, that we have talked about subjects of which we had little knowledge, and the principles of which we had imperfectly sounded.
He told the electors of Bristol, that they might reject him if they pleased, but that he should maintain his position as an Eng- lish statesman, and an honest man. They did reject him, of course, but his speech remains as a model for all true men to fol. low, as a warning to all who adopt another course, that they may make friends for the moment, but that they will not have a friend in their own conscience, and that their books, if they leave any, will be no friends to those who read them in the times to come.
Away from the club in which Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith were wont to meet, in a little village in Buckinghamshire, dwelt another poet, who was not uninterested in their doings, and who had in his youth mixed with London wits. William Cowper in- spired much friendship among men, and still more among women, during his lifetime ; they found him the pleasantest of all com- panions in his bright hours, and they did not desert him in his dark hours. His books have been friends to a great many since he left the earth, because they exhibit him very faithfully in both ; some of his letters and some of his poems being full of mirth and quiet gladness, some of them revealing awful struggles and despair. Whatever estimate may be formed of his poetry in com- parison with that of earlier or later writers, every one must feel that his English is that of a scholar and a gentleman — that he had the purest enjoyment of domestic life, and of what one may call the domestic or still life of nature. One is sure, also, that he had the most earnest faith, which he cherished for others when he could find no comfort in it for himself. These would be sufHcient explanations of the interest which he has awakened in so many simple and honest readers who turn to books for sym- pathy and fellowship, and do not like a writer at all the worse because he also demands their sympathy with him. Cowper is one of the strongest instances and proofs how much more quali- ties of this kind affect Englishmen than any others. The gen- tleness of his life might lead some to suspect him of clTeminacy; but the old Westminster schotjlboy and cricketer comes out in the midst of his * Meditation on Sofas*; and the deep tragedy
2852 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
which was at the bottom of his whole life, and which grew more terrible as the shadows of evening closed upon him, shows that there may be unutterable struggles in those natures which seem least formed for the rough work of the world. In one of hia later poems he spoke of himself as one —
* Who, tempest-tossed, and wrecked at last, Comes home to port no more.^*
But his nephew, who was with him on his deathbed, says that there was a look of holy surprise on his features after his eyes were closed, as if there were very bright visions for him behind the veil that was impenetrable to him here.
I have thus given you a few hints about the way in which books may be friends. I have taken my examples from the books which are most likely to come in our way; and I have chosen them from different kinds of authors, that I may not im- pose my own tastes upon other people. I purposely avoid say- ing anything about more recent writers, who have lately left the world or are in it still, because private notions and prejudices for or against the men are likely to mingle with our thoughts of their books. I do not mean that this is not the case with the older writers too. I think I have shown you that I have no wish to forget the men in the books — that my great desire is that we should connect them together. But if we have known anything about the writers, or our fathers have known anything about them, if we have heard their acts and words gossiped about, they are not such good tests of the way in which we may discern them in their books, and learn what they are from their books. But as I began this lecture with some animadversions upon the tendency of one part of our popular literature to weaken our feeling that books are our friends, I ought to say that I am very far, indeed, from thinking that this is the effect which the more eminent writers among us produce. In their different ways, I believe most of them have addressed themselves to our human sympathies, and have claimed a place for their books, not upon our shelves, but in our hearts. Of some, both prose writers and poets, this is eminently true. Perhaps, from feeling the de- pressing influence of the We-teaching upon all our minds, they have taken even overmuch pains to show that each one of them comes before us as an I, and will not meet us upon any other terms. Many, I hope, who have established this intercourse with
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 2853
US will keep it with our children and our children's children, and will leave books that will be regarded as friends as long as the English language lasts, and in whatever regions of the earth it may be spoken.
It is very pleasant to think in what distant parts of the earth it is spoken, and that in all those parts these books which are friends of ours are acknowledged as friends. And there is a living and productive power in them. They have produced an American literature, which is coming back to instruct us. They will produce by and by an Australian literature, which will be worth all the gold that is sent to us from the diggings.
American books have of late asserted very strongly their right to be reputed as our friends, and we have very generally and very cordially responded to the claim. I refer to one book now — Mrs. Stowe's *' Dred," though I did not mean to notice any con- temporary book at all — for the sake of certain passages in it which I think that none that have read them can have forgotten. They are those in which the authoress describes the effects which were produced upon a very simple-hearted and brave negro — whose whole life had been one of zealous self-devotion to some white children, but who had had no book-teaching what- soever— by the stories which were read to him out of the Old and New Testaments. We are told with great simplicity and with self-evident truth, how every one of these stories started to life in his mind, how every person who is spoken of in them came forth before the hearer as an actual living being, how his inmost soul confessed the book as a reality and as a friend. No lesson, 1 think, is more suited to our purpose. It shows us what injury we do to the Book of Books when we regard it as a book of letters, and not as a book of life; none can bear a stronger wit- ness to us how it may come forth as the Book of Life, to save all others from sinking into dryness and death. I have detained you far too long in endeavoring to show you how every true book exhibits to us some man from whose mind its thoughts have issued, and with whom it brings us acquainted. May I add this one word in conclusion? — that I believe all books may do that for us, because there is one Book which, besides bringing into clearness and distinctness a number of men of different ages from the creation downwards, brings before us one Friend, the chief and centre of all, who is called there the Son of Man.
Fiom Vi.s Lectures.
MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY
(1806-1873)
*ATTHEW Fontaine Maury, one of the greatest scientific inves- tigators of America, was born in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, January 14th, 1806. He was educated for the United States naval service, and after serving his apprenticeship at sea was stationed at Washington for a number of years as superintendent of the Hydrographical Office and National Observatory (1844-61). During this period he practically invented the science of Meteorology. He says in one of his letters that his first idea of the laws governing the circulation of air and water was given him by the passage in Ecclesiastes, ^^All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full,* etc. The modern signal-service system grew out of his work, and his investigation of the bed of the Atlantic Ocean made it possible to lay the Atlantic Cable successfully. His most noted work, « Phys- ical Geography of the Sea,>> was published in 1855. It sustained, and perhaps increased, his already great reputation for discoveries, which had brought him honor from the principal governments and learned societies of the world. At the beginning of the Civil War he «went with his State* and became a Commodore in the Confed- erate navy. After the close of the war he spent several years in Mexico and Europe, returning to become professor of Physics in the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, where he died February ist,
1873.
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THE SEA AND ITS SUBLIME LAWS
mE inhabitants of the ocean are as much the creatures of I climate as are those of the dry land; for the same Almighty Hand which decked the lily and cares for the sparrow, fashioned also the pearl and feeds the great whale, and adapted each to the physical conditions by which his providence has sur- rounded it. Whether of the land or the sea, the inhabitants are all his creatures, subjects of his laws, and agents in his economy. The sea, therefore, we may safely infer, has its offices and duties to perform; so may we infer, has its currents, and so, too, its inhabitants; consequently, he who undertakes to study its phenom-
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., has its currents, and so, too, i;
•A'hn rrrdertakes to study its phenon
(
I
MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 2855
ena must cease to regard it as a waste of waters. He must look upon it as a part of that exquisite machinery by which the harmonies of nature are preserved, and then he will begin to perceive the developments of order and the evidences of design; these make it a most beautiful and interesting subject for con- templation.
To one who has never studied the mechanism of a watch, its mainspring or the balance wheel is a mere piece of metal. He may have looked at the face of the watch, and, while he admires the motion of its hands, and the time it keeps, or the tune it plays, he may have wondered in idle amazement as to the char- acter of its machinery'- which is concealed within. Take it to pieces, and show him each part separately; he will recognize neither design, nor adaptation, nor relation between them; but put them together, set them to work, point out the offices of each spring, wheel, and cog, explain their movements, and then show him the result; now he perceives that it is all one design, — that, notwithstanding the number of parts, their diverse forms and various offices, and the agents concerned, the whole piece is of one thought, the expression of one idea. He now rightly con- cludes that when the mainspring was fashioned and tempered, its relation to all the other parts must have been considered, — that the cogs on this wheel are cut and regulated — adapted — to the ratchets on that, etc. ; and his final conclusion will be, that such a piece of mechanism could not have been produced by chance; for the adaptation of the parts is such as to show it to be according to design, and obedience to the will of one intelligence. So, too, when one looks out upon the face of this beautiful world, he may admire its lovely scenery, but his admiration can never grow into adoration unless he will take the trouble to look behind and study, in some of its details at least, the exquisite system of machinery by which such beautiful results are brought about. To him who does this, the sea, with its physical geography, becomes as the mainspring of a watch; its waters, and its cur- rents, and its salts, and its inhabitants, with their adaptations, as balance wheels, cogs and pinions, and jewels. Thus he perceives that they, too, are according to design; that they are the expres- sion of One Thought, a unity with harmonics which One Intelli- gence, and One Intelligence alone, could utter. And when he has arrived at this point, then he feels that the study of the sea, in its physical aspect, is truly sublime. It elevates the mind and
2856 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY
ennobles the man. The Gulf Stream is now no longer, therefore, to be regarded by such a one merely as an immense current of warm water running across the ocean, but as a balance wheel — a part of that grand machinery by which air and water are adapted to each other, and by which this earth itself is adapted to the well-being of its inhabitants — of the flora which decks, and the fauna which enlivens its surface.
Let us now consider the influence of the Gulf Stream upon the meteorology of the ocean. To use a sailor expression, the Gulf Stream is the great ** weather breeder** of the north Atlan- tic Ocean. The most furious gales of winds sweep along with it; and the fogs of Newfoundland, which so much endanger nav- igation in winter, doubtless owe their existence to the presence, in that cold sea, of immense volumes of warm water brought by the Gulf Stream. Sir Philip Brooke found the air on each side of it at the freezing point, while that of its waters was 80°. * The heavy, warm, damp air over the current produced great irregularities in his chronometers,* The excess of heat daily brought into such a region by the waters of the Gulf Stream would, if suddenly stricken from them, be sufficient to make the column of superincumbent atmosphere hotter than melted iron.
With such an element of atmospherical disturbance in its bosom, we might expect storms of the most violent kind to ac- company it in its course. Accordingly, the most terrific that rage on the ocean have been known to spend their fury within or near its borders.
Our nautical works tell us of a storm which forced this stream back to its sources, and piled up the waters in the Gulf to the height of thirty feet. The ^* Ledbury Snow ** attempted to ride it out. When it abated she found herself high up on the dry land, and discovered that she had let go her anchor among the tree tops on Elliott's Key. The Florida Keys were inundated many feet, and it is said the scene presented in the Gulf Stream was never surpassed in awful sublimity on the ocean. The water thus dammed up is said to have rushed out with wonderful velocity against the fury of the gale, producing a sea that beg- gared description.
The ^* great hurricane** of 1780 commenced at Barbados. In it the bark was blown from the trees, and the fruits of the earth destroyed ; the very bottom and depths of the sea were up- rooted, and the waves rose to such a height that forts and castles
MATTHEW FOXTAINE MAURY 2857
were washed away, and their great guns carried about in the air like chaff; houses were razed, ships were wrecked, and the bodies of men and beasts lifted up in the air and dashed to pieces in the storm. At the different islands, not less than twenty thou- sand persons lost their lives on shore, while further to the north the " Sterling Castle " and the ^ Dover Castle," men of war, went down at sea, and fifty sail were driven on shore at the Bermudas.
Several years ago the British admiralty set on foot inquiries as to the cause of the storms in certain parts of the Atlantic, v.hich so often rage with disastrous effects to navigation. The result may be summed up in the conclusion to which the inves- tigation led : that they are occasioned by the irregularity between the temperature of the Gulf Stream and the neighboring regions, both in the air and water.
The habitual dampness of the climate of the British Islands, as well as the occasional dampness of that along the Atlantic coasts of the United States when easterly winds prevail, is attrib- utable also to the Gulf Stream. These winds come to us loaded with vapors gathered from its warm and smoking waters. The Gulf Stream carries the temperature of summer, even in the dead of winter, as far north as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
From * Physical Greography of the Sea. *
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