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COLLECTED
LITERARY ESSAYS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
ILonUon: FETTER LANE, E.G.
C. F. CLAY, Manager
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COLLECTED
LITERARY ESSAYS
CLASSICAL AND MODERN
X*-" ^ BY
A. W. V^RRALL, Litt.D.
KING EDWARD VII PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
AND FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
HON. LITT.D., DUBLIN
EDITED BY
M. A. BAYFIELD, M.A.
AND
J. D. DUFF, M.A.
WITH A MEMOIR
Cambridge :
at the University Press
y^7
CambnUgt :
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PREFACE
THE essays contained in this volume have been
collected from various periodicals, some of
which are now difficult of access. The selection
was made by the author a few months before his
death, at a time when there was every expectation
that he would live to see the republication. The
names and dates of issue of the periodicals in which
the essays originally appeared are given in the
Table of Contents.
For permission to republish, our thanks are due
to the editors of the Quarterly Review, the New
Quarterly, the Oxford and Cambridge Review, the
Independent (and Albany) Review, to Mrs M'^Nalty,
executrix and literary legatee of the late editor of
the Universal Review, and to the Executive Com-
mittee of the National Home-Reading Union.
The Commemorative Address by Dr Mackail,
which is appended to the Memoir, was delivered
at a meeting of the Academic Committee of the
VI Preface
Royal Society of Literature on November 28, 191 2.
We are much indebted to him for his kindness in
allowing us to include this valuable appreciation,
and we have to thank the Society for permission
to reprint it.
We have also to thank Mrs Verrall for valuable
assistance.
May 1 913.
M. A. B.
J. D. D.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Portrait Frontispiece
Memoir ix
Memorial Inscription in Trinity College Chapel ciii
Commemorative Address. By J. W. Mackail, LL.D. cv
'H'^ A Roman of Greater Rome . . . , . J . i
I Universal Review, 1888. /^ ^-,4b,A^
An Old Love Story 27
Universal Review, 1888.
The Feast of Saturn 58
Universal Review, 1889.
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History . . 85
Universal Review, 1889.
Love and Law 112
Universal Review, 1889.
A Villa at Tivoli 127
Universal Review, 1890.
"To Follow the Fisherman": a Historical Problem
IN Dante 153
Independent Review, 1903.
Dante on the Baptism of Statius . . . , 181
Albany Review, 1908.
«5
Vlll
Contents
y
PAGE
The Birth of Virgil
204
Albany Review, 1907.
The Altar of Mercy
319
Oxford and Cambridge Review, 1907.
Aristophanes on Tennyson
236
New Quarterly, 1909.
The Prose of Walter Scott .....
247
Quarterly Review, 1910.
"Diana of the Crossways" .....
276
National Home-Reading Union's Magazine, 1906.
General Index
289
Index of Passages
290
\ X
\J.
MEMOIR
Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho' left alone.
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine.
In Memoriaffi.
Arthur Woollgar Verrall was bom at
Brighton on February 5, 1851, and was the eldest
of a family of three brothers and two sisters. His
father, Henry Verrall, was a well-known solicitor
who held for many years the office of Clerk to the
Magistrates of the town. Since it is always inte-
resting to trace the influences of heredity, some
characteristics may be mentioned here which seem
to have been part of the boy's natural debt to his
parents. From his father he would appear to have
derived his remarkable inductive powers, his simple
tastes and dislike of ostentation, and the patient
endurance with which he bore the sufferings and
disabilities of his later years. His mother's gift
embraced a rare conscientiousness, the aptitude for
languages and teaching, the delight in music and the
ear for rhythm. The tie of affection between mother
and son was unusually strong.
X Memoir
At the age of nine, his health being thought too
fragile even for the conditions of a preparatory school,
he was sent as a private pupil to the Rev. R. Blaker,
Vicar of I field. Mr Blaker soon discovered the boy's
genius for languages, and Greek was immediately
begun. Progress was exceptionally rapid, and two
years later Mr Blaker wrote :
He certainly gives promise of more than ordinary scholar-
ship, and if his health is good, I augur an honourable future
for him. . . . He evinces a quickness of comprehension which is
remarkable for so young a boy. His memory is excellent,
and he is able to retain facts and draw inferences from matters
connected with his reading with wonderful clearness.
' An amusing little story of nursery days perhaps
gives an even earlier indication of his bent in this
direction. The child was looking at some pictures
of red-legged partridges, and was overheard saying
to himself, 'Arthur is a good boy; he doesn't say
thenis grouses, he says thenis grice'
In 1863 he went to Twyford, the well-known
preparatory school for Winchester, where he stayed
a year and a half. His health during this time was,
however, much broken. In 1864 he competed for
a Winchester scholarship, and failed. No doubt
the failure was a disappointment at the time, but in
after years he would refer to it as really a piece of
good luck, since if he had gone to Winchester, he
would have been sure to go to Oxford! In this
judgement we may concur, for we can see that
Oxford would hardly have helped him to * find
himself.' The Greats course would have led him
Memoir xi
into fields of study foreign to his intellectual
temperament, and for metaphysics he had a whole-
hearted dislike, as he had for all speculation that
promised to lead to no definite conclusion. Never-
theless, he had a great respect for Oxford and
a special affection for Winchester, where he was
a frequent visitor. The defeat was almost im-
mediately retrieved. In October of the same year,
at the suggestion of Dr Beard, a friend of his father,
he was hurried off at a few hours' notice to compete
for a scholarship at Wellington College. Though
his name had not been previously entered, his
candidature was accepted, and he gained the second
scholarship, being just beaten by E. Heriz Smith,
afterwards Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
In a letter now before me, Dr Benson wrote that
the boy ' was nearly though not quite equal to the
first candidate.... I like very much the boy's clear
and unassuming manner, and am very glad nothing
prevented him standing.' It was like Benson to
add that he hoped he had ' been comfortable under
the odd and hurried circumstances of his competition.'
While at Wellington, Verrall must have experienced
and observed many such instances of thoughtful
courtesy, and as we know, they bore abundant fruit.
Mr Wickham of Twyford, in a letter written when
the boy was leaving the school, repeats Mr Blaker's
impression of his character and augury for his future.
An earlier letter of Mr Wickham's contains one
significant remark : ' I must try to get him to read
a little Ovid next half year, to get him into more
xii Memoir
style in his verses.' The boy, then, was capable of
independent reading at the age of thirteen, had
learned to dislike Ovid, and needed persuasion
before he would read him. This dislike Verrall
never lost, and I can recall the tone of real sadness
with which he once referred to the essential trivi-
ality of Ovid's art ; it actually distressed him that
a man who could have done better things ' should
have left only piffle.' One can well believe that
the boy dimly felt the same disappointment, that
he was even at that early age seeking in his
author something more than the ' topmost froth of
thought.'
He entered Wellington at the end of his
thirteenth year. Nattifally reserved, of a tempera-
ment unusually refined, and with enthusiasms pre-
dominantly intellectual, he was not one of those
best fitted for the rough and tumble of public school
life. ' Something of home-life,' he wrote in his
contribution to the Archbishop's Life, ' something
like the sympathetic and intelligent circle from
which I came, was almost as necessary to me as
bread and butter.' When he got into the Sixth, as
he very soon did, Benson's keen observation detected
this want, and he and Mrs Benson supplied it in the
best of ways, by treating the boy as one of the family.
He was continually in and out of the house, and
whenever he liked, which was two or three times
a week, he used to join the ' nursery tea,' at which
Dr and Mrs Benson were habitually present. The
value to him of this happy modification of the
Memoir xiii
ordinary conditions of school life, and the incal-
culable gain from these closer relations with two
such natures, he always felt he could not over-
estimate. He would say, referring to those days,
' the Bensons made Wellington possible for me ' ;
and he has written, ' He [Dr Benson] saved my
health and my sense ; I believe that he saved my
life.'
If Verrall had written an autobiography (a thing
incredible), not the least interesting period of it
would have been that of his later school years.
Unfortunately even recollections of him as he
appeared to others are disappointingly meagre.
One school-fellow writes, 'As soon as Verrall was
in the Upper Sixth we were aware that his mind
was of a different order from ours,' and mentions
'the width of his reading.' In an obituary notice
in the Wellingtonian, Mr E. K. Purnell, also a
school-fellow, gives a little vignette of unmistakable
fidelity :
A contemporary, who knew him first as a clever boy of
1 8, described him as in those days a most talkative vivacious
youth, his eyes kindling with life and enthusiasm as he talked,
his voice running up into a kind of falsetto. He observed
and was interested in everything and everybody, and his
personality, with its many-sided sympathies, impressed itself
on all with whom it came in contact. The same person,
meeting him when he was examining for the Benson a few
years ago, was drawn irresistibly by the charm of his intense
vitality, and the unconquerable courage which still helped
him to keep up his part in the scheme of life — in a Bath
chair.
xiv Memoir
These two brief scraps are all that can now be
obtained. One episode, however, Verrall has him-
self related with curious but characteristic detachment
and candour in the contribution to the Life of the
Archbishop referred to above.
I saw that after the approaching holidays I should...
almost certainly be ' Head of the School,' a really laborious
and responsible change. I was then a rapacious student and
(except perhaps an infamous player of football) nothing else.
My perturbation may be measured by my helpless imperti-
nence. Without any intimation of the Headmaster's purposes,
I actually went and told him that I could not be ' Head,' and
that I should leave ! I ought, I dare say, to have been
snubbed. What I know is that a harsh or light word then
would have ruined my best chance in life, and (as I make
bold to say) would have lost a good year to the school.... He
discussed the matter with me almost daily, always from my
point of view.... In a fortnight I was a very little ashamed
and exceedingly sanguine. And during my year I was to
the Headmaster like a third hand.
In the spring of 1869 he obtained a Minor
Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and
a Foundation Scholarship in the following year.
He was bracketed with Henry Butcher from Marl-
borough and Walter Leaf from Harrow — a remark-
able trio to have entered for the same examination.
When the result was known, Dr Benson wrote to
Mr Henry Verrall :
He has done beautifully, and he deserves success. For
his heart is wholly in his work, and that with so much modesty
and so much affectionateness, that no one can rejoice too
much at his success or fear that it may spoil him. His two
co-equals are respectively thought the best of their two
Memoir xv
schools for several years past. And one of the examiners
has written to tell me that if it had been possible to make
a diiference it would have been in Arthur's favour.
We may congratulate each other most sincerely — only on
one point you must not congratulate me, for it is hard to part
with him, I assure you.
Of the undergraduate period available informa-
tion is scanty, and no letters have been preserved.
In the time at which he went up to the University-
he was not a little fortunate, for among his contem-
poraries and friends were such men as Walter Leaf,
Henry Butcher, F. W. Maitland, J. G. Butcher,
Frank and Gerald Balfour, A. J. Mason, A. T.
Myers (a younger brother of F. W. H. Myers),
T. O. Harding, Edmund Gurney, G. H. Kendall,
W. Cunningham, and F. J. H. Jenkinson. With
all these, and the first three especially, he main-
tained a life-long friendship, and the deaths of
F. W. Maitland in 1906 and of Henry Butcher in
1 9 10 were blows little less than overwhelming.
Among his older contemporaries were Henry
Sidgwick, R. C. Jebb, Henry Jackson, and Frederick
Pollock. One event, which occurred early in his
University career, he spoke of at the time as ' the
best thing that ever happened to me in my life.'
This was his admission to a private but not obscure
society, consisting of graduates and undergraduates,
which met, and still meets, for intimate discussion of
any and every subject. Dating at least as far back
as the time of Tennyson, it counts among its numbers,
I believe, many of Cambridge's most distinguished
xvi Memoir
men, and Verrall always considered that he owed
more to his membership of this * glorious company '
than to any other influence of Cambridge life.
Another surviving incident of the undergraduate life
is sufficiently characteristic to deserve record. It
, fell to him to have to read in the College chapel the
I lesson about the feast of Belshazzar from the Book
I of Daniel. Those who were present declare that
the solemnity and dramatic power with which he
delivered it, combined with the rare quality of the
voice, were astonishingly impressive and made the
occasion quite unforgettable.
To The Tatler in Cambridge, an unusually good
example of those short-lived periodicals with which
the undergraduate genius from time to time pro-
motes the gaiety of University life, he contributed
four clever papers. The most amusing of these is
perhaps one on Bain's Mental and Moral Science.
The book, he discovers, has running through it a
vein of subtle humour, and he gently warns the
author that this is a talent which in such a work
should be exercised with philosophic discretion.
The criticism of satire is perhaps all that the work
deserves, and an admirable piece of fooling closes
with the following poetical summary of Mr Bain's
views.
There was a Professor called Bain •
Who taught, in the Land of the Rain,
That the ultimate Fact
Which induced you to act
Was an Inkling of Pleasure or Pain.
Memoir xvii
He proved that Volitional Force
Depended entirely on Sauce,
Inasmuch as the Question
Was one of Digestion,
And Morals would follow of course.
Your Head was impressible Batter
Compounded of White and Grey Matter,
So your Measure of Reason
Would flow from 'Adhesion '
To a tender and merciful Hatter.
He laid the Foundations of Virtue
In finding by Trial what hurt you ;
And spite of your Terror
Would stick to his Error,
And at last, and at best, would desert you.
Religion and Duty he made
A Manner of feeling afraid ;
And Tact, on his showing,
Consisted in knowing
The Feel of the Tongs from the Spade.
Faith, Charity, Hope were reducible
To Phosphate or Salt in a Crucible,
Dissent and Dysentery
Both 'Alimentary,'
Manners and Mammon both fusible.
If Flesh can be sane or insane.
And Meat the sole Factor of Brain,
Then hey ! for the Cooks,
Since the Moral of Books
Is 'Leave Writing for Eating,' O Bain.
In 1872 he obtained the Pitt University Scho-
larship, and in the next year passed out in the
Classical Tripos, being bracketed second with T. E.
Page ; Henry Butcher was Senior Classic. In the
xviii Memoir
examination for the Chancellor's Medals, which
immediately followed, the three were bracketed
equal, and a third medal was awarded, — a thing
never done before or since.
In connexion with his Tripos Verrall used to
tell an amusing story, which he always regarded as
illustrating in a remarkable manner the perverse
vagaries of the human mind. He had to translate a
passage from Tacitus in which Tiberius is described
as doing something Rhodo regressus. These words
he rendered by 'on his return to Rhodes,' and
added two marginal notes, the first explaining and
endeavouring to justify the use of Rhodo for Rhodum,
and the second explaining how Tacitus came to
speak of Tiberius as having done after his return to
Rhodes what it was common knowledge that he did
after his return from Rhodes. Not till he got back
to his rooms did it occur to him that it would have
been simpler to v^Yii^ from in his translation !
In the same year he was elected Fellow of
Trinity College, and resided in Cambridge until the
summer of 1874, taking private pupils. I was my-
self an undergraduate at this time, and knew him
by sight, but alas ! did not know what I was losing
by not asking to be allowed to join those lucky
youths.
In July Benson, who had now left Wellington,
wrote to him that there was a vacancy on the staff
of the School : —
I need scarcely say to you that the idea present to all
men's minds is what would have been present with me, viz.
Memoir xix
whether it would be compatible with your arrangements that
you should give them any help I need scarcely put into
words the fact that you would be more useful to Wellington
College than any man living. What they want is enthusiasm
— high-couraged work — with scholarship. And of course
they want a feeling, understanding soul.
Happily he resisted this earnest appeal.
For the next three years he lived in London,
reading for the Bar and doing a certain amount of
teaching work. From 1875 ^o ^'^11 ^^ was 'Super-
numerary Instructor in composition and extra read-
ing ' at S. Paul's School. He gained the Whewell
Scholarship for International Law in 1875, was
called in 1877, and held one brief, if not two.
A legal career, however, had no attraction for him :
in October he returned to Cambridge, and was soon
afterwards placed on the teaching staff at Trinity.
From that time onwards Cambridge was his home.
For the next five years he combined with his work
at the University some teaching at Wren's well-
known coaching establishment in London. He also
taught at Newnham College, and in connexion with
his work there Miss Jane Harrison tells a delightful
story.
I have sometimes wondered if a brilliant dramatist was
not lost in the finding and making of a subtle classical
scholar. One day, as quite a young mfan, he was looking
over my composition in the then library of Old Hall. Coals
were wanted and no coal-scuttle in sight. After a longish
hunt I remembered that the library coal-scuttle always lay
perdu between the double doors that led to Miss Clough's
sitting-room. The arrangement, owing to its ingenious
economy in coal-scuttles, used to cause Miss Clough a quite
V. L. E. b
XX Memoir
peculiar and intimate joy. No less though a slightly different
joy did it cause Mr Verrall. On catching sight of the coal-
scuttle and the double doors he stood transfigured and trans-
fixed. ' What a scene for a play ! ' he exclaimed, and coal
scuttle in hand, me and my composition utterly forgotten,
the plot of that play he then and there constructed and
enacted.
In 1 88 1 he published his first book, an edition
of the Medea of Euripides. He had been asked
by Messrs Macmillan & Co. to prepare a school
edition of the play, but on getting to work he found
that the limits of a school-book, even if that were
the proper medium, would be far too narrow for
what needed to be done for the Medea, and what
he felt he could do. The book was remarkable not
only as the production of a young man of thirty, but
in itself; it was strikingly original and brilliant, and
was at once recognised as the work of a scholar of
the first rank. Nothing of the kind, nor perhaps
anything approaching it, had previously been done
on the Greek tragedians. While he breathed fresh
life into the play itself, the effect of his work went
further ; for it suggested what might be done for
other legacies of the Attic stage, interest in which
seemed to be steadily sinking into the mere formal
respect one pays to a dull old man whose former
dignities do not permit him to be quite ignored.
The volume was welcomed with delight and admi-
ration, and I think I recognise the hand of Professor
Tyrrell in a long and frankly eulogistic article un-
earthed from the file of the Saturday Reviezv. The
Memoir xxi
textual restorations, of which something will be said
below, naturally attracted special attention, and
confirmed to their author, if they did not originate,
the half-jesting, half-earnest sobriquet ' Splendid
Emendax.' But this part of the work was by no
means the chief or the most valuable. Other merits
were found in rare and perhaps unprecedented com-
bination : a peculiarly delicate appreciation of the
subtleties of the language, a fine discrimination
between expressions superficially identical, a subtle
appreciation of the poet's skill in delineation of
character, and an acute perception of the necessities
and possibilities of a dramatic situation. In the two
last Verrall had no rival among his predecessors,
and few if any equals then or later among his con-
temporaries. As one perused the text afresh after
digesting the commentary, one found the scenes
leap into life, one saw and heard the drama in
progress ; or rather — but here we have first to
thank Euripides — one felt one was in the presence
of a living Medea and a living Jason. The notes
were enriched with illustrations drawn from English
literature and even (as the writer in the Saturday
Review notes) a parallel from Lohengrin, * which to
a commentator of the older school would have ap-
peared unpardonably frivolous.'
Of these qualities of the book there was but
one opinion, but the textual work divided readers
into two camps. While the teachable, old or young,
were only grateful, there were some who were
offended by the originality and alarmed at the
bz
xxii Memoir
brilliance. They mistrusted the cleverness of emen-
dations which took their breath away, making
familiar passages unrecognisable, and they feared
the effects of a pernicious example. Thus did the
mediaeval world regard Galileo. It is an attitude
towards Verrall's work as a textual critic — whether
here or in later books — which has always filled me
with astonishment, for his methods were essentially
sound. As all his labours in this department show,
his decisions were not based on mere guess-work
(of which he always spoke with some impatience),
but were conclusions arrived at from the evidence
furnished by the mss. themselves. Where he dif-
fered from others was in the possession of unusual in-
ductive powers, which enabled him to see further; and
these powers were assisted by a rare sense of lite-
rary and dramatic fitness, an apparently complete
acquaintance with the extant vocabulary of classical
Greek, and an exceptional memor)^ We may, if
we please, sum up all this as ' ingenuity,' but if we
do, we must not use the word in a disparaging sense.
Of course, and he used readily to admit it, the
sharp-edged tool sometimes slipped. Impatient of
the ' fluffy ' explanation that does not explain, he
was occasionally tempted to ofler something which
still fails to satisfy, and which only he could have
made plausible. Again, as some think, he some-
times finds a point where none was intended. It
may be so, but it is surely well to err on the side of
respect for one's author, and if we do not believe
in pointless lines in Aristophanes, why should we
Memoir xxiii
tolerate them in the texts of the tragedians ? And
after all, to accompany Verrall even on an incon-
clusive quest, is to learn things by the way which
are perhaps as valuable as what we may have set
out to seek.
In emendation he kept two ruling principles
always before him : he did not accept or offer a
correction as more than possible, unless the sup-
posed corruption were accounted for, either by the
correction itself or otherwise ; and he held that an
odd variant, just because of its oddness or grotesque-
ness or absurdity, might possibly conceal the true
reading, as against the passable respectability of the
textus receptus. The first, of course, was a well
established canon, though one freely ignored ; the
potentialities of the second had been but dimly ap-
prehended. Three examples, taken from the Medea,
will show his methods at work.
At V. 668,
is the text of all the mss. ; but the second hand in b
(one of the inferior class s) has superscribed tKicti/et?.
ecrraXry? is irreproachable, but iKaveis cannot be a
gloss on it, and Verrall deduces H^dvet^; as the true
reading. If anyone cannot see this, there is no
more to be said ; in the name of all that is dull, let
him hug his eVraXr;? and be happy.
At 27. 53 I the ' superior' class of mss. give
a>? *E/3a)9 cr' -qudyKacre
TTOVdiV d(f)VKTO)U TOVfXOV eKaOXTaL 0€fJia<i.
xxiv Memoir
The ' inferior ' class give robots d(f)VKToi<;. Paley's
note is, ' There is a variant ro^ot? d<f)VKTOL<s, ap-
proved by Elmsley,' and he passes on with the
crowd. Verrall was not so easily satisfied. Both
variants are passable though feeble, but their pre-
sence as alternatives is unaccounted for, and he
offers ToVots d^u/crots as the common original. If
anyone thinks there was no problem to be solved,
again there is no more to be said.
At V. 1 183 the 'superior' mss. have
7) 8' €^ dvavhov /cat ^vcravros ofJifxaTO?
S€t^'ov (TTevd^acT rj rakaiv r^yeipero.
The * inferior ' class give a variant dncoWvTo. No
one had seen that dvavhov (dvavyov, Verrall)
required correction, and since aTrwXXvro passed un-
heeded, riyeip€To of course incurred no suspicion.
But it is just from this absurd diToiWvTo, as a cor-
rection of ANQ/\AATOY, a misreading of a mis-spelt
ANQMATOY, that our 'daring' editor restores ANQM-
MATOY. Unfortunately dvoixfjiaro) is not an extant
word, and that fact has been to some, in this case
and others, a stumbling-block in the way of accept-
ance. One reviewer solemnly deprecated ' these
attempts to enrich the Greek language.' The logic
is somewhat Chinese, but minds work variously.
In China the scholar himself, on returning from a
journey, is in danger of being refused recognition
by his family, argue as he may, unless he can pro-
duce the tally which is the one sure proof that he is
not a masquerading devil. So the English editor
Memoir xxv
should perhaps not be surprised if, when he says
'Take my word for it,' his word is regarded as some
such masquerading devil, unless he can produce
from the lexicon a reference to its respectability.
There is naturally no trace in Verrall's Medea of
the theory of Euripides' art which he afterwards
elaborated, and the one miraculous incident in the
play, the dragon-chariot, is passed over without
special comment. One paragraph in the Introduc-
tion is, however, noteworthy in this connexion. It
was a traditional commonplace that the poet's con-
cern in the stories which he dramatized was pre-
dominantly with their human interest, but so far as
I am aware, no one had previously laid stress on the
significant completeness with which the marvellous
and all reference to it are excluded from the Medea,
at any rate until the play's proper climax has been
reached. The observation appears to have been
fruitful.
To Euripides, therefore, the story of Medea is interesting
wholly as a plot of passion, and all other aspects of it are
thrown into the background. Indeed, considering the rich
fabric of romance with which her name had been interwoven,
it is not a little curious to observe how strictly it is reduced
by the dramatist to its human and ethical elements. The
splendid and marvellous story of the Argonauts is of course
a necessary presumption, but the allusions to it are so curt
and so colourless that, even with the story before us, it is
sometimes a matter of difficulty to interpret them {Med. 479,
487) ; and it is plain that any other story would have been
as acceptable, which furnished or admitted the essential points
of the situation, the proud barbarian wife and mother aban-
doned by the Greek husband to whom she has sacrificed all.
xxvi Memoir
Even the chorus in their lyric songs occupy themselves with
the ethic and pathetic aspects only, with the social and intel-
lectual position of woman, the virtue of self-control, the
blessings and trials of parents, the sanctity of hospitable
Athens, with anything, in short, rather than the clashing
rocks and the fire-breathing bulls, the ram of Phrixos and
the cauldron of Pelias. (p. xviii.)
In 1882 (June 17) he married Margaret de Gau-
drion Merrifield, daughter of Frederic Merrifield,
Barrister-at-law, of Brighton, now Clerk of the
Peace of East and West Sussex. Miss Merri-
field, after a study of Latin and Greek extending
over practically no more than the period of her
University life, had taken honours in the Classical
Tripos Examination of 1880, and was at the time a
resident Classical Lecturer at Newnham College.
For many years after her marriage Mrs Verrall
continued to take part in the classical teaching at
Newnham, and her valuable work in connexion
with the Society for Psychical Research during the
last ten years is well known to a large section of the
public. Of the married life of these my dearest
friends I cannot trust myself to say more than that
the union seemed to be as ideal as that of Robert
and Elizabeth Browning, and to realise to the utmost
the beautiful vision of The Princess :
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth.
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life.
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind.
Memoir xxvii
There is one daughter of the marriage, Miss
Helen de G. Verrall, who has inherited largely
both the gifts and qualities of her parents. She
obtained a First Class in the Classical Tripos Part I
in 1905, and a First Class in Part II in 1906.
Verrall's next book, Studies hi Horace, published
in 1883 and now out of print, is a collection of essays
on the Odes of Horace. The volume is written
with charming freshness, and the poems discussed
gain a new life and often a quite unexpected interest
from the originality and independence of the
criticisms. The most important essay is the one
entitled Murena. Identifying the famous con-
spirator of that name with the Murena of iii 19
and the Lucius Licinius Varro Murena whose 'sister'
Maecenas married (and on this identification the
main weight of the contention rests), Verrall en-
deavours to show that the first three books of the
Odes were not published before B.C. 19, as against
the generally accepted lowest date e.g. 23.
Although he failed to commend his view on
either point to some of those best entitled to form
an opinion, nevertheless both questions are still
matters of dispute, and an eminent Italian historian,
ignorant of the existence of Verrall's book, has
recently expressed agreement with him so far as to
hold that the Odes ' are a single poetic work, ani-
mated by a central idea, and not a miscellany of
disconnected verse.'
Scattered through the volume are vivid pictures
of Roman society in the Augustan age, drawn with
xxviii Memoir
a rare dexterity, and the power exhibited in ap-
praising the significance of historical events, the
liveliness and sureness of touch with which they
are described, and the insight which marks the pour-
trayal of character, show that when we gained a
scholar and critic, we perhaps lost an unusually
gifted historian. A great Latinist wrote at the
time : ' The essay on Murena was to me the one of
most fascinating interest. If a drama or historical
romance on the personages and incidents of the
Augustan age were to be written, the writer would
find his materials in that essay.' The following
brief extract may serve as a specimen of much more
that is equally striking.
For the difficulty lies not in the fact of the allusion to
Murena, but in the tone of it. That Horace, writing or pub-
lishing after the conspiracy, would pass the history of Murena
in silence can in no way be presumed. As a poet, indeed,
he could ill afford to do so. A theme more suggestive for
poetry of a tragic cast, especially as the ancients conceived
of tragedy, it would be difficult to imagine. The whole story
from prologue to catastrophe — the hard lessons of experience
learnt and forgotten, the humiliation, the sudden rise and ill-
sustained prosperity, the insolent tongue which made enemies
when it was the time to propitiate envy, the doubtful guilt
and certain ruin, the wide-spread sympathy not unmixed
with horror — all that our authorities give us unites in a
subject such as Aeschylus chose, a veritable rpayuSta of real
life, acted not in the theatre of Dionysus but in the midst of
the society of Rome. Nor would the relation between the
poet and Maecenas forbid the subject, if only it were touched
in a proper spirit. What was the private opinion of Maecenas
on Murena's crime and the emperor's justice, it would be vain
to conjecture. But on no view could he desire silence, (p. 31.)
Memoir xxix
From 1886 to the summer of 1889, in addition
to his other work, he lectured at Pembroke College.
An interesting anecdote falls somewhere in this
period. On a certain Saturday he was going to
London for the day. On the following Monday the
Trinity lecturers would be wanting to distribute to
their pupils printed copies of a piece of English for
translation into Latin hexameters. It was Verrall's
turn to set this piece, and at the Cambridge station
he remembered that he had not done so. More-
over, his Latin version of the piece should be in the
lecturers' hands on the Tuesday morning. From
London he telegraphed to the University Press to
print and send out to the lecturers that day 'Merchant
of Venice, Act v. sc. i, from "The moon shines
bright " to " footing of a man," ' and he composed
the version, from a perfect recollection of the Eng-
lish, during the day. A few final touches were given
next day, and the copy sent off to press. It will be
found, with about a score more from his pen, in
Cambridge Compositions (1899). ^^ wrote Greek
and Latin with almost as much facility as English,
and in a style that has the true ring, as a man writes
a language which he speaks. All his compositions
possess distinction and individuality, and some of
his verse is such as an ancient poet might have
published with advantage to his reputation. One
merit of his versions is sufficiently uncommon, even
in the best work of this kind, to deserve special
mention : he never failed to catch the spirit of the
original. I regret that there is not space to quote
XXX Memoir
here the copy referred to above, for it affords an
excellent illustration of this, reproducing with an
absolute fidelity (so at least it seems to me) the
extremely delicate tone of Shakspeare's sole but
perfect idyll.
In 1887 he published an edition of the Septem
cont7'a Thebas of Aeschylus. The play offers no
scope for such a comprehensive view of the poet's
art as we have in the commentaries on the great
trilogy, but this volume inaugurated a new era in
the interpretation of the play and in the study of
Aeschylus as a whole. The same faculties which
had been so fruitful in the case of the Medea were
brought to bear, and now by a reconstruction of the
text, now by a more satisfying interpretation, he
gave to passage after passage fresh or fuller sig-
nificance. At the same time he did much to quicken
and enlarge our appreciation of the characteristic
qualities of Aeschylean diction and style. There
were of course, here and there, instances of the
inevitable over-subtlety, — he expected it himself, no
less than did his readers ; but we have learned to
regard these things as mere spots on the sun, which
are, I believe, due to uprushes of excessive energy
from the solar subliminal, and doubtless not without
their use. No man was less disposed to hold to 'a
poor thing' because it was 'his own,' and I can
remember points, both in this play and in others,
which upon discussion he instantly abandoned when
a reasonable objection was presented. Sometimes
(and every scholar could illustrate this from his own
Me7nou^ xxxi
case) the obvious vie,w had simply not occurred to
him. One day, during my last visit, I was reading
over in his presence an unpublished ms. which he
had written on a passage in Lucan, and in which
reference was made to a statuette possessed by
Alexander the Great,
quam comitem occasus secum portabat et ortus.
Verrall had translated, ' whether he went east or
west,' and I interrupted my reading to ask him why
he did not think the meaning was ' night and morn-
ing.' His immediate answer was, ' I did not think
of it.'
Perhaps the most valuable of Verrall's contribu-
tions to our enjoyment of the Septem is one which
affects the whole play, and concerns a matter on
which no one dreamed that there could be anything
novel to say. By general consent it was agreed
that the play was wanting in true dramatic interest.
There was a wealth of gorgeous and majestic poetry,
and a succession of stirring scenes, which never-
theless failed to give the genuine tragic thrill.
There was none of the suspense and painful interest
that is produced as we watch the action steadily
working up to a supreme moment ; none of the
' horror and pity ' to which we are moved when at
that moment the blow of fate is suddenly struck,
without warning, and in a manner that its victim
had never suspected. By a master-stroke of dra-
matic instinct Verrall restored the deficiency, and
showed that the meeting of the brothers, usually
xxxii Memoir
supposed to be foreseen, was on the contrary an
Mr\t.y.'^^QX^A peripeteia developed on the stage. This
makes tragedy indeed ; but a reviewer, as I remem-
ber, ' confessed that he thought the new view made
no difference,' — and this, though he was writing
under no compulsion.
In 1889 he became one of the four Tutors at
Trinity. He accepted the office with a deep sense
of its responsibilities. Its duties, he felt, included
the cultivation of really human relations with the
men, a thing involving considerable expenditure of
time and energy, but an expenditure that must be
made, he believed, if the work was to be properly
performed. For this closer intercourse, which was
to him and Mrs Verrall a source of genuine pleasure,
opportunities were made in a manner at that time
almost unknown among Tutors, by the exercise of
frequent hospitality at Selwyn Gardens. All the
freshmen, some fifty in number, were invited to
dinner in their first term, which involved a dinner-
party two or three times a week, and tennis and
croquet parties on Tuesdays and Fridays were a
regular institution of the May term. It was in this
way, besides others, that he sowed the seeds of that
affection which most of his men came to feel towards
him. ' You know how much more than a merely
official relation Dr Verrall made of his tutorship,'
writes one ; and another, ' he made a man feel he
was more than one in a long list.'
Mr E. H. Marsh, C.M.G., a former pupil, who
has kindly sent me some reminiscences, writes,
Memoir xxxiii
He was an extraordinarily sound, just, and sympathetic
judge of character. No one valued cleverness and originality
more, but there were plenty of rather commonplace good
fellows whom he not only appreciated for their * English '
qualities, but thoroughly liked. I remember his going
through the list of freshers on his ' side ' one year, — ' No,' he
said when he came to the end, 'they are not a galaxy'; but
before their first year was over I am sure he had made
personal friends with a great majority of them. He seemed
rather formidable of course at first sight, but no one could
mistake the perfect simplicity of character which he com-
bined with that unusual complication of mind ; and as he
always steered between talking down to people and talking
over their heads, everyone was soon at ease with him. He
used to have croquet parties in old days, and though I don't
remember his playing himself, he used to throw himself into
the games and devise complicated tactics for the players —
the balls almost became characters in a subtle Euripidean
plot.
He was a very successful president at smoking-concerts,
etc. I remember how everyone shrieked with laughter when
he excused himself for having been prevented from preparing
an after-dinner speech by 'a succession of incalculable circum-
stances over whom I had no control.' He was never on a
high horse for a moment ; he used to tell delightedly how,
when the son of an old friend paid his first visit, the talk fell
on Shelley, and Verrall said he had never read The Revolt of
Islam. 'Ah,' said the youth, 'that's sheer indolence of mind.'
With the Tutorship he combined his ordinary
work as lecturer. This was not usual, but he made
it for himself a condition of undertaking the office,
and managed the double work easily for most of the
period of ten years over which the Tutorship usually
extends.
Verrall's reputation as a lecturer and teacher
xxxiv Memoir
grew year by year, and of the value of this part of
his work there is but one opinion. To my own
lasting regret, I heard him lecture twice only,
although he was my most intimate friend for more
than thirty years. For the present purpose, how-
ever, this matters little, for I am fortunately able
to give the reader the life-like impression of him
in this aspect contained in a letter kindly contri-
buted by Mr F. M. Cornford, Fellow and Lecturer
of Trinity College. The following pages are from
Mr Cornford's pen, down to the place where his
signature appears (p. xlviii).
Letter from Mr F. M. Cornford.
You have honoured me by asking me, as one
who was first a pupil, and later a colleague, of
Verrall at Trinity College, to write some account of
him as a teacher and lecturer. Several Trinity men
have helped me by sending their impressions of him.
They all agree, as we should expect, in saying that
it was, above all else, his personality that counted ;
one or two of them speak as if contact with him had
changed the whole current of their intellectual life.
To describe that personality is another matter, but
it cannot be left out in any account of his teaching
and lecturing.
It was in this part of his work that his extra-
ordinary gifts had fullest play ; yet, when I call up
my memory of him, it is neither as ' lecturer ' nor as
Memoir xxxv
'teacher' that I can think of him. In both these
words there is an undernote of pedantry ; and, in
the rear of the two respectable nouns comes a flock
of woolly epithets — 'painstaking,' 'conscientious,'
and the rest — which in this case are, all of them,
thoroughly deserved, but convey nothing of the
quality and distinction of Verrall's genius. He did
take unlimited pains, not only because he was
'conscientious,' but because to him teaching was the
means of expression in which he felt the passion and
the joy of an artist. His emotion seemed, at least
in his last years, to have fused with his intellect in
a way that is rare among northerners : it strengthened
the impression that he must have had a strain of
Latin blood — an impression given by his dark
colouring and the particular clear-cut and dignified
beauty of his features, the long fine aquiline nose
and oval cheeks. This passionate intellectuality,
moving most easily at a height of rarefied atmosphere
where few could follow him, combined with something
aristocratic in his nature to tinge his pupil's admiration
with awe. He was, to many people, always a little
terrifying ; but he became much less so to those who
found out that he genuinely cared, not only to set
their minds working, but to win their sympathy.
I was slow to discover this : it was long before it
occurred to me that he could mind what I thought
about his theories, or want others to share his delight
in the things he enjoyed. There must be something
in the relation of pupil to master which makes it
hard to perceive such a need ; for with Verrall it was
V. L. E. c
xxxvi Me^noir
very strong and characteristic, and to a great extent
the secret of his influence. Without it, he might
have been too remote ; but, as it was, it moved him
to exert his marvellous powers of exposition to the
utmost, so as to bring the slowest minds under his
spell.
Perhaps only an acute reader would detect this
trait in his books. In writing, his sensitive courtesy
never allowed him to forget that he was addressing
strangers ; there is a certain formality of style, which,
together with his scrupulous use of words and the
polish of his dexterous sentences, would leave anyone
who had merely read his books with only a faint
notion of what it was to hear him speak to an
audience whom he knew. In conversation, again,
there was scope for his wit and for that adorable
silliness in which an intellect incapable of foolishness
can bubble over ; but in conversation only the
pompous can be eloquent ; and of pompousness he
had not a grain. It was only when he lectured that
he could let loose all his rhetorical powers and yet
keep the explosive flash and exuberance of hi§ talk.
On informal occasions in his own class-room, his
delight in some absurdity would vent itself in that
strange noise, which was at once a laugh, a crow,
and a shriek. But, being never afraid of losing his
dignity, he never lost it ; and, for all his need of
sympathy, he neither flattered his hearers nor traded
on his charm. He was too completely absorbed in
the point he was making : and this — whatever it
w^as, from a subtlety of Euripidean psychology to
Memoir xxxvii
a detail of syntax — seemed to everyone, because it
seemed to him, the only thing in the universe that
mattered for the moment.
Mr E. H. Marsh writes :
Did you hear his lectures on the Choephori} Those are
the ones I have the clearest recollection of. You know how
he used to sit, in a subdued frenzy of impatience, waiting till
everyone was there and seated, and how, if the noise of
settling down went on a moment after he had hoped it was
over, there was an agony, shown only by his martyred face
and the drumming of his pencil on the desk. There was
never any noise when once he had begun, and the high rich
shrillness of his voice came streaming out, under the closed
eyelids in his ivory face. We are not likely to see anything
more resembling the phenomena of inspiration. I find my
mental picture has completed itself with curls of pale blue
smoke from a tripod.
He could work us up into excruciating suspense, as when
he unfolded Ridgeway's theory of why Electra recognised
Orestes' hair and footmark. And how beautifully he told the
story of the man who had only time to write ' irdpeaTi ' before
he was overwhelmed by the mud avalanche ! It was all far
too exciting to take notes. I used to put a dot under each
word that he noticed, and he put everything so perfectly that
I scarcely ever found I had forgotten what the dots meant.
I was usually convinced by everything, and always felt at
least that, if Verrall's own theory was not certain, at any rate
all the others were impossible.
This description brings out what is quite true,
that a lecture by Verrall was definitely a performance,
prepared down to small details with an orator's sense
of effect. The performance, however, was not a
display of fireworks, but dramatic, requiring (as I
C2
xxxviii Memoir
have said) the sympathy, and therefore the under-
standing, of the whole audience. This is not an
easy end to achieve in lecturing to a class which
covers the whole range of ability and knowledge
lying between the first and last divisions of a Classical
Honours list. To bring in the third class man,
elementary truths must be mentioned which were
known to the first class man years before he left
school. How to instruct the most backward without
boring the advanced, is a problem that few can
solve. Verrall managed it so cunningly that one
could never see how it was done ; he neither talked
over their heads, nor yet seemed to talk down to
them. It was partly that, in lecturing as in talking,
he had the art of thinking aloud and taking his
audience through all the processes by which he
reached his conclusion. Often he followed what
one may call a Ring-and-t he-Book method, repeating
the same thing again and again, but so as to put
a finer edge on it each time. This was, of course,
most delightful in ordinary talk, because then he
started without knowing himself where he would get
to : as he went on, the idea cropped up and sprouted
and branched and flowered under your eyes. His
wit was never expressed in the dry drawl of an
academic epigram ; his best jokes broke cover in the
heat of some excited discourse, and, once they were
sighted, he spared them no turn or double of the
chase. In lecturing, the excitement was even more
intense, for he only allowed his pack to scent the
quarry from afar, so as to give them their share in
Memoir xxxix
the passion of pursuit as well as the joy of being in
at the death.
The following extract is from a letter written by
one of his most recent pupils, Mr J. R. M. Butler :
I think the first thing about Verrall's lecturing which
struck one coming from school was the way in which he
forced you to take no literary judgment for granted, but
to justify your opinions at first hand. He challenged every-
thing that occurred to you as a truism, and his paradoxes
could not be answered by stock arguments out of books.
And by discussing with you on equal terms — as he did in the
notes he scribbled on your papers — he gave you a self-respect
in literary things and made you ashamed of being dishonest.
That was one thing — forcing you to criticise. Another
was the desire his own strange theories gave you to discover
new and hidden things yourself. There might be endless
secrets lurking in the best-known places, and Classics became
a delightful and adventurous thing.
I don't think we believed very much what he said ; he
always said he was as likely to be wrong as right. But he
made all Classics so gloriously new and living. He made us
criticise by standards of common sense, and presume that
the tragedians were not fools, and that they did mean some-
thing. They were not to be taken as antiques privileged
to use conventions that would be nonsense in anyone else....
He was good about keeping in touch with his class.
I remember once he sent for me to his house, to ask if
I could suggest any reason why he was not getting satisfactory
papers done, and if I thought he ought to make any change
in his own method.
It is interesting to compare this writer's ' I don't
think we believed very much what he said,' with
Mr Marsh's ' I was usually convinced by everything.'
But both letters equally show how little it mattered
xl Memoir
whether this or that statement bore the cold light
of reconsideration. The point was to witness the
reaction of this astonishing intellect upon literature
which to him, and to all whom he made see it with
his eyes, was the subtlest form of art. He was, I
suppose, one of the first lecturers in Cambridge who
resolutely insisted on always treating the Classics as
works of art and not as masses of so much Greek
and Latin, from which samples of dubious grammar
could be extracted and held up with the warning :
* Not for imitation ! ' He was not, by modern
standards, a very learned man ; he knew the ancient
writings that deserve to be called literature up and
down, but he was a little impatient when he was
made to attend to archaeological lore. Not, of
course, that he either despised or neglected it ; but
his private name for it was 'stuffage.' And, as a
civilised man, with a preference for civilised products,
he disliked the grim remains of prehistoric savagery
which, as he felt, are now being pinned to the skirts
of Hellenism. What he loved to analyse was the
intended qualities of technique and design, and all
the unconscious effects of style. He realised that
a Greek play, for instance, must be interpreted
primarily from itself, not buried under a load of more
or less relevant learning, still less used as a text for
a general disquisition on grammar. This may seem
obvious enough ; but, if we compare his editions,
which in this respect are like his lectures, with the
commentaries of an older generation, we see that he
was one of the first who made it obvious. Many
Memoir xli
generations of pupils got from him their first
revelation of literature as an art. At school, they
had necessarily — or so, at any rate, it used to be
considered — spent their time in struggling with the
difficulties of learning to read and write the ancient
languages. At that stage, the Classics are used as
textbooks ; and, while it is dimly apparent to the
schoolboy that as textbooks they leave much to be
desired both in subject and style, it is not always
possible for him to see that their authors had any
other purpose in view. In Verrall's lecture-room
the light broke upon them. Some speech in Euripides
which had seemed a dry tissue of commonplaces
suddenly began to glow with passion and flash with
wit ; and as he lit up the large outlines of the piece
and showed how one part gained its meaning from
its relation to another, undreamed-of prospects
opened out.
Verrall's manner in reciting poetry naturally pro-
duced different effects on various temperaments. I
quote two extracts from letters which, as it happens,
refer to the same occasion. Mr H. A. Hollond
writes :
Too rare, we thought, were the occasions on which he
exercised his wonderful gift of reading aloud in order to
illustrate his point. No word-music has left with me so vivid
a memory as his rendering of Horace's Solvitur acris hiems.
I feel, as if it were yesterday that I listened, the passionate-
ness, at its beginning, of the sentence : Pallida mors aequo
pulsat pede... dying away into the whispered sibilant at its
close. A long pause, and then the sad but calm philosophy :
O beate Sesti, vitae summa brevis spent nos vetat inchoare
1
xlii Memoir
longam ; and last of all the courageous change of mood into
the forced gaiety about young Lycidas. On that day Verrall
must have been giving us much of himself.
Another correspondent says :
He gave you a new idea of the importance of language
and sound in poetry, by chanting Horace, Catullus, etc. It
was often fantastic, as when, in Solvitur acris hiems, he said
' regumque turres ' meant the approach of thunder, or that
' Hadria ' in Donee grains eram ought to be laughed — ' Ha-
ha-ha-dria ' ; but it made you believe in the power of subtle
word-building. In reciting Vivamus, mea Lesbia, he showed
wonderfully how the change of sound meant change of
thought. I think the finest of all was when he declaimed
Creusa's monody in the Ion, at a University Extension
lecture; Kai...oros ■/ . . .dfjia6rj<; was extraordinarily dramatic.
In teaching composition to individual pupils,
Verrall had nothing in common with the school
of teachers whose favourite words are 'grinding'
and 'grounding.' Instead of setting himself to fake
a goose till it should pass, in the examiner's eyes, for
a swan, he was content to help the creature to see
what it was to be a swan, and, with gentle derision,
when it was deserved, to make it feel what a goose
it had been. But, if he pounced upon stupidity, he
watched eagerly for every symptom of intelligence,
and encouraged it with generous praise.
He had, writes Mr Marsh, the most scrupulous sense
I have ever known of the value of exactness in language.
There was nothing academic in this : no one took more
pleasure in novelty or audacity of expression, if, on close
inspection, it was justified and held water; but he would
never tolerate an approximation to the meaning required.
I suppose very few of the greatest writers always came up to
Memoir xliii
his standard ! Do you remember how particular he was
about not misleading the reader (except, of course, on
purpose, when he loved it) as to the form a sentence was
going to take? Any such inelegance would cut him like
a knife.
He had beautiful manners as a teacher, and never made
one feel a fool when one wasn't. When he did, it was
delightfully done. I remember dining with him once, as
a mature wise second-year man, to help with three freshmen.
After dinner modern novels were discussed, and one of the
freshmen contributed his view as follows : ' Well, Dr Verrall,
I must avow that in my opinion Edna Lyall is the first of
contemporary novelists.' Verrall was taken aback for a
moment ; but then : * Well, if you think so, you're quite right
to avow it, you know...^?-. ..' (the long high ur, between a
laugh and a crow). His sense of justice made him approve
the young man's candour, but his humour couldn't resist the
handle given him by the unlucky word ' avow.'
Another pupil says :
I think that Verrall's personal teaching was exactly com-
plementary to the stimulus of his written work. Whereas the
latter, whether convincing or not, teaches one to try to see
what the author really felt and meant, conversely his teaching
of composition showed one how to shape one's mind to the
formal mould on which our ideas must be impressed if they
are to seem to be the utterances of Greeks or Romans. So
many scholars who write admirable Greek or Latin are quite
unable to point out to a learner what are the features which
cause it to be idiomatic. They can tell you intuitively ' That
won't do,' but not why it won't do. Verrall's own Greek and
Latin did not always seem to have quite the quality of that of
some of his colleagues ; he sometimes strained the language ;
but he seized unhesitatingly the merits of another's fair copy
and showed exactly why an effect in the English piece, of
emphasis for example, could only be produced in the transla-
tion by a device of a completely different character. For
xliv Memoir
instance, he was continually pointing out the use which can
be made in Latin of alliteration, of the repetition of an
important word, of compact phrasing. In correcting a verse
composition he would urge us to look at the structure of the
piece as a whole and to avoid uniformity and monotony of
rhythm, whereas so many teachers content themselves with
indicating the faults — grammatical, syntactical or metrical —
of each particular sentence.
I have the feeling — do you know whether anyone shares
it with me ? — that Verrall, however enthusiastic he was about
Greek literature, nevertheless understood the Latin mind
better, or, at any rate, Latin modes of thought and expression.
The extremely difficult, and often impossible,
task of translating English poetry into Greek or
Latin taxed all his peculiar powers, and he rejoiced
in it. If he had been imprisoned till such time as
he should have rendered (say) Stubbs' Select Con-
stitutional Charters into Greek Iambics, I believe he
would have emerged in a surprisingly short time,
refreshed in spirit; and Stubbs' treatise would thence-
forth have been better reading than it is. This
curious form of art, beloved of English scholars,
provided him with just what he most liked — a strictly
1 1 limited problem, only to be solved by the utmost
stretch of dexterity and the finest sense of word-
values in both languages. His versions were
^ brilliant. He used to say that he was not sure
that composition could be taught in any other way
than by the master's letting the learner see how he
did it himself.
To his colleagues, Verrall was generous and
considerate. Staff meetings are commonly dull
Memoir xlv
enough, but if he was present, there was sure to be
fun. One never knew what he would say next, or
how his whimsical humour would twist the banalities
of business into every shape of absurdity. He had
not, at least when I knew him, the temper of a
reformer. The traditional system of teaching
satisfied him ; within its limitations he found room
to do all that he wanted. But, though he seldom
initiated changes, he never obstructed, but always
listened readily to others who recommended them,
giving his support, if he was convinced. He was,
all his life, steadfast to Liberalism in politics, and
the passion that went with his reason was quickly
fired in any cause of justice or liberty; yet he had in
his composition something of the conservative. With
an instinct for ceremony, he always liked a decency
to be observed. This feeling for tradition was
connected with his devotion to the College to which
he gave his best work. It is hard to tell how far it
is possible for one man to affect the life of an
institution where the generations come and go in
rapid succession ; but it is certain that Verrall's
influence will be felt so long as anyone who knew
him remains connected with Trinity College, and
his lectures and books have permanently affected
the tradition of teaching.
Before ending, I should like to be allowed to
recall one of his most exquisite and characteristic
performances. It was at a College meeting which
met in January, 1906, to discuss certain changes
in the papers set in the Fellowship Examination at
xlvi Memoir
Trinity. The old ' Philosophy papers ' were to be
remodelled and their range extended to include
questions on the general aspects of science, art and
history. Literature, for some reason, had been
omitted from this list. I believe Sir Richard Jebb
f had intended to move for the insertion of it ; but
I before the meeting was held, Sir Richard was dead,
I and Verrall took up the proposal in his place. He
I had been deeply moved by J ebb's death. He
delivered his speech sitting in his chair (he was too
crippled to stand) and, as usual, with closed eyes.
Ostensibly, he was outlining the sort of questions
about literature that might be set in the examination ;
they were questions, it is true, that few but himself
could have thought of, much less answered. But as
the speech went on, his audience began to realise
that they were listening to a funeral oration, though he
said nothing about Jebb, and I doubt if he mentioned
his name. It was, perhaps, the most audacious
thing that Verrall ever did. College meetings are
extremely impatient of long speeches, and he ran
the risk of being interrupted at any moment by
an appeal to the chairman to check his irrelevancy.
Who else could have trusted his power of holding
such an audience, and who else could have succeeded ?
The climax came when he contrived to recite a
passage from Massillon's Oraison Funebre de Louis
le Grand, in which a quotation from the Vulgate is
several times repeated : Qtmndo interrogaverifit vos
Jilii vestri, dicentes : Quid sibi volunt isti lapides f
His pronunciation of French was singularly pure ;
Memoir xlvii
his musical intonation rendered the melancholy pomp
of echoing sounds and slow, massive rhythms ; and
he made the recurrent Quando (pronounced, of
course, with the French nasal n and a long-drawn a)
strike through them like the passing bell with its
harsh clang at long intervals : Quando inter rogaverint
vos filii vestri, dicentes : Quid sibivolunt isti lapidesf
With my correspondents' help, I have tried to
give some idea of Verrall's influence on the men he
taught. But, as I look back, what fills me with
admiration and gratitude is not so much his teaching
as the splendid spectacle of his triumph over physical
pain. He will live in my memory as he was in the
last years of his life, when his mind seemed to have
withdrawn inside the last defences, gallantly defying
the encroaching disease that had crippled and
emaciated his frame. Beaten back from point to
point, as one activity after another was taken from
him, he kept the flag flying as gaily as ever. When
his body failed him he treated it with contempt.
He thrust his infirmity aside as a tiresome accident,
about which the less said the better. Latterly, his
mind was like a fire that smouldered through hours
of bodily exhaustion, and then would suddenly shoot
up in flashes of white flame. As soon as this
happened, his illness was utterly ignored. It was
impossible to remember that every movement was
pain ; he made one forget it, as he forgot it himself.
There was in this no hint of an heroical pose.
Probably no man of equal rhetorical gifts ever so
' s
j
I
s
V
xlviii Mernoir
completely kept rhetoric out of his life. Nor was it
resignation ; but rather the magnificent pride of the
spirit setting its heel upon the flesh.
Much as his friends have learnt from him, it
is above all for this last conquest of a courageous
and noble mind that they will always hold his memory
in reverence and honour.
F. M. CORNFORD.
Numerous other letters received from former
pupils confirm one point or another of Mr Corn-
ford's impression. One writes : —
There was no one of his generation at Cambridge who
meant so much as he did to us younger men. It was not
only the immense pleasure and stimulus of hearing him
either on his own subject or any subject, but besides that
his constant kindness and readiness to give sympathy and
advice were a very great help and a thing for which I shall
always be grateful.
And another, to the same effect : —
My intellectual debt to him is greater than I can estimate ;
but even more than the brilliance of his mind, it was the
fearless directness of his character and the inspiring ardour
of his enthusiasm which endeared him to those who had the
good fortune to come under his influence.
Another writes that, to know Verrall 'meant an
awakening all round, and something of " the rapture
of the forward view." '
In 1889 Verrall published his Agamemnon of
Aeschylus, and in the general judgement the book
Memoir xlix
at once established him in a position of supremacy
among the poet's interpreters. The position was
confirmed later by his Choephori and Eumenides,
but it was assured to him by this work alone. As
an instrument of expression, for flexibility and range,
for delicacy and subtlety as for force, the Greek
language confessedly has no rival. To judge from
his work on Aeschylus, Verrall would seem to have
come near to grasping its utmost possibilities. By
a fearless recognition of the boldness and pregnancy
of Aeschylean phraseology, and of the freedom of
Aeschylean syntax, he enlarged our conceptions of
the whole language. He, so to speak, extended its
reach. We may sometimes be tempted to think
that he claims for Aeschylus a latitude of expression
which the poet would not have claimed for himself,
but when that occurs, it may serve to give us pause
before condemning, to recall that Tennyson in a
certain place wrote
'and felt the boat shock earth.'
If he thought of strike (with the poet, however,
la parole suit la pensde), he rejected it, to give us
something peculiarly Tennysonian and better, if we
can see it, — but, like much in Aeschylus, at once
audacious and ' unexampled ' ! On the other hand,
Verrall's surer judgement rejected not a few ex-
travagances, both of language and grammar, which
less discriminating editors would father on the poet;
nor could he be beguiled into believing that what
was on universal principles false in taste, might
I s
1 Memoir
nevertheless be Aeschylean. Again, not once nor
twice nor thrice, his mere command of the language
enabled him to give meaning to what others had
found untranslatable or unsatisfactory ; and in many
a familiar passage his more than Oedipodean acute-
ness as a solver of riddles detected a point or allusion
which had hitherto been missed. Not a few passages
he restored to sense by no more than a change in
the punctuation or re-division of the words.
But the unique value of the book consists in
something more than all this. If any new thing
was less expected than another in connexion with
the Agamemnon (as with the Septem), it was the
discovery that our conception of the plot was in
essential features wholly wrong. Verrall declared
that it was, and propounded a view which fell on
the classical world like a bomb-shell.
No edition known to me ventures to tell without disguise
the story of the Agamemnon. I do not of course mean
merely that the story told is not correct. This would be
to assume the very point we are to discuss. I mean that
the story, as it is commonly understood, is not told without
concealment and practical misrepresentation.
With cruel frankness he makes good these
editorial laches. He relates the story as it ' is
still, with whatever dissatisfaction, accepted,' and
goes on to ask,
Is it possible that the story above told really represents
the intention of Aeschylus? That a man who had spent
most of his life in writing plays, when he came to lay down the
lines of his supreme masterpiece should encumber himself at
Memoir li
starting with absurdities so glaring, so dangerous, so gratuitous,
as this fable exhibits in all its parts ?
To sweep away any lingering traces of delusion
as to what the story amounts to when seen in its
naked simplicity, he adds : —
As I see no reason to think that the popular mind in
the time of Aeschylus was in this respect very different from
the popular mind now, I will offer a Socratic parallel, not the
less just because it is homely. — Scene : A room in London.
Time : Early morning. Servants discovered preparing the
room. From their conversation it appears that the master
of the house has been for some time in Africa, and that
the conduct of his wife, in relation to a person too often
received, is causing them much anxiety and a strong desire
for the master's return. They have learnt with satisfaction
that their mistress is expecting soon to hear that he is on his
way home. A telegram arrives for the lady, who presently
appears and informs them that it is from her husband, and
was despatched last night from Lake Nyanza. Being asked
by a servant whether there is a telegraph at the Lake, she
explains that the wires have just been extended so far by
the result of her husband's enterprise. He intends to return
forthwith. She wonders what sort of breakfast he is having
in Africa, and hopes that he will not meet with any accident
on the road back. The table is laid, and the lady is sitting
down to it, when there is a ring at the bell. Enter the
husband's courier, who announces that his master is detained
for a few minutes at the terminus, but is coming immediately.
He dilates upon the discomforts of the overland route and
the breaking-down of an Italian train. The husband follows
accordingly. He describes the success of his explorations.
The lady receives him with rapture but without any surprise.
In conversation with him she says nothing of the telegram,
nor he to her. And so ends the first scene. — Now, at this
point of the story we might either know the key to the riddle
V. L. E. d
Hi Memoir
(if the author were dramatizing a popular novel) or we might
wait for the solution in the sequel. But what would be the
bewilderment and the dismay of the audience if it should
prove that there was no solution, and that the mysterious
telegram, introduced with so much circumstance, had no
bearing on the story whatever ! I submit that this is not
the way in which the crowns of the drama may be won, and
that the most rigorous proof should be required before we
assume that it ever was. (p. xxiv.)
Verrall's solution of the tangle will be found in his
Introduction, which, as also all the Euripidean
volumes, can be readily understood and enjoyed
even by those who have no knowledge of Greek.
The power with which the exposition is worked
out, and the skill with which the threads of the
argument are gathered and combined, alike from
innumerable hints scattered through the play and
from the necessities of the whole situation, are
beyond praise. It is a masterpiece of induction,
and we are left staggered, but convinced and
satisfied. The play which we had admired for
little more than the great scenes which follow the
king's entrance — being a little bored (to tell the
truth) by the want of dramatic interest in what
precedes, despite the magnificence of the poetry —
we now see has a close-knit unity which keeps us
enthralled from beginning to end.
It is notoriously difficult to lay aside deep-rooted
prejudices, and accordingly this account of the plot
was greeted by some with murmurs of disapproba-
tion or doubt ; but it may be safely prophesied that
the Byzantine view of the Agamemnon will not again
Memoir liii
find a serious champion. There is one little dilemma
to be faced by such a defender at the outset. If
Verrall's story is not what Aeschylus had in his
mind, then some Maxwell 'sorting demon,' with a
literary turn, must have been having the time of his
life, as he popped in note after note of his own leit-
motivy in faultless accord, under the poet's very
nose ! The suggestion, made some three years ago,
that an interval of several days may be assumed
between vv. 493 and 494, is sufficiently condemned
by an examination of the text at this point, — to say
nothing of other serious objections.
In the editions of the Choephori (1893) ^'^^
the Eumenides (1908) there is the same luminous
exposition of details, fresh evidence of that charac-
teristic faculty of seeing in one view the drama and
its purpose, the same skill in presenting it to the
reader, the same incomparable dramatic instinct.
Who but Verrall could have offered such a solution
as he offers of the problem raised by the sudden
conversion of the Erinyes ?
Ath. {coming closer). I am not to be wearied of pleading
with thee what is good [etc.].
{She is now in the midst of them, and speaks as for
them alone.)
Ah, if sacred Suasion be holy unto thee, the appeasement
of my tongue, the soothing... {Her voice ceases to be heard,
and for a while she seems to commune with them in silence.
They become suddenly calm, and show in their behaviour a
great awe.)
...So thou wilt belike abide;...
We cannot be sure that this is the manner in
d?2
liv Memoir
which the wondrous reconciliation was effected, but
who would not be profoundly grateful for the con-
ception, and that, if only because it inspired the
following noble and eloquent passage ?
Now here [in the conversion of the Erinyes] is a solution
indeed, a solution not of any particular casuistical or judicial
problem (we may notice that after the trial the specific crime
of Orestes is ignored completely), but of the universal problem,
the discordance of principles, the antithesis of Right against
Right. If the Inexorable can indeed be pacified, then there
is somewhere One Right, one universal principle, something
upon which ' the fallen house of Justice ' may be builded
again. Let us but know ivhy this pacification takes place,
upon what grounds and by what persuasions, and we shall
be admitted to the very secret of things. We turn to the
speech which effects all this, but — no explanation appears.
At a certain point it is assumed by Athena that the ad-
versaries are content, as they prove to be ; it is assutned
that this content proceeds from something just said or done.
And just before stands — an unfinished sentence. Ah, if
sacred Suasion be holy imto thee, the appeasement of my
tongue, and the soothing.... Thou, then, tvilt belike abide, or
if it should be thy will not to abide — but that is not their will.
A hiatus (it would appear), an injury singularly deplorable,
has obliterated the words of the Eternal and the wisdom of
the Most High. But never (we may hope) were they written.
It is a gap which Aeschylus could no more have filled, nor
would, than Dante could have told us what was the song
which, on the Mount of Purgatory, hailed the forgiveness of
sin and the restoration of man : ' I understood it not, nor
here is sung the hymn which that folk then sang.' Not
Aeschylus, nor any one who had felt, like him, that ' burden
of thought ' which can be lifted away only in the name of
Zeus, would pretend to tell us what thought or thing it was
with which Athena won the Erinyes. He that would put it
in words, in his own words, would not be worth our hearing
Memoir Iv
Such a conciliation, if it is to command faith, cannot and
must not be explicit. Something there must be which by
men is not understood nor even heard, some place for the
miraculous, mystic, and incomprehensible, (p. xxxii.)
And this —
Indeed the strongest reason for believing, provisionally
and until the contrary is proved, that the mystic and
miraculous conversion of Vengeance to Grace, the sudden
revelation that, in some incomprehensible way, Vengeance
and Grace are the same, punishment and prosperity parts
and aspects of one Providence, was the thought, substantially
new and original, of Aeschylus himself, is its profound un-
likeness and immense superiority to the common religious
products of the Greek mind. It has the stamp of Aeschylus,
perhaps the only Greek who shows a strong genius for
religious invention, not metaphysical, or moral, or artistic,
or imaginative, or ritual, or anything else but religious.
The conversion of the Erinyes is a religious idea, awful,
dark, and intensely satisfying, (p. xHii.)
In the summer of 1890, at the request of the
Syndics of the University Press, and with a view-
to the performance of the play at Cambridge in the
coming term, he prepared and pubHshed an edition
of the Io7i. The commentary, though intentionally
limited in scope, gives an adequate explanation of
the text, and as was to be expected, throws new
light on a considerable number of passages. The
dialogue is admirably translated into blank verse,
with occasional deviations into the rhyming couplet,
and the lyric portions of the play are rendered in
a variety of metres adapted to the subject-matter of
each. The following is the version of the passage
Ivi Memoir
beginning "^Xl Havos OaK-rjixara {v. 492), and for spirit,
music, and rhythm, would seem to be hardly capable
of being bettered. The reader will observe the
felicity with which the sad note of the thrice-
recurring w of the original (^11 Iiav6<i...St Tidv...
w fieXea) is echoed in the burden of the version.
O Athens, what thy clifif hath seen !
The northward scar, Pan's cavern-seat,
With rocks before and grassy floor,
Where dancing tread the Aglaurids' feet
Their triple measure on the green
Neath Pallas' fane,
Whene'er the god in his retreat
Times on the reed a quavering strain :
O Athens, what thy cliff hath seen !
It saw the ravish'd maiden's pang.
The babe she bare to Phoebus there
Cast to the talon and the fang.
There on the same insulting scene !
Of any born
'Twixt god and man none ever sang,
None ever told, but tales forlorn.
O Athens, what thy cliff hath seen !
The chief interest of the book, however, lies in
the Introduction, where we have the earliest of
those studies in the work of Euripides by which
Verrall attained what is perhaps his greatest and
most lasting distinction. For these studies have
achieved a result which, in all its circumstances, is
unique in the history of literature. The admiration
of the poet's contemporaries for his dramas knew
no bounds, and the judgement of the whole ancient
world, Greek and Roman, ranked him, howsoever
Memoir Ivii
different the quality of his genius, as the equal of
Aeschylus and Sophocles. His right to the place
was not discussed, it was taken for granted. In
the popular favour he stood far above his two
great rivals, and the picture drawn by Browning
in Balaustions Adventure, though heightened by
poetical expression, represents in spirit an en-
thusiasm which was universally felt. In contrast
to the ancient estimate of Euripides, the modern
world, since the Revival of Learning, while not
blind to his merits as a poet, found him as a play-
wright, in almost every one of his extant works,
frankly beneath contempt. He was a botcher and
bungler, a mere patcher of theatrical quilts which
lacked all unity of design.
Story ! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir ; —
or at least he could not tell it intelligibly, or without
making it impossible and ridiculous. When he
seemed to be desiring to rouse the hearer to
emotion, with incredible perversity or stupidity he
would kill the nascent feeling by a dash of the
grotesque. Even when he had touched on some-
thing like success, he would spoil his own effect,
and you would have the preposterous god or
goddess contradicting from the clumsy machine all
you had been led to expect, and failing to unravel
the tangled skein after all. In a word, what stood
for the plot did not work ; and the dubious thing
which he offered as drama, though 'good in parts,'
as a whole failed to please, if it did not actually
Iviii Memoir
stink in the critical nostril. It was left for Verrall
to do for the whole work of Euripides what he had
done for the Aga7nemnon and Septem — to solve the
enigma by recovering the old-world point of view,
and to justify the ancient enthusiasm by showing
that we have before us not only sane, peculiarly
sane, art but also a supreme artist.
Thus in the prologue of the Ion Hermes tells us
that Apollo intends to guide the day's events in a
particular way : in the sequel these events go their
own way, in defiance of the intention of the prophetic
god. In the course of the play the Oracle makes
a certain statement about Ion's parentage, but cir-
cumstantial evidence, furnished by the Delphian
authorities themselves, convinces the boy later that
the statement is false. When he realises the contra-
diction his simple soul is ' horrified ' — -for the oracle
must have lied — and he turns to enter the shrine
and ask Apollo for an explanation. At this moment
Athena appears above the temple roof. The
following account is no travesty of the speech which
she proceeds to deliver ; Verrall has only added the
touch of an inimitable raillery to the common im-
pression of its effect.
Such being the knot to be solved, let us now consider the
solution. To say that Athena cuts it, without untying, is to
pay her an unmerited compliment. She does not touch the
nodus at all. Whatever she said, how could she ? This
goddess, or this part of a goddess (for we seem not to be
shown the whole of her, though we doubtless see all that
there is), this divine Trpoo-wTroj', heaved up by the machine, is
herself a walking or rather a swinging fallacy, a personified
Memoir lix
ignoratio eknchi\ A goddess of Olympus, and a goddess
'rising above' the Delphian temple, is to give bail for the
Oracle of Delphi ! And where then is the security for herself?
As is the speaker, so is her speech. It ignores the question,
and Ion bluntly tells her so. More than half of it is spurious
legend, complimentary to Athens but nothing to the matter.
In the other half she repeats, point for point and almost
without change, the explanations which Creusa has already
offered in vain, and which now fall the flatter after exposure.
Her apology comes to this : ' Yes, the facts are precisely as
you can hardly believe. You, Ion, are the son of Creusa and
Phoebus, who is indeed the selfish, brutal being that, on that
hypothesis, he has been freely called. (In fact it is because
he is ashamed to show himself, that I am here.) He did tell,
and through his oracle, the lie in question ; his motive, if that
mattered, was no better, but a trifle worse, than Creusa has
said ; and he does propose to save his credit by the quirk
which has been treated with such contempt. As to the
question asked, whether then the Delphian oracle is worthy
of credence or not, I do not choose to answer directly ; but
I leave you to suppose, if you please, that it is not. I have
only to add, that (since Ion will grow up into an excellent
father and hero of the Ionian race) all this is of no importance,
and you may all go happily home, convinced that revelation
is a fraud, and faith a delusion. And of this there is no
shadow of doubt, no possible, probable shadow of doubt, —
for I am Pallas Athena ! '
No wonder that she produces no effect ! (p. xvii.)
Clearly this sort of thing won't do. By ' this
sort of thing' I mean, not the echo of the Gondoliers
— by which, as one grieves to learn, a certain
Professor was inexpressibly shocked — but Athena's
speech. It won't do. But what if it was not meant
to do ? What if in fact the Ion conveys, beneath
a veil thin enough for sharp eyes to pierce, a
Ix Memoir
deliberate attack upon Delphi and the Olympian
religion? Euripides was notoriously a 'free-thinker':
by putting the gods on the stage he persuades the men
that they dont exist, is the complaint of a woman in
Aristophanes. Strip the play of its divine prologue
and finale, and what have we left ? A perfectly
constructed drama in which every point tells, and
from which every supernormal element is absent,
but at the same time a drama in which the purely
human story is, with consummate skill, so handled
that Delphi is plainly discredited as a fountain of
truth. As the pious Ion perceives to his dismay, it
can lie. This discovery, however, which forms the
climax of the play proper, has more than a polemical
purpose ; it contributes to the pathos of the story no
less than the sufferings and anguish of Creusa. For
the shattering of a cherished religious faith is in itself
a sufficiently tragic experience, and this Euripides
plainly meant to show. Indeed, it is Ion's case,
rather than Creusa's, which would seem to have
lain closest to the poet's heart ; and I hazard a
conjecture that as he drew this touching picture of
the boy's distress, he was recalling the shock which
had ' confounded ' his own youthful soul when its
early beliefs were swept away.
Such is the scope and purpose of the Ion, as
revealed by Verrall's analysis : it is an impeachment
of Delphi and all its works. The attack is covert,
indeed, but it is so by preference as much as by
necessity, for Euripides had in his armoury a better
weapon than open invective, and one in the use of
Me^noir Ixi
which he is unsurpassed. He knew the deadly effect
of innuendo, and Verrall aptly sums up his method in
a quotation from George Meredith, prefixed to one
of his later essays : — ' Yes, dear Van ! that is how
you should behave. Imply things.' And though
two gods are introduced to deliver speeches, this is
no more than a concession to convention, and one
that the poet is little loth to make, for the prologue
and finale which he maliciously claps on to his
already finished play are so contrived as to give the
coup de grace. As our bloodthirsty old drill-sergeant
used to say at bayonet practice, 'one half-turrn to
the right makes the wound incurable.'
What contemporaries of Euripides, who shared
his views, might have thought and said of such
a Day at Delphi as the Ion represents, Verrall has
embodied in an epilogue. This epilogue is dramatic
in form, and represents a conversation between the
Delphian authorities and some Athenians who have
been silent spectators of all that has taken place. It
extends to no less than twenty-two pages, and is in
its kind a perfect work of art ; one knows not whether
to admire most its originality as a conception, or its
brilliance and truly Athenian wit. To read it is to
receive a positive thrill of intellectual delight. When
the talk is over, the scene is suddenly changed : we
are in Athens, and the curtain has just fallen on
Euripides' play.
Ati Athenian {sadly). And is there then no god, O
Euripides ?
Euripides. Neither that do I say, or have said, O
Ixii Memoir
Chaerephon. Whence, or from whom, came to that feast
the detecting dove ? Who sent that dumb creature to save,
at the cost of her own * incomprehensible agony,' the Ufe of
the kind-hearted lad who was sorry to kill the birds? Apollo,
Chance, Providence? We know not. Only, for the gods'
sake, do not think that it was the ravisher of Creusa.
Which is more likely ? That this frame of the heavens,
this truly divine machine, is governed by beings upon whom
our poor nature cries shame ; or that a knot of men, backed
by prejudice and tempted by enormous wealth, should try
by cunning to keep up a once beneficent or harmless delusion
for a little while longer ?
For a little while ! Xpona /mcv to. twv Qtwv ttws, cis tc'Xos
8' ovK daOevrj. Good night. Let us go to our chambers and
pray, to Pallas, if you must, to Zeus if you will, but let us
pray at least to the Father of men and women and beasts
and birds of the air, and give the verdict according to our
hearts, (p. xlii.)
The recognition of a double purpose in the
Euripidean drama forms the basis of the work by
which Verrall has vindicated Euripides as a dramatic
genius inferior to none, and has rehabihtated indi-
vidually more than half-a-dozen of his plays. He
contends that while, as a poet, Euripides found
sufficient material for his art in the play of human
passion and the tangle of life, he saw his way to
combining with this an attack on a theology and
religious practices which were, in his judgement,
both puerile and harmful, — or rather that the latter
was his life's purpose, which the stage was em-
ployed to subserve. In the conjunction he con-
trived to strike a tragic note such as had not
been heard before, and the skill with which he has
Memoir Ixiii
united the two aims leaves him in this respect
absolutely without a rival. If we did not see this
before, it is because we did not know the man
Euripides as Verrall has taught us to know him ;
we had failed to recognise the full import of hints,
and more than hints, scattered broad-cast over his
works. And if any do not now recognise or care
for this contexture of tragedy and wit, then Euripides
did not write for them ; but the enjoyment of those
who do, comes as near as the lapse of ages will
permit to that of the poet's contemporaries and the
ancient world. All thanks and homage to him who
has placed the key to it in our hands.
After the publication of the Choephori in 1893
the Euripidean studies were resumed, and bore fruit
in Euripides the Rationalist, which appeared in 1895.
The Alcestis, Ion (for a second time) and Iphigenia
in Taurica are subjected to an exhaustive analysis,
and the general result is to establish that view of
Euripides as a dramatist which is indicated by the
title of the volume, and which had already been
shown to be the only view accounting satisfactorily
for the phenomena presented by the Ion.
Of the novel and startling view taken of the
Alcestis no extract or summary could give a fair
presentation ; the whole essay, which extends to
128 pages, must be read (and more than once)
before the cumulative force of the argument can
be appreciated. The many who agree with the
conclusion arrived at, regard the essay as a
Ixiv Memoir
marvellous example of inductive reasoning. On
the other hand, a reader who for any reason
hesitates to yield assent, finds himself again con-
fronted with the ' sorting demon ' ; for the play is
manifestly open to Verrall's interpretation, while
from beginning to end it does not present a single
refractory feature. Let us make a supposition.
Let the story of Alcestis' restoration to life be
familiar, but let Euripides' play exist only in one
recently discovered copy, still kept secret in the
pocket of a happy digger in the Fayum who is a
convert to the rationalist view of the poet's work.
Let him be challenged to sketch the plot of a
covertly rationalistic play on the Alcestis story,
after the manner of his Euripides, and let him for
answer produce the Alcestis that we have. Can it
be doubted that by the general vote he would be
pronounced to have scored a triumphant suc-
cess ?
L In this same year the honorary degree of Litt.D.
jl was conferred upon Verrall by Trinity College,
Dublin. As will be seen, the Public Orator did
justice both to his theme and to himself.
Maximo meo gaudio ad vos duco Arturum Woollgar
Verrall, virum excellenti ingenio, doctrina, industria prae-
ditum, qui nomen meruit nulli secundum eorum quibus
Cantabrigia pristinam famam hodie auget. Postquam spatia
Academica felici eventu percurrerat, totum se dedit Musis
quarum ingenti percussus amore sacra fert. Studiis Aeschyleis,
Euripideis, Horatianis operam praecipuam adhibuit. Fabulas
Aeschyli tres, Euripidis Medeam edidit. Non huius est
tritam criticorum orbitam sequi. Pennis non aliis datis
Memoir Ixv
negata temptat iter via
coetusque volgares et udam
spernit humum fugiente penna.
Novas verborum gemmas eruere hunc valde iuvat, novosque
flores decerpere unde prius nuUi velarunt tempora. Locis
obscuris lampada ingenii admovit, sententiamque latentem
saepe elicuit quae alios omnes fugerat. Quid? Nonne ab
inferis Alcestin revocavit, Stesichori exemplo damans ovk
t(TT erv/Mo^ Xo'yos outos, negavitque in fabula earn decessisse,
ut vulgo perhibetur, argumentisque baud spernendis senten-
tiam suam stabilivit ? Ut ingenio dives, ita animo candido
ingenuoque est : et ipse pro me testari possum quam libenter
auxilium ferat iis quos idem pratum metentes viderit.
Musarum pio sacerdoti interpretique sanctissimo Arturo
Woollgar Verrall plaudite.
The year 1897 marks the beginning- of the
declension in bodily health. There was a definite
attack of arthritis, from which, in spite of a visit
to Bath, he never made a complete recovery, and
the smaller disabilities in the use of the hands and
limbs began. In 1899 the Tutorship terminated,
and in the summer he went for a ' cure ' to Strath-
peffer, but without obtaining any appreciable benefit.
The next years were uneventful. He pursued
further the study of Euripides, and in 1902 wrote,
in the Alps, the essay on the Heracles which was
afterwards published va Four Plays. In the October
term of 1903 he delivered a lecture on the Birds.
This was the first of those, given to a general
audience, which came to be looked forward to as
an invaluable prelude whenever afterwards a Greek
play was to be produced in Cambridge. I regret
Ixvi Memoir
that I can give no account of it beyond saying
that it was astonishing for brilliance and originality,
and that the enthusiasm of the audience knew no
bounds. It was found necessary to repeat the
lecture for the benefit of many for whom there was
no room at the first delivery. The later lectures on
the Eumenides (1906) and the Wasps (1909) live
no less, I believe, in the memory of those who were
fortunate enough to hear them. The following
extract from a report of this last in the Cambridge
Review will give an idea of the delightful humour
which from moment to moment convulsed with
laughter an audience of nearly a thousand people
in the Examination Schools.
The Old Man Philocleon is trying to adorn his con-
versation with the Uterary anecdote in the true style of the
day. Unfortunately his fund of stories all date from the
glorious but old-fashioned times of Peisistratus, and they
are marred by the fact that in his drunkenness he ends
off each anecdote or allusion with a piece of scurrility.
Dr Verrall explained how much of the humour of this
scene was lost to a modern audience. For instance, we
can hardly raise a smile at the lines
Simonides and Lasus once were rivals :
Then Lasus says, ' Pish, I don't care,' says he.
Now, the point lies in the fact that Simonides and Lasus
are two poets of the Peisistratid period, and reference to
them sounded grand in the ears of Aristophanes' contem-
poraries. We might produce something of the same effect
if we imagined a dispute about the fare between a Festive
Person and a Cabman. The Festive Person or F. P.
attempts to silence the Cabman with the following remark :
Great Galileo through his optic glass
Saw once, as I see now, a silly ass.
Memoir Ixvii
A Policeman summoned says F. P. must pay. Says
F. P.,
Carlyle thought not. He closed a like dispute
With Ruskin by the observation ' Scoot ! '
The Policeman says there must be an end to this.
'Ah,' says the F. P.,
Sir Isaac Newton knew that Science springs
From careful notice of the simplest things,
And when he rode a coach would never fail
To keep an eye upon the horse's tail.
He learn'd a lesson which I recommend
To your attention: 'All things have an endJ
In other matters also is the humour of Aristophanes not
obvious to a modern audience. The Introduction of the
Chorus is really a piece of delicate parody. In Tragedy
it had frequently been the custom to introduce a Chorus
speculating and questioning as to the absence of the hero. . . .
In the Wasps the Old Dicasts come searching for their
absent brother, who appears, be it remembered, out of the
chimney-pot. Throughout there is sly imitation of Tragic
Drama. We may partly reproduce the effect in English,
by introducing somewhere a parody of English poetry — say
of Locksley Hall:
What constrains him,
What detains him?
May the cause of his arrest
Be some injury? Or how, sirs,
If he have mislaid a vest.
Shirt, or coat, or even trousers?
Or perchance the mischief's root
Is a tightness of the boot?
Comrades, let us wait a little, while as yet 'tis early morn,
Wait, and if our friend should want us, help him with the
shoeing-horn.
v. L. E. e
Ixviii Memoir
Verrall was an active member of the Greek Play-
Committee, and in connexion with the performance
of the Eutnenides in 1885 and the Oedipus Tyrannus
in 1887 executed the tour de force of rendering the
lyrics of these plays into rhymed verse which could
be sung to Stanford's music, composed for the Greek
text.
In 1905 the work of the poet who had now
perhaps become his favourite — at least among the
ancients — was examined afresh in Four Plays of
Euripides. The plays discussed were Andromache,
Helen, Heracles, Orestes. With characteristic apt-
ness in the selection of titles, the essays are headed
respectively, 'A Greek Borgia,' 'Euripides' Apology,'
'A Soul's Tragedy,' 'A Fire from Hell.' The first
essay and the two last — these last especially — were
hailed as masterpieces of analysis and criticism ; and
the volume, together with Euripides the Rationalist
and the essay on the Bacchants afterwards published,
has no doubt settled the main questions of Euripidean
interpretation for all time. The view propounded
of the origin of the Helen is, from its nature, not
such as could be more than suggested. The true
answer to the riddle may lie elsewhere, but even
if we remain unconvinced, and regard Verrall's
solution as no more than a clever guess (which
would be to do it great injustice), we are far from
regretting that the essay was written. There is the
expected originality in the way in which the whole
problem is handled, the familiar but always astonish-
ing 'ingenuity,' with humour, fancy, playfulness, wit,
Memoir Ixix
tout ce quil y a de plus Verrallesque, — in a word,
Verrall in his lighter vein at his very best. The
following passage gives one of the many reasons
which compel him to regard the play as a jest.
Whether the cardinal miracle of the phantom Helen and
its astounding disappearance could by any treatment be made
credible to the imagination, we need not speculatively enquire.
What is certain is, that Euripides does not so treat it. Never
for an instant do the personages of the drama exhibit the
sort of emotion which such an event must be expected to
excite. They neither speak nor behave as if it were real.
A single quotation will settle the point. Where then is the
evil thing which was sent to Troy instead of you ? asks
Theoclymenus of Helen when he has been informed that
Menelaus has died at sea. The cloud-image, yoti mean, she
answers ; // vanished into air. Ah Priam ! sighs the amiable
prince, and ah Troy town, destroyed for nought I — and then
without another word on the subject they settle the details
of a funeral ceremony for Menelaus. We do no disrespect
to the author of such a dialogue, but conceive on the
contrary that we are following his clear direction, when we
say that it recalls not even the midsummer night's dream,
but another famous dream, which I need not specify, in
which the cat asks what became of the baby. ' It turned
into a pig.' ' I thought it would,' says the cat, and closes
the incident by vanishing, (p. 46.)
The following, from 'A Soul's Tragedy,' is a
remarkable piece of writing, independently of its
bearing on the play.
But among the conceivable factors of legend, among the
many ways in which things might come to be believed though
they never happened at all, or at any rate not as they were
related, there was one upon which Euripides, whether guided
or not by any predecessor, had meditated, as a tragedian,
e2
Ixx Memoir
with special and specially justifiable interest. That the topic
of madness and mental aberration was attractive to him, is
noted by ancient critics, and is indeed obvious.... [Illustrations
are here given from various plays.]
These, however, were but steps on the road. It is in
the Heracles that this conception is applied on the largest
scale, with most skill, with most insight, and most profoundly
tragic effect. For power, for truth, for poignancy, for depth
of penetration into the nature and history of man, this picture
of the Hellenic hero may be matched against anything in
art.
Although both in fact and in fiction madness is most
commonly associated with crime, this conjunction is neither
the only one in which mental extravagance is actually found,
nor that in which it may with most profit be studied and
depicted. Great hearts, as well as great wits, are to madness
near allied ; and among the consecrated benefactors of man-
kind there are perhaps few whose intellectual constitution
appears to have been particularly sane, while in many the
vigour of delusion has been proportional to the general
strength of the faculties and character, Euripides needed
not to look beyond the market-place of Athens for a
personality scarcely more distinguished from the mass by
acuteness and benevolence than by eccentricity of spiritual
imagination. Nor are these higher types of aberration
exempt, any more than the vulgar sort, from fluctuation
and intermittence. The madman of genius or virtue may
swing, like another, between sanity and insanity, and may
be great in both. Now let us suppose (and the supposition
is surely entertainable) that in the dark ages of superstition
in the very dawn of civilized life and intelligent speculation,
there arose a hero physically, mentally, and morally far
superior to his contemporaries, but curst from his birth with
a taint in his blood, a recurrent and progressive malady of
the brain. Let such an one, in ardent and solitary medita-
tion, have so far purged his notions of man and God from
the grossness and barbarity around him, as to grasp at least
Memoir Ixxi
in vision the hint of philosophies still unbuilt, the principles
of creeds and religions long after to be preached and estab-
lished. All this has been achieved by many a 'madman,'
whose thoughts, by the favour of circumstances, have passed
into circulation and are famous to this day; and doubtless
(as Euripides justly divined) it has also been achieved by
many and many another, whose voice was not heard nor
even raised, and whose meditation effected nothing but the
uplifting of his own heart and the ennobling of his own life.
Let our hero have done his duty faithfully up to and beyond
the demand and standard of the time, loving his home
and family, devoted in friendship, fighting gallantly and
victoriously for the little struggling community to which he
belonged. Let him have lent his services without stint to
the largest and most beneficial enterprises which the state of
things presented, to penetrate as pioneer the uncleared and
unknown waste, peopled in reality by savage beasts and men,
and supposed to be the haunt of monsters yet more terrible.
By the vulgar herd, nay, even by his nearest and dearest,
the source and nature of his greatness will be ignorantly
misconceived, and most of all by those who admire most.
On all sides he will hear his praises translated into language
which he loathes and contemns. His superiority to others
will be explained by the fiction of a divine parentage, which
to his better thoughts will seem a revolting blasphemy. His
genuine achievements will be enlarged and travestied by a
huge appendix of incongruous falsehood. And worst of all,
because of that taint in his blood, because he is not only
inspired but also, in the plain and gross sense of the word,
mad, because he has his hours of darkness as well as his
hours of illumination, he himself will sometimes lend his
authority to confirm the tales which he abhors, will repeat
the abominable nonsense with which his ears are fed, pro-
claiming himself that which he knows he is not, and painting
the good deeds of which he is proud, with the crude,
disgusting colours of folly and misbelief. In process of
time he will become aware that he does these things.
Ixxii Memoir
Long before anyone else, he will know how it is with him.
Self-hatred and self-suspicion will aggravate the inner mischief
from which they spring. And at last, upon the occasion of
some special excitement, in a few moments and without any
effective warning, the thin partition of his brain will break,
and a burst of cruel fury will exhibit the benefactor of
humanity, for some horrible hours, in the secondary but
not less genuine character of a fiend. Such is the Heracles
of Euripides, (p. 139.)
As a constructive study in the psychology of madness,
based not upon observation but on intuition, and for
sheer eloquence, the passage stirs in me a greater
admiration than I dare express.
In 1 9 10 was published The Bacchants of Euri-
pides, a volume which contains seven other essays
besides that which gives its name to it. The
essay on the Bacchae is a worthy companion of
those on Euripides previously published, both in
power of analysis and in literary grace and vigour.
But it was much more than a mere addition to its
predecessors ; it formed the indispensable completion
of the work which Verrall purposed to do in connexion
with the poet. Other remaining plays could easily
be brought into line by application of the principles
of interpretation already laid down, but in the Bacchae
the miraculous, or seemingly miraculous, appears not
in a detachable prologue or finale, but interwoven
with the whole action of the play. What counten-
ance, if any, Euripides intended to give to the cult
of Dionysus, had long been a matter of debate with
scholars ; to Verrall the question naturally presented
itself in another form. What puzzled him was the
Memoir Ixxiii
presence of the miraculous element at all, and its
contradiction of the poet's practice in other plays
offered a problem which he had long felt demanded
solution before he could himself consider his views
to be securely established. After much pondering
this last riddle was guessed, and with the discovery
that in the Bacchae the miraculous was after all
intended to be no more than clever wizardry or
the familiar exaggeration of hearsay, his last difficulty
was removed, and the rationalistic interpretation of
the Euripidean drama was rounded off into a har-
monious whole.
As a critic Verrall possessed certain qualities of
mind which gave his work a peculiar differentia.
In their combination and in the degree of their
development, so far as I am aware, he stands alone.
Perhaps the most distinguishing mark of his genius
was his power of reconstructing his author. I do
not mean his author's works, nor his author as a
writer, but as a man. In the case of modern or
even ancient writers, if a moderate amount of
biographical information is available, such recon-
struction is not difficult, and the thing has often
been admirably done ; but when this information
is wanting or negligible in quantity, as in the case
of Aeschylus and Euripides, the task is of an
altogether different nature. Verrall's rare insight
and inductive powers, brought to bear on little
more than the text of these authors (on no more
in the case of Aeschylus), enabled him to trace the
workings of their minds as it were from within, and
Ixxiv Memoir
so to embody with some measure of completeness
the Hving, thinking man behind. He seemed to
know them as one knows a personal friend, the
natural current of whose thoughts one can in given
circumstances divine, and of whom one can affirm
with some certainty (as in deciphering, say an
illegible passage in a letter) that he would, or would
not, have written this or that. To this power of
psychological reconstruction we are indebted for a
more profound and comprehensive conception of
the genius and aims of Aeschylus, and for a pre-
sentation of Euripides which we can well believe
touches close upon the truth. In the long monologue
put into the poet's mouth in Etiripides the Rationalist
(pp. io6 ff.) we feel that we are listening to a living
man, in comparison with whom the personages in
Landor's Imaginary Conversations are hardly more
than marionettes. Clever, again, as is the New
Lucian of H. D. Traill, the author has all the
advantage that comes from the selection of modern
characters and well-known public men. Verrall did
better with much less promising material. It was
because Euripides had come to be alive to him, no
less than by critical observation directed to the play,
that he was led to his wonderful interpretation of
the Heracles : if this man handled the story at all,
this is the Heracles he would have pourtrayed, and
being Euripides, he could not have pourtrayed any
other. Indeed, it was, I think, because Verrall thus
realised Aeschylus and Euripides as living men that
he bestowed so much loving labour on their works.
Memoir Ixxv
Though the aims of the two poets were so widely
divergent, he felt a sympathy, at once moral and
intellectual, with both ; he came to know each as
being, according to his lights, a man of noble
purpose, worthy. In the art of Sophocles, great
as was of course his admiration of it, his interest
was of a totally different kind, and comparatively
weak. Even if the field had not been already
occupied by the great scholar whose genius was
so completely in sympathy with that of the poet,
he would never, I believe, have been drawn to
producing an edition of Sophocles. The mere
artist,
eu/coA09 [L^v evoao , euACoAo? o e/cet,
awakened no enthusiasm ; there was no man to be
discovered behind the artist, or at any rate no man
whom Verrall would greatly care to know.
Another predominant trait, in respect of which
I find it difficult to imagine that any man could
surpass him, was his extraordinary intellectual alert-
ness. In the ordinary relations of life it was a
characteristic which could not escape notice, so that
if Athena (not she of the /on) had chanced to
meet him on one of the many likely occasions that
Cambridge society affords, she could hardly have
helped quoting herself in gracious approbation,
ovveK iiT'qTy)^ iaori kol dy^^tVoo? /cat e)(€(f)poiV.
The company would have agreed that each epithet
was deserved, but they would have had little doubt
that it was the ay^ivoLa which brought the line to
Ixxvi Memoir
her mind. Of his published work it is one of the
most conspicuous features. He seems, as he read,
to have missed nothing. No point, unnoticed by
others, but which the author must have intended,
would pass unobserved (there is a striking instance
in the note on vTrriacr/xa at Aesch. Ag. 1263); no
text which obscured such a point would remain
unchallenged. That he was always right, his most
whole-hearted admirers would be the last to contend;
but it is his distinction, that in the whole range of
classical literature and elsewhere he saw much, very
much, that predecessors and contemporaries alike
had failed to see. Few men can have raised or
discussed more problems in familiar fields, and few
can have contributed more to their solution ; and if
we cannot always discern what he discerned, well —
the eye can only see what it has the power of seeing.
Thus a reviewer failed to see, even when it was
pointed out, the effect produced by the turn which
Agamemnon gives to his term of address at Ag. 905.
The following note left him unconvinced.
Ai^Sas -yc'vceXov : a significant opening. Clytaemnestra was
the daughter of one false wife and the sister of another, and
her husband, who calls her by no other name or title but
this, — neither ' wife,' nor * queen,' nor even ' Clytaemnestra,'
— gives her to know that he has not forgotten the fact.
This would make our Aeschylus too clever !
Problems were indeed a meat that Verrall's soul
loved ; and if it were the modern fashion to give
additional surnames to others than sailors and
soldiers, in commemoration of notable achievement,
Memoir Ixxvii
one might venture to affirm that he would be known
to posterity as Problematicus. Leaving out of ac-
count the minor questions which confront the editor
of an ancient author at every turn, more than half
of Verrall's published work, which runs to twelve
volumes, is addressed to the solution of problems
properly so called. No less than five, from Greek,
Roman, and Italian literature, are discussed in the
present volume. The whole of his work on Euri-
pides, excepting the Medea, centres round one great
problem, and we must include under this head the
Studies in Horace, and the Introductions to the
Septem, Agamemnon, and Eumenides. In The
Bacchants of Euripides we have essays on The
First Homer, the Mutiny of Idomeneus (a little
discovery of his own), the Death of Cyrsilus, and
Christ before Herod ; and a problem is the starting
point of half the papers now republished in Collected
Classical Studies. The variety exhibited by the list
is significant : whenever and wherever in his reading
he came across what in the language of private life
he called a ' boggle,' he could not rest until he had
made an eflfort to get to the bottom of it. The
origin of the essay on Christ before Herod is typical.
He happened, during a holiday in the country, to
be reading Loisy's ponderous tomes on the Synoptic
Gospels, and discovered that a difficulty of some
importance had been raised, but not solved, in
connexion with the two Trials. The subject was
entirely outside his usual range, but as he said to me
with a whimsical air of apology 'there was the boggle.'
Ixxviii Memoir
Another faculty he possessed, which must have
been observed by all who knew him or have read
his books : he had the genuine dramatic instinct.
He showed it in the way in which he narrated a
story or anecdote in conversation, in his lectures
(it is noted in Mr Cornford's account), and in the
form in which he cast his essays and many an
editorial note. He does not jump to his point,
but skilfully prepares the ground piece by piece,
so that the reader shall grasp the situation as it
is in all its bearings ; and when expectation has
been sufficiently aroused, and the suspense long
enough maintained, then and not till then, he
launches his conclusion, with proportionately telling-
effect. In his editorial work the faculty proved of
special service, and not only in the matter of verbal
interpretation. He never forgot — it seems odd to
have to note this — that a Greek play is a thing that
was once actually pei'-formed — a Bpafxa, and the
details of the stage-management were always present
to his mind. Yet, as he found it necessary to ob-
serve, the ancient dramas have been read and
interpreted as though a dramatist who wished to
produce a play on the stage, had nothing more to
do than write his dialogue and place the MS., without
explanation, in the hands of the actors. Even with
our own dramatists readers would fare ill if the
printed book contained no more than the words
to be spoken ; and how much turns on effective
stage-management, and sometimes solely on that,
needs no saying. In numerous passages of the
Memoir Ixxix
plays with which he has dealt, Verrall has saved
us from error, or enlarged our understanding of
the scene, simply by supplying necessary stage-
directions. He has pointed out how much could
and must have been expressed on the Attic stage
by grouping, by gesture, by a mere change of
attitude or position, by intonation and emphasis.
Evidence of yet another fruitful gift is given
by five essays in the volume of Collected Classical
Studies, and by many an occasional observation in
other parts of his works. He had a peculiarly
delicate ear for rhythm. The essays referred to
are that on Eur. Andr. 655 f.. The Latin Sapphic,
The Metrical Division of Compound Words in
Virgil, A Metrical Jest of Catullus, and On a
Metrical Practice in Greek Tragedy. Each was
born of that unerring instinct for musical balance
in language which is illustrated by many passages
in his own prose and verse, and each is a master-
piece of constructive criticism. So imperfectly
were the rules for the senarius of Greek Tragedy
understood, that though the two lines in the
Andromache had been suspected, no one had
thought of rejecting them decisively, as Verrall
does, on metrical grounds alone, and the essay
forms a valuable guide for numerous other passages.
The conclusions arrived at in the two last essays
must have awakened some dismay in the hearts of
not a few who had found delight in writing Latin
hendecasyllabics or Greek iambics, and if any such
composers have not read them, they would do well
Ixxx Memoir
to let their Muse rest until they have ! For they
will find — what they will find. Besides these essays
he wrote the articles on metre in the Companion to
Greek Studies and the Companion to Latin Studies.
To the latter he also contributed the article on
Latin Literature to the end of the Augustan period.
Some original and valuable observations on rhythm
were also made in the Clark lectures.
Mr Cornford, who gives expression to the
universal verdict, has spoken of Verrall's excep-
tionally stimulating power as a lecturer. The same
quality is found in his books. It is not merely
that he writes with conviction, as many others have
written : he does this, and it is part of the secret of
his force, but he does more. Some authors write
as though chiefly anxious to maintain an opinion,
for their own satisfaction, as it were. Most write
as though their business were done, as perhaps it
is, when they have delivered their message, — with
an air of indifference as to whether the message be
accepted or not. Verrall wrote as one concerned
to convince, to convince you, the individual reader.
There is a personal air about it all. It is as though
he began by saying, ' Here is something that interests
me immensely, and I want to interest you too.' He
wishes to do his reader a friendly service : ' Let me
introduce you to Euripides ; you will find him worth
knowing.' It is an effect which few writers, and
very few editors of the ancient classics, manage to
produce. In Verrall's case, while even those who
have not known him are sensible of the impression,
Memoir Ixxxi
with those who have, it is reinforced by a pecuUar
experience. He wrote easily and naturally, and so
vividly does the literary style represent the man,
that sentence after sentence produces the illusion
of hearing the written words spoken by the living
voice, with all the familiar intonations. Vitality of
this kind stimulates, and not merely with the stimulus
of awakened interest and the sense of refreshment.
It encourages, and has already encouraged not a
few, to fresh study on the same lines. For Verrall
never left the impression that he had exhausted his
subject, but rather that there was more left to be
done, that the familiar ground is still full of buried
treasure.
The two following extracts from obituary notices
refer to his work on Euripides.
It is largely due to Dr Verrall that the reputation of
Euripides has been rehabilitated ; at present owing to his
work and to Professor Murray's translations, the last of the
three dramatists occupies in the esteem both of the critics
and the public a position which, if foreshadowed by Milton's
view of him, would have been surprising to many of his
readers in the middle of the last century. {The Times,
June 19, 1912.)
The scholars had long considered Euripides' plays un-
satisfactory ; but by riveting their attention upon details they
were able to hush the fact up, and continued in a mechanical
way to acclaim him the equal of Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Verrall's first business was to tear aside the veil, and to show
that, if the scholars' view of such a play as Ion was correct,
honest opinion must pronounce its author hopelessly stupid
and incompetent. This, however, led to a dilemma, for such
excellent judges as Aristotle had a very different opinion of
Ixxxii Memoir
Euripides. It is well known how. . . Verrall proposed a solution
for this dilemma. Whether it is the correct one is a highly
controversial question ; but it may be asserted with some
confidence that the correct solution will be found upon
Verrall's lines. In any case the dilemma itself remains
and can no longer be shirked; and it was this power of
forcing a clear-cut intellectual problem upon those who
would always prefer not to face one that was the great merit
of his mind. {Spectator, June 22, 191 2.)
I do not quite understand the writer in the
Spectator when he says that the correct solution
of the Euripidean dilemma will at any rate * be
found upon Verrall's lines.' Setting aside certain
professedly conjectural suggestions duly marked as
such, and which do not concern the main question,
Verrall's ' lines ' are not speculative but logical, and
it is difficult to see how they could lead to any but
his own conclusions. That these conclusions should
not yet be generally accepted, need cause no surprise,
nor should the fact tempt younger students to mis-
trust their own unbiassed judgement of Verrall's
arguments. Busy men read books with haste, and
so may fail to appreciate their force, and towards
middle age most men notoriously find it difficult
to change their views on any subject. No doubt,
also, there will always be those who cannot see that
a door must be either open or shut. Moreover, we
British cherish an inborn mistrust of all subtlety
of mind and of some forms of originality, and a
writer who combines these qualities with what we
call 'brilliance,' is likely to find his very merits a
bar to the ready acceptance of his message. If
Memoir Ixxxiii
Verrall had written in France for French scholars,
their only hesitation, I fancy, would have been as
to which to do first — kiss him on both cheeks or
lay wreaths on their copies of Euripides. There
is a question which we ought to ask ourselves, and
which some of us have not asked, and it is this.
If the ancient and (may I add ?) correct estimate
of Euripides as a consummate artist was ever to
be recovered, was this recovery likely to be made,
considering the conditions of the problem, except in
a manner at once daring, original, subtle, brilliant,
startling or even shocking ? Was the riddle for
any chance guesser ? Was less than a Verrall
needed, and were zve not to expect to be astonished
by the answer f Some critics would seem hardly to
have realised the magnitude of the issue, and the
fundamental change of view which any solution of
the question must involve. The very strangeness
of the solution of such a problem is in its favour, so
long as the steps by which it is reached are logically
sound, — as Verrall's are. The Spectator also speaks
of the correctness of Verrall's solution as ' a highly
controversial question.' This may be so, but one
looks in vain for the controversy. It is now twenty-
three years ago that Verrall first blew his trumpet
and entered the lists on Ion, and three times since
he has sounded his challenge and thrown down his
glove. And all have praised his high port, and the
beauty of his armour, and the skill of his manege,
and some have muttered that bold though he be
and ful of sotyl devys, yet are there many weak
V. L. E. /
Ixxxiv Memoir
joints in the rich harness, and that his is not to
be the victor's garland, but no man has taken up
Verrall's gage. Meanwhile the onlookers are
drawing their own conclusions, and for myself I
take leave to express without reserve the conviction
that before this generation has passed away, Verrall's
view of the work of Euripides will be the accepted
view, and that mere murmurs of disapproval will
cease to command attention.
From 1904 the arthritis remained practically
stationary for about five years. He could walk
with assistance, and save for this and some other
slight physical disabilities, lived the usual life, doing
his ordinary work, and going out in his trailer or
for drives in a carriage. Journeys by train were
accomplished without great inconvenience, and
during this period he paid many visits to friends,
and travelled to various places to lecture. It may
be interesting to note that Aristophanes on Teftnyson
in the present volume originally formed part of a
lecture delivered at Newcastle.
In the October term of 1909, besides the ' historic
lecture ' on the Wasps already mentioned, and the
Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, the substance
of which appears in the present volume in the essay
entitled The Prose of Sir Walter Scott, Verrall
delivered also the first six of the Clark Lectures.
Six more were given in the following term. To
illustrate his main theme, the Victorian Poets, the
following authors were selected : Tennyson, Robert
Memoir Ixxxv
Browning, Matthew Arnold, D. G. Rossetti, and
Swinburne. The lectures were given in a large
double lecture-room at Trinity, accommodating
about 200 people. The room was always filled
to its utmost capacity, and the men among the
audience greatly outnumbered the women, 'a fact
most rare in the history of Cambridge lectures on
English Literature or on Art.' A characteristic
feature of the lectures, to which he himself attached
great importance, was the reading aloud of a con-
siderable number of selected passages. I quote the
following from the Cambridge Review : —
Dr Verrall's method of reading is unique and over-
whelming. His voice is under the most wonderful control
for shades of pitch, volume, and expression. In Greek we
have long known it, we know it in English now. Dr Verrall's
reading gives the hearer something, many things, that no
criticism in the world, not even Dr Verrall's own, could
ever give. The poems are suddenly alive. No one who
heard 'Blush it thro' the East,'... will ever forget the
experience.
It is to be regretted that these lectures are preserved
only in the memories of those who had the good
fortune to hear them, but from their very nature
they were incapable of being committed to paper.
Verrall himself would make no attempt to give
them to the press, for he held that in such lectures
the living voice must always play an indispensable
part. This opinion he expressed in the Inaugural
Lecture delivered from the English Chair in May,
191 1. In a report of that lecture the Cambridge
/2
Ixxxvi Memoir
Review writes of him as speaking to the following
effect : —
All languages, and English more than most, depend
largely upon effects of stress and intonation, which are
incapable of reproduction in writing, but in conveying which
the viva vox can be of great service : an instance is the
much quoted and much misunderstood line, ' We needs
must love the highest when we see it.' Especially is this
the case with poetry written in an elaborate and difficult
metre — for instance, Shelley's Ode to the Skylark.
The appointment to the King Edward VII
Professorship of English Literature, which is made
by the Crown, came in February, 191 1. The chair
was founded at the end of 19 10 by Sir Harold
Harms worth, who expressed a desire that in pro-
moting the study of ' English Literature from the
days of Chaucer onwards,' the Professor should
follow * literary and critical rather than philological
and linguistic lines.' Verrall was the first holder
of the office. Before accepting the appointment
he consulted his medical man and a few friends.
There had been some increase of the arthritis in
the spring of 19 10, and he was carried upstairs to
the two last Clark lectures, after which time he
never again walked. In the summer, however,
there had been a satisfactory recovery, and the
medical verdict was that there was no apparent
reason why the present condition might not be
maintained for a considerable time. His friends
were unanimous in urging acceptance of the ap-
pointment. The universal opinion was indeed
Memoir Ixxxvii
expressed by the Master of Trinity at the * Annual
Gathering ' soon after Verrall had passed away ;
he said that no one who had heard the Clark
Lectures could doubt that Verrall was the proper
person to be the first King Edward VII Professor.
Twelve lectures on Dryden, the only course de-
livered, were given from the English chair in the
October term of the same year. They were marked
by the expected originality and freshness of treat-
ment, and though the difficulties of delivery were
considerable, showed no least falling off in power.
The notes for the lectures have fortunately been pre-
served, and these are so full and in such form as to
be suitable for publication. It is hoped that they
may soon appear.
All who have known both Verrall and his books,
agree upon one point, that the fascination of his
literary work, great as it is, was surpassed by his
personal charm. The following is a sample of many
letters received by Mrs Verrall :
Your dear husband had for me an irresistible attraction
from the first day I got to know him when I was an under-
graduate, and the attraction which he exercised on me was
only that which he had for everyone who knew him.... I have
never forgotten, nor can I ever forget, his kindness to me in
the early years after I had taken my degree.
It was my own happiness to enjoy the closest
intimacy with him in a friendship extending over
half a life-time, and perhaps no man knew him
better. What such a friendship was to me would
Ixxxviii Memoir
add to his praise if it could be told, but I can only
record here that during all the time that I knew
him, I was conscious of an ever increasing admira-
tion and affection. To know him was to like him,
to know him well was to love him, — and for all
that he was. One did not have to make allowances,
for there were no contradictions in the character, it
was rounded, harmonious, beautiful. The extra-
ordinary subtlety of the mind was united to a nature
of rare simplicity, utterly devoid of ostentation and
pretence, and without the least tinge of vanity. He
never even exhibited such a modest pride in his
achievements and distinctions as would have needed
no excusing, and I am sure he did not feel it.
When he was elected to the English Chair, his
crowning University distinction, his one thought
was of the things he would now have an opportunity
of saying. He was also transparently sincere, and
few can have known a man so completely unselfish.
Easily roused though he was even to excitement
when holding forth on some matter which greatly
interested him, his usual manner was extremely
gentle, the natural outcome of a kindly and affec-
tionate disposition. His sympathy was instinctive
and peculiarly real, and his interest in the fortunes
of his friends seemed greater than in his own, if
indeed they had not become his own. If you
went to his house on a visit, he would inquire par-
ticularly about each member of the family, asking
for details, and this not out of mere politeness, but
because he wanted to know. Even in the case of
Memoir Ixxxix
strangers or those who were no more than acquaint-
ances, news of a misfortune touched a chord of real
feeling, and as his swift imagination vividly pictured
how things must be with the sufferers, he actually
experienced, I believe, something like what he
would have felt had the trouble fallen upon himself.
It was a literal cru/u-Tra^eta. I have myself observed
this many times, and instances will occur to others
who knew him. Thus, in a letter written home
from Chamonix, there is a quite long account of the
sorrows of a poor man who had lost a mule ; and
another letter written from Normandy depicts the
desolation of a ' personally conducted ' party of
tourists who had missed connexion with their con-
ductor, with almost as much concern as if he had
been one of them. A letter from Strathpeffer tells
how sorry he was for a young bride who was being
married, 'Scottish fashion,' in a sort of open shelter
in the hotel garden, in full view of the residents,
and how relieved he was to learn afterwards that
she ' didn't mind a bit ! ' His love for children was
uncommon in a man. He understood them and
their ways, and found great delight in watching and
talking to them. How generous he was of his time
and of his counsel, many an old pupil has testified, —
how he would 'put himself out ' to do a man a kind-
ness. Thus one correspondent recalls an occasion
when ' he carried me off to Brighton with him for a
change, when I was in bad health before my Tripos';
and few of his friends are not his debtors for some
service out of the common.
xc Memoir
Not the least of his charms was his exquisite
courtesy, which was not, as it is so often, just a
veneer, but natural and spontaneous. No doubt it
was the mark of sincerity which made the following
incident live in the mind of the writer.
...I have a very vivid recollection of the first time
Dr Verrall spoke to me. It was in my second year, and we
had rooms on adjoining staircases and shared the same bed-
maker. One day he was wanting to call Mrs Chapman and
climbed the stairs to the first storey. I was just behind, on
the way to my rooms, and as his illness was then beginning
to take a firm hold upon him, I was kept waiting a little on
the staircase. As I passed him at the first storey landing, he
turned and apologized for delaying me, and such courtesy to
an insignificant strange youth touched me deeply....
One can imagine the winning smile with which
the apology was made. It was by these and a
dozen other delightful traits that Verrall won men's
hearts ; but there was more still behind, for all were
combined in a character of singular rectitude and
rare purity of mind and heart.
As Mr Marsh has said, he was a good judge of
character. Yet he was never a harsh one ; his
broad sympathies were always ready with an excuse
for human weakness. But he had more than the
insight needed to make a judge of character ; he
had the quality of constructive psychological intui-
tion which goes to the making of men of the type
of Robert Browning, and I have often thought that
it needed but a touch to transform him into some-
thing out of the common as a dramatist or poet.
How near he came to this may be seen if, for a
Memoir xci
moment, we combine in one view his gift of musical
verse and his instinct for the dramatic with the
masterly pourtrayal of the Euripidean Heracles.
'His presence, his voice' (to quote Professor
Gilbert Murray) 'were full of inspiration'; and this
was true even of the latter years, when the body
was a wreck and the voice had lost something of its
timbre. There was still the fine head and face — the
broad full brow, the harmonious contour of the
cheeks and well-proportioned nose, the kindly lines
about the mouth, and the large, dark, expressive
eyes that spoke with no less eloquence than the
compelling voice. During the later lectures he
said, ' I could lecture as well as ever, if they would
only get my tiresome voice right.' Nor was this
far from the truth. So long as the voice, with its
clear articulation, and tones according instinctively
with his theme, responded not inadequately, one
could not fail to feel, through eye and ear, that
quickening effect which is justly called inspiration.
Verrall was not a wide reader, as reading goes
among scholars to whom we apply the term 'learned';
but he was something better than 'learned,' and he
turned his reading, which was really wide, to better
account than many a ' learned ' scholar has done.
For mere information he did not care overmuch, he
preferred multum legere potius quam multa. What
he asked for from serious books was nutriment,
and this he got better (if I may pursue the horrid
metaphor) by repeated mastication than by the
hasty omnivorous feeding which makes assimilation
xcii Memoir
impossible. Certain books and authors he read over
and over again until they became part of him, bone
of his bone. Among these, besides some of the
English poets, were Shakspeare, Dante, Dryden,
Macaulay, Thackeray, Fielding, Scott, Louis Steven-
son, Jane Austen, The Egoist, Racine, Bossuet and
other famous French orators, on which last he lec-
tured in early days at Newnham. Jane Austen was
an especial favourite, and it is characteristic that in
her works he found abundant room for emendation
in the countless printers' errors perpetuated from
the first editions to the latest. He published an
article on them in the Cambridge Observer {iS>g2)^
and two others reprinted in Tke Book of the Cam-
bridge Review. While some of the corrections are
obvious enough, many are emphatically not, but
needed — well, a Verrall. I regret that there is not
room to quote the note on 'his direct holidays might
with justice be instantly given to ' [his friends at
Mansfield Park] {M. P. vol. i, p. 240, Brimley
Johnson's edition). The correction derelict is typical
of his skill in this line, and the arguments by which
it is justified are another illustration of his remark-
able power of reconstructing for himself an author's
mind. Shakspeare and Macaulay 's History were
never out of his hands for long, and I believe he
had read the history from end to end some half-a-
dozen times, and many parts much oftener. He
had in fact prepared for delivery from the profes-
sorial chair lectures on Macaulay 's works considered
from a literary point of view. Shakspeare, I suppose,.
Memoir xciii
he knew as some of us know, or once knew, our
Latin Grammar jingles. His memory, and espe-
cially his verbal memory, was extraordinary. Scores
of times I have heard him quote the very words of
long sentences from prose authors, and long passages
from poets ancient and modern. Verse in particular
he seemed simply unable to forget, and he would
often repeat stanzas which he had read only once.
There seemed to be nothing for which he could not
instantly find a quotation that fitted, and only a
week or two before we were to hear the loved voice
no more, something — a mere word — called up a
stanza of Thackeray's verse which he had not seen
for years. He ' boggled ' over the ending of one
line, but the rest he declared was correct.
For dogmatism in every form Verrall had a
strong dislike, and in the matter of religious faith
the dogmas of orthodoxy and heterodoxy alike
failed to appeal to him. He believed that the truth
lay deeper. At the same time his reverence for
religion was deep, and the life — for ' all that is true,
all that is noble, all that is right, all that is pure, all
that is loved, all that is fair-speaking, be there
virtue, be there praise ' — was such as many who
hold a more definite faith might look upon with
self-reproach. His was the anima naturaliter Chris-
tiana. In politics, in which his interest was keen,
he was a strong Liberal, stronger than many friends
whose opinions differed, were aware ; for he hated
controversy, and while he delighted in a political
talk with those who thought with him, he never
xciv Memoir
himself introduced the subject with those who did
not, though he would listen with genuine interest to
their expositions of the adverse view. His liberalism
was of the true sort. G. K. Chesterton writes, in
his book on Browning, —
A Liberal may be defined approximately as a man who,
if he could by waving his hand in a dark room stop the
mouths of all the deceivers of mankind for ever, would not
wave his hand. Browning was a Liberal in this sense.
And such a Liberal was Verrall, as he himself used
to say. Miss Jane Harrison tells a confirmatory
story : —
I remember saying to him apropos of some scholar from
, whom I differed, 'It is intolerable that people should be
f allowed to go on talking and teaching such nonsense ! ' He
screwed up a whimsical eye at me and said, 'AH right, let's
^ have back the Inquisition.'
He believed in thrashing out things, everything,
by the freest and fullest discussion, for only so, he
thought, could the ultimate truth, for which he cared
supremely, be attained. No established view or
theory, on any subject, had for him any claim to
acceptance just because it was established ; all must
stand the test of examination, and every side must
be heard. He would encourage every investigation
which gave promise of tangible fruit. Thus he
took the liveliest interest in Mrs Verrall's work in
psychical research, and in the work of the Society
generally, and himself originated and pursued one
most valuable and interesting telepathic experiment,
the famous one on [xopottoXov e? 'Aa>. And he was
Memoir xcv
more than content that his daughter should devote
her rare intellectual powers, as she has done, to
work in the same scientific field.
To his predominant enthusiasm for literature he
added a love of art in any shape, for he had the
artist's instinct, and the artist's eye readily respon-
sive to beauty of colour or of form. Architecture
in particular appealed to him. His knowledge of
its principles and developments was considerable,
and probably few men were better acquaintanced
with the great European churches, either through
having visited them or through books and photo-
graphs. Music gave him intense delight. He felt
it, like all true lovers, in his very marrow. As
he listened, he lived in it, totally absorbed, alert
to every refinement of expression and responding
to every mood. He was a regular attendant at
concerts in Cambridge until the physical difficulties
made this impossible, and in the last months the
skilful and sympathetic interpretations of a friend
who used to come and play the pianoforte to him,
were among the welcome solaces of that sad time.
He loved nature in every aspect. A cycling or
walking tour, in England or abroad, was a source
of perpetual enjoyment, for he missed no beauty of
the scene, however simple, no transforming effect
of light. The Alps, Swiss or Italian, he of course
loved best, though alas ! he was no mountaineer ;
the most moderate precipice made him giddy. The
resolute spirit did its best to master the flesh, but it
was of little use, and the passage of such places, if
xcvi Memoir
accomplished, was always attended with anguish.
It seems to have been the only thing for which the
dear head was no good at all.
It is needless to add that he was, to an unusual
degree, a man of many friends, — real friends, who
were much to him, as he to them.
Of his conversation Professor Murray writes in
the Oxford Review : —
His conversation, even at a time when he had been
crippled by years of arthritis and must have suffered great
pain, was indescribably brilliant, ranging over politics, lite-
rature, classical learning, and often taking refuge in pure
nonsense. Seldom indeed can so keen a wit have been so
utterly devoid of malice. In a friendship of about twenty
years I never heard him tell a story to any one's discredit,
nor even defend himself against criticism with any resent-
ment or bitterness. I remember nothing worse than a genial
' W is an owl,' and then attention to business. His
style in controversy was courtesy itself. He could make an
opponent feel ridiculous and even — experto crede — laugh at
himself; but there was not a word to resent, not a phrase
that left a feeling of unfair treatment. It is perhaps owing to
these qualities, combined with his unflagging love of justice
and the extraordinary courage with which he rose superior to
his long and terrible illness, that Verrall has left upon those
who knew him well an impression of greatness and of
nobility, far outweighing the normal admiration due to a
famous scholar.
It remains to say something more of a trait
touched upon in this extract and also in the
obituary notice in the Spectator, from which the
following is taken.
Though his body was crippled by a painful illness, his
mind never seemed subdued by it. It was always active and
Memoir xcvii
at times irrepressibly gay, as willing to discuss The Mystery
of the Yellow Room as a Pindaric ode, ready to break out
into a snatch from the Mikado or a tirade from Andro-
maque.
The trait I mean is one that is never absent from
a mental picture of the man we loved, — his natural
gaiety of heart and love of nonsense for its own
sake. His wit was always ready, as for instance
when, overhearing on a hot and smelly day in
Rome, some tourists asking for the Cloaca Maxima,
he quietly observed, ' I should rather have expected
them to ask for the Cloaca Minima \ ' Another
story, which I tell in Mr Marsh's words, shows his
power of extracting amusement from unpromising
materials. At a meeting of * revisers ' to the
O. and C. Board the Latin verse papers from Eton
were produced. ' Now for susurrusl' said Verrall.
' What do you mean ? ' asked a colleague. ' Why,
did you ever see a copy of Eton verses without
susurrus ? ' Then he looked at the English, and
gave up hope ; there seemed to be absolutely no
opening for susurrus. He went on sadly to read
the first copy till he came to a line in which 'And
universal silence reigned alone' was rendered by
nullusque susurrusl 'My point is completely estab-
lished!' he screamed. 'If there was any sound, it
was susurrus ; if there was no sound, there was
nullus susurrus ! U-u-ur ! '
But the joy of joys was his manner of reciting
humorous verse or pure nonsense, and to find (if it
was your first experience of him in this vein) that
xcviii Memoir
he took as intimate a delight in it as you did your-
self. ' Tragedy ! ' he once said to me suddenly in
the early days ; ' Did you ever hear this ? ' And
he proceeded to chant slowly, in rolling, melancholy
tones, a once famous song of Toole's (metre strictly
dactylic) —
A norrible tale I 'ave to tell
Of the sad di-sasters that befell
A noble family as once re-sided
In the very same thoroughfare as I did. (etc.)
Or it might be Dan Leno's parody of ' The Honey-
suckle and the Bee,' in which the Wasp vainly
makes love to a hard-boiled ^^^ : —
And what a silly wasp for 'just a word' to beg,
For you can^t get any sense out of a hard-boiled egg !
It is impossible to give any idea of what Mr Marsh
well calls ' the kind of augustness which remained
with him in all his wildest nonsense. He seemed
always to be a priest of fun, pouring it out with the
same power and authority with which he recited
the most magnificent poetry.' He seemed indeed
at such moments to be literally possessed by the
spirit of mirth, and it was enough ' to shake the
midriff of despair with laughter.' Scraps from the
Ingoldsby Legends would bubble up on the slightest
provocation, and it does me good to recall the tones
with which he would bring out such things as
She drank prussic acid without any water,
And died like a Duke and a Duchess's daughter !
Memoir xcix
Or
But is it O Sandissima she sings in dulcet tone,
Or Angels ever bright and fair ? — Ah no, it's Bobbing Joan !
Sometimes some musical rhythm running in his
head would seem to have touched the spring, as
when he would say without warning, —
The Callipyge 's injured behind,
The De' Medici 's injured before ;
And the Anadyomene 's injured in so many
Places, I think there's a score.
If not more.
Of her fingers and toes on the floor.
He was also a prolific inventor of extempore
comicalities in verse, and this not only in waking
moments. He said one morning, only four days
before the end, that between sleeping and waking
he had been fancying that Charles the First's
children were presenting a petition to Cromwell,
when he found what he used to call his ' head,' as
distinguished from himself (for such experiences
were not uncommon) saying —
And then this strange complaint the list of querimonies
led off:
'We can't get back our poor papa, they've been and cut
his head off.'
I wouldn't listen longer to these slangy little princes,
For when the language mocks the rank, the mental palate
winces.
As a jest of the Trapa irpoaBoKiav type, or any
type, the following dream is, I should suppose,
V. T.. E. g
\
c Mernoir
unequalled. It is of much older date than the
preceding. He dreamed he was in a train. The
train stopped at a station. Someone in the carriage
asked what place it was, and someone else said
Miletus. Verrall put his head out of the window
and saw close at hand a factory, on the blank wall
of which was painted in large letters
EPIC CYCLE WORKS, LIMITED.
What remains to tell may be told briefly, and
perhaps best so. Although, as has been said, there
was a satisfactory recovery after the illness in April
1 910, it would seem that the ground lost was never
completely recovered. In the late autumn he felt
the strain of a great anxiety, lasting for some weeks,
about the health of Henry Butcher, and Butcher's
death in December was a crushing blow. Never-
theless he gradually recovered his usual spirits, and
during the early summer was very well, all things
considered, and occupied himself in preparing the
professorial lectures. In August, however, there
was a grave illness, and though he was able to
deliver the English lectures in the October term,
and although, as those lectures show, the mental
vigour was in no way impaired, it was only too
clear that the bodily strength was steadily ebbing.
The next course of lectures, which was to deal
with Macaulay, was indeed prepared, but it was
found necessary to postpone their delivery. The
Memoir ci
May term was looked forward to, and there was
reasonable hope that he would then be able to
lecture ; but the following months brought no acces-
sion of strength, and the proposed May term lectures
were in consequence abandoned.
When, as was the case after the end of 191 1, he
ceased to go away from the house and garden, it
was a delight to him to be still kept in touch with
the outside world by more frequent visits from
friends, both from Cambridge and from a distance.
The visitors from the neighbourhood were arranged
for by a sort of rota for each week, and a few of the
most intimate, such as Mr Duff and Dr Parry, came
of course with special frequency. During these visits
he would talk with the old alertness and something
like the old vivacity ; and when at last talking
became difficult he would still take pleasure in
listening to the conversation of others. During all
this period his days were filled up with reading or
hearing books read to him. Nor were the books
selected light ones : the one in hand at the last was
Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellio7i.
Through all the fifteen years of his illness, he
never lost heart or interest. From the time when
the physical disabilities first became serious, there
was no repining, no complaint, no hint of rebellion.
Some momentary uneasiness might call forth just a
fretful word, but even this was extremely rare, —
and it was all. Each successive infirmity was ac-
cepted with calmness and patience, as a disagreeable
factor indeed, to be reckoned with and arranged
<?2
cii Memoir
for, but then as far as possible ignored. With a
resolution that never wavered, the unconquerable
spirit, unshaken and at peace within itself, insisted
on continuing to live its own separate life. Some
of his best literary work was done at times when
the least involuntary movement was attended with
pain and the general discomfort was continual ; and
he lectured when the hands could no longer turn
the leaves of a book or lift a glass of water. Years
of suffering failed to crush him, and what might
remain to be endured he faced without dismay.
A condition which would have dulled the intellect
and withered the heart of most men, would have
soured them and made them peevish or morose, left
that rare nature serene, interested, lovable, to the
last. It was wonderful and beautiful, but oh, the
pity of it !
The end came with some suddenness on June i8,
191 2. In the morning, after being carried down
into the study, he asked the day of the week, and
when told, said, 'Ah, Parry's coming.' He then
asked the day of the month, and on learning that it
was the i8th, said 'Wellington College Day.' At
half-past two the pure, noble, steadfast soul passed
peacefully to the larger life.
/
M. A. B.
>
i
w
Inscription on Memorial Tablet in Anteckapel
of Trinity College.
ARTVRVS WOOLLGAR
V E R R A L L
SOCIVS TVTOR PROFESSOR
LITTERIS ET ANTIQVIS ET NOVIS
TOTO ANIMO DEDITVS
IN COLLEGIO PER XXXV ANNOS LECTOR
MIRO ACVMINE MIRA ELOQVENTIA
AVDITORES TAMQVAM SIREN
DEVINXIT
IDEM SCRIPTIS SVIS
AESCHYLI ARTEM INLVSTRAVIT
EURIPIDIS FAMAM VINDICAVIT
DENIQVE IN ACADEMIA
LITTERARVM ANGLICARVM PROFESSOR
PRIMVS INSTITVTVS
MVNVS FELICITER VIX INCEPTVM
MORBI MORTISQVE NECESSITATE
DEPOSVIT.
IN HOC VIRO
SINGVLARES INGENII DOTES
COMMENDABAT MORVM SIMPLICITAS
COMMENDABAT EA FORTITVDO
QVA LONGOS CORPORIS DOLORES
SVI SEMPER IMMEMOR
AMICORVM MEMOR
INVICTO ANIMO PERPESSVS EST.
NATVS NON. FEBR. MDCCCLI
OBIIT A.D. XIV KAL. IVL. MCMXII.
COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS
delivered before the Academic Committee of the Royal Society
of Literature by John William Mackail, M.A., LL.D.
Arthur Verrall was not, technically and pro-
fessionally, a man of letters ; he was a classical
scholar and student. In that field, he was an able
exponent of the fine and contentious art of textual
criticism ; he was a subtle and also a daring inter-
preter. On the one hand he was an instance of the
old-fashioned scholarship at its best, equal, perhaps,
to any scholar of his time in the peculiarly English
art of Latin and Greek composition : on the other,
he was a potent force in the movement which has
transformed scholarship by altering the whole atti-
tude of our minds towards the ancient classics. But
to the larger circle of those who practise the art of
English letters, or who are its critics and historians,
he was little known. In his own University, and
among scholars, he was known certainly as a brilliant
writer, but as a writer of works of scholarship. The
master of a graceful, flexible, and lucid pen, he, in
fact, wrote comparatively little. His Clark Lec-
tures, and those few which he was able to give from
cvi Commemorative Address
the Chair of English Literature, were not committed
to paper. He was not the author of any single
great work. The collection of his literary essays,
which is now being made, will not place him among
the writers who have in this age made English
letters illustrious. Yet he was a strength and an
ornament to the Academic Council which is now
recording his loss : and when he was chosen by the
Crown to be the first Professor of English Litera-
ture at Cambridge, the choice was recognised by
those most competent to judge as not only justifiable,
but singularly happy.
It should not indeed be necessary, if the relations
between scholarship and literature were such as they
ought to be, to draw a line between men of letters
and classical scholars. For the classical writers
received and retain that name, because their works
represent the highest and best of what has been
created in the art of letters. Just as our whole
civilisation is based on, grows out of, that created
and established by the Greek and the Latin genius,
so the whole of modern letters have the ancient
masterpieces before them as patterns of excellence,
beneath them as a soil from which they draw nutri-
ment. But in fact, as we all know — as the opponents
of classical education triumphantly point out, and as
its defenders must candidly, if not ruefully, acknow-
ledge — it is not the case that all scholars have a
genius for letters, any more than that all writers of
genius are scholars. Education based on those
ancient masterpieces, life spent in their study, too
Cofnmemorative Address cvii
often are an illiberal education, and a wasted life.
The creative artist has often never possessed scholar-
ship, or has flung away what he possessed of it.
What has been his loss, what may have been his
incidental gain, by being thus cut away from the
traditions of the past, or by cutting them away
through his own act, is a large question. But this
much at least can be said : that a writer to whom
scholarship is meaningless can have no trained sense
of the organic continuity of the art of letters : he
has forgone, from circumstances which may or may
not have been inevitable, for reasons which may or
may not be judged adequate, the power of placing
himself in the stream of history. It will not, to be
sure, profit him to have gained touch with the past
if he has lost touch with the present, and sub-
merged his own genius. But neither is it to be
expected that his own genius can thrive on a
sustenance which is of the day only. All live art is
a new birth ; but the present is the integration of
the past, and the art of the present is but one mani-
festation of a single continuous art. On the other
hand, it will not be denied that the scholar has often
contracted into a pedant, for whom literature is not
a living art, out of touch with the creative and
imaginative movement of his own time. For scholars
of this kind the noblest of all arts has little vital
reality, the actual movement of the human mind has
but a faint interest. They are linguists, archae-
ologists, critics ; but they move like laborious ghosts,
out of the daylight, immersed in a dead world.
cviii Conwiemoi'ative Address
This Verrall was not : we are not following a
grammarian's funeral. For him letters, both ancient
and modern, were a world crowdedly and intensely-
alive. He brought to the study of the classics — of
those masterpieces which have been so thumbed
and worn by long currency — the fresh mind at whose
contact they sprang into fresh vitality. He brought
the same fresh interest and enjoyment to English
letters and the literary art of his own day. To hear
him discourse on modern authors was to realise that
they were not separated in his mind from the ancient
authors among whom he worked professionally. To
both alike he applied the same rapid intelligence, in
both alike he felt the same living interest. And
that was the interest neither of classicism nor of
modernism ; it was the interest of literature as a
fine art.
It is as an exponent or representative of English
letters that we have to regard him here. But Eng-
lish letters are part of a larger community. A sane
literary nationalism not only keeps touch with, but
reinforces, the solidarity of the Republic of Letters :
just as the living art of the day is rooted in vital
appreciation of the no less living art of the past, and
in conscious kinship with it. For in literature, as
in all the arts of life, art is one thing, and artists, of
all schools and periods, are one household.
In that art he concentrated his study, not on
periods, but on qualities ; not on particular writers or
particular works for the sake either of their prestige
or of their novelty, but for the sake of the artistic
Commemorative Address cix
quality which he found in them ; not on a single
province of letters — poetry, history, oratory and the
like — as such, but on all these as literature. That
his work, so far as it is recorded and accessible,
does deal mainly with certain periods and writers,
only means that, having to deal with these in the
course of his duties, or finding in them the literary
quality, as he conceived it, specially prominent, or
requiring special prominence to be given to it, he
took them as instances, and turned upon them the
critical spirit in which he read not only them, but all
that he read. If we can fancy a mind so rapid and
alert as his pausing to describe its own operation as
a system, we may think of him as saying, whenever
he took up a book : This purports to be a work of
art ; what sort of art is it ? what is the effect of its
art upon my mind ? and what has to be noted in
order to elucidate its art, to enable me or others to
appreciate the quality of that art, the process by
which the work of art came to be what it is, the
meaning that was in the artist's mind ? In advice
given by him to students entering on a course of
modern English literature, this note is struck with
emphatic precision. ' Do you honestly enjoy this
book, and if so, what in it pleases you ? Does your
enjoyment increase as you study it, and if so, through
what process of thought .-* Such are the questions
which readers should ask themselves.' Such were
the questions which he asked himself, and in finding
answers to which his study of literature in essence
consisted. The word ' enjoyment ' should be noted.
ex Commemorative Address
For art is, according to the old and sound definition,
production with enjoyment and for the sake of enjoy-
ment ; and the appreciation of art is the entering
into the artist's enjoyment through imaginative sym-
pathy, and in some sense thus renewing his act of
creation and the joy of that act.
Art is one thing ; it is the organic synthesis of
all the arts. And the art of letters is likewise one
thing ; it is the dlan vital incarnating itself in verbal
structure. Where one artist in letters will differ
from another is in his special pursuit of one or
another element in his art ; and where one man's
appreciation will differ from another's is in his native
or trained affinity for one or another of these
elements ; in the measure to which he disengages
this from other qualities, traces its workings, and
makes it in some sort the test or critical moment in
all his appreciations.
The element in literature to which Verrall's mind
had perhaps the greatest affinity was wit, as he
himself somewhere defines that ambiguous word.
'Wit,'" he wrote, 'or subtlety on the part of the artist
in the manipulation of meanings ' ; and with this he
went on to connect, on the part of the recipient or
critic, ' the enjoyment of such subtlety for its own
sake, and as the source of a distinct intellectual
pleasure.'
Subtlety in the manipulation of meanings — this
was at once Verrall's distinctive strength in dealing
with literature, and in some measure also his beset-
ting temptation. His enjoyment in it was almost a
Comniemorative Address cxi
passion. By its exercise he did much towards the
modern revivification of scholarship. His effective
work Hes not so much in an)^ published writings as
in the impulse which as a stimulating teacher, and
even more perhaps as a brilliant talker, he commu-
nicated to pupils and friends. He never brought to
any book, were it ancient or modern, the dulled
mind. He took no orthodoxy for granted. In his
reading he was always poised ready for a pounce on
some shade of meaning, some implication or sugges-
tion ; and he followed out their traces acutely,
adroitly, alluringly. Sagacity in its literal sense,
the keen scent after things hidden, was the habit of
his mind. If, as was once said by a remarkable
thinker, imagination is nothing else than the faculty
of tracing out consequences fully, Verrall had imagi-
nation to a singular degree.
To this power of scenting and tracing, of quick
and continued apprehensiveness, must be added
another if work is to be sound. That other power
is comprehensiveness ; the power of seeing things
in their proportion to one another, and not exag-
gerating what is secondary, or losing grasp of the
whole plan in curious consideration of some detail
or byway. It is, in fact, good sense. Without it,
the sagacity of which I have spoken leads straight
to paradox. Self-hypnotised by absorption in a
certain train of reasoning, the mind insensibly sways
aside, and the judgment loses its centre. This is a
danger which always attaches to fresh interpretations.
The essence of paradox is that, however startling, it
cxii Commemoj^ative Address
is true ; its vice is that, however true, it is truth
placed in disproportion, and thus distorted.
It may be said of Verrall that he did not wholly
avoid this danger. His quick insight into subtleties
of meaning, and his delight in tracing them out, led
him, more than once, into paradox pursued beyond
measure, novelty of view passing into a more or less
conscious whimsicality. It made him fond, perhaps
too fond, of a fascinating but dangerous occupation,
that of rehabilitating names in the commonwealth of
letters which had either found or sunk below their
due level, and reinterpreting in a new sense works
(like the Odes of Horace), upon which the world
had formed a settled, and, it might seem, an un-
alterable judgment. In this his example has affected
a whole school of his pupils, some at least of whom
may be thought to have given way to the temptation
of reinterpreting everything, to the pursuit of clues
spun by themselves, and the finding of hidden mean-
inors where he who hides finds. A sentence from
one of his essays is very characteristic of his own
attitude towards the authors on whom he turned his
dancing searchlight : ' What Dante alleges about
Statius, he could not have found unless he had
sought it with singular determination ; but find it
he did.' But any reservation to be made here as
regards Verrall's own work would only be just if
accompanied by generous recognition of two things ;
first, of his delightful love of nonsense, what I may
venture to call his attractive and humane impishness;
secondly, of the great service he did to literature by
Commemorative Address cxiii
approaching it always with fresh eyes, by realising,
for himself and for others, the truth that all works
of genius are alive and possess the mobility of life ;
that they lend themselves perpetually to fresh inter-
pretation, and have stored in them an unexhausted
potential energy.
To all his favourite authors Verrall brought this
vitalising force of a subtle and dexterous intellect.
He was an accomplished sophist, in the best sense
of that needlessly discredited word. He was a
master in the art of exposition and the art of per-
suasion. The power of the live voice, a thing
nowadays too little enforced and too little cultivated,
was an element in his genius. It made him a fasci-
nating lecturer, but this kind of accomplishment
leaves no written record. The printed page only
shows imperfectly with what adroit and ingratiating
skill he handled the work of poets and historians, of
orators or dramatists or novelists, and showed the
live intelligence taking shape in it. His own range
of reading was wide, over the whole field of French
as well as English letters. His affinity was for the
writers, in either language, in whom wit and subtlety
are predominant. But he did not pursue these
qualities simply for their own sake, or allow them a
monopoly in his interest. His two favourite French
authors were Racine in poetry and Bossuet in prose,
writers of the classical period who renewed, and not
as copyists, the authentic classical note. So in
English likewise, he found his choicest and closest
friends among the writers of the central movement —
cxiv Commetnorative Address
Dryden, Fielding, Scott, Macaulay — the masters of
spacious construction and large sanity. An essay
on Dryden, the last work on which he was engaged,
would have been a real help towards the appreciation
of that fertile and perplexing genius, and of the
whole age in English letters to which he has given
its name.
This is not the occasion for personal record, and
my task is not that of the biographer. But a friend-
ship of more than five-and-twenty years may be
allowed a concluding word of more intimate tribute.
For what Verrall's friends remember is not so much
his fine intellect and brilliant accomplishments as his
courtesy and geniality, his kindly nature and winning
manners, a natural gaiety and clarity never clouded
by circumstance, the total absence in him of jealousy
and self-assertion, and, above all, the unconquerable
spirit which bore him up through the last years in
which, crippled by long wasting illness, he never
allowed himself to repine, to be beaten down, or to
lose heart. Of the courage, not less than heroic,
with which he bore that load of bodily weakness and
great pain, the less said the better ; it is a thing to
admire, not to praise. If I venture to touch upon it
now, it is because in such an example we may see
how the art of letters can sustain and reinforce the
art of living ; how commerce with great writers
may and does kindle in their students some corre-
sponding greatness of soul ; and how literature is
not a region abstract and apart, but a real thing, the
image and interpretation of human life.
-t^^A-'"
A ROMAN OF GREATER ROME
The proverb would lead us to suppose that for
a bad name some dogs have actually been hanged.
It is certain that this kind of justice has been exer-
cised not seldom by " the judgment of posterity" and
at the "bar of history." Such compendious con-
demnation has been passed not only on individuals,
but on whole states, whole periods, and whole
civilizations. And no culprit was ever more unlucky
than the Roman Empire in that period which pre-
cedes the definite appearance of Christianity in the
West. The first century (the second fares rather
better) is scarcely known but in denunciation. It
has armed with instances all the satirists and all the
preachers who have come since, and is commonly
described as one vast field of tyranny, servility, and
corruption, full of the seeds of a just and scarcely
regrettable decay. The mark of Tacitus and of
Juvenal is upon it all. It would be useless to ask
for a reversal of this verdict, partly because there
is truth in it. But we ought perhaps, once in a way,
to remind ourselves that there was another side, and
spare a word of thanks to benefactors not less real
because for the most part anonymous.
V. L. E. 1
2 A Roman of Greater Rome
I In spite of many warnings, it is difficult well to
remember the enormous part of accident in giving
the colour to historical evidence. Nineteen-twentieths
(or some other imposing fraction) of that evidence
is literature, so much of literature as is preserved.
Speaking generally, it is preserved according to its
merit ; and its merit — this is familiar enough, but is
often ignored all the same — has scarcely anything to
do with its true and proportional value as material
for history. There are at any given time a few men,
most probably a very few, whose words will stand
for the chief monument of the age. Each of these
must be capable of giving literary permanence only
to a very small part of the life about him. All of
them are under the strongest temptation — we may
almost say necessity — to copy each other and fall
into each other's ways. What does not get into
their pages will, not indeed in effect but in the
memory of men, soon exist no more than if it had
never been at all. We need not go far back or far
away for instances. Are not they now complaining
in France that their recent literature misrepresents
them ; that their writers have been working a certain
vein, because they have lighted on it and come by
suitable tools, not because it is really wider and
deeper than others that lie about ? It is certain
that these complaints have truth ; yet it is odds that,
as between the literature and the protest, if either
has any long life, the literature will have the best
of it. We need not even go to France. At this
very moment most of what is truly important in the
A Roman of Greater Rome 3
internal history of eighteenth-century England, a
history made up of obscure multifarious effort in the
direction of social improvement, is fast slipping into
the irrecoverable gulf, because it has no attraction
for art. The enterprise of treating it truly and
effectively becomes daily more difficult; and though
it is not for those who have done nothing to speak
ungratefully of what has been done, no book exists
yet which is likely to make Walpole's England
(another hanging name) appreciable by the good it
had, and not by the good it wanted. And if we
are already in some difficulty with the eighteenth
century, how is it likely to be with the first ?
The fact is that, of the true work, the greatest
work, of that time we know scarcely anything, and
never shall know anything adequate. I do not now
speak of the grave personal limitations and disabilities
which affect our chief witnesses; these have been
often pointed out and as often practically dismissed
from notice. Most of them are professed scandal-
mongers, most of them reactionaries, out of temper
with themselves and their times. But what is much
more damaging is this: almost all their interest is
fixed in Rome. It was not in Rome that the work
was being done; it was not even mainly in the East,
where the seedling of Christianity was preparing for
future transplantation. The bed meanwhile was
preparing for the flower, and for the moment this
part of the labour had the lead. If we could have
bargained with the writers of the age, we might well
have foregone a great part of their laments over what
4 A Roman of Greater Rome
was dead for a glimpse of what was growing, for
some picture of Africa, of Gaul, and of Spain. The
Romanising of the Western provinces in particular
was probably the most brilliant service, as it was
certainly one of the most vital, ever rendered to
civilization. Our side of Europe was twice saved
from moral destruction, and very narrowly saved,
by the vigorous Romanism of Gaul. There is some-
thing ludicrous, pathetic, and yet consoling at the
same time, in the thought that Roman Gaul was
being made, and with marvellous rapidity, all the
while that morbid and sensational declaimers in
Rome were painting the world as a crowd of pro-
fligate slaves. At the fall of the Republic, about
50 years before Christ, Toulouse was a mere military
outpost in the "backwoods." A century later it was
a celebrated seat of learning. Cordova, formerly a
not remarkable place of trade, rose in even less time
to send from a single house three leaders of the first
rank to rule the literature of the capital : though
Lucan and the two Senecas unluckily learnt in that
intellectual society to repeat too much of its futile
dreams and spurious cant.
Little more than half a century from the death of
Horace, a Spaniard could at least talk, in a moment
of exuberance, of matching him with a Horace from
Spain :
The Tagus dares, in Lucius' praise,
Challenge Venusia for the bays.
Be Argos praised as Argos will
By Argos, Thebes by Thebans still;
A Roman of Greater Rome 5
Be Rhodes renowned by other tongue
Than ours, be Lacedaemon sung ;
We, Celtic or Iberian born,
Of Celtic towns will take no scorn.
If Spanish names be rude, they chime.
Think we, not ill in Spanish rime.
And it must be remembered, as this boast reminds
us, that Corduba, Tolosa, and a hundred creations
like them, were produced in great part not by the
destruction, but by the instruction and self-instruc-
tion, of the native peoples. All this work, to which
we are all deeply indebted this day, was achieved
by the early emperors, or rather by the men, mostly
unknown, who supported and carried out the imperial
policy. It was begun when the sword of Julius
opened the senate-house to the foreigner. How it
was done so fast and so well is what we really want
to know about the first ages of the Empire. It
never can be known with any completeness. Most
of our informants, belonging to a select circle which
greatly mistook its own importance, are occupied
with dramas of high life and of personal politics,
which seldom touch the vital matter. The greater
their art, the more they take our attention from the
right place. We have however one writer, who in-
directly lets us see something of the spirit which
made the work possible — a Roman Spaniard who
never forgot that he was a Spanish Roman, who
never learnt the false "patriotism" and theatrical
"indignation" of the metropolitan cliques, who was
a loyal and enthusiastic citizen of the Greater
Rome.
6 A Roman of Greater Rome
History has scarcely used enough the represen-
tative evidence of Martial. Tacitus is a grave
personage. Juvenal takes himself somewhat more
than seriously. Both profess to instruct us, and
both for reasons good and bad are very angry with
their contemporaries. It is not surprising that his-
torians, who like the rest of us take men at their own
valuation and, for accidental reasons, have too often
read their "first century" to get up an indictment,
let Tacitus and Juvenal give the tone. All the
literary men of the same age must be in many ways
much alike. They learn their art from each other.
Martial and Juvenal illustrate each other at every
turn, and have been quoted side by side till they
are half confounded, Juvenal being mostly taken
for the witness of real importance. But between
Martial and all the rest there is a spiritual gulf.
Taken as a whole, the literature of the first century
leaves for its chief impression — weariness. The
spectacle of life seems to give the writers no direct
pleasure. They take a sullen satisfaction in endur-
ing, and a fierce satisfaction in denouncing. These
are the springs of feeling; and writers who cannot
live upon these (such as is for the most part Statius)
are much in want of something to live upon. With
Martial it is utterly different. It would be hard to
find another poet, equal in bulk, whose tone is so
uniformly cheerful. Never was so bright and so
interesting a world! He is ready to touch off any
subject, and every subject suggests a not unagree-
able contemplation. Trifles do not weary him, nor
A Roman of Greater Rome 7
graver thoughts depress. He enjoys beauty without
discontent and ugHness without maHce. His satire
is such as one can hardly call by that terrible name.
It is thoroughly good-humoured, and carefully
guarded from personal application. He enjoys the
splendour of the imperial city; he enjoys, but with-
out spite, the thousand little embarrassments of a
city population. He enjoys the country, not in the
philosophic manner of Horace, nor in the artificial
manner of Virgil, but rustically and simply, in the
way we commonly call modern. In the beneficent
destiny of the Roman Empire — and here is the
grand distinction, the key to all the rest — he believes
heartily and without reserve. He is the only writer
of this time who uses comfortably and unaffectedly
the language of the genuine imperial religion, the
worship of the monarch.
King of heaven, whose power is proven
While it guards our prince below !
Though mankind besiege thee, seeking
What, O gods, ye can bestow ;
If for me I ask thee nothing,
'Tis not, Jove, in scorn of thee.
I should pray to thee for Caesar
And to Caesar pray for me.
Here indeed Martial, whose religion has naturally
something of himself, is playing with the subject, as
(to say nothing of the rest) he sufficiently shows by
the humorous little reservation "quae dei potestis."
The sermons which have been read to him hereupon
for his "disgusting adulation" are a sad waste of
8 A Roman of Greater Rome
preaching. But he is sometimes serious enough.
It is thus that he praises the emperor for repeaHng
a sentence of banishment :
Kinder than bolts from heaven thy thunder's course
Turns in mid air and stays the fatal force.
Were Jove thus merciful ! Then both alike
Should often stint your strength and seldom strike.
Strong language, but not to be judged as if Martial
did or could regard "Jove" as the moral ideal. He
only expresses in his way what Dryden, applauded
by vast numbers of Christian Englishmen, expressed
in his way, when he said of Charles 1 1 :
If mildness ill with stubborn Israel suit,
His crime is God's beloved attribute.
Such language belongs to epochs (that of Louis XIV
in France is another case) when the dearest interests
of millions have depended, or seemed to depend, on
a strong government, and strong government has
demanded, or seemed to demand, the reinforcement
of personal power. It would be ridiculous to repre-
sent Martial as calling a man "a god," if indeed that
could give the man much pleasure, in order to be paid
for it, which he was not, and, as far as we know, had
no reason to think that he would be.
This "worship of the emperor " is a matter exceed-
ingly hard for us now to approach with sympathetic
understanding. We are apt to fancy it mere slavish-
ness and profanity. It was most assuredly neither
one nor the other, but the best and truest form which
religion took in that "inter-religious" period — if we
A Roman of Greater Rome 9
may coin a term. As to the profanity, that is answered
by observing that the Roman, had he used capital
letters, would still have written "deus" with a little
"d." It was not the fault of the provincials that
Latin was beggarly in terms of spiritual distinction.
When they called the emperor "deus," they took the
simplest way of saying that the empire deserved from
them, as human beings, gratitude and veneration.
And so it did. The disestablishment of the Roman
oligarchy at once rescued and vastly extended the
benefits of culture. If the rapture of those for whom
civil peace was only saved, found natural vent, as
with Virgil and Horace, in the language of religious
imagination, what was the strength of that feeling
among men highly capable of civilization, and swept
in the way of it then for the first time ? The altar
of Augustus at Lyons, with its solemn annual cele-
bration maintained by all Roman Gaul, represented,
if ever an altar did, a moral and reasonable zeal. In
the capital, mainly for reasons intelligible but not
creditable, the enthusiasm soon died away. Juvenal
bestows on the altar of Lyons, and on the excitement
of those who served it, a brutal sneer. We cannot
decently applaud him. It is lucky for us that Lyons
did not find the ceremony ridiculous.
Martial, we have said, is first and last a provincial,
a Roman of the Greater Rome, He was born at
Bilbilis in Northern Spain, a place celebrated for its
ironworks, and one of the thousand places which took
life or new life from the consolidation of the provinces
with Rome. His silence and his hints alike assure
lo A Roman of Greater Rome
us that, despite his Roman name (which proves
nothing), he was a Roman only by name and poli-
tical adoption, a genuine Spaniard by blood. Almost
all his working life was spent in Rome and Italy.
He came to the capital a young man, in the last
years of Nero (about 65 a.d.), to make his living by
literature, and returned at the close of the century to
his native town, being then near sixty years old, to
spend his old age and to die. He must have taken
with him to Rome an admirable literary education,
an education astonishing when we reflect that
Northern Spain had only been in a settled condi-
tion about sixty years when Martial was born. It
is quite possible that his provincial breeding accounts
partly for the form of his work. He composes en-
tirely in short highly finished pieces, each expressing
a single thought, a complete anecdote, an entire
picture. (The name of "epigram," given to such
compositions in ancient literature, has so changed
its sense as to be now misleading.) An author
writing in a learnt language (and we know from
Martial himself that the exact academic idiom of
literary Rome was not often heard in Bilbilis) is
safer in a short flight. His danger is much greater
if he lets himself go. At any rate Martial never
does let himself go. Sometimes it is a little story
of the bazaar — how A.B. went from stall to stall,
now asking the price of an expensive bronze, now
selecting a set of elaborate crystals, calling for this
tapestry to be taken down and that piece of furniture
set out, and finally took two mugs for a penny, which
A Roman of Greater Rome 1 1
he carried away himself. Often we have the figure
of the poor man who strolls the colonnades, the
gardens, and the baths for the chance of an invita-
tion to dinner. He looks, we are told in one place,
so depressed and so seedy, that when he returns as
a last chance to the colonnade of Europa, where the
heroine was represented upon her bull, the associa-
tion of ideas inevitably recalls the scarecrows which
were tossed about by the bulls of the amphitheatre,
and the looker-on breathes a charitable prayer that,
failing all other resources, the wanderer may per-
chance be "entertained by the bull." In one piece
the poet laments gracefully over the lovely landscape
covered by the lava of Vesuvius :
Is this Vesuvius, late so freshly trimmed
With vines, and rich with vats at vintage overbrimmed?
Are these the hills that Bacchus chose to grace
More than his Nysa? This the Satyrs' revelling place?
Is this the land renowned of Hercules?
The haunts to Venus dear more than Cythera these?
Burned, blasted, overwhelmed ! It is a sight
To make the almighty rue the license of their might.
At another time he laments with deeper feeling
over the tomb of a little slave. This child, Erotion,
seems to have been born in the poet's household, and
was brought up by him as an orphan. He loved her
dearly, and was deeply affected by her early death.
It would be rash to attempt here either the beautiful
verses (v 34) in which he commends the poor little
ghost to the protection of her dead parents among
the terrors of the unseen world, or those, still more
tender (x 61), written years afterwards and in the
12 A Roman of Greater Rome
prospect of his return to Spain, in which he begs
whosoever might succeed him as the proprietor of
his ItaHan plot, not to neglect the little grave. But
there is another tribute to her memory (v i"]), of
which some general idea may be given. It is a
curious piece. The poet's habitual mood asserts
itself oddly in the hour of grief. He plays with
his sorrow fancifully, and ends with a grimace, as
pathetic perhaps in its fashion as tears.
I had a maid, a little maid,
More soft than swans or lambkins be,
More fine, more delicately made
Than finest cates, than jewelry.
Snow, lilies, ivory new, would seem
Beside her fairness scarcely fair :
No fleece or fur of golden gleam
Could match the golden of her hair.
Her breath was as the air that smells
Of roses in the Paestan land,
Or honey fresh from Attic cells.
Or amber from a lady's hand.
Matched with her poses and her play
The graceful peacock wanted grace ;
The squirrel seemed but clumsy ; nay,
The phoenix had been commonplace.
Erotion ! Six — not six years old,
And dead, my plaything and my pet !
This hour they burned her, and the mould.
She mixed with, feels some warmness yet.
And Paetus chides : " Be brave," says he,
" / have just carried to the grave
A noble dame of high degree —
And wealth (he sighs), no little slave !
A Roman of Greater Rome 13
"It does not break my heart, although
She was my wife. I see you start."
What courage ! What an awful blow !
A fortune does not break his heart !
The way in which the illustrations are here piled
up is characteristic. But it is more commonly used
merely to make entertainment out of some simple
idea. A good specimen is the poem in which a
person presented with a garden-farm ^ expresses his
disappointment that it is not bigger. "It is a mere
window-box. A grasshopper's wing would cover it.
A cucumber could not lie straight in it. There is
not room for the whole of a snake. The one gnat
is dead of starvation. A mushroom in spreading,
a fig in swelling, a pansy in opening, would go over
the edge. A building swallow takes the whole hay-
crop. The corn could be carried in a spoon, and the
wine made in a nutshell." This sort of miscellany,
set off by phrasing and versification generally fault-
less, and everywhere sustained by a frank, unaffected,
and impartial human interest, will at any rate just
tempt an indolent reader from page to page : and
this is Martial's proclaimed ambition.
The mere delight in a complex and yet orderly
existence, in material civilization, has perhaps never
been expressed with such force as by Martial. It
seldom was achieved so suddenly and so happily as
by the men of his country and time. I propose to
' It has been supposed that Martial is the donee, and that the
circumstances are real. This certainly cannot be proved, and
I take them to be fictitious.
14 A Roman of Greater Rome
present here, as best I can, a few of those poems
which seem to me representative of this feeling.
I need hardly say that I do not pretend to give a
full equivalent or an exact rendering. This paper
is not for those who can read their Martial, and do
it. Others will perhaps be indulgent, and then, as
Martial himself might say, they may get to the end
if they do not stop sooner.
We will take first a piece (ix 6i) expressing
perhaps in the form least liable to modern objection
the enthusiasm of the new Romans for the work of
the Caesars. All suspicion of flattery is here at least
impossible. The Caesar celebrated, the " deified "
Julius, was dead more than lOO years ago when it
was written. The rivalry of Caesarian and Pompeian
was as much a matter of history as it is now. It is
impossible to attribute the zeal of the poet to any
motive but honest reverence for the creator of im-
perial Spain. That his memory should have been
worshipped at Cordova is the more noticeable be-
cause, when every allowance is made for exaggeration,
Cordova must have paid dearly at the moment for
the bloody inauguration of the new world. The
subject here is a house, which had lodged the divine
hero and still showed "Caesar's tree."
Where golden soil with native richness dyes
On living flocks the fleece of Western lands ;
Where Cordova by generous Baetis lies
Well-pleased, a mansion monumental stands :
There Caesar stayed. A plane-tree spreading wide
Enfolds the court in shade from side to side :
A Roman of Greater Rome 15
This Caesar planted. From his conquering hands
The wand auspiciously commenced to rise ;
And still, as conscious of his high commands,
Aspires with lusty boughs to climb the skies.
There oft the reeling Fauns at hour unmeet
With merry pipe scare Silence from her bed ;
There oft to baffle Pan's pursuing feet
Through lone dark fields the woodland fay hath fled.
With perfume Bacchus' rout the rooms hath filled;
Lush grew the leafage from the wine they spilled ;
At morn the grass with pile of roses shed,
Which no man knew for his, was flushed and sweet.
Then, tree of gods, hold high thy deathless head.
Fear no profaning steel, no furnace heat.
Pompeian slips may perish with the name.
Thy planter planted for eternal fame.
We are not going now to pursue this Caesarian
topic any further, though Martial offers plenty of
illustrations. We have looked at it only to see what
faith the writer had in him. Long imaginative
labours (and Martial must have worked exceedingly
hard) can scarcely be sustained without a belief in
something. Martial believed cordially in the empire
and its business of civilization. "If you would move
my tears, yourself must feel the grief." If you would
be interesting, you must be interested. The mark
of Martial, as already said, is just this : that the
machinery and goings-on of civilized life are so
universally interesting to him, and in him become
so interesting. Nothing excites him more, nothing
lifts him to so high a level, as that special product
of material civilization, household comfort. He is
perhaps the only writer in whom plate and tapestry,
1 6 A Roman of Greater Rome
earthenware and hardware, beds and sofas, become
truly poetic, as all deserving readers would allow
that they do. This is not to be attributed merely
to the man's individual character. It is the result
of his time and situation. Convenience of life has
a nobler aspect in him than elsewhere, because it
was for his time, and relatively to those whom he
represented, a nobler and more elevating thing than
it commonly is. He delights in pleasant houses.
He loves the urban palace; he is not insensible to
suburban snugness; but, above all, he loves that
highest achievement of comfort, the rich man's
fancy-farm. To the honour of this he sacrifices the
palace, with its weary ceremony, and the suburban
garden, which leaves you after all dependent on the
market. Bassus has such a garden. He has been
seen on the road near Rome with a whole carriage-
full of pleasant things — vegetables, game, and poul-
try ; even the running footmen had eggs to carry :
So plenteous was the freight in every sort
Of rural breed and boon. Our friend, in short,
Was on his way between his "farm" and town.
"Yes, coming up." Oh no, sir; — goitig down!
Here, as often in Martial, the jest at the close merely
serves to frame the picture, the poem being written
for the picture itself. This is still more the case in
the noble sequel (in 58), where Bassus appears
again, and a genuine country-place is described to
him by way of contrast. The poet has few things
better:
That is no "country" where the myrtle grows,
Bassus, in rigid rows.
A Roman of Greater Rome \*j
And shaven box, and planes without a vine
In many a useless line.
For "country," see Faustinus' acres, tilled
To the last corner, filled
With fruitful corn ; see many a storing-room
With autumn's rich perfume
Replenished yearly, till, November past.
The raisin's gathered last.
Wild in the glen the bull-calves fight and fret
Their foreheads smooth as yet.
The grown bulls bellow free. The feathered train
Spreads in a roomy plain :
There the shrill goose and starry peacock run,
Flamingoes, like the sun
Setting, and many a wing of speck and spot
And curious-painted blot,
Numidian, Phasian, Rhodian. Housed above.
The pigeon-kind make love,
And coo to coo replies. Here, rough and rude,
The pushing swine for food
Follow the farm-wife's apron ; there the lamb
Looks, helpless, for its dam.
The hearth within, where cheery logs abound,
Shows chubby faces round;
No pale and sedentary tapster there !
(Your draught is the free air)
No foul gymnasium ! Hunt, and fish, and toil,
And you may spare your oil.
The footman in his glory will not shirk
A little garden-work,
And lads who ran from tasks, no more afraid.
Run willing to the spade.
The country "callers" from the neighbouring lands
Come not with empty hands ;
With gift of honey in the comb they come,
With shapely cheeses some,
With dormice half asleep, with this and that,
Kidlings or capons fat.
V. L. E. 2
1 8 A Roman of Greater' Rome
Eggs in a basket, or such housewife thing,
The stately lasses bring
"With mother's duty." — Hours with labour blest
Bring supper and a guest.
The country table, certain not to fail,
Saves nothing to be stale ;
The menials, with their bellyful at least,
Contented serve the feast. —
See, Bassus, see all this ; then boast me not
Your mean suburban plot,
Some laurels and a scarecrow (this for show,
To make believe things grow).
The porridge of your artificial clown
Comes from a shop in town.
The sum of your " farm-labour " is to cart
Down from the city mart
Eggs, cheese, greens, poultry, fruit. Why drive so far?
You were in town — and are.
Strange, in all this modernness, are the occasional
touches that tell us the time ; the gymnasium and the
"oil" as the type of town-exercise, and the page-lads,
slaves in training for various duties in the great
household, for whom in town there would be lessons
to do, while in the country they are set, to their great
relief, at the garden. The "dormice" surprise us in
the list; but doubtless there would be enough for a
dish, a favourite dish. But no detail is so remark-
able as the diffused delight in the apparatus of life,
which quickens the whole : if, indeed, I can hope
that anything of this survives in the translation.
I cannot forbear to quote for their sound just two
verses ; this on the pigeon-house :
Sonantque turres plausibus columbarum,
and this exquisite description of the rustic girls :
Grandes proborum virgines colonorum.
A Roman of Greater Rome 19
The age when this last could be written was assuredly
not without its better aspects.
The poet himself had a country cottage and
garden in his wealthier days. He makes a point
of sending roses from it to a dear friend, but laments
that weightier presents have to come "from the
shop." Not but that on occasion he can be enthu-
siastic also over the " rus in urbe." He has one
particularly famous picture in this style (iv 64),
representing what must really have been a charming
house and from its situation a show-place in Rome.
One Julius Martialis (no relation to the poet, whose
family name was Valerius), a man of some distinction
in politics and — at least as a patron and admirer — in
literature, had a sort of miniature park on the Jani-
culan Hill, above the ancient Mulvian Bridge. Lying
on the west of Rome, and separated from the mass
of it by the winding Tiber, it commanded the most
interesting view in the world : the city for foreground,
and behind it, right away to the hills, a beautiful
country, crowded with legends and memories; all
the towns which had fought with Rome when Rome
was an ambitious village, now linked to each other
by those magnificent roads which were the chief
instrument and symbol of the " Roman peace."
"A little place" — Yet not the blest
In the Happy Gardens of the West
Could here pronounce their dwelling best.
Better does Martialis dwell.
Janiculus with gentle swell
From low dull air uplifts him well
20 A Roman of Greater Rome
To skies more pure. His favoured zone
Enjoys a climate of its own,
A heaven brought near for him alone.
All the Seven Hills of queenly Rome
The eye may take from this fair home,
To Alba, Tusculum, may roam,
Fidenae, Rubrae, names of yore,
Perenna's orchard (heretofore
Mishallowed with a maiden's gore)\
Two noble ways you hence may trace
And follow there the chariot's pace.
By sight not sound ; to this high place
The wheel is dumb. The boatman's cheer,
The bargeman's most vociferous jeer,
Are silent to the sleeping ear.
Yet that's the Mulvian, past a doubt,
That's Tiber, with the craft about.
"Am I in town?" you say, "or out?"
And you would find a welcome there
So frank and free, so debonnair,
As you yourself the master were.
Alcinous-like he shares his state.
Or like Molorchus, grown to great
For keeping of an open gate.
(Odysseus' entertainer, the King of the Phaeacians,
is moderately famous still; but as to Molorchus, some
^ " Et quae virgineo cruore gaudet, Annae pomiferum nemus
Perennae." The legend, apparently of the Iphigetiia type, is not
otherwise known in connexion with the old Italian deity, Anna
Perenna. For this reason (a poor one, as it seems to me) it has
been supposed that there is some error here. The present tense
is perhaps "historical"; but it is quite possible that some symbol
of the sacrifice was actually kept up.
A Roman of Greater Rome 21
may not disdain to be informed that he made his
fortune by entertaining Hercules unawares.)
Ye that all merit see in size,
Whom all a township scarce supplies
With one such farm as satisfies :
Seek where you will your ample space,
If only you will give me grace
Still to prefer this "little place."
Martial, we see, like other professional persons,
could plead either side of a cause for a proper con-
sideration, and was indeed a man genuinely pleased
with many different things. But he had his bent all
the while. He is never so sparkling and elastic as
when something suggests the prospect of Spain and
of rest among the iron-forges of Bilbilis. We will
put here together, first his good-speed to a fellow-
countryman, who, having made a fortune at law, was
going back to the West (i 50); and secondly the
farewell which he himself, having at length got
enough and meaning soon to return, takes of another
distinguished Spaniard whom he was leaving in Italy
(^ Z1^- (The strangest thing in them, to our eyes,
is the "sport." It must be confessed that the Roman
gentlemen took their sport in a lazy way. I should
not dare, for fear of ruining Martial right out, to pro-
duce here certain expostulations which he addresses
to a friend, who had a habit of hard riding after the
hare.) The first of these pieces is among the earliest
work, the second among the very latest, of Martial's
career at Rome. The places are mostly mere names
now, but they have a quaint and interesting sound.
22 A Roman of Greater Rome
Good-speed !
O theme for Celtiberian lays,
O worthy name for Spaniards' praise !
And are you, are you bound for Spain,
To see high BilbiUs once again
(For stream and stithy a town of pride)?
Old Gaius' snows, and the mountain side
Whence breaks Vadavero, sacred flood !
Boterdus' screen of fragrant wood,
The garden-goddess' loved retreat !
Shall it be yours, 'twixt cold and heat,
To bathe where Congedus invites
Soft Naiads to his soft delights?
That softness then to brace and cool
In steely Salo's tempering pool?
Then in Voberca's teeming chace
To make your bag from the lunching-place !
Or break the summer's sultry powers
In the deep dark of Tagus' bowers,
With fresh Dercenna and Nutha's drench
Better than ice your thirst to quench !
When enters with December hoar
The bellowing North-wind, fierce and frore,
You'll seek the Tarraconian coast
And "lang-syne" Laletanian host.
There for your nets are fallow deer.
Boars "on the premises" for your spear.
And dodging hares to breathe your horse
(The stags your rustic best may course).
Almost the forest lays its logs
(So near it grows) upon the dogs.
The household gathers in the hall
Easy and happy ; just a call
Will bring the huntsman. — Lay aside
The gown, the badge of irksome pride;
A Roman of Greater Rome 23
Its purple stinks \ You need not here
Go shivering to some lev^e drear.
You wake not here to meet forlorn
Pale business ghastly as the morn,
The pauper's drone, the lady's scorn —
Sleep on. Let others tear the laws
For the sweet poison of applause.
You, in the triumphs of your boy,
Find a more pure, more wholesome joy.
When most of life is paid for fame,
Life claims the rest — a modest claim.
As we follow the traveller from region to region
of this Roman province, so interesting but for the
most part so dim to us, we must wish once more
that he had somewhere given us more full and more
precise descriptions. Writing almost wholly in Italy,
and for a gay pleasure-loving public, it is commonly,
as here, for its material ease and abundance that he
contrasts his unexhausted country with the "struggle
for existence" in the region of the capital. But he
could have told us many curious things, if he would.
Once (iv 55) he runs over a list of Spanish places,
just to laugh (for the benefit of Italians) at their
strange sounds, but maintaining at the same time
with proper pride that they are very good names,
and that Italy had worse. Some of the touches
with which he adorns his catalogue must be pain-
fully exciting to a Celtic archaeologist. What was
the sanction, religious or secular, which "protected
the dances of Rixamae" ? In whose name and with
^ This literal fact (for the Tyrian dye was apt to be very
unsavoury) is here used with pungent effect.
24 A Roman of Greater Rome
what ceremony did the folk assemble for "the holi-
day banquet of Carduae " ? What mysteries did
Burado cover in its "grove of oaks," and for what
mysterious reason must every traveller, however
little disposed to walk, dismount or diverge so as
to pass through it ? What, above all, was there at
Rigae, for which Martial takes the nearest Roman
term to be " our fathers' antique theatre " ? A
"theatre" in the common sense, such as the Romans
copied from the Greeks, his fathers had certainly not
built there. Was it perhaps a "ring" of banks, or
of great stones, after the Celtic fashion known else-
where ? But we must leave these disquisitions for
others, and return to our business of seeing Martial
himself to his Spanish home, and of presenting in
English his happy
Farewell.
King of the Courts, whose lips maintain
By honest truth their legal reign,
What orders, friend and fellow-townsman,
What orders, hey ! for the Spanish main ?
Why care you here to pull the line
For dog-fish (if your chance be fine).
While there they fling the mullet, wanting
His full three pounds, to his native brine?
Why choose to swell a meagre bill
With sapless whelk or tasteless squill.
While Spain has oysters, such profusion,
The very lackeys may eat their fill?
Why this halloo a fox to scare.
Stinking and snapping, to the snare?
My nets in Spain, ere yet from ocean
The hemp be dry, will be round a hare.
A Roman of Greater Roi7ie 25
Here comes your fisher — nothing ta'en ;
Your huntsman — of a weasel vain.
The town must keep your seaside table.
What orders, hey ! for the Spanish main ?
Naturally the poet, when he had got his will,
did not find all that he hoped. Who ever did ?
Nothing proves that he ever regretted his return.
But he felt more keenly what he had left behind.
Doubtless the disadvantages of Bilbilis told more
in reality than in fancy. His Roman taste had
become more fastidious ; and — he was getting old.
Some of his last verses come as near melancholy as
any of his bright and equal writing. It could not
be otherwise. It is pleasant, however, to know that
he got a garden, and was able to call himself, as he
had called his friends in the capital, " as happy as
Alcinous and the Hesperides." He even married
a garden, the dower of a certain Marcella of Bilbilis\
and thanks her gracefully for the gift. He was able
to thank her also for nobler consolation. We cannot
end better than with the little poem (xii 21) in which
he praises her, not without pathos, for her Roman
culture. It ought to be remembered, when vials
' Whether he had ever been married before is uncertain.
Some of his poems mention a "wife," but she is never named,
and it is impossible to say in his writings how much is literary
fiction. Marcella certainly did not become his wife till after his
return. It should, perhaps, be noticed, that she has been sup-
posed to have been the poet's patron, and not his wife. The
evidence is chiefly contained in the above poem, which, I confess,
leaves little doubt in my mind. She was in any case his best and
most intimate friend, and the question scarcely concerns us here.
26 A Roman of Greater Rome
of wrath are poured upon the Rome of Nero and
Domitian, that a man, certainly not without keen
sensibilities of mind and heart, when he wanted to
show how highly he valued the companion whom
he had chosen to be with him till death, could
think of no words higher than these — "You, and you
only, bring me Rome ! "
Who could believe that such as thou couldst grow
In this our burgh, by this our iron stream?
Thy thoughts make other music than we know,
And, heard in Caesar's court, would native seem.
No child of the mid City is thy peer;
To thee the Capitol's best daughter yields;
To win a Roman heart, for many a year
No worthier flower shall bloom in foreign fields.
Thou, only thou, dost soothe my fond regret
For that fair Queen. I have something Roman yet.
■•-**^
AN OLD LOVE STORY
About twenty years before Christ, while the
first Augustus of the newly established empire, sick
in body and sorrowing for the recent death of his
only heir, was gone with his legions to set in order
the still unquiet East, and to vindicate the national
honour by recovering from his Parthian neighbour
the standards lost, a generation earlier, at Carrhae,
there appeared at Rome, in complete and final
shape, a book of verse, destined to exercise through
remarkable vicissitudes of fortune a long, and yet
unexhausted, effect upon literature. It was divided
into Three Parts, and comprised some eighty poems,
varying in length from near a hundred lines to six.
It was written in the couplets traditionally appro-
priated to the tender passion, and presented, in the
form of a personal confession by the poet, the
beginning, consequences, and end of a censurable
and unhappy attachment.
Both the author and his Cynthia were already
well known to the public. The First Part, complete
in itself, had come out under the same title before,
and the fame of it had spread, we are told, to the
28 An Old Love Story
I steppes of the Dnieper, to the obscure limits of the
I civilized world. The author, Sextus Propertius,
belonged, with Virgil and Horace, to the high court
i of letters, the circle of the minister Maecenas. And
J over his pensioned compeers, the son of the farmer
and the son of the freedman, he had considerable
temporary advantages. By birth he was probably
at least the equal of the minister himself, whose
pedigree was of the kind suspiciously antique ; and
in fortune he was independent. He belonged to
" what we should call a good county family^ " of the
neighbourhood of Perugia. While he was a child
his father died, and he was deprived in some way of
a large estate ; but he can still speak of himself as
" not very rich," and his story requires us to suppose
that, in one way or another, his circumstances were
easy. If, as it seems, he was not on good terms
with Horace, we can easily account for friction
between two literary rivals moving in good society,
one of whom had the usual passports for entering
there, while the other was often reminded un-
pleasantly that he had not. Of Virgil he speaks
with profound deference ; but Virgil had written the
Georgics, and thus placed himself practically beyond
competition, before Propertius entered the field.
^ I take this opportunity of acknowledging my debt, as a
i reader of Propertius, to my friend Dr Postgate. There are
I naturally points in this article on which he or others might not
' agree with me, but these pages are not a suitable place for dis-
cussion. My references are to the text edited by Prof. A. Palmer,
a delightful little book.
An Old Love Story 29
It would seem strange, and perhaps absurd, to
say of a man whose reputation is not of the first
order, and whose chief work was contemporaneous
with the Odes and the Aeneid, that he was in any
sense the best poet of his time. And yet, without
defiance of common opinion, this might be said of
Propertius. We have only to choose appropriately,
among the various qualities which go to "poetry,"
the quality which we will regard as essential. It is
a not uncommon view, that the vivid and apparently
spontaneous expression of feeling is of the essence
of poetry, and that no subtlety of linguistic art can
compensate for the want of it. For such a taste
Roman literature supplies small satisfaction, and
Augustan literature very small indeed, a fact put
bluntly by the accomplished critic who said that,
after Catullus and Lucretius, the Romans had no
I poetry at all. The only writer of the Augustan
age for whom on these principles much could be
said, is Propertius. If he and his rivals could be in
some way represented by equivalents of our own
time, it is quite possible that by the majority the
modern Virgil and the modern Horace would be
much more admired than loved ; it is certain that the
i modern Propertius would become rapidly popular
1 wherever English is read. But the world, now
supplied with many good literatures, naturally goes
to each for what it offers best ; and has long sought
the Roman not for passion at all, but for " lo bello
stile che I'ha fatto onore." The Aeneid wdiS turned
into a school-book the moment it was written, and
!
30 An Old Love Story
a school-book of the human race it has been, and
will be. For such purposes there could not well
I be anything less suitable than Cynthia. Signs,
I however, indicate that the long tutelage of mankind
I by Latin may soon end or be interrupted. Should
this take place, one result may be that those who do
go to Latin will go to it more for pleasure and less
for literary training ; and in that case, though Virgil
and Horace will not descend, the reputation of
Propertius will relatively rise, as in fact it has lately
risen. Meanwhile we may at all events spend a
few minutes over a book which has made great
poetry again and again, and could "spur an imitative
zeal " in no less a mind than that of Goethe.
We will look first at the original Cynthia, now
represented by Part L It is supposed to have been
published near the year 25, when the real Propertius
was about twenty-five years old. How much in it was
fact and how much fiction we do not and need not
know. At the conclusion the poet, after a common
Roman fashion, makes a few brief statements about
his origin, just sufficient for personal identification.
In the rest of the book, as in the two later Parts,
there is, for a work of the kind, a remarkable want
of detail in place, time, and circumstance. It was
plainly never intended for a roman a clef. The
hero is a youth without occupation, whose first
serious love, when the work opens, has lasted a
year : he may be supposed, according to Italian
ideas, perhaps twenty years old, not more. His
story might be that of any such youth. Equally
An Old Love Story 31
typical is the description of the heroine. It was be-
lieved in the second century a.d., that she answered
to an original in real life, whose name was Hostia ;
but the statement, if true, is of no importance. The
Cynthia of the poems is a woman without position,
family, or connexions (except a mother) of any
kind, sustaining by her beauty and accomplishments
an extravagant life. Her accomplishments include
a fine taste in literature, or at least such is the
persuasion of the enamoured poet. About her
character her lover is never deceived, except wilfully
by himself. His very first words are a lament that
in the pursuit of her he has become utterly im-
provident, and has lost the taste for honest society.
Around the principal figures are grouped three or
four other youths — a Tullus, Gallus, Bassus, Ponticus
— such friends as a gentleman and a poet would be
likely to have, young, passionate, and literary, but
not characterized with much distinctness. Ponticus
is at work on an epic, and looks with much contempt
on lesser ambitions. His elegiac friend thinks the
epic equal to Homer, but warns him that he will
find hexameters of little use when he falls in love,
which presently comes to pass. Bassus is a lyrist
in the " Adeline " and " Madeline " stage, but cannot,
with his gallery of beauties, distract the devotee of
Cynthia. Gallus seems to be a relation, as ardent
as the poet himself, and exchanges with him
rapturous confidences ; while Tullus, a calmer and
not active personage, is his monitor, and his auditor
when he bewails his folly or talks about his family.
32 An Old Love Story
The machinery is of the simplest kind, and might
have been perfectly uninteresting.
But, such as it is, it is enough for Propertius.
Those who, for a study in grammar, have been
conducted for some time up and down the undula-
tions of Ovid, would be astonished to find what the
compass of the couplet is, when touched by a poet
of earnest and delicate feeling. Propertius has all
sorts of faults. He is often obscure, he is sometimes
dull. He strains his language, brusques his transi-
tions, and twists his thoughts. But there is one
word that never applies to him, a word that haunts
disagreeably the reader of much Latin literature.
He is never vulgar. Every thought, we are sure,
has really been thought by this particular man.
Even the commonplace, of which he has plenty, is
Propertian, and not the commonplace which is
common. His grain is grain, and there is no
"vacant chaff." Such a man can but very imper-
fectly speak for himself in translation. But we must
do our best when there seems to be a chance.
The remorseful introduction already mentioned
is followed by a gentle expostulation with Cynthia
upon her needless finery :
Thou canst not mend thy face : Love, going bare,
Loves not that beauty should be made with art.
In the third poem the full splendour of the poet
breaks out. Deep in the night Cynthia is found
asleep, and the youth, from experience, is afraid to
awaken her. The picture, in the realism of its
grace, was probably then an entirely novel thing.
An Old Love Story 33
Neither has it, in its kind, been superseded by the
innumerable imitations.
I gazed, with Argus' fixed and wondering look
At lo guised with horns. Anon I took
And softly set on Cynthia's marble brow
The wreath that was upon mine own, and now
Raised the loose hair, and shaped the scattered strands,
Or slipped sly gifts into the open hands,
A fruit, a flower. Dtill slumber took them all,
Nor thanked me, and too oft the lap let fall.
And if she stirred or sighed, at every turn
My folly still a meaning would discern,
And thought perchance, my Cy?tthta, thou didst seem
To fly sotne lover shown thee in a dream.
The moon from window on to window crept.
And teased at length the eyes that lingering slept,
With gentle ray the seal of slumber brake.
Upon her pillowed arm she rose, and spake :
"At last thou art dismissed, at last I see.
Turned from some other door, thou com'st to me !
Where hast thou been this weary while, that I
Have watched the stars go slowly, slowly by?
To know thy cruelty, thyself must spend
Such long dark hours, and sicken for the end.
How oft, how long, my needle did I tire,
How often wake, for change, the unwilling lyre !
Sometimes, in pity of my lonely state,
I did lament of others' happier fate,
A little, and but gently. Ere I slept
This was the latest thought on which I wept."
I have marked here the passage which I think
most characteristic. Nothing surely can be more
exquisitely subtle than this half-conscious "folly,"
which interprets trifles first instinctively, according
V. L. E. X
34 '^'^ Old Love Story
to what it knows to be true, and then wilfully, by
what it chooses to believe. And how superb are
the secure falsehoods of the confident beauty !
Perhaps no other poem in the First Part comes
up to this. The next four poems, as well as the
ninth and tenth, are addressed to the friends, and
something has been said of them already. The
feeling of them all (and it is their chief merit) is
delightfully young and fresh. In the sixth, Tullus,
the monitor, has made the reasonable suggestion
that the narrator should go with him for a voyage
in the East, and has tried the effect of impeaching
his courage. He replies that, as far as that goes,
he would accompany Tullus to the world's end ; but
that not for all the sights in the world would he see
Cynthia so miserable as she threatens to be :
What should I gain to see fair Athens' arts,
If Cynthia cursed me while the ship was launched?
When tears of blood ran down her visage blanched,
What should I care for Asia's ancient marts?
language which long afterwards he was bitterly to
remember. In the eighth poem, with a certain
irony of contrast, it is found that Cynthia is on the
point of leaving with a wealthy suitor for Greece,
but she is dissuaded by the poet, who attributes his
success wholly to the power of his verse, and flatters
himself that after this proof of his strength he is
sure for ever. He is soon taught, however, that his
Muse can by no means dispense with the material
aids of the purse (xi — xv). Cynthia is gone to
the great watering-place of Baiae, the Brighton or
An Old Love Story 35
Scarborough of the day, whither the poet has not
followed her. This seems at first strange, as there
is no hint of a quarrel, and he is extremely doleful
at the separation ; but it is explained when we
discover, certainly without surprise, that his affairs
are in disorder. This disclosure is made with much
humour. In xiv the poet, with some heat, assures
Tullus, who would appear to have been improving
the occasion, that really he does not care for wealth,*
being possessed of love :
Unenvied you, the rich, by Tiber's side,
Quafifing your priceless cup, may lie at large,
And wonder that the skiffs so swiftly "glide,
Or wonder that so slowly stems the barge.
These opening lines may be noted in passing for
their delicate description of utter indolence. But,
alas! the "peril of my fortune" is announced at
Baiae, and Cynthia, instead of hurrying back, does
not seem to understand that the danger is "ours,"
and continues to study her daily toilet, unmoved
by the poetic assurance that none of the faithful
heroines of Greek legend, neither Calypso, Hypsi-
pyle, Evadne, nor Alphesiboea, would have behaved
so, and that she is forfeiting the prospect of an
equal renown. After this the lover is forced to open
his eyes (xvi). He seeks solitude both on sea
and on land (xvii, xviii), and is discontented with
himself for seeking it. He repeats the beloved
and unworthy name to the woods, carves it on the
trees, and generally conducts himself in the expected
manner. Finally (xix) he falls into an expectation
3—2
36 An Old Love Story
of death, and builds some hope of reconciliation on
this pathetic subject. There the book ends, so far
as Cynthia is concerned. The last two poems form
the personal epilogue, and, taken together, suggest
the relationship of the author to Gallus. Before
these two is put a piece unconnected either with
Cynthia or with Propertius, a charming and often
imitated version of the story of Hylas carried away
by the water-nymphs. It seems intended as a
specimen of the author's power in narrative proper,
and by an address to Gallus is loosely tacked into
its place.
Such in very brief outline is the First Part of
Cynthia. As will have been seen, though the pieces,
where connected by allusion, are naturally placed in
the order of time, the whole can scarcely be called a
story. There is but slight development, and after
the year supposed to have elapsed at the beginning
there is no hint of date. The time allotted to the
proceedings may be whatever the reader thinks
suitable. We may note also of this part that it
really is, what it calls itself, a book in praise of
Cynthia. The lover's expostulations are extremely
moderate, and his tenderness is rather increased
than diminished. A more curious point is this.
The introductory poem is full of self-reproach ; the
speaker knows himself to be in the way to ruin and
degradation, and would thankfully be rescued, were
it possible. Nothing of the sort occurs in this Part
again ; and it may well be suspected that when
Cynthia was expanded to its present form, the
An Old Love Story 37
introduction was modified to suit, as it does, not the
First Part, but the entire work.
For, whatever Propertius may have intended,
circumstances did not leave him perfectly free. His
reputation opened to him the official circle, and he
entered it. The Second Part begins with an address
to Maecenas, and we soon discover that we are in
an altered atmosphere. He was told, though he
did not need to be told, that his new patron had
taken him not for performance but for promise. He
has defined his position neatly by reference to the
rise of Virgil. The minister and the emperor are
pressing for a historical Roman epic, for something
parallel to the growing Aeneid, and Propertius can
only answer that he has not risen even to the
Georgics yet, but is still in the amatory region of
the Idylls^. But indeed he was something worse
off than this. His Cynthia, so far as it went, went
the wrong way. Augustus wanted a reform of
manners, and wanted above all to repeople desolate
Italy with soldiers and citizens. He was already
struggling to legislate in favour of marriage, and
against precisely the sort of connexion which
Cynthia celebrated. How peremptorily he could
deal with literature, both Horace and Ovid ' in
different ways were to prove. Evidently, either
Propertius must forgo the obvious path of ambi-
tion, or Cynthia must stop, or Cynthia continued
must take a new turn. We can easily understand
^11 I, and II 10, particularly 11 10, 25, 26. See Georg.
II 176.
38 An Old Love Story
why the rising author decided on the third way, and
added to his first picture of enchantment a second of
disillusion, and a third of deliverance. The Second
Part expressly promises the Third, and the two,
though perhaps published separately, were projected
together.
It is of course impossible here to examine the
whole, and we must be content with a glance at the
principal groups. The Second Part, as it is the
longest, is also in my judgment the most interesting.
The mental and physical charms of Cynthia still
exert their full force, and the lover, without real
effort, remains her servant. But he can deceive
himself no longer. A few pieces of eloquent de-
scription are followed (v, vi) by a fearful outburst
of rage and denunciation, recurring in various forms
at frequent intervals. The reproach of himself,
which after the introductory warning disappears
from the First Part, is now frequently upon his lips.
But against pressure from without he is fiercely
defiant. A social enactment enforcing marriage has
lately been put forward by the Emperor. The
lover declares that he would sooner die than wed
(for a marriage with Cynthia, it should be observed,
would not have satisfied the law). They rejoice
together when the law is withdrawn, a scene of
telling irony, for in fact the moment is one of the
few glimpses of happiness in this division of the
story, and it is clear that Cynthia, who for the most
part keeps no measures with her victim any longer,
has really been frightened by the proposal into
An Old Love Story 39
a passing gentleness. Two other reconciliations
occur. The poet, with the same complacency so
amusingly presented in the earlier part, attributes
each to an artistic success. We will try to show
something of both the poems so distinguished, for
the opinion of Propertius on his own work is not
to be despised. The first time (xiii, xiv, xv) he
tries again the familiar pathos of foreseeing his
death, a way, as he says with delicate satire, so
obvious that he ought not to have missed it. He
now goes the length of arranging his funeral :
No masked procession show my pedigree.
Nor let the trumpet wail (what use?) for me.
Lay not the corpse upon an ivory bed,
No broidered coverlet beneath me spread.
Give me no train of mourners, give me just
The meanest following of a pauper's dust.
A train of Three shall satisfy my pride —
My Books, a royal gift for Pluto's bride.
But thou shalt follow there, and beat thy breast,
And call my name, and call, and never rest ;
Kiss the cold lips, aye, kiss them, till the pyre
Is crowned with spices and awaits the fire.
Then let me, all to dust and ashes turned,
In vessel small and earthen be inurned.
And where they burned me, as memorial due,
Set me a bay for shade, and verses two :
"The slave, whose relics this is set above.
Had but one only Lord, whose name was Love."
Posterity has confirmed the poet's judgment, and
has given this poem a wide and perpetual fame. It
has also generally agreed with him in admiring still
more the other professedly successful piece in the
40 An Old Love Story
book, a desperate effort which follows the dead
failure of an allusion to the old topics of death and
poetic immortality (xxiv, xxv, xxvi). He tries a
different pathos.
I dreamed. Ah, dearest ! near a sinking ship
I saw thee faintly beat the drowning sea.
Drenched was thy heavy hair, and ah ! thy lip
Confessed the falsehoods it hath told to me.
Thus Helle, when the golden beast she rode,
Tossed on the waves, thought I in deadly fear.
Like Helle, Cynthia too, my thought forbode.
May name a sea, and ask the traveller's tear.
I cried to heaven, to Neptune, Leda's Twain,
Leucothea too, a woman once as thou.
Thy hands are lifted feebly from the main.
Thou criest on me, and thou art dying now !
Had but the merman king beheld thine eyes,
Thou must have been his queen. The whitest face,
The bluest locks in ocean, with surprise
And jealous murmur, must have given thee place.
But see, a dolphin darting to thy side !
(The same Arion, harping, rode upon?)
I would have flung me in the waves; I tried,
I struggled, agonized — the dream was gone.
The reader may find here, as high as it can be
traced, the beginning of many a fertile stream of
poetry. There is a detail which, though not im-
portant in the piece itself, affords afterwards a
curious illustration of the variety of Propertius in
working up his topics. One would scarcely suspect
anything personal to Cynthia in the " blueness " of
the sea-nymphs' tresses ; for Cynthia's hair was
An Old Love Story 41
brown. But a new light is thrown back on it after-
wards, when in another mood the lover twits the
lady with her small success in a whimsical attempt
at black :
If one I know will turn her tresses i>/ue,
Say, does that prove it a becoming hue?
But beautiful as are these golden threads in the
Second Part, they are far more effective in the web.
The last in particular comes as a delicious relief
after a frantic episode (xxii — xxv), in which the
narrator plunges low indeed in search of dissipa-
tion, with the only result of deepening his disgust
and self-contempt. It is well worth notice that this
incident and all the like element in the book is, so
far as we know, entirely original, a new thing in
literature. Certainly it was not taken from the
Greek. The moment was critical. The Dipsychus
was becoming conscious of his two souls, and the
breach was before long to be widened into an agony
which re-created the world. The mental dialogue
which begins thus,
I, that should have disdained the common road,
Now drink, delighted, of its very pools !
is worth volumes of declamatory satire.
From the triumph which rewards the "dream"
we pass, by a singularly skilful transition, into a
wholly fresh episode. The dream leads naturally
to the thought, that a death at sea, with Cynthia,
would not be unacceptable, and this to a little piece
of false rhetoric on the theme, that among the
uncertainties of life he alone knows the destined
42 An Old Love Story
manner of his death, who will live or die by the
kindness or cruelty of his mistress ; when suddenly
truth avenges itself upon affectation by illustrating-
the uncertainty of life in another way. Cynthia falls
•dangerously ill. In a poem of prayer and pity the
familiar legendary names, the poet's Greek stock-in-
trade, lo, Leucothea, Andromeda, Callisto, Semele,
defile past with a strange and helpless effect. But
the danger grows ; the last efforts of witchcraft are
exhausted ; the lover throws away his learning and
breaks into the simplicity of despair :
The wheel runs slack, the spell said o'er;
The ashes in the lembic die ;
The moon will be bewitched no more,
I hear the night-bird's boding cry.
If death for her, then death for me
Must set his sail of funeral hue.
I'll be with her, or cease to be.
Is one life nought? Yet pity two.
Ah, God ! If you would save my sweet,
The hymn that I would make for you !
And she should sit before your feet
And tell you all her peril through ^
Cynthia recovers, and things return to the accus-
tomed track. The hero, if such he can now be
called, cannot sink much lower ; but lower he does
sink at the end of this Part (xxxii, xxxiii), where
he actually endeavours to propitiate his tyrant by
artfully defending her offences.
^ The magic rhombus was not a " wheel," as Mr Andrew Lang
has discovered for us ; but we cannot well call it a " bull-roarer."
An Old Love Story 43
Scattered in this division, of which the above is
the merest sketch, runs a topic which takes a larger
development in the next. With the revolt of the
lover's new feelings mixes very naturally and artisti-
cally the stirring of ^ new literary aspiration. In the
address which opens Part II, when first discussing
the proposals of Maecenas, he declined, as we saw,
the task of national poetry as beyond his strength.
But it continues to suggest itself as a true ideal, and
begins to take the shape of a duty. It touches
with a shade of remorse even the commands for
his funeral. He has reasons for renouncing so
emphatically the last honours of a Roman citizen.
Nor let the trumpet wail (what use?) for me.
He recalls himself to the subject sharply a little
later (x), registers a promise to undertake it some
day, and actually addresses to the emperor a few
couplets in praise of his triumphs, excusing himself
from attempting more at present with a graceful
apology :
The garland, if the head men cannot touch
Of some tall statue, at the feet they lay ;
So we poor poets, when the theme too much
Exceeds us, bring such incense as we may.
In the heat of the moment he even gets so far as to
dismiss, or pretend to dismiss, the topic of Cynthia's
praises (xi). His temporary farewell to it is a
finished miniature :
Praise thee who list, if any care, and sow
His laboured verses in a barren ground.
44 -^f^ Old Love Story
All shall be buried with thee, all shall go
With thee into the low forgotten mound,
Which men shall pass, nor say, beholding it,
"This earth was once a woman and a wit."
But the tone of the protest beHes its words.
He persists in the old manner, and even declares
(xxv) that he shall persist in it to the end. How-
ever, in the closing poem of Part H, which upon a
slight pretext is devoted entirely to his literary hopes,
other views are again distinctly seen. Returning
to the thoughts of the opening poem, he praises en-
thusiastically the rising Aeneid, and while he takes
Virgil himself to witness that it is something to
have attained a glory in the parallel of the Idylls,
asserts with emphasis the superior greatness of the
national theme and of the "glories of Actium." It
is among such thoughts that Propertius first cites
as his model the significant name of Callimachus.
Callimachus of Alexandria, himself an elegiac poet,
was famous particularly for a work in which he had
turned the form of elegy to the service of Greek
legendary history. The Roman project which this
connexion suggests is henceforth always in view
till we lose sight of Propertius, and with an appeal
to the precedent of Callimachus the Third Part
opens.
Before we dismiss the Second we must notice
that Cynthia, enlarged into three successive pictures,
became something very near a story, and as such
now required marks of time. We hear now first of
the lapse of months, then of the lapse of years.
An Old Love Story 45
Two dates are furnished, each denoted by a great
imperial event. Near the end of the Second Part
is placed the dedication of the new Palatine temple
of Apollo (b.c. 28), towards the end of the Third the
death of the emperor's nephew and heir Marcellus
(b.c. 23). The former poem is tacked to the main
subject of Cynthia, and is in no sense a poem for
the occasion ; indeed, it was probably written long
after. It is brief, and (except to an archaeologist)
of little interest, and is evidently inserted chiefly
for the sake of marking the date. The latter is a
quasi-official elegy and, we need hardly say, does
not mention Cynthia, who indeed by that time is
relegated to a colder distance. It was probably
composed at the time, and followed before long by
the publication of the whole work.
With the Third Part we must be brief. In it
are wound up both the threads of the previous part,
the amorous and the literary, the two still entangled
as before.
In the degraded condition disclosed at the end
of the Second Part, in the condition of "slavery," a
word of terrible sound to a Roman ear, the narrator
spent, as he tells us in the last poem of all, five
years. The limits, as already seen, are roughly
marked by the two dates, 28 and 23. Of the rela-
tions between him and Cynthia we hear directly
very little more, some five poems only out of twenty-
five being given to it. But this little is significant.
Knowing that he is utterly weary, that he is now
bound to her, however securely, only by inveterate
46 An Old Love Story
habit, the woman had begun to make him scenes.
One such occurs in the Second Part (xx), when
he represses her laments with a peevish tenderness.
But in VIII of Part III, a powerful poem, we have
the further stage, when love itself is turned into a
sort of malice, and the lover ruminates with bitter
gusto the enjoyment of yesterday's spectacle —
Cynthia in the paroxysms of a jealous fury. In
XV the storm is actually raging. But if these
poems present with force the last phase of his
miserable pleasure, the others (vi and xvi) show
with humour, not less artful, the abject facility with
which he went back to it. In vi a message of
reconciliation from Cynthia (for Cynthia in this part
for the first time has to summon) is brought by her
slave, Lygdamus, a name to be linked hereafter with
a tragic mystery. The lover assumes a sceptic air,
and solemnly adjures Lygdamus, "as he hopes for.
freedom, '\ to tell him the truth. But instead of
waiting for an answer, he shows his resolution not
to be deceived by a series of leading questions,
which put into the messenger's mouth a touching
picture of Cynthia sitting sadly at her modest work,
with not so much as a mirror to be seen, and tear-
fully complaining to Lygdamus of the cruel deserter.
If this is true, let Lygdamus bear from him at once
the tenderest reply, and "as he hopes for freedom"
procure an instant cessation of hostilities! In xvi
he makes himself utterly ridiculous, not indeed for
the first time, but with a consciousness of his
absurdity which is ominous. In the middle of the
An Old Love Story 47
night a message calls him from Rome to Tibur, a
distance of near twenty miles. He goes, but full
of tremors, which he vainly endeavours to make
pathetic. What if he should be murdered ! Will
Cynthia bring garlands to his grave ? He is obliged
to confess that this much-abused "grave" is likely
to receive anything but respect from people in
general, and hopes (oh contemptible " grave " !) that
at any rate Cynthia will put it somewhere out of the
way ! From this time he sets steadily to the work
of his deliverance.
One only glimpse of anything resembling the
old happiness this Part contains (x)\ The con-
nexion, now a thing of years and habit, has become
also a thing of anniversaries. The birthday of
Cynthia will afford, hopes the lover, at least a day's
respite from the fatigue of her tempers. Long
before, when this fatigue was a new feeling, he had
flatteringly compared her eternal complaints to the
mourning of the nightingale and the tears of Niobe'.
Now, by a dexterous allusion to this, he discreetly
cloaks his request for a brief intermission. The
piece is exceedingly celebrated for poetic grace, and
dramatically also it represents, I think, the author's
highest level. One might spend some time (if the
^ I do not here forget hi 20, but I think it plain, for many
reasons, that this poem is not addressed to Cynthia, but to a
person utterly different, and celebrates the marriage, or at least
the ** honourable addresses," of the narrator. It is in fact a step
in the course of his deliverance.
2 II 20, 5—8.
48 An Old Love Story
task were not better left to the reader) in studying
its sharp and delicate delineation.
Surprised I saw, while yet the sun was red
This morn, the Muses standing by my bed.
Three times their joyful hands they clapped, to greet,
As then I knew, the birthday of my sweet.
Oh cloudless let it pass, the winds give o'er,
The waves break gently on the threatened shore !
Far from my sight this day let sorrow keep.
Not marble Niobe be seen to weep.
The halcyons hush their plaint, and she, whose lay
Mourns for lost Itys, mourn him not to-day!
And thou whose prospered life this day was given,
Arise, and pay thy grateful dues to heaven;
Wash thee from sleep with water pure, and fair
With moulding fingers set thine ordered hair.
The robe thou hadst, when first thou didst subdue
Propertius' eyes, put on, a garland too :
Then pray that still those potent charms may last.
And still in thy subjection hold me fast :
The altar wreathe, the atoning incense light.
Till the glad flame make all the chamber bright.
Then speed the time till eve : prepare the board,
The wine, the sense-entrancing perfume poured :
Tax the hoarse pipe, till night be tired with dance;
Free be thy jest, and loosely let it glance ;
Banish dull sleep with riot ; let the rout
Fill with its echoes all the street without.
While we will ask the dice, as others do,
What hearts Love's leaden wings are beating through.
Last, when the cups have measured many an hour,
The Priestess shall disclose the mystic bower.
With annual rite the feast shall duly close,
And this thy birthday finish in repose.
Meanwhile the great literary project grows in
firmness and fixes in outline. (Fragments of it
An Old Love Story 49
were written and are extant, and perhaps it was
already commenced before the Cynthia came out.)
We are told distinctly that the Cynthia detains the
author only for a while (11), and more precisely
that with encouragement from Maecenas, whose
admired modesty the author feels constrained to
imitate, he will certainly enter on the poetic history
of Rome, from the earliest legends of Romulus to
the overthrow of Antonius at Actium by Augustus
himself (ix). The next and decisive step is
masterly. Turning from the birthday picture placed
here, the poet tries to palliate his servility in the
eyes of some censor by excuses from mythologic
precedent. And indeed he can plead much nearer
precedent. If an Antonius could be slave to Cleo-
patra — "may not I," he was going to say, "be
pardoned } " But the name of Antonius, so lately
mentioned with such different hopes, lights like a
spark the long prepared train of literary and personal
motives. His apology is forgotten, and the Roman
poet breaks indignantly into that very "theme of
Actium " which he had formerly resigned to Virgil.
This piece again, familiar as an extract, surpasses
itself when read with the context :
She asked, for price of her profaned hand,
Rome and Rome's Senate subject and enslaved !
Oh guileful Alexandria, guilty land !
Oh Memphian fields, with blood of Romans laved !
Too deep upon our souls, when Pharos' strand
Despoiled thrice-victor Pompey, was it graved,
That better in the field had Pompey died
Or 'neath the heel of Caesar laid his pride.
V. L. E. A
50 An Old Love Story
And dared she then, Canopus' harlot-queen,
That sperm of Macedon, our branded shame,
With dog Anubis front the Thunderer's mien,
With threats of Nile the Tiber think to tame?
With rattles chase our trumpets, and our keen
Swift barques with galleons of Egyptian frame?
On Rome's high rock set up her tented seat,
And bid the Roman eagles to her feet?
We feel that the Roman CalHmachus has actually
commenced work, and that, the Cynthia finished, a
Roman " Scenes of Story " may be with some
confidence expected.
The rest of the poems we must pass lightly.
Various in subject, they are variously and some-
times very adroitly shaped to the purpose, as where
an elegy on a death at sea, after blaming much the
rashness of men's enterprise, concludes with this
unexpected turn :
I shall not brave you, winds. I cannot choose
But lie at Cynthia's steps, sans fame or use.
All is now ready for the end ; and after experi-
menting on one or two other methods, the rebel
recurs after all to the very expedient recommended
and rejected years ago — a voyage to Athens and to
the cities of the East. To point the parallel and
round the whole work, Tullus, the original author
of the suggestion (with this exception, the friends
of Part I disappear in the continuation), is found
resident in Asia Minor, and the poet has the satis-
faction of lecturing him on the folly of preferring
Asia to Italy, which he lauds in language thoroughly
An Old Love Story 51
proper to the official school of poetry, and in fact
adapted freely from a memorable passage of the
Georgics, — Italy, whose honourable history is so
much more respectable than wild Greek romance,
** Italy, Tullus, your natural home, to which you
ought at once to return and get married ! " Thus
Propertius, and we feel that he is changed indeed.
A Roman story could scarcely conclude without
a symbolic portent, and here the love-poet loses
his professional tablets. As for Cynthia, nothing
remains but to dismiss her, with costs, if possible :
Trust woman, trust the charms no more
Which cheated once my humble eyes.
Love lent, I see, the poor disguise :
I blush to read my verses o'er.
Love, Cynthia, gave each heavenly grace,
And showed me things that never were,
And could to rosy morn compare
The brilliance of a painted face.
My fond disease no medicine moved ;
Kind seniors sermoned me in vain.
I would to sea. Alas ! how fain
I own the perils I have proved.
Love's cruel dungeon have I tried,
The stake, the cauldron, and the chain.
Yet have I 'scaped that Afric main,
And see in port my vessel ride.
My wounds begin to close, my wits
Return; and I myself consign,
By Jove neglected, to the shrine.
If such there be, where Reason sits.
This may be all very well, but we could now
wish that the ransomed captive had stopped here,
4—2
52 An Old Love Story
and not thought it necessary to hold up to Cynthia
the probable miseries of her future. However, such
a close is truly Roman and perhaps, if it comes to
that, not untrue. If there were any obstinate lovers
of " Greek romance " who were inclined to murmur,
they were destined to receive an ample satisfaction.
Besides the Cynthia, Propertius left a small
number of poems and fragments, now subjoined as
"Book IV." This numbering, though convenient
for reference, is misleading and not a little absurd ;
for the collection is not a " Book " at all, still less a
part of Cynthia. Indeed, the "arrangement" of it,
if the word applies, is so careless that it can scarcely
be attributed to the author^ One piece is evidently
the opening of that poetic history the projection of
which has been traced above, and for the same work
most of the others seem to have been intended.
Three or four refer to the facts (or fictions) of
Cynthia. Like the rest of the posthumous collection
they are disconnected and without order. They are
all distinguished from Cynthia by a very different
style, and an examination of them shows that (with
perhaps one exception)^ none could have found a
proper place in it. But there is one most remark-
able poem (not that just excepted), which is in a
^ Dr Postgate rightly insists upon this.
^ IV 8, which might possibly have stood in Part iii, though
it is very different in style. Like the other posthumous poems,
it shows a great multiplication of dramatis personae and scenic
details. The absence of these is the characteristic of the Cynthia^
the defect indeed, as the author would seem to have thought.
An Old Love Story 53
certain sense a sequel to Cynthia, and cannot be
omitted from the briefest notice of it. It is plain
that, whatever additions Cynthia might have re-
ceived within, if the story were to proceed at all,
one only further stage had a chance of interest.
The deserted woman might die ; and Propertius
determined to kill her. Her ghost revisits the lover.
The scene has a sort of realistic romance quite
startling in Latin, and shows, I think, that had
Propertius lived or worked longer, he might have
changed considerably the course of literature. It is
night. It is a very short time after Cynthia's death.
I The poet has heard of it, and has been somewhat,
not very deeply, affected. From the conclusion of
Cynthia it would be inferred that after the dismissal
the lover interested himself in his former mistress
no more. The present poem starts from the same
assumption. He has heard of her funeral, but was
not there, and indeed he does not know (for he has
to be told) where she is buried. Of her recent life
we must suppose him absolutely ignorant. His
mind is wandering in a selfish regret for his departed
youth, when — but I will try to give in his own form
the manner of the waking :
There is a life beyond the grave. A shade,
A pallid wraith escapes the conquering flame.
/ have seen Cynthia. She was lately laid
Beneath the whispering wayside : yet she came.
(It may be well to remind the reader that Roman
graves were made by the roads as a regular practice,
and that the words here mean no more than "she is
54 ^^ Old Love Story
buried, ' though they have doubtless a very different
poetic effect.)
To me, who drowsed upon a funeral thought
Of love dethroned, came Cynthia from the grave;
Her hair, her eyes as from the bier she brought.
But on her flesh the charred vesture clave.
The gem (I knew it) of her ring betrayed
The fire; her blank lips had a Lethe look.
She sighed and spoke, as though with breath, but made
A bony rattle as her hand she shook :
" False that thou art and false must ever be
To woman, canst thou sleep? So quick forgot
The things that once were done 'twixt thee and me.
And all the tender past as though 'twas not ! "
She adds a few vivid touches of reminder, and then
she tells him that she died without a friend, without
anyone who cared to use the strange (but then
accredited and common) means to detain a little
the parting soul. The call of a beloved voice was
supposed to have some power ; his would have
given her one more day. She died, and he knew
it ; yet he paid not the slightest tribute to her
memory :
"Who at my burial saw thy sunken head.
Thy warm tears falling on thy garb of woe?
Thou couldst not (if no further to be led)
Bid to the gate my bier more slowly go ! "
He sent no precious spices, no inexpensive flowers.
And hereupon, as if to put beyond question that she
died not only quite friendless, but also (for a reason
which she leaves him to guess) quite weary of life,
An Old Love Story 55
she suddenly discloses these horrid facts. She was
poisoned by two of her slaves , 7nale and female ; she
let herself be poisoned ; and the murderers, married
together, are, without question, enjoying her property,
holding in subjection the rest of her household, and
stifling her memory by horrible cruelties.
Let Lygdamus be tried with fire and brand
(I knew the wine's fell colour when I took),
Let guilty Nomas wash her guarded hand
And, if her soul be clear, the ordeal brook.
She, she, the refuse of the public walk,
Now trails in dust a golden train of state,
And if a handmaid of my beauty talk,
With double task-work silences her prate.
For garlanding my grave old Petale,
Fond, faithful wretch, was loaded with the stocks;
For begging in my name was Lalage
Scourged, while she hanged upon her twisted locks.
The murderess, in her brutal rapacity, actually
stole the gilt statuette from the dead, and has melted
it down, as an addition to her " marriage portion."
Yet Cynthia is not come to reproach Propertius
(she acknowledges her debt to his genius), but only
to assure him that she is faithful to his memory.
She offers a proof, which the poet by his own
practice might certainly be estopped from disputing :
she has gone to the company of the good women of
legend, and in the consoling converse of Elysium
gives a report (alas ! partial) of Propertius to such
admired wives as Andromeda and Hypermnestra.
She requests him lastly to take under his protection
56 An Old Love Story
two specially dear to her, and to render a small
service to her grave :
If thou art touched, if Chloris, she whose spell
Can hold thee now, permit a thought of me —
My nurse is palsied; and she used thee well;
Let her not starve, my old Parthenie !
And ah ! my darling " Maid " (the name was fit ;
She held a mirror to me), let her be
Maid to no other ! And thy verses writ
On Cynthia, burn them ; keep no " praise " of me !
This, however little we may care for Andromeda
and Hypermnestra, we shall hardly deny to be real
pathos. It is but too easy to comprehend the wish
that Cynthia's child (for there can be only one
meaning in the explanation added to the name)
should, if possible, never read Cynthia.
So tight with ivy cords my grave is bound,
My bones are aching : let me lie at ease.
In the white clime of Tibur is the mound,
Where brooding Anio feeds the orchard trees.
Set me a pillar there, with praises just
And brief, that posting travellers may see,
"Here lieth golden Cynthia, one whose dust
Adds something, Anio, to the praise of thee."
Of the " ivy " I have seen no explanation, and should
gladly find one. That it is not supposed to have
grown on the grave is evident. The circumstances
make this manifestly inconceivable. I imagine that
the cords are used, as hazel and other wood is
sometimes used now, to hold together the new
heap ; and I strongly suspect that the tightness of
An Old Love Story 57
the binding is connected with the murder, and was
a superstitious device for holding down the ghost.
"Soon," she tells him, at the last moment, "soon
I, and no woman else, shall have thee, keep thee,
press thee, mix with thee bone in bone\" The
prophecy would seem to have been before very long
so far advanced towards fulfilment that Propertius
died. At least this is the simplest way of explaining
the state of the later collection, and the fact that of
his magnum opus there is nothing but a few cut
stones. These fragments indeed are, many of
them, of rare beauty. Perhaps I may return to
them another time, and even say something more
(I should like to say much more) of Cynthia. It is
not at all the book to be easily exhausted by selec-
tions. Enough if I may have revived some reader's
former pleasure, or possibly even directed one to a
source of pleasure untried.
^ [The poem is iv 7].
THE FEAST OF SATURN
Should we like to see sixty thousand people
immensely happy ? Could we resolve to do it
without scolding or grudging ? Could we rise to
this, even if the president of the feast were to be
a traditional villain of the children's story-books —
one of those upon whom satire and tragedy, dabbing
away in alternate streaks of black and white, happen
to have put such a tarry smear as history will never
get off? Even if the scene of the feast were a
building raised with more blessings and ruined with
more curses than any pile of stone in Europe ? If
so, let us have the pleasure of the spectacle. Let
us go back just eighteen centuries. Let us suppose
ourselves the subjects of that generous and popular
prince (no irony) the Emperor Domitian. We are
resident in the capital. It is the middle of De-
cember. Let us go to the Coliseum, some fifteen
years old, shining white in the sun ; let us forget
(for to make this Roman holiday no one shall be
butchered), let us forget for once to be inviting
the Goths to glut their ire (at the cost of what
little means of happiness the civilized races have
painfully scraped together), and let us, under the
The Feast of Saturn 59
guidance of the poets Statius and Martial, attend
a revival of the Great Saturnalia.
We must first use our minds a little to the
surrounding atmosphere, political, popular, and lite-
rary. We must dissociate all the objects round us
from the thoughts which long habit has attached
to them. We must teach ourselves the socialistic
principles of the Roman populace, the true prin-
ciples, as they held, of the Roman state, vindicated
against the rapacious oligarchy by the revolution
which founded the Empire, vindicated again against
a line of Caesars, false to the democracy through
which they rose, by the revolution which threw
down the tyrant Nero. Through the work of
Vespasian and his sons, particularly under the
brilliant reign of the young Domitian, " the Roman
people " seemed to themselves to be entering again
into their own. The magnificent buildings, most
of them destined to popular use, with which the
Flavian princes covered the city, were regarded
by the citizens of the capital, through whose eyes
we are proposing to look, not as bribes for their
support, but simply as repayment to them of that
" property of the Roman people " which was theirs,
but had been treacherously seized and misspent by
the degenerate heirs of the deified Julius.
Most strongly, as was natural, did this feeling
attach to the buildings and the festivals erected
and celebrated within that great area of the city
which Nero had occupied with his monstrous
palace and park, within the site of the infamous
6o The Feast of Saturn
"Golden House." In the midst of this area, as a
crowning monument of popular pleasure substituted
for selfish luxury, lay the great Flavian amphitheatre,
known later, and by us, as the Coliseum.
It is scarcely possible for a modern to appre-
ciate the sentiment with which this building was
regarded at the time. That it should be praised
as an all-surpassing "wonder of the world" is
intelligible. We can tolerate Martial when he
writes :
Boast no more your builded mountains, Memphis ! Babylon,
be dumb !
Delos, hide your horn-built altar; Ephesus, your conqueror's
come. *
Mention not your Mausoleum, Caria, hanging in the sky.
What is great? The rest be silent. Says the Coliseum, "I."
But this is nothing. Martial distinctly speaks
of the amphitheatre (the arena of the lions !) as a
" sacred " edifice. And he accompanies the word
with explanations which, for the moment, we must
try to make our own. It was the strong impression
left on the Roman mind by the gigantic greed of
Nero which made so keen the sense of renovation
for the world when his grasp was unclosed and his
prey recovered. Rome seemed at one and the
same moment both to be given back to herself
and also, by the closer union with the distant
provinces, which was the effect of the improved
Flavian administration, to become more universal,
more worthy of her great enjoyments and splendid
popular pomp. There is another piece of Martial
The Feast of Saturn 6i
which compresses into a few lines the whole spirit
of the Flavian age, and centres it upon its true
centre, the amphitheatre. He supposes himself to
stand on the site of the " Golden " palace near the
colossus of the Sun, and to be surveying the chief
buildings of Domitian and his family.
Where midway in the street the scaffold climbs,
Raising nigh heaven yon giant crowned with rays.
One tyrant house devoured in other times
The city round, and spread a baleful blaze.
One lake, one private water, yielded room
For all that sacred Circle. Where you mark
Yon swiftly-building Baths, there Nero's doom
Made thousands homeless for a single park.
Last to the place of yon fair Colonnade
He grasped, still craving. — Caesar, thanks to thee,
Rome is once more for Romans. Thou hast made
The enslaver's pleasance free unto the free.
It was impossible that in any time which pos-
sessed a poet at all, or the capacity for poetic
feeling, this union of the world should fail to
kindle the imagination. If in the enumeration of
Gibbon the long defile of races obedient to the
Caesars makes a stately and impressive show, what
must have been the effect of actually seeing the
vast unity, typified in the varied crowd of the
streets, of the colonnades, and, above all, of the
amphitheatre ? Possibly this may be read by some
who were present at the opening of the Great
Exhibition in 1851. I was not there myself (for
good reasons), but I have heard it said by men
who were, and who are well entitled to speak on
62 The Feast of Saturn
such a matter, that it was the most "poetic" ex-
perience they had ever known or could easily
conceive. I am not ashamed to say that I find
our various "Inventories" and " Colinderies " in
' London more poetical than most poetry, and have
.always wondered a little that scarcely anything of
the picturesque and imperial suggestiveness to be
found there, and in modern London all over and
at all times, has found its way into the later
Victorian literature. It has not happened to suit
the genius of those among us who have the faculty
of expression. We have not for this purpose found
our man. Rome did. Among the crowd in the
Coliseum sat Martial, noting and translating, in
a thousand sharp touches, the thoughts presented
by the successive figures. It is true that the unity
was much more real and the variety of surface
much more striking than in the English " empire "
as represented in our capital. Through the same
passage of the theatre would pass, in a few minutes,
wild horsemen from the Steppes, whose looks at
least seemed to authenticate the grossest barbar-
isms recorded in Herodotus ; a group of majestic
Arabians, excited for once into something like
haste ; Germans who had but once seen the
Rhine ; Africans who had possibly drunk the
springs of the Nile — all more or less subjects of
Rome, all entering at Caesar's door, and sprinkled
as they entered with his cloud of saffron perfume.
Among them sometimes would be a mountaineer
of Thrace, pale and pensive, who, seeing the press.
The Feast of Saturn 63
takes from his wallet a little roll of parchment and
holds it tight in his hand as he goes. Martial might
well look at him and wonder. He is an ascetic, a
brother of the Orphean mystery. He and his like
have for centuries preached and practised strange
precepts of self-suppression and renunciation. Their
little river is at the very point to join and swell
a mighty world-stream. What will it not sweep
away! Him and all did Martial note. Here is
one scrap from his note-book.
\ Is there a race so rude,
So bare of art and nude,
; That comes not, Caesar, to thy glorious show?
; See yon Sarmatian ! Think !
\ He hath bled his horse for drink !
; Yon^Haemian reads his Orpheus 'mid the snow.
; This one, it may be, dips
I In Nilus' fount his lips,
j That hears the breakers of the encircling Main.
I Arabia comes, not last,
Sabaea hastens fast,
Cilicia finds her saffron here again.
See the Sygambrian there.
Known by his knot of hair ;
The Aethiop, knotted too, but diversely.
A thousandfold their speech ;
Yet this attuneth each,
They hail a common father, Sire, in thee !
In a city and age presenting such rich material
for the imagination in the walks of daily life, it is
not strange that some should have regarded this
material as exclusively proper for literature, and
should have contrasted with it contemptuously what
\
\
64 The Feast of Saturn
could be got by treating over and over again the
well-worn topics borrowed from Greece. This was
the choice : for to the faculty of invention scarcely
any school of Roman poetry would pretend, cer-
tainly none of those which divided the city under
Domitian. The difference of tendency rose to the
height of a formal controversy, and is represented
to us chiefly by the names of Martial and Statius.
But into this controversy we must not now enter
very far, nor shall we attempt to estimate the merits
of Statius' work on the traditional Greek lines, his
epic upon the orthodox epic subject of Thebes.
It has had some effect at various times, and may
have again. At the present moment, though slightly
alive in the schools, in the world it is practically
dead, and it has been in this condition for a great
part of its existence. A work whose whole motive
is borrowed from times in which the writer had
only a fictitious interest, has generally something
unhealthy in its constitution. There are plenty of
English parallels ready to hand. Martial had no
doubtful opinion on the subject. He held that,
under the Flavian dynasty at all events, the proper
subject for Romans was Rome. Despite of civili-
ties, there was evidently friction between Martial
and Statius ; and the matter is of interest to us
here because we are presently to have before us,
from the gallery of Statius, perhaps the largest
picture remaining of a Flavian festivity. Now this
picture is evidently a challenge-piece. It is the
chief of Statius' essays in the manner of the rival
The Feast of Saturn 65
school, and probably owes some energy to the
writer's eagerness in proving that he too, when
he chose, could touch off the humours of the town.
A glance, therefore, at these rivalries is a proper
prelude to the subject. Martial offers satire in
abundance ; of which here is a specimen. It should
be remembered, as a help to fixing the point, that the
legends of Thebes and Argos, typified by the names
of Oedipus and Thyestes respectively, make the
whole of Statius' Thebais, and that Statius was,
beyond comparison, the chief writer of his school.
' Thyestes and Oedipus, folly all that is !
j Your Scyllas, Medeas, what good do they do?
i What's Hylas, or Parthenopaeus, or Attis?
I Endymion sleeping, what says he to you?
I The pinions of Icarus melted, the slighting
I Of amorous rivers by swains they pursue, —
1 What help can you get from such pure waste of writing?
• Here's verse to which Life may write under '"Tis true!"
No Centaurs, no Gorgons, will here be presented,
No Harpies ! 'Tis man, sir, man only that speaks.
If you don't like your portrait, and feel discontented
At seeing yourself, sir — why, go to the Greeks !
A sharp cast of the literary javelin this, at a
time when the favourite poet of culture had "fixed,
O Muse, the barrier of his song at OedipusT It is
clear that to turn aside these and other like missiles
was one object of Statius when, imitating osten-
tatiously the manner of Martial, he wrote his very
interesting piece on " The Saturnalian Feast of
Domitian."
V. L. E. q
66 " The Feast of Saturn
Of all the feasts by which, as it was held, the
" sovereign people " enjoyed their own, the most
widely popular, the most typical, was the feast of
the Saturnalia, held in mid- December, and lasting,
in the time of Domitian, five days, of which one
was principal. The connexion of the feast with
Saturn — the Italian god of the field, honoured
when the seed was sown, that in due time he
might give the increase symbolized by his sickle —
had of course long before Flavian times become
merely nominal. To suit the facts of the time the
Sowing festival of Rome must have then been
adapted to the agriculture of Egypt, Pontus, and
where not ? But the old winter-feast of the farmers
fell, for Rome and Italy, at a time of year very
well suited to public merry-making. It is other-
wise with us. Our Christmas, closely connected
in history with the Saturnalia, is made miserable,
; three years in four, by the weather, and for united
I public festivals on a large scale it is quite impos-
sible. Our real Saturnalia have long ago migrated
to Easter, and from Easter tend constantly to fix
themselves practically in our brief summer and
delightful autumn. But at Rome, as everyone
knows, there is a really enjoyable Christmas for
the general public, and there was a really enjoy-
able Saturnalia. As at our Christmas so at the
Saturnalia, public manners required of everyone to
make those in his power as easy and comfortable
as might be during the five days. Particularly, as
with ourselves, this remission was claimed on behalf
The Feast of Saturn Sy
of the poor and the oppressed. The State con-
tributed to the general rejoicing a relaxation, which
is to us odd enough and affords a lesson to the
historic imagination. Of gambling the business-
like and economical Roman felt a great horror ; and
at ordinary times both law and public sentiment re-
l pressed all games of chance with an extravagant
' and doubtless self-defeating severity. But both
gave way to the imperative desire that everyone
in his own fashion should be happy at the Satur-
nalia, and for five days the Roman might get drunk
(which for the most part he did not want to do)
and might shake the dice-box (which he wanted
very badly indeed), without fear of interference
from the aediles. The sentiment, indeed, of the
graver sort held out when law had given way. It
is laughable, a fine instance of the local humours
of Puritanism, to read that Augustus, half a cen-
tury earlier than our Flavian period, and when the
Roman Empire, the "corrupt," the "dissolute,"
etc., etc., was already established, incurred grave
reproach because he, being the guardian of public
morals, and bound to set a good example, went so
far in Saturnalian licence as to join in a round game
for points with his family! Pro pudor inversique
mores !
To the Roman mind, therefore, a general per-
mission to play in public for stakes seemed to be
the seal and assurance of general liberty, and the
Feast of Saturn is seldom mentioned without some
allusion to this characteristic mark. And it is
5—2
68 The Feast of Saturn
mentioned often. To Martial in particular, as a
caterer for amusement, the season was especially
dear. There is some evidence that for a time he
published regularly at the Saturnalia — by way of
Christmas numbers as it were — special volumes of
light verse suited to the holiday reader. He is
always pleading the general absolution of the feast
as an excuse both for offences against the moral
taste, which, to say the truth, are frequent, and for
supposed laxities of literary workmanship, which
are pretended merely, as a show of humility ; for
a more exact artist never put stylus to wax. Very
delicate and graceful are his excuses for rudeness,
and very various ; this, for example, where he in-
geniously deduces from Saturn's sickle, once used
for other purposes, a suggestion of fleeting life and
an injunction to make the most of our time :
When the greybeard with the scythe
Bids the dice to keep us blythe
Days five-fold :
Merry Mob-cap, Madam Rome,
Poets for a careless tome
Scarce you'll scold.
Will you ? No ! your smile replies.
We may write without disguise.
Care's man's curse !
Freedom ! Let the casual thought,
As it ought not, as it ought.
Just run verse.
I have myself taken here a certain Saturnalian
liberty (as perhaps elsewhere) in the rendering of
pileata Roma ; for to call the pileus, properly the
The Feast of Saturn 69
cap of liberty, a mob-cap, might well be stigmatized
by the severe as nothing more than a bad pun.
But I appeal to the poet. Martial, if any one, must
listen to the excuse that "Christmas comes but
once a year." We will quote yet two more of his
preludes to the Saturnalia. Nowhere is better seen
the spirit of the Hellenized imperial festival — com-
mon, nay gross, humanity, frank and unashamed,
exposing itself in forms of singular severity, the
heritage of Greece, and leniently rebuked by public
conscience, the great gift of Rome. Here is a
strange little piece. The tune (if I could catch it)
is the tune of Milton. The thought is — well, not
exactly Miltonic. (It will be seen that the date is
after Domitian, but that does not matter.)
Hence, sullen Frown, stern rustic heritress
Of Cato and Fabricius, come not nigh !
Go, mask of Pride and mannered Moralness,
All things that fall from us in darkness, fly ^ !
" Hail, Feast of Saturn ! " 'Tis a happy cry
And honest (Nerva giving leave and cause).
Grave airs, I give you warning. It is I.
Leave me ; and read your Digest of the Laws.
And here is the other mood, the Roman thought.
Who " Varro" was, whether he really existed, is no
matter. He serves here for a mere type of the mind
to which the holiday is an offensive interruption,
and its harmless game of forfeits an unpardonable
expense of working hours. Impertinent in the
^ Qiddquid et in tenebris non sumus, ite foras, an epigram, in
its kind, not to be surpassed in Latin or otherwise.
70 The Feast of Saturn
former piece, here Martial chooses to be respectful.
The two moods please.
Varro^ whom Sophocles had not disowned
For tragedy, nor Horace for the lyre,
Lay work aside awhile ; be Farce postponed,
Trim Elegy her hair forget to tire.
The verse I send, to a December taste,
May pass, when smoke and folly seem the rule :
Regarded, Varro, simply as a waste
Of time, you cannot find them worse than pool.
Freedom then for those who would enjoy, com-
pulsion almost, if need be, for those who would not,
was the key-note of this formidable merry-making.
But the general good-will signified itself in one
way, which, as a corruptio optimi, is perhaps the
very worst nuisance which ancient or modern man
has wilfully invented — a mutual giving of presents.
It is true that in Rome, as among ourselves, a cer-
tain convention was found, whereby the extreme of
tiresomeness was mitigated. Tablets and napkins
(both doubtless decorated with various "designs")
supplied in Flavian Rome the place of Christmas
cards ; and the methods of lighting in use per-
mitted as a third simple usage the handing about
of presentation-tapers. It was thought scarcely fair
to send tablet, napkin, or taper at any other time.
But, as may be supposed, the ingenuity of human
beings in self-annoyance was not to be so easily
balked ; and all sorts of other objects, as well as
these three, continued to circulate from house to
house, to flow in with absurd abundance upon those
who were worth courting, and to flow out (for the
The Feast of Saturn 71
Romans managed the matter after their fashion,
plain and business-like), to flow out again to the
class from which they came, as a cheap kind of
liberality, everyone knowing the whole process, and
all secretly willing to get as much or give as little
as they could. Endless are the varieties of humour
which this pernicious and long-lived custom (for it
goes on merrily) furnished to the painter of Flavian
society. I quote one or two, not for themselves,
but because, in order to appreciate the great scene
we are presently to see, we must figure to our-
selves first the Saturnalia as specially the season
of "presents all round." Here is one of many
variations on the same fertile theme of the disap-
pointed giver. Very comic when written down in
black-and-white are the natural reflections of the
hunter for "presents" who has missed his game,
and receives, instead of repayment with interest,
only satirical assurances that the patron would have
been delighted to pass on any little thing he had
received, only that, his supply of "gifts" having
failed, his generosity is without means. It is the
best of the joke, that the man does not in the least
feel the absurdity of his anger :
I sent you a trifle ; and, alack !
Ne'er a trifle has it brought me back.
Now the Feast is over. Times are bad.
Say you. Ne'er a present have you had.
Ne'er a client brought a pot of pickle.
Coif, or kerchief, pennyweight of nickel?
Ne'er a grumbler, to assist his suit.
Backed it with sardines or candied fruit,
72 The Feast of Saturn
Case of shrivelled figs or olives rotten?
You're so sorry I should seem forgotten !
Keep this cheap benevolence for those you
Still can cheat — and not for One who knovv^s You.
Here is another tragedy of the same type, but
less deeply moving. A gentleman, to whose finances
this commerce of society is important, has failed in
his speculation upon the accustomed bounty of a
certain lady, and ungallantly promises himself to
make things straight next first of March, the Ladies'
Day of the Roman Year :
Now ushers call the unwilling lad
From nuts and marbles back to school.
The gambler, if his luck be bad.
Chased from the public, drunk and sad,
Tempts the police again, poor fool !
The Five Days gone ! Yet, Galla, you
Have sent me nothing. Less I had
Foreseen. But nothing, Galla ! Phew !
Ah, well ! December's for the men,
And March for women. Wait till then.
How shall you like it, Galla, when
You get your nothing back again?
But though the presents might be tiresome
enough, and though Martial, as his business is,
may gaily turn out this and that seam on the
inner side of the popular motley, the Saturnalia
represented feelings real, deep, and sacred. Then,
as at Christmas now with us, was the assembly of
the family for the prearranged evening of festivity,
doubtless difficult sometimes to make "go," but not
to be sneered out of the grateful memory of any
The Feast of Saturn 'j'ii
people who know the meaning of " family " and of
" home." What store the Romans set by it is well
seen in a device of their great historian, or rather
tragedian, Tacitus, apt for our present purpose as
if it was made for us. The popular brilliance of
the Flavian house is constantly shown to us against
a background of Neronian horror. It was seen
so by contemporaries. And the blackest of the
Neronian horrors is the horror of murder — that
chain oi parricides which began when the Emperor's
rival, cousin, and heir, the orphan son of Claudius,
was taken off with poison. And how does Tacitus
think best to make us feel the unkind murder of
the boy Britannicus ? By dating the inception of it
from the family feast of the Saturnalia.
At the supper of the imperial family, Nero,
Britannicus, and other young friends were met.
The dice, the dice of the Saturnalia, having raised
Nero to a temporary throne as *' king of the for-
feits," he laid upon each guest his playful duty to
perform, observing nevertheless the respect due to
each. But when he came to Britannicus he com-
manded the lad to sing, thinking that he could not
but come off ill, having little experience in gaiety,
and in drinking still less. However, the boy put
him out of countenance, for he came forward,
nothing daunted, and sang a sad enough song,
showing how he who sang was put out of his
own, and oppressed, and had no help. Whereat
the company were much moved (and ashamed, we
will hope), as was easily seen, for the wine made
74 The Feast of Saturn
them free of their looks and words. But the poor
wretch paid dearly for showing his spirit ; for the
tyrant, alarmed and angry, resolved to be rid of
him without delay. And so it was. Such had
been the family feast of the Emperor Nero, and
such a story was Tacitus telling about the time of
the particular festival to which we now proceed.
We have now in our minds the chief facts and
thoughts which Statius supposes us to bring to
the reading of his " Great Saturnalia." We are
ready, putting ourselves in the place of the average
Roman at the time, to see in the Emperor not a
bloody tyrant and persecutor but the liberator of
the people ; in the Coliseum not a torture-chamber
for martyrs but the revered monument of the great
liberator; in the Saturnalia not a soft name for an
orgy of beasts, but a specially humane ordinance of
public religion, commanding general gladness, wide
benevolence, and summing up, like its successor in
modern times, the charities of the family life. We
can for the moment persuade ourselves to see how
appropriate it was that on the great day of the Five
the "common father" of nations should gather the
people to a common table in the great amphitheatre
and scatter to them his indiscriminate gifts. We
can feel why on such an occasion the poet of arti-
ficial Hellenism should have quitted his Parnassus.
It is worth while to make the effort of imagination,
for whatever may be the merits of the verse, very
seldom upon earth has been witnessed a scene more
splendid than Statius has to describe, seldom one
The Feast of Saturn 75
more interesting to a sympathetic mind, not often
one more pleasant to an understanding heart.
Apollo, Pallas, let me play;
Ye strict and stern, not yours the day.
Grave Muses, with the opening year
Return, but leave us. Now and here
Assist me, Saturn, fetter-free,
And gay December, deep in wine.
Help, wanton Wit and grinning Glee,
To picture how our prince benign
Kept, morn to evening, long and late
His public Saturnalian state.
The hospitality offered by this giant monarch
to his colossal court was nothing less than to feed
and amuse, from dawn until far beyond the end of
the winter's day, "the people of Rome," that is to
say a representative gathering selected from all
ranks, which must have numbered some fifty or
sixty thousand at the very least. The scene of
the entertainment was the amphitheatre, to which
the company were doubtless admitted as usual by
distributed tickets. How the building was arranged
for the particular occasion cannot be ascertained in
detail. It is a problem of the antiquary how at
ordinary times the awnings were fixed and moved
over its vast internal oval of (roughly) 500 feet by
400 feet. But we shall see that for this particular
festival the lighting of the building after dark in the
manner described would require temporary internal
structures on an extensive scale, useful also for other
purposes ; nor can the expense of such structures,
great as it must have been, have told for much in
76 The Feast of Saturn
such a "Christmas bill" as must have been pre-
sented to Domitian when the feast was over. The
assembHng and placing of the multitude began in
early morning, and must itself have occupied some
hours. Meanwhile they were kept in good humour
by the scattering of confectionery, itself in its variety
a symbol of the power which commanded the whole
resources of the world from far east of the Bosporus
to far west of Gibraltar.
The day broke showery — such a pour
Of sweetmeats ne'er was seen before.
Nuts! All the nuts that Pontus knows,
All kinds that Idumaea grows;
Fruits of Damascus, grafts of price,
Force-ripened sweetness of the cane
From Ebusus, the choice, the nice
Of East and West, a Uberal rain;
And all that's baked beneath the sun
Of comfit, biscuit, cake, or bun.
Dates fell as thick, as if unseen
Some palm-tree overhead had been.
Not Pleiads shed so loose a shower,
Nor Hyads in their wildest hour.
As then from skies unclouded broke
Upon the vast theatric throng.
The storms of Jove, for Roman folk.
May waste the earth, yet do no wrong,
While such peculiar bounties flow
Provided by our Jove below.
Amid these agreeable preliminaries, with much
crunching and munching, doubtless also much push-
ing, squeezing, and "Where are you a-shoving to?"
the circle was filled, the arena remaining empty for
The Feast of Saturn yj
a future use. The dinner which followed, Statius
expressly tells us, was the same for all ; we are, no
doubt, to understand that the various ranks were
distinguished as usual by their places, and the
Emperor's own immediate circle seated on his
private platform. The uniformity of the repast is
a guarantee that it was good, amazingly good for
the quantity. Many illustrious senators must have
been cross enough at having to come there at all
(for they hated his Majesty), but I would not waste
on them one grain of sympathy. The Emperor
could not have served them with anything but
decent wine, and what he served to them he
served to all — not a bad example of taste in a
society which is constantly represented as the type
of vulgarity.
The seats are full, in every rank,
From floor to crown, no single blank;
When, lo ! the attendants mount the tiers.
And twice as great the crowd appears.
Like Ganymedes for gest and grace.
The cates, the napkins white and fine,
The viands choice for all they place.
And freely pour the mellowed wine.
Like the round world, this princely treat
Like that is vast, like that complete.
The "Ganymedes" we are to figure dressed in
respectable white, the Roman equivalent for the
swallow-tail and shirt front; the company in all
the garments worn within the four corners of the
earth, even the aristocracy togaless, for the toga was
a bore and gladly cast aside, so that the discarding
78 The Feast of Saturn
of it is frequently mentioned as an assurance of
Saturnalian freedom. Where was Martial ? There,
for certain ; perhaps in the Emperor's party, en-
joying himself greatly, and making endless mental
notes of figures, costumes, remarks — sighing, per-
haps, a little for native Spain and some quiet rustic
pig-sticking, and an evening by the fire telling Celtic
stories under the mistletoe. Well, he would have
it all soon. Where was Statius ? In the imperial
party, for certain, from his complacent manner of
assuring the public at large that they were equally
well off; not enjoying himself, I suspect, as much
as Martial, though he does seem on this day to
have been shaken into an unusual state of genuine
excitement. That simile of the world is very
good ; at least, it stirs me strongly. And his next
is better.
Gigantic Trade of modern time,
Feigned plenty of the golden prime,
All, all are in conception less
Than this concentred bounteousness.
Rome at one feast ! Sex, ages, ranks
Unclassed; none more, none less than free;
And last, to beggar prayers and thanks,
The giver's sacred majesty;
That so the least of us may say,
"I with the Prince have dined to-day."
Not sated yet with new delight,
Taste passes sudden into sight —
We have finished our victuals and wine, we in
the outer rows ; a good deal better (as the poet
elegantly but not altogether gracefully reminds us)
The Feast of Saturn 79
than most of us get every day. We have gone
back to our dates, figs, ratafias, "cakes of Ameria
squashy in the middle," etc., of which in the hours
of waiting we collected a little heap, being good
at catching. We ruminate peacefully upon these
joys; till suddenly even "cakes of Ameria" no
longer keep our attention —
For, lo ! the arena fills. A horde,
By nature soft, and for the sword
Not formed or fashioned, here forget
To fear like women, and display
Their Amazon battalions, set
In order for a manly fray.
Hippolyta could scarce have sent
Such lasses to a tournament.
Now, we are Romans ; and it is not one century
yet from the birth of Christ. We should not be
horrified if these trained girls fell on and did real
execution with their swords and javelins. But they
are not going to do anything very bloody. From
the account of the poet it is clear that this army
of women, and the army of dwarfs (amazing proof
of organization, when we come to think of it)
which enters presently, are sham armies, and that
the whole contest is no more than a contest pour
rire — a laughable Saturnalian parody of those only
too real encounters which this gorgeous circle has
seen. It is an elaborate mockery of gladiators' per-
formance. They act all the incidents of battle, and
the joke of the thing lies in the incongruity of these
soft limbs and stunted forms with the horrors and
feats which they recall to the imagination. Not a
8o The Feast of Saturn
refined pleasure, but for this time not brutal ; and
such were the spectacles of Rome more often than
is sometimes supposed.
These challenge next a tiny sort,
Whom nature, knotting them too short,
Finished as dwarfs. Heroic rage
Urges the minions to engage.
Great is the show of little strokes,
Small deaths, and miniature despairs.
Mars laughs ; his grisly partner jokes ;
While wondering at such pygmy airs
The cranes above them (see the sequel)
Allow the pygmy for their equal.
Of these "wondering cranes," who seem to
have prompted Statius with a learned comparison
between the dwarfs and the crane-fighting Pygmies
of Homer, the poet in the sequel gives an expla-
nation not too clear for our modern understandings,
and assuredly not made much clearer by the modern
expositors. We shall come to it in a moment, and
must hasten on : for the dinner, the dwarfs, and the
Amazons have occupied some time, and already the
winter light is fading.
Now, for the day was closing in,
'Twas time the scramble should begin.
"The scramble!" At the exciting call
Enter the famous beauties, all
Whose charms of person or of art
Possess the stage j the rounded forms
Of Lydia here, and there apart
Lithe limbs of Spain with timbrels; swarms
Of Syrians, coming still and coming,
Exclaiming, clapping, dancing, drumming.
The Feast of Saturn 8i
The " scramble " was exactly what the name
implies to our ears — a scattering of gifts among
a crowd, partly for the benefit of the receiver,
partly for the amusement of the lookers-on. But
what a scene ! What a moment, when the hollow
ellipse of brilliant and varied colours was filled by
a centre of greater brilliance, variety, and beauty !
The beauty of the world, literally chosen, gathered,
and collected ! For mere splendour, for popular
splendour (the most admirable sort and the most
useful), the world has seen nothing like it before
or since.
Complete at length the motley rout,
Supers and match-girls not left out.
All on a sudden from the sky
Birds, flocks of birds unnumbered, fly !
The fowls of every climate known,
From sacred Nile to freezing Phasis,
Blown southward from the frigid zone,
Blown northward from the warm oasis,
All kinds but one — no birds of prey,
Lest they should take the rest away.
These birds, whatever they may have been to
the ladies, are a very considerable surprise to us,
and a puzzle too. The commentators are nowhere,
so to speak. They tell us that these birds were
only tickets, scattered among the crowd, each repre-
senting a specimen of game or poultry, and entitling
the possessor, on application at some place indicated,
to the actual bird. Such a method was certainly
practised in these amphitheatrical scrambles — the
bird, as Martial puts it, preferring the hazard of
V. L. E. 6
82 The Feast of Saturn
the ticket to the certainty of being torn in pieces.
But it is simply impossible that what Statius here
describes was a mere scattering of tickets, con-
vertible into chickens ! To say nothing of the
absurd irrelevance of his imagery, the question is
clinched and settled, so far, by the foregoing refer-
ence to the cranes. The cranes, says the poet in
plain terms, plainer even than my version shows,
were some of the birds which descended in the
scramble, and these "cranes" were astonished to
see the exploits of the pygmy paladins in the arena
below. And yet these cranes were only tickets ?
Not a bit of it. The reader, knowing his or her
Statius, has no doubt a solution of the puzzle. But
" birds " of some sort these birds must have been,
and of course not real, or many a lady would have
been slain on the spot. Privately I guess them to
have been some sort of toy-birds made of rag, tow,
and what not, suspended above, lowered at the
proper time near to the arena, and then allowed
to flutter down. Nothing would make a better
scramble or a more amusing. To each would be
attached the Emperor's gift, that is either the
"ticket" for it or, much more likely, the gift itself.
Objects highly attractive to the assembled fair, and
quite costly enough for a distribution by hundreds and
thousands, could be easily attached to a toy-bird.
Now all content compare their gains;
No pocket empty, none complains.
Then all at once the myriad throats
Join in one shout their countless notes.
The Feast of Saturn 83
" Hail to the Prince," their sound proclaims,
"And Feast of Saturn, princely-free !
Hail to his name, to all his names.
Our Prince — our Master ! " " Nay," said he,
And put the flattering phrase away,
" What else ye will ; but master — nay ! "
It is hard that, in spite of this, Domitian — who
has fared worse for less reason than ahnost any-
character in history, and who is frequently abused
from pulpits and otherwise by people who hardly
care to know whether he was or was not the same
as Diocletian — that Domitian should be scolded for
the servility of address which he permitted. He
was a hard master to the Roman nobility, who
perhaps wanted one ; but he was a real king and
not a fool. After this last interchange of compli-
ments between him and his company, he had
doubtless had quite enough of the proceedings and
withdrew, we may presume, by his private passage
to a well-earned evening without any round game,
the grandees generally following suit. Nor is it
likely that the fastidious Statins, though the fun
was but just beginning, saw very much more of
it. The arena was lighted up (how, it is hard to
learn from the raptures of the bard), and a sort of
Bartholomew Fair, with shows, stages, and drinking-
bars free, seems to have gone on there ad libitum.
Hours afterwards Statius declares himself too sleepy
with the Emperor's wine to tell any more. He had
more probably worked himself out over a first draft
of his poem ; which if the reader does not allow to
6—2
$4 The Feast of Saturn
have some real fire and flavour in it, let the fault
be mine and not the Roman's ; for in the original
I find a great glow of pleasure and glory. And
thankful to remember, in this air of mud and smoke,
that ever a multitude was so bright, so happy, so
splendid as were these sixty thousand Romans in
the year Ninety-blank Anno Domini^ I would con-
duct the poet, in Roman fashion, most respectfully
to his bed : —
Scarce night begins to mount the sphere,
When — see a sun of flames appear !
Brighter than Ariadne's crown,
Through gathering shades it settles down
In mid arena. Heaven is thick
With fires, and darkness banished quite.
Dull sleep and sloth fled, strangely quick,
To other cities at the sight,
Perceiving that this sun portended
A feast not easy to be ended.
But how describe the enormous jest
Of shows and farces and the rest?
The suppers heaped, the streams of drink —
I cannot sing, I cannot think.
Spare, generous Prince, and let me sleep ;
The memory of this wondrous day —
Not while thy Rome and river keep
Their places, shall it pass away;
Not till, new given to man by thee,
Yon Capitol shall cease to be !
k '
A TRAGI-COMEDY AND A PAGE
OF HISTORY
A SATIRIST in search of an example by which to
show the invincible repugnance of individual tastes
in matters of art, and the consequent futility of
critical discussion, could scarcely desire a better
case for the paradox than the estimate of the poet
Euripides. From his own time to the present
day it has been the fate of his works to raise a
strange and complicated discord of opinions. He
was scarcely cold in his grave when Aristophanes
hastened to set up the jousts for a tournament of
letters, and devoted the most brilliant of his national
dramas to a question such as never perhaps before,
and seldom since, has been so pompously debated
— whether the dead poet had or had not a right
to his accredited place as a master supreme in his
kind.
And where the question is left by Aristophanes
in the Fi^ogs, there in effect, and in spite of all
changes, it now remains. That vast popularity and
influence which the comedy presumes to exist, have
never been withdrawn, nor ever ceased to provoke
from time to time the same sort of scornful rage
86 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
which they provoked in the comedian. By the side
of Aeschylus and Sophocles he was compelled to
place Euripides, and Euripides only ; and yet he
would gladly have converted the throne to a pillory.
So now, in a list of the world's greatest poets, the
ducal rank of the literary baronage, no one could
omit the name of Euripides without being conscious
of the gap. And yet in a general history of Attic
drama, it is possible for a scholar to bestow on
Euripides a chapter of venomous depreciation, and
to back it with respected names \ Among the living
poets of England one has eloquently defended the
unity of the great tragic triad, while another has
declared, with something more than his habitual
emphasis, the impossibility that anyone worth at-
tention should ever put Euripides in the same class
with the other two.
Such a disagreement of doctors might well stop
our mouths, if in these few remarks we were aiming
at any decision. But the very disagreement is a
temptation to ask the cause of it, and why, when
most writers who have made a venture for the first
rank have been speedily fixed to their places, within
or without, by something like a general consent,
Euripides alone (for I believe he has no parallel)
should be crowned indeed, but with such an uneasy
and disputed crown. The fact I take to be that
Euripides wrote at a moment in the history of
literature not merely, like all moments in history,
^ See the criticism of Schlegel, as reproduced and endorsed
by Donaldson in his Theatre of the Greeks.
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 87
unique, but egregiously and inimitably unique. He
swam in the swirl of two strong currents, which,
taking their rise in the mind of the same inventor,
flowing, clashing, and mixing diversely ever since,
threw up around Euripides the spray of their most
bewildering conflict.
When Aeschylus, in the phrase of Aristophanes,
" first reared the pomp of tragic style," a date which
may be put about level with Euripides' birth, his
work had two effects, one of which he planned and
consciously accomplished, while the other he cer-
tainly did not design, nor in its full consequences
even comprehend. He perfected the sublime and
he made realism inevitable. As for sublimity, it
is the essence of him. For the type of his art,
antiquity rightly chose the stately and unfamiliar
costume by which he strove to raise his personages
literally above and out of the common level. He
had the faculty of greatness, in theme, style, words,
everything. It belonged in part to his age ; his
contemporary Pindar has it more perhaps than any
other except himself. But Aeschylus has it most,
and for the exquisite pleasure of elevation there is
none like him. To sustain this height he made
(we have express, though perhaps needless, testi-
mony that he was the first maker) an extraordinary
diction ; he borrowed and adapted a peculiar lyrical
music ; he chose and developed all that was morally
grandest in the grotesque abundance of myth and
legend ready to his hand. Now in all this there
is nothing exclusively proper to the stage ; and
88 A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History
though Aeschylus was assuredly one of the very
greatest of theatrical artists, though his actual work
is essentially theatrical, it is nevertheless not in its
theatrical quality that his genius as a poet consists.
Of which the best proof is that in later literature
the most Aeschylean poetry is to be found not in
dramas at all. Milton is much more Aeschylean
than Shakespeare, and not in scenes quasi-dramatic
merely, but in his ordinary narrative.
Nor is this so merely because Milton knew
Aeschylus profoundly, and Shakespeare, we may
say, not at all ; for Dante, who knew not a line
of him, is often Aeschylean nevertheless. It is
easily conceivable that, under other circumstances,
Aeschylus might have applied his unequalled power
of elevation to poetry not dramatic in form, and
had he done so, he would have been Aeschylus still.
But without his sublimity of manner there would
have been no Aeschylus, not if he had kept ever
so strictly to the form of dialogue and always
written for the purpose of recitation from a stage.
Indeed the mere spectacular form of tragedy, so far
as it was ever invented at all, was invented rather
by Athens than by Aeschylus, and was certain to
arise, as it did, whenever there should first exist a
large free population desiring and able to command
the luxuries of the mind.
Nevertheless it was a vital matter, that the
strong new spirit of Aeschylus went to raise and
to popularise the new form of serious drama. For
this form was an instrument not likely, once made,
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 89
to lie idle for want of hands. Through action and
speech, as combined in conversation, we learn the
greater part of what we know about each other.
It was therefore a prodigious step in the art of
showing man to men, when poets took up seriously
the composing of dialogues to be recited with ac-
tion. But Aeschylus, though he took the initial
and decisive step, went but a little way himself;
and could he have foreseen where the way led and
where others soon would go, he would have been
but little disposed to congratulate himself upon his
lead. In the latest and most developed of his works
there is scarcely a sign that the poet feels in his
grasp a new tool for carving the likeness of common
humanity. His dialogue is but little applied to
exhibit the play of thought and emotion as only
dialogue can show it. The spectacular possibilities
of the drama he grasped completely, but its possible
subtlety he did not comprehend or care for. It
was indeed alien from his mind. To preserve that
noble air of grandeur requires a treatment broad not
subtle. You cannot be, at least no one ever has
been yet, gigantic in outline and minutely human
in detail. However ingeniously the two qualities
may be combined, something of the one must be
sacrificed to the other.
But the step was taken and was not to be
taken back. The realistic analysis of character is
a pleasure too keen to be tasted and not to provoke
appetite. In the drama of Sophocles it assumes
such new proportions as to be really a new thing.
90 A Tragi-Co7nedy and a Page of History
The working of a virtuous mind under temptation,
as it is shown in the Philoctetes, and could not have
been shown without the aid of the dramatic form,
offers a kind of intellectual pleasure fertile ever
since in literature, but no more to be found in
Aeschylus than it is in Homer. Our present
space and purpose will not allow us to dwell upon
Sophocles, or to consider the skill with which he
contrived to hold in combination for a time the
discordant elements that were combating for the
stage of tragedy. But this we have to remember,
that for the conciliation which he effected there
was a price to pay. The process of permeating
tragedy with the spirit of realistic analysis, without
destroying that elevation given to it by Aeschylus,
was a process of limited possibility. This is re-
cognised explicitly in the contrasted criticism of
Sophocles and Euripides, which is attributed to
Sophocles himself; that Sophocles represented
humanity according to the requirements of art,
while his successor painted it as it is. But what
if men should care for the reality more than for
the requirements of the Aeschylean art ? Or, to
put the question more fairly, what if they insisted on
having all kinds of intellectual pleasure, a realistic
drama as well as the elevated and remote.-* Even
Sophocles is held to have succeeded least in those
of his plays (such as the Philoctetes and the Women
of Trachis) where the new element has most part.
Who should forbid it then to declare itself altogether
independent ?
A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History 91
Such was the state of things when Euripides
came. Everything was ripe for a tragedy, or
comedy, or tragi-comedy of manners ; and if there
might be a question what it should be called,
Athens was not likely to wait, any more than we
need delay ourselves now, for a mere scholastic
question of classification. Such a tragi-comedy
Euripides did in truth create, and if he could have
started it frankly in what would now seem the
obvious way, half the pother which has vexed his
renown might have been avoided. The drama of
Euripides, if we look at the essential parts of it
and neglect the accidental, is concerned wholly with
the life which he actually saw around him. And
it ought in the nature of things to have dealt
nominally, as well as actually, with common per-
sonages and ordinary incidents. Half the criticism
of Aristophanes and of many since would cease to
apply, if the plays were furnished with a new set
of dramatis personae, fictitious names without any
traditional association. And it is amazing with
what facility this could be done, how slight is often
the connexion between a play of Euripides and the
old-world legend which serves for the scaffolding.
With the change of a few verses here and there,
the Medea might be cut loose from the tale of the
Argonauts, with which it has in truth nothing what-
ever to do. The life of it comes not from romance,
but from the homes of Athens, Hippolytus is slain
by a miraculous monster ; but if he had been killed
by the commonest carriage-accident, the play might
92 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
still be much what it is, and might have made as
deep a mark in literature as it has. The names of
Theseus and Phaedra, nay even the very human
deities of Aphrodite and Artemis, might all be
exchanged for other names and persons, and the
drama in its essence would still be there. There
is not a single play of Sophocles which could be
subjected to such a process without utter dissolu-
tion, and as to Aeschylus, the very thought seems
I a profanity. The legends of mythology are the
very warp and substance of their compositions ;
they are for the most part the mere frame to
those of Euripides, and a frame too often imper-
fectly suited to the texture.
Why the tragi-comedy of Euripides and his
contemporaries did not (with exceptions too few
to signify) take what now seems the plain road,
and strike into independent fiction, is probably to
be explained by the quasi-religious character of
theatrical performances at Athens. Probably neither
the authorities who licensed and financed the exhi-
bition, nor the audience themselves, would have
tolerated all at once so bold an innovation. The
fourth century might have witnessed it ; but the
fourth century produced only a Menander and no
Euripides. Serious thought had turned elsewhere,
and the great age of Greek poetry was over. Nor
has the true lover of Euripides any reason to regret
what actually was done. The elements of the
Euripidean drama, the romantic or religious legend
which is taken for base and the story of common
A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History 93
life which is built upon it, stand indeed not seldom
in the sharpest and, it may be, the crudest oppo-
sition. But this very contrast gives to the reality
of what is real a strange and fascinating relief. It
is often as if the figures of some quaint tapestry
were suddenly to walk and talk from the canvas.
Nor is there the least doubt that the poet knew
I \ \ well what he was doing. He loves to startle his
reader with the very bareness of sheer life thrusting
I I itself upon the artificial scene. High art has never! \
\ forgiven him, but mankind have never given him
I up and never will. | V
11^ I propose for our present amusement, and on
the chance that others may turn to use an expe-
rience of many years in the great poet's peculiar
ways, to illustrate what has been said by a brief
review of his Andromache. This play is classified,
with all his works, as a tragedy, and some are pleased
to call it a second-rate tragedy. No Euripidean is
concerned with this nomenclature nor bound to
defend the play as a tragedy at all. 1 1 is no tragedy.
The only tragic incident lies outside of the main
action, and merely serves the poet for a piece of
brilliant narrative. In the time of Elizabeth we
might have called it a comedy ; now we have no
word for it at all. But call it what we please, it is
an admirable piece of work, full of reality, and in
the central scene subtle and yet simple in the play
of character after a fashion which Euripides has to
himself
Interested above all things in the complications
94 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
of domestic life, an interest stimulated by the great
social and material improvements of his century,
Euripides has centred the Andromache upon a
problem such as our modern civilization happily
does not admit. The Greeks were in one sense
monogamous : that is, a man could not in Athens
be married to more than one legal wife. But, as
in all slave-owning communities, ambiguous rela-
tions, regular though not matrimonial, were common.
And as the slave- women of Greece were often, in all
respects but status, fully as fit to be the wives of
their masters as the true-born burgess-ladies whom
they formally wedded, there was constant tempta-
tion to risk the double household, to " marry " one
for love and one for position. This situation, with
all its perils, was exciting to the eye of the poet and
of the philanthropist: and Euripides was both. He
sought within the prescribed circle of tradition for
an opportunity to place such a situation by a little
adapting of the legendary data, and he found it in
the legends of the house of Peleus.
After the capture of Troy the captive Andro-
mache, formerly the wife of Hector, was assigned
to Neoptolemus, son of Achilles and grandson to
Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis, by whom she
became the mother of Molossus. According to an-
other story, probably in origin quite distinct from
that of Andromache, this same Neoptolemus wedded
Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus of
Sparta, which Hermione was nevertheless bestowed
as wife by yet another independent tradition upon
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 95
her cousin Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, and
hero in that fearful story of murder and revenge
which Aeschylus has made generally known. Again,
among the many legends told by the priests of
Delphi in honour of Apollo, it was related that
this Neoptolemus, having attempted to plunder the
sacred place, was slain by the deity, and buried at
Delphi, where his grave was shown. Out of these
materials Euripides, using the romantic element
after his habit as a background, and adjusting the
social facts, if we may term them so, to his purpose,
has constructed his play of The Rivals, for so it
might have been appropriately called in the modern
style. In the house of Neoptolemus Euripides
establishes both Andromache and Hermione side
by side — Hermione, the princess, as the rightful
wife, Andromache, the slave, though princess too,
as a wife in everything but name, first in the
husband's love, and superior also in the possession
of a son. He gives them contrasted characters —
Andromache, the woman, all tenderness, Hermione,
the girl, all pride ; Andromache unable not to cap-
tivate the captor whose dominion she abhors,
Hermione unable to condescend even where she
is desperately eager to please ; and lastly, both
women all through, both jealous not so much of
love as of place, and neither able to forgo the
delights of a triumph, whatever pang may be paid
for it.
Such is the bed which Achilles' son has made
for himself. Meanwhile the distractions of the
g6 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
household are observed by a watchful enemy.
Taking up the story which made Hermione wife
to Orestes, the dramatist supposes her to have
been promised to him, but given nevertheless to
Neoptolemus by her father Menelaus, a weak and
crafty man (here comes out the Athenian hatred of
Sparta), when Orestes had compromised his posi-
tion by that unfortunate matricide, and the heir of
Achilles was the most desirable ally among the
Greek youth. Orestes, false and crafty as Menelaus
his uncle, but strong in purpose, waited his time,
and aided by the self-willed folly of Neoptolemus
did not wait in vain. Neoptolemus had pleased
himself by taking Hermione in spite of Orestes*
better right ; he had pleased himself still by not
putting Andromache from the home to which he
brought the princess ; and he pleased himself once
too often by venting against Apollo his anger for
the death of his father Achilles and going so far
as to demand satisfaction of the deity. Reminded
of his weakness by the ill success of his domestic
plans, he repairs to Delphi on an errand of apology.
And now his errors come home. Hermione, with
the support of Menelaus whom she summons from
Sparta, determines, in the absence of her husband, to
be even with the slave-rival once for all. Andromache
flies for refuge to the sanctuary of Thetis, but is
tempted to leave it by a stratagem of Menelaus,
who discovers the hiding-place of Molossus her
son. Menelaus and his daughter are about to put
both mother and child to death, when they are
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 97
saved by the spirited interference of Peleus, the
boy's great-grandfather, before whom the cowardly
Spartan finds it convenient to retire "upon a sudden
and a pressing cause," leaving Hermione to extricate
herself as she may.
Then follows a scene of exquisite humour and
force. The princess, like the spoiled child that she
is, passes in a moment from the height of arrogance
to the depth of terror. She tears her magnificent
and priceless robes, declares that her husband will
kill her, that she will never meet him alive, and
struggles with contemptible despair in the arms of
the attendants who soothe her and scold her like
a rebel of the nursery. Here arrives Orestes, who
has surveyed if not guided the whole working of
the machinery which is accomplishing his ends. He
arrives pretending to know nothing of the situation.
In reality his cousin has never ceased to correspond
with him, and though he has politicly stood off from
her appeals while there was no fair chance of suc-
cess, he has been, during the last critical days, in
the very neighbourhood of the house, and presents
himself at this moment ready to receive her, should
she throw herself, as she does, into his arms. For
her husband he has already provided otherwise.
Using the jealousy of the Delphians against one
under suspicion of enmity to their god, he has
arranged that Neoptolemus shall be assassinated
(Apollo conniving and aiding !) in the sacred pre-
cinct itself. So ends all, not more unhappily than
things are apt to end when foolish men choose, as
V. L. E. 7
98 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
they will, to act as if they might safely defy the
feelings and beliefs of the world and the course
of nature. Intelligent selfishness carries the day
against reckless selfishness. Orestes, cold-hearted
and wary, regains his native rank and promised
bride, while Neoptolemus, gallant in a sort of
blundering fashion, lies in his grave among the
Delphians, to the "eternal opprobrium," puts in
the satirist, of their cruel and revengeful deity.
And the moral of it all, if the moral signifies, is
that young men should be very careful how and
whom they marry ! This maxim Euripides, mocking
with a sympathetic smile the romance of mythology,
puts twice into the mouth of Peleus and illustrates
lastly from the case of Peleus himself, who having
allied himself so particularly well (with a goddess
of the sea, no less) is rewarded by his Thetis, who
appears at the close of the piece, with an everlasting
home in the ocean-caves. Thence the immortal
pair may now and again come up to behold their
Achilles enjoying his happy days upon a mystic
island far in the Euxine Main. Andromache is
dismissed finally to a new husband of her own
race, and left, as happy as she may be, with her
boy Molossus in Molossia.
Hero or heroine the piece has none. It is
proper to tragi-comedy, which is the antithesis of
tragedy rather than a species of it, to avoid these
elevations. But the climax is the success of Orestes,
and it is to the scene between him and Hermione
that the drama advances. After this it is merely
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 99
wound up. Let us put ourselves then at this point of
view, and look at a pair of scenes with Euripidean
eyes. The first important moment is the entrance of
Hermione. Her character is a piece of the crudest
realism, and Euripides prepares for it in his fashion
by a delicate contrast of poetic romance. An un-
rivalled linguist, he had every style at command,
and the beauty of this passage has won praise from
the most unwilling. I must apologise, indeed, for
the attempt to reproduce it.
When the play opens, Andromache is found in
sanctuary. A slave, once hers, now level with her
in subjection, brings her word of the new plot laid
by Hermione and her father against Molossus, and
is sent, the last of many messengers and the only
one found faithful, to summon Peleus. Left alone,
Andromache is bewailing herself in tones which
echo the old, old music, older than memory, of
Homer and the poets of Ionia, when she is visited
by some Thessalian women of the place, led by
their sympathy to steal, as they hope, a moment
when the jealous vigilance of Hermione is averted,
and to approach the sufferer with consolation and
advice. Thus sings to herself the widow worse
than married :
Death and doom it was he wedded when in Ilium's royal tower
Paris led his Helen to the bower.
Troy, for Helen thou art wasted; Troy, for Helen swiftly came
Ships a thousand fraught with sword and flame.
Aye, for her my Hector died in death dishonoured, dust-defiled
'Neath the chariot-wheel of Thetis' child.
7—2
lOO A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
Me they took from Hector's chamber, haled me to the sounding
shore,
Veiled in slavish weeds — a queen before.
Tear on tear I wept to leave you, Hector, with the dying town,
Dying, Hector, all in ashes down.
Woe is me, what profit had I more of living? I, a slave
To the Spartan ! Better were a grave
Than to fly before a tyrant to these marble arms and pour
Fountain-tears, until I waste no more !
Thus she sings, and thus in her own mood and
measure answer to her the secret visitors, softly
steaHng in, while one after another they take up
the burden of the song :
Lady, listen, where thou clingest to the goddess of the waves,
Faithful to the shrine that saves.
Fear us not ; though thou wast bred in Asia, though in Phthia we,
Yet in love we come to thee.
Might compassion
Something lighten of thy misery !
And here other voices put in :
Caged, alas, and with the rival cribbed, as in a narrow room,
Must thou battle
'Gainst the bride, poor mistress, for her groom?
And here yet others again, repeating the rhythms
of the first :
O advise thee, O consider of thy helpless, hopeless case !
Wilt dispute a royal place?
Troy and Lacedaemon, slave and princess, what a match to play !
Ah, content thee, come away !
Let submission
Win thee respite while it may.
Why increase the certain torture, lengthen out the appointed pain ?
She is sovran.
She will reach thee; tempt her not in vain.
A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History loi
Then others, with a quicker step and a livelier
urgency :
Come, descend, forgo thy refuge, quit the Nereid's holy fane;
See what thou art and where,
Nor think it gain.
Humble and friendless, to disdain
The proffer of a little care.
Aye, we love thee, captive lady, pity thee, in this too wise
That we have feared to speak.
We feared surprise :
Hermione hath jealous eyes,
And queens are mighty, subjects weak.
And now the realist has laid the train for his
effect. At this very moment, breaking harshly
upon the spell of the sustained and soothing lyric,
Hermione herself, who has watched the unsus-
pecting women upon their errand of mercy, and
enjoyed, with what feelings may be supposed, the
proverbial reward of the listener, steps out, splendid
in person and apparel but mean in act and gesture,
upon the astonished circle, and addresses them in
words like these :
If I am pleased to bind my brows with gold,
And robe myself in gorgeous broideries.
Not Peleus nor Achilles first bestowed
Upon the Spartan bride her proper state.
My father dowered me with the royal right,
Purchased and richly paid, to speak my mind.
So, you are answered, ladies ! As for thee.
Prisoner and slave and — mistress, thine intent
Is to expel me, to usurp my place.
I02 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
Thou with thy witchcraft, thou, hast made my spouse
Mislike me, cursed my womb with barrenness.
Being, like all your passionate Asian breed,
Adept in this love-magic. But I mean
To end both it and thee ; nor sanctuary.
Sea-nymph or shrine, shall rescue thee from death.
Or let thine angel, for thy one last hope,
Bend thee to quit thy greatness and thy pride.
And crouch, and grovel, and fling thee at my feet,
Sprinkle my floors and sweep them (I will find
Thee gilded vessels for the menial task).
And learn the simple truth that this is Greece !
Here is no Hector and no Priam. Here
We practise not thy shameless savagery.
To woo the embrace of hands that have on them
Thy dearest blood, be mother of a child
Whose grandsire slew thy husband ! But your East
Is all for such abhorred accouplements.
No cross of kin, no soul-dividing feud
Bars like from like, or farthest hate from hate.
Bring not thy fashions here. Foul sin it is
To yoke two women in one governance;
He that would 'scape a miserable home
Let him content his amorous heart with one.
Detractors might say what else they would, but
could not deny that here was breathing, staring life.
Neither in Aeschylus certainly nor in Sophocles (let
those smile who will) is there anything like it. Even
to us, on whose ears the comparison of Asia and
Hellas must needs fall as something foreign and
far-away, and who must use our imaginations before
the household of Neoptolemus can rise before our
minds as a fact, even to us (I speak at least for
myself) this formidable girl gives a startling im-
pression of real presence. I wish there were time
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 103
to spend over the rest of the scene, and the admir-
ably contrasted figure of Andromache, sorrowful and
majestic, yet not less exasperating- than Hermione
herself, pathetic and yet dealing wounds with every
appeal :
O Youth and Self! What peril is in youth,
In youth that nothing loves beyond herself!...
No spell of mine procures thy husband's hate,
But thou thyself, wanting one wifely charm,
The magic of companionableness.
Hermione however has in her hand for the moment
the strong card of force, and plays it, but loses the
game, as we have seen, by the collapse of her pitiful
partner, King Menelaus. And so we pass to the
best scene of the play, where Orestes reaps the
benefit of his calculations and meets the dishevelled
beauty in the moment of attempted flight, sobbing
helplessly at the gate in the arms of her duenna.
The feigned surprise of the successful plotter, the
vain attempt of the queen to perform with dignity
the part of throwing herself on the protection of
a discarded suitor and to cover the shame of her
unkingly parent, the angry explosion of her repent-
ance, which positively stops for a time the offer
which is ready on Orestes' lips, the contempt of
her Thessalian subjects, the prudent chivalry of
Orestes himself, who is not too much in love to
see his strength, and lastly the sudden reassump-
tion of the lady's dignity when she sees that she
is sure of her object — all this makes an episode
which tickles the fancy at every turn.
I04 A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History
Orestes.
A Lady.
Or.
Hermione.
Or.
Herm.
Or.
Herm.
Or.
Herm.
Or.
Herm.
Or.
Herm.
Or.
Ladies, inform me, of your courtesy,
Is this the palace of Achilles' son?
Aye, sir. And thou, the questioner, who art thou ?
Orestes, lady, Agamemnon's son
And Clytaemnestra's. Being in pilgrimage
Unto Dodona and being come so far
As Phthia, I have thought to ascertain
The health and happiness of my kinswoman,
Hermione of Sparta, dwelling now
Far from our love, but not forgotten —
Saved !
A haven, a haven ! O Orestes, see —
See where I kneel, and answer for thyself
Thy loving question of my happiness.
Thus with mine arms I bind me to thy feet.
And clasp mine altar. Pity me !
Gracious Powers !
Do I mistake, or do I see indeed
The princess' self?
Menelaus' daughter, sole
Born of his queen, of Helen : doubt it not.
Then heaven be merciful and mend thy woes !
But what, but what ? Come they from heaven at all
Or fault of man?
By fault of man, of him
Who is my lord, and yet from heaven, from all.
Thou hast no children, and thou art aggrieved !
Shrewdly I doubt where lies the jealous grief?
Well doubted; there it lies.
Thy lord hath ta'en
Some other to his bosom.
Her who being
The wife of Hector fell to be a slave.
It is a wrong indeed.
It was a wrong !
And therefore did I try to right myself.
By woman's vengeance on a woman ?
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 105
Herm. Aye,
On her and on her bastard, by their deaths:
But—
Or. Reached them not? Who balked thee of thy
will?
Herm. Peleus was pleased to lend his gravity
Unto the baser cause.
Or. But thou, thou hadst
No helper?
Herm. Aye, my father: he had come
Express from Sparta.
Or. But was overpowered
By the old grandsire, was he?
Herm. Over-awed
He was, and left me, left me here behind.
Or. I take thee; thou art fearful of thy husband,
Seeing what has passed.
Herm. Thou hast read my fear indeed.
Why, he will take my life; and wherefore not?
Now, for the dear sake of our cousinhood.
Take me away; farthest from here is best;
Take me to my father's. For indeed I think
The very palace cries me to be gone,
And the land loathes my presence. If my lord
Return from Delphi hither ere I go,
I die a death of shame, or live to serve
The slave, his mistress, that I ruled before.
"Why was I such a fool?" Because of fools
That had free access to me, tongues of women,
Prompting me still with fool suggestions. " So !
You have the patience to endure a slave,
Free of the house, free of the bed ! I' faith.
Madam, let me say, if bed and house were mine.
The interceptress soon would lack her eyes ! "
I heard the siren voices, listened to
The reckless gossip, learned the subtle cant.
And swelled with sentiment. — What need had I
io6 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
To be my husband's jailer? Did I want?
Had I not wealth in plenty, queenly state,
Children, if I should bear them, noble lords
Of the base issue from the rival couch?
Ah never, say I, never I say again,
Will reasonable men, wedded to wives,
Suffer the spouse to entertain at home
Women ! The women it is who teach the harm.
For one will serve temptation for a bribe,
And one, being fallen, to bring her sister down,
And more for wantonness. Thus house from house
Takes the infection. Therefore lock your doors.
Bolt them, and bar them up, and set a watch
To keep the women out, whose visiting
Is purely profitless and mischievous !
A Lady. This is too loose a libel on the sex.
In thee excusable, though woman's part
Is more to gloss the frailties of her kind.
Or. It was a wise advice that someone gave
To be a listener and let others speak. —
I was apprised of the domestic war
Between the Trojan rival and thyself,
And lay in truth watching the chance. Belike»
Sooner than fray it out thou would st retire,
Quitting possession to the doughty slave,
And though I came without a call to come,
Wouldst license me (and so thou hast) to offer
My convoy hence. Thou wast already mine
When thy false father wedded thee away.
His plighted word, before the siege of Troy,
Gave me that hand, which afterwards, to buy
Thy husband's aid therein, he pledged to him.
To Achilles' heir. I, at their coming home,
Sparing thy father, begged the son preferred
To yield thee, pleading my unhappy state
And how, an exile and for such a cause.
Failing to wed the daughter of my kin.
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 107
I scarce might hope to win a wife at all.
Whereon he scorned me for a matricide,
Haunted (what fault of mine?) by bloody fiends.
I bowed my head (the sorrows of my house
Had humbled me) but did not feel the less,
Because compelled, the losing of thy hand.
And now the wheel hath turned, now thou art fallen
Hapless and helpless, I will be thy guide
Hence to thy sire in safety. Cousinship
Is a mysterious bond, and at a need
Where should one lean but on a kinsman's arm?
Herm. How I should marry, till my father have
Reflected on it, lies not in my choice.
Only make haste for our departing, lest
My lord step in upon me ere I go.
Or Peleus learn that I am fled the house
And charioted pursue us.
Or. Fear him not;
He is old; and Neoptolemus, fear not him.
This hand, which owes him for his insolence,
Hath knotted him a sure and deadly snare
And set the same — but I anticipate;
Time will reveal the sequel, in the doing.
To Delphi, where, unless my Delphian friends
Fail to perform their oaths, "the matricide"
Will read my lord a lesson on the risk
Of wedding my betrothed. He shall abide
The wrath of Phoebus, whom he called to account
For slain Achilles, nor shall save himself
By his repentance and submission now.
The god will be his death, and I, his foe,
Have laid a train of rumour thereunto.
Fate in a quarrel lets the advantage poise
Alternate, for the chastisement of pride. \Exeunt.
Such or such-like is the chief scene in the
Andromache of Euripides. By what scholastic
io8 A Tragi-Coniedy and a Page of History
name the work should be ticketed is not a pressing
question. But if it is not admirable work, so clever
in conception, so delicate and humorous in detail,
if it is not first-rate work, then by all means let us
have second-rate, and be thankful. Tragedy is good
and so is tragi-comedy. There remains, I think, of
Euripides, but one single work (the Bacchae) which
the Muse of Tragedy should acknowledge or claim
as exclusively her own. All the rest have been
marred or mended by her sisters named and name-
less, and all their gifts we may have without cavil
or contention. Indeed it is an ill use of eternal
literature to dispute over it ; and therefore, lest the
reader should disagree after all with my estimate
of such scenes as the foregoing, I will ask leave to
try once more with a piece about which there is,
I believe, no difference. That Euripides could tell
a story with spirit is granted by those who like him
least, and it happens that the Andromache contains
one of his best, the death of Neoptolemus at Delphi,
related to Peleus by one of the servants who bring
home the body. The narrator witnessed the scene,
but was prevented with his companions from bearing
a hand in it by the ritual practices of the place. It
will be seen that Neoptolemus at the critical moment
was divided from his defenders, as the enemy fore-
saw and intended, by the impassable wall of the
sacred close. From the high ground outside they
saw what was done, but could not help. The
archaeological interest of the story, enacted upon
one of the most famous sites in the world, is very
A Tragi'Comedy and a Page of History 109
great ; but except in the points noticed it will
sufficiently explain itself. So I give it without
more preface.
Arrived at Phoebus' far-renowned see,
We spent the golden hours of three full days
In feasting with the show our curious eyes,
And stirring (innocently) suspicion so.
This grew and gathered, while from knot to knot
Orestes wandering whispered to the folk
His fell suggestions : " See him, how he goes
With careful survey through your treasure-close
Rich with the whole world's wealth, 'Tis the old grudge
To Phoebus brings him here this second time
For plunder." So he whispered, they believed,
Until the chartered keepers of the store.
After due conferences had and held.
Set private watch about the pillared courts.
At length, of all this coil unconscious, we
Took victims, petted on Parnassian lawns,
And waited at the high gate solemnly
With Delphians to present us and direct.
Then said the questioner, "Your purpose, sir?
What is the prayer that we shall make for you
To Phoebus?" Said my lord, "To be forgiven;
To make amends that for my father slain
I sinned so far to ask amends of him."
And now was seen to what malign effect
Orestes had possessed them with the fraud
Of our ill meaning. When my lord had passed
Within the boundary to address his prayer
In the oracular presence, there were set
Swordsmen in ambush, covered by the bays.
With the arch-plotter, Clytaemnestra's son.
And while my lord, intent upon the rite,
no A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History
Faced toward the god communing, even then
They stabbed my brave lord in the open back,
But not to death. He wrenched the dagger out,
Backed to the colonnade, and snatched therefrom
The hanging armour, clad himself, and stood
Tremendous on the stair. "And why," he cried,
"Slay ye a pious pilgrim, Delphians? Why?
Tell me the charge that I must die upon."
Whereto from all their numbers never one
Made answer but with hail of stones, that beat
Upon him furiously, the while his shield
With ineffective ward to right and left
Made shift against the shower, now arrows, now
Knives, javelins, creases, all an armoury,
Growing to a heap of steel about his feet,
Which kept a dance, you never saw the like.
So strange and horrible, to escape the fall.
But when the crowded ring began to close
Towards him, respiteless, and taxed his breath,
Down from the altar-step the gallant knight
Leaped, as he leaped upon the foe in Troy,
The victim turned assailant. And they turned.
Like doves that see a hawk, they turned and fled.
And many fell, pierced in the coward back
Or jostled in the strait and cumbered port,
Rending the silence of the sanctuary
With yells that echoed from the cliffs.
My lord
Shone in his harness for a passing while.
An orb disclouded.
Then from the unapproachable
And holiest a mysterious thrilling call
Rallied the fliers ; and my noble lord.
Struck through the body by a Delphian,
Whom with a many more of them he slew.
A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History in
Fell; and thereon, when he was down, oh, then
Was ne'er a hand but had a hack at him,
Stoned him or stabbed, until his comely form
Was utterly disgraced with ghastly wounds.
Then, lest the nearness of the corpse offend,
They flung it o'er the censer-sacred pale.
We, on our shoulders lifting it with haste.
Have borne it hither, my lord, my father, to thee
For grace of tears and honour of the grave.
But oh ! the Teacher of the world, the Judge
Of all mankind, so foully to abuse
The fair submission of Achilles' son !
This unforgiving malice, base in man.
Doth it consist with goodness in the god?
Long ago the injured mortal has had his
revenge of the false deity. The pen of the poet
was writing against Apollo the irrevocable sen-
tence even then. The spade of the explorer,
when it turns the soil of Castri, will scarce find
the tomb of Neoptolemus, and of Phoebus never
a ghost. Let us part from them all in peace.
^
LOVE AND LAW
"It makes a man despair of history." — R. Browning
If Macaulay was right, as he obviously was, in
insisting on the historical importance of the mutual
relations between the sexes, there is no age for which
these relations are of greater moment, or perhaps
so great, as for the cardinal period of European
development, in which the original Roman Empire
of the West was formed and transformed, and in
which the dominant religion of Europe took its rise.
The successful enterprise of Augustus is the basis
upon which political and social Europe was built.
And if there is any limited proposition which, in the
complication of causes, we can make with practical
truth as to the cause of any one event, it is that
Augustus succeeded because he professed and really
aspired to be the regenerator of Roman society, the
purifier and protector of the Roman family. This
is indeed a familiar and even a commonplace truth.
The interdependence of cause and effect is here no
matter of subtle analysis or calculation ; it lies before
us upon the record, material and palpable. The
military forces, with which Augustus conquered, all
but failed him in the crisis of his fate from the vulgar
Love and Law 113
want of money. They would actually have failed
him but for the direct support in cash of the better
classes in Italy. And the support given then, and
given in other forms before and afterwards, was
tendered upon the ground put forward repeatedly
by the Emperor himself and by his literary inter-
preters — that morality must be rescued ; that the
family, as the source of population and strength,
must be reconstituted ; and in particular that the
institution of marriage must be restored to its
primitive honour and power.
By what means it was attempted to redeem these
promises, how inadequate was the conception both
of the evil and of the remedy, and how it befell that
civilization actually died of its distemper, hastened
fearfully in the close by external violence, is partly
known, and may be better known by the labour of
our historians present and to come. It need hardly
be said that I do not now propose to follow the
story. My present concern is merely with the time
of Augustus and the attitude of his supporters
towards this particular problem ; and our considera-
tion will be further limited to a certain part of the
literary evidence, the more important to us as the
total evidence available is miserably inadequate.
Primarily, we must observe, it is not, and it was
not in the Roman world, by libertinism, as that word
is commonly understood, that the framework and
efficiency of the family were brought into danger,
and the whole foundation of popular strength de-
stroyed. Against mere libertinism, mischievous as
V. L. E. 8
114 Love and Law
it is, the forces of society fight, I believe, at least
on fair terms, if not with advantage. Far more
insidious and far stronger are those adversaries which
fight against family life with weapons imitated, if not
borrowed, from its own armoury. It was the faux
mdnage (to borrow a term from the sinister voca-
bulary of our neighbours) which honeycombed the
ancient nations of the Mediterranean. The facility
of ambiguous connexions, quasi-permanent and
quasi-licit, must in the ancient world have been
something difficult to conceive under the wide-
extending and regular administration of our great
modern states. The purely Roman law of burgess-
marriage was in itself a model of various uncertainty,
while in the Roman dominions at large there existed
no general law at all, but a vast complication of
what we should call " international " regulations
between the hundreds of municipal atoms out of
which the Graeco- Roman nation was produced. A
lawyer of the provinces in the time of Augustus
would probably have been puzzled to say with regard
to many a couple whether they were married or not,
and if so, from the point of view of what law ; and
if the matter were to be judged not by strict law
but from social sufferance and convention, the doubt
would have been still greater. Most curious in-
dications in this direction, so far as relates to the
centuries preceding the Roman revolution, are to be
found in Graeco- Roman comedy; but these must wait
for another time. We turn to the Augustan age, and
to the special character of the Augustan literature.
Love and Law 115
The poets of the official circle which was formed
around Maecenas were scarcely less a part of the
Emperor's government than the ministers and other
political personages themselves. They were spokes-
men of the Imperialist ideals to the people, and of the
enthusiasm of the people towards the Imperial office.
They are represented to us by three great names,
those of Virgil, Horace, and Propertius — Horace
chiefly in his Odes, which were for his own age by
far the most important part of his work. In the
case of the first two poets the effect produced upon
their writings by the Imperialist programme is justly
represented in common estimation, though as to
Horace there are misconceptions still to be removed,
especially as to the matter of which we are now
speaking. But with regard to Propertius the pre-
valent estimate is less satisfactory. For want of
sympathy with the ideas of the time, and under the
vast traditional prejudice piled up in ages when
Propertius and his contemporaries were thought of
chiefly as "heathen," the meaning of the poet has
been misrepresented in a vital matter. The error
has practically broken into confusing fragments one
of the most interesting and best-constructed books
of antiquity, and has entirely destroyed its value,
which is not small, as a piece of historic evidence.
The problem which I am going to propose
belongs, it will be inferred, to a class which it is
usual, and usually right, to leave in the hands of
professional scholars. It is, however, most desir-
able that now and then the light of our common
8—2
ii6 Love and Law
understanding should be let into these places, and that
questions habitually studied under the pre-occupa-
tions of grammatical detail should be disengaged for
a moment for the consideration of our less erudite
faculties. I do not at all despair of interesting the
most "general " reader, if he will indulge me with a
little patience. Indeed, in this "learned age" we
are all of us dabblers in criticism more or less.
In a preceding essay in this volume^ is sketched
an outline of the story told by Propertius in the one
work which, so far as we know, he ever completed,
the poem (in three parts) of Cynthia. The story,
of which the poet himself is the supposed hero,
represents the beginning, the disasters, and, after
many struggles, the end of a disreputable connexion.
There is reason to suppose that the present scheme
of the poem was to some extent an after-thought.
The First Part, published before the poet became
connected with the Imperial court, shows no trace
(except in the prologue, which we may reasonably
regard as having been added or modified later) of
the subsequent development. The First Part alone
merely represents, in lively fashion, the somewhat
stormy happiness of a very young man, who in the
hallucination of passion believes, or tries to believe,
in the fidelity and affection of a vicious woman by
whom he has been enslaved.
But the Second and Third Parts, which carry on
the story over a period of five years, exhibit both
the hero and his fortunes in quite another aspect.
^ "An Old Love Story," p. 27.
Love and Law 117
The Second Part, one of the most striking works of
antiquity, shows him to us in all the varied miseries
of a disenchanted slavery ; while the Third repre-
sents his self-rescue, achieved partly through the
call made upon his nobler nature by honest ambition,
and the desire to do some service to his country as
a national poet, partly by the prudent resolution,
to which under this stimulus he manages to bring
himself, of improving his chances by absence from
the seat of danger. His final "restoration to sanity,"
in his own words, is effected by a voyage among the
distracting wonders of Greece and Asia. The two
latter parts of the poem are avowedly written under
the official inspiration of the Emperor's minister and
his literary adjutants.
Now, although I was not there writing, any more
than here, for Latin scholars as such, it did not seem
right to conceal what was indicated therefore in a
foot-note, that this account of the book Cynthia
was not altogether supported, or rather in its main
outline not supported at all, by received authority.
In the works of the best writers on the subject, the
construction and plot of the book are so far from
being made principal or prominent that the book is
scarcely treated as one poem at all, or regarded as
having a plan. We find in our " Propertius " the
three books of Cynthia printed, without distinction,
side by side with an appendix of fragments, for the
most part wholly unconnected with it. And within
the Cynthia itself no notice is commonly taken of
any interdependence between the separate poems of
ii8 Love and Law
which the books are composed. They are read as
mere units without any thread, save that most of
them relate in some way to the poet's love.
Now, seeing that the three parts of Cynthia^
are beyond all question in their general character
respectively such as I have described them in the
former essay and here, it may be thought, and it is,
remarkable that their mutual relations should be
thus set aside as not important to the reader. For
this however there has been one single, simple, and
sufficient cause. There is one poem of the series
which, interpreted as it is, destroys altogether the
scheme of the work, and makes it impossible to see
in it any plan or series whatever. It is upon this
poem, interesting and beautiful in itself, that I now
propose to fix our attention.
What of thy features can his memory keep
Who left thee, having won, to sail the deep?
Oh, cold of heart, to weigh his love with gain.
These tears with all the wealth of all the Main !
He lies belike in other arms; and thou
Dreamest the while, too fond, of oath and vow.
Brave beauty, chaste accomplishment, a name
Gilt by thy grandsire with a scholar's fame —
All these thou hast, and wealth. Thy missing part
Of bliss, oh, find it here, a loyal heart !
My night is near, my first. Retard thy pace
Swift moon, for that first night, and give it space.
Thou sun, that wheelest wide thy summer way,
Abridge thy circle and defer the day.
^ Propertius, Books i, ii, and iii. See Professor Palmer's
edition.
Love and Law 119
Time I must have to seal, to sign, to draw
Love's new indenture in his forms of law,
Which Love himself shall certify beneath,
As witness Ariadne's starry wreath.
What hours of parley I must interpose.
What long assay before we fairly close !
Love without such preamble, full and clear,
Lacks power to castigate his mutineer.
Fancy binds quick, breaks quickly. Slow and sure
Let love begin between us and endure.
Then if the plighted spouse, forsworn and vile,
The altar of his faith should dare defile.
All plagues be his that ever love hath bred :
Let hissing scandal pelt upon his head !
Wild at his lady's window let him yearn.
In utter darkness, lost beyond return !
With due deference to the correction of any
Latinist in details, I will venture to say that this
translation represents with accuracy in all material
points the 20th poem of the Third Book of Pro-
pertius. If the reader is not familiar with the
commentaries on the poet, he will, I think, hear
with a shock of surprise that this poem is commonly
supposed to be addressed to a scandalous person-
age of notorious ill-fame, and to commemorate the
beginning of a degraded attachment, which has
previously been deplored in every key of repentance
by the self-confessing author of the book in which it
is found.
Now it would seem that, if this is really so,
Roman society was the strangest institution, and
Latin the oddest vocabulary, that ever was known
among men. That law and that language were, it
120 Love and Law
appears, utterly indifferent to the most vital distinc-
tion in human affairs. They had no fixed and
ascertained expressions which marked beyond mis-
take what we know as an honourable love and a
legitimate union. For if the language of Propertius
here does not mean this, there were no words which
did. A husband in Rome could be called nothing
better than maritus, nor the ritual by which he
became such anything more august than sacra
marita, nor the religious altar which sanctioned his
troth by any term more sacred than' ara. If the
engagements of undisciplined caprice were not
stigmatised by the word libido, there was no way
in Rome by which the reproach could be expressed.
If the image of a legal covenant, "drawn, signed,
and sealed," did not then express real solemnity and
obligation, those ideas were beyond the range of
Roman thought. If this poem were written about
any society of which we have a present conception,
as of a real human fact, any one who tried to
persuade us that such language as Propertius here
uses really meant nothing definite, and that though
the poet talked in the forms of matrimony, he never
dreamed of being so understood, would be laughed
at. Surely these presumptions are as good for the
Romans as for any other people. Surely no society
in which they were not true could possibly have
held together at all. If this poem was accepted by
Augustan readers as a natural address to such a
person as "Cynthia," it is hard to see whither, below
where it had already fallen, the Roman Empire
Love and Law 121
could possibly decline. If it was so, history ought
to reckon with the fact.
But it was not so. To interpret this poem as
addressed to Cynthia not only makes the poem
itself inconceivable, but also ruins the sequence, and
with it half the interest, of the book. We find it
close to the end of the story, surrounded by other
poems which describe the last determined effort of
Cynthia's lover to escape from his thraldom. A
little before (in 18) he is trying, very unsuccess-
fully, to drink himself free. Immediately afterwards
(hi 21) he declares that, having now tried every
means of escape (many have been enumerated
before), every means consistent with remaining in
Rome, he will take the one remaining hope of a
distant journey. This occupies two poems. The
author comes home completely cured ; Cynthia is
dismissed with scorn ; and the story comes rapidly
to the due and respectable conclusion.
All, therefore — the poem itself and the place
where we find it — points to the natural conclusion,
that it represents the marriage of the hero, or at
least his immediate intention and expectation of
marriage. This he thought proper to try as one
of his remedies. But with some judgement and
humour, Propertius leaves it to our imagination to
fill up the details of the story. Whether the pro-
posing husband really married, but the marriage was
a failure, as under the circumstances it well might
be ; or whether, after all, the engagement (for it is
clearly an engagement) was broken off, which also
122 Love and Law
it might be, on either part, without violence to
probability, we are to determine as we please. The
poem is addressed to a lady of position and good
family. All her virtues and social advantages — her
fortune, literary grandfather, and all the rest — are
usually transferred and handed over to Cynthia, and
this in the teeth of the whole book, which tells us
that Cynthia had not a known relation, except a
mother, in the world, and paints her always in
colours with which the addition of "chaste accom-
plishment " will on no terms combine. Whether the
too commercial admirer by whom the lady had
been deserted, was a husband already or a favoured
suitor, is not exactly determined, nor does it matter.
If the lady was married to him, release under the
circumstances would not have been difficult.
If nothing were here at stake but the meaning
of this single poem, it would scarcely be worth while
to say so much of the matter. But the truth (which-
ever way it lies) is of importance to the whole
purport of that Augustan literature upon which
many of us, willy-nilly, spend not a little of our
time, and from which are imbibed, for good or ill,
more notions than are expressed by schoolmasters
or put down in examination-papers. Cynthia is
self-advertised as an official book, appearing under
ministerial and practically under Imperial sanction.
Both Augustus and his ministers wrote very disre-
putable verses, and sometimes omitted to burn them.
The practice was common then and at no time alto-
gether unknown. But it is a total misconception,
Love and Law 123
as it seems to me, to infer from this and like
facts that a poet of the ministerial circle would
have pushed his court by producing a book really
dedicated to Cynthia, or dealing with Cynthia at all
otherwise than as a delusion and a snare to the
well-intentioned young Roman. At the opening of
the Second Book, the hero, then still in his bondage,
deliberately and ostentatiously defies the new legis-
lation in favour of marriage, which the Emperor,
with the best designs but under much mistake as
to means, was straining his powers to carry and to
enforce. "Not Caesar," he says, "shall tear him
from Cynthia." Was this defiance real, and not
atoned for ? Are we to understand that while
Horace, at the command of Maecenas, was de-
ploring the decay of the Roman family and was
celebrating the matrimonial happiness which the
new rdginie would make universal among succeeding
generations, Propertius, by the like command and
with the same sanction, was filling with Cynthia a
whole book, unredeemed in official eyes by any
compensating moral ? The truth is that Cynthia,
such as the book became by the addition of Parts 1 1
and III, is a poetic manifesto against all Cynthias,
a novel, as we may almost call it, with a purpose.
It is true that in this case, as in many others,
the purpose has not very much to do with the merit
of the work. The interest of it as a work of art
lies primarily in the picture of man and of human
feeling, much of which remains unaltered if w^e erase
or ignore the moral altogether. But as a historical
124 Love and Law
document the book of Cynthia is totally changed,
and, as I think, totally distorted, by a reading which
conceals the purpose and dissolves the connexion
of it.
One little question, historical in a certain sense,
though not important, we may dismiss. Did the
marriage, or proposal of marriage, represented in
our poem really take place in the life of the real
Propertius .>* It is impossible to say, nor does it
signify. It was open to him, having made himself
the hero of his book, to coin for himself what
adventures he pleased. Our modern feelings might
suggest various arguments for or against the reality
of the circumstances. But then we cannot be sure
how far they are a safe guide.
Much more interesting and more instructive is
the light thrown by the poem upon the position of
literature at the court of Augustus, especially in the
early years of his reign. The Second and Third
Parts of Cynthia were written to make good the
position of the author in the ministerial circle. They
answer in the work of Propertius to the Imperial
Odes in the work of Horace, more exactly, perhaps,
to the Fourth and strictly Imperial Book of Odes,
which Horace added under the Emperor's command
and compulsion ; only with this difference, that
Propertius seems to have executed himself with a
good will. He may indeed have intended from the
first to make of his Cynthia a " Lover's Progress "
and an example to youth, though, as I have said, this
does not actually appear in the first and originally
Love and Law 125
sole part of the work. At any rate as an adherent
of Maecenas he plainly felt that this was his cue and
his text, and to much edification does he preach
upon it. His crowning sermon is contained in the
22nd poem of the Third Part. The 21st (the next
after the marriage) takes him, flying from the sight
of Cynthia, to the far East. In the 22nd he meets,
at Cyzicus, in Asia Minor, an old friend and mentor,
who had been accustomed in early days to lecture
him on his aberration. In the confidence of his
recovery he now repays the lecture, and scolds
Tullus, in his turn, for so long neglecting the duty
of a Roman to fill his place in Rome or Italy and to
carry on his family.
What ! couldst thou thus content, my Tullus, bide
These many years by cold Propontis' side?...
If storied Helle's strait have charm for thee.
Charm to beguile regret for such as me,...
If fancy tempt thee still to follow back
To Colchis Argo's legendary track,...
What marvels hath the world, however far,
To rival those on Roman earth that are?
Her legends raise no blush ; her soil is made
To breed nought baser than the soldier's blade.
Not here Andromeda was chained, not here
Was Pentheus chased, Thyestes fed not here.
She is thy mother, Tullus, and thy home;
The honours thou art heir to seek in Rome,
Speak Latin to thy peers, and give thy life
To the dear babes of some sweet Roman wife.
This very brilliant and charming piece (of which
I have given here but an outline, reproducing closely
only the conclusion to which it all leads) loses half
126 Love and Law
Its beauty and all its substantial meaning if it be
made to follow close on a rapturous proposal to
Cynthia. But this is the way we sometimes deal
with the literature of old times, upon which we have
chosen to put the general stigma of a presumed
indecency.
These and other lines we may follow another
time, or the reader at once, if he has patience.
I hope I have not tired him so far. The theme at
least deserves the hour. Charity and candour are a
duty between age and age, not less than between
man and man.
A VILLA AT TIVOLI
Brown Lycoris, hearing Tibur's air
Turns the brownest ivory (so they swear)
Fair,
Tried the breezy climate. But alack,
Very shortly came Lycoris back
Black !
The unlucky brunette of Martial's epigram is
one of the few recorded persons in ancient or
modern times who have had reason to disparage
the boasted attractions of Tivoli. From the time
when Catullus noted it as a mark of distinction
between his friend and his enemy, that the one
called his dubiously situated villa Tiburtine, while
the other "would bet anything that it was Sabine,"
from that time, and from long before, even to the
present day, no haunt of pleasure has had a wider
and steadier reputation. The very tea-gardens of
our own suburbs will recommend their ponds and
their gravel and their shrubless bowers by in-
scribing themselves with the name of Tivoli. To
the Roman the sound was sweetness. The clime
of Tibur signified a celestial region, a symbol of
peace and white purity. The towers of Tivoli
128 A Villa at Tivoli
beckoned, says the poet, through the night with
a singular whiteness, and the graves of the beloved
dead who slept in Tivoli, seemed to speak more
than other graves of Elysian happiness, of wrong
forgiven and stains for ever taken away.
I do not here propose to detain the reader with
any long description of the place. Innumerable
writers and painters have made known the site,
lying upon the front of the Sabine hills in full
view of Rome, and have told how the Anio or
Teverone, forcing its desperate way out of the
mountains behind, plunges into the gorge which
half encircles the town ; how, not content with its
main channels, both natural and tunnelled by man,
it breaks under and through the mass of the fortress,
and flows back into its main self by a thousand
miniature falls, making of the hillside an orchard
" fruitful with shifting streams." We, out of the
wealth of poetry which the Latin poets by their
lives and writings have bequeathed to Tivoli, will
but take at random a few pieces for the minute's
amusement, choosing them so as to illustrate both
the charm and the pathos which for different rea-
sons attached to the town in Roman remembrance.
Tibur was to the Romans the place of retreat, in
all times, earlier and later, republican and imperial,
the place of chosen retreat, the land of delightful
homes, but in republican times also the place of
enforced retreat, the place of exile and of half-
consoled regrets. We shall see it in both these
colours, but chiefly in that which it oftenest and
A Villa at Tivoli 129
longest wore, as a city and country full of de-
lightful homes. Such it was, above all, in the not
yet fading prime of the empire victorious and at
peace.
Of the moderate Roman villa, no palace but
a house of some dignity, as it was to be found in
Tivoli when Roman society had come to its full
splendour, we have one fairly complete and highly
interesting picture from the hand of Statius. It
is one of his poetic Studies (Silvae), and is found
in the same book with that upon the Saturnalia,
of which some account has been given in a
previous essay entitled The Feast of Saturn. The
owner of the house bore the name of Vopiscus,
to English ears not happy in sound, though to a
Roman poetic and pathetic enough, if, as they say,
it signified properly the survivor of twin babes,
the one left when the other was taken. Nothing
whatever is known of him now, nor does the poet,
who was not the man to hide under a bushel the
glories of himself or his friends, say anything to
suggest that Vopiscus was a man of uncommon
mark. He was not even, and this is noticeable,
a man of extraordinary wealth, but merely an
independent gentleman, with a taste for literature
and literary society, and able to indulge his taste
by collecting about him the sort of people that
he liked. All the more significant is the tone of
splendour "in the air" with which the verses of
Statius are filled and suffused.
The piece was apparently the offspring of
V. L. E. Q
130 A Villa at Tivoli
genuine gratitude on the part of the writer, not
for any mercenary service, but for a boon more
precious than money. Like Maecenas in that
summer when Horace reminded him with remon-
strance that
The untilted cask of mellow wine,
And roses in thy hair to twine,
had long been ready for him in the Sabine hills,
Statius had been kept by the claims of society on
a subordinate man of fashion far into full summer
at sweltering Rome. In the gorge of the Anio,
an easy stage from the capital, he enjoyed a brief
breathing, and begins to record it in a rapture of
regret.
With eloquent Vopiscus have ye been,
Where as the caverned ice his bower is cool
In Tibur with the Anio rolling through?
Or seen his chambers, that from bank to bank
Answer each other and dispute their lord?
Oh then, though Sirius howled, ye did not feel
His dog-star hot, nor suffered, though the whelp
Of Nemea's forest glared. The frost within
Is obstinate against the powerless sun,
And still in Pisa's month the halls are fresh.
Thoroughly Roman, and pleasing in its way
to an acquired taste, is this enthusiastic pedantry.
What is "Pisa's month".'' Without any shame a
man might give it up, and probably some of the
company who were with Vopiscus at the first reci-
tation looked it out privately in the library, and
got into trouble with their dictionary over the
A Villa at Tivoli 131
resemblance between Pisa and the much better
known Pisae. As a fact, this Pisa was the place
of the Olympian festival ; and as this festival was
held just after the summer solstice, to say " the
month of Pisa," when you mean "July," is as
natural and obvious as to put the "whelp of
Nemea," or Nemean lion, for the corresponding
sign of the zodiac ! To Statins at least all this
erudition was alive with poetic suggestion, as he
very quickly proceeds to prove.
'Tis said that Pleasure drew with softest touch
The ground-plan; Venus touched the battlements
With perfume of Idalia from her hair,
Which trailing on them left so sweet a trace,
The sparrows bred thereon will never quit.
Any one who has dabbled in mortar knows that
the coping-stone must be "wetted " with something,
commonly beer ; but champagne of course is better,
and scent of ambrosial Cyprus in some ways better
still. For the same reason, whatever it may be,
the bottle of champagne is broken on the prow of
a ship at the launching. It is pleasant, when you
pay the bricklayer for " drinking your health," to
remember these sparrows of Statins, which surely
are treated with an exquisite feeling. Very like,
and yet with a deep difference, is that martlet, the
" guest of summer," which commends the pleasant
castle of Macbeth, and
does approve
By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here.
9—2
132 A Villa at Tivoli
Indeed the writer of Banquo's speech should
have furnished our translation. As it is, we must
get on as we can.
Oh memorable hours, oh pleasant thoughts
Which I have brought away ! My eyes are tired
With marvels. What advantage in the ground,
How artfully improved ! Not anywhere
Has nature been more liberal to her taste.
Over the rapid stream the high woods stoop,
Reflected leaf for leaf; the water seems
A moving avenue. Fierce, full of rocks
Above and lower, Anio here is calm.
Nor foams nor murmurs, as in fear to break
Vopiscus' days, given to the quiet muse,
His dreams, poetic with remembered song.
Habentes carmina somnos, "sleep retaining song,"
says the poet more exactly, but I find it necessary to
sacrifice his terseness.
Both shores alike are home; —
That the house was in two parts, one on each bank,
we have already seen in the opening description.
Whether this fanciful arrangement increased its
convenience may be doubted, particularly as there
seems to have been no bridge ; but it is certainly
striking to the imagination, and the painter makes
more than the most of it.
Both shores alike are home; the gentle stream
Seems no division, and the fronting towers
Feel themselves one, despite the flood between.
How poor a pride was his who passed, they tell,
By dolphins drawn across the Sestian strait !
Here is eternal calm, all storm forbid
A Villa at Tivoli 133
To chafe the waters. Eye to eye may speak
Across, or voices join, or almost hands.
So small a barrier Euripus is
To Chalcis, or the sea that sunders off
Pelorus from the gaze of Bruttian coasts.
Here we have, half in burlesque, and plainly
so intended, that ancient and specially Roman
pomposity of decoration, huge comparisons and
thundering names, which so deeply affected the
ear of Milton. The most famous waters of the
old world, and the greatest figures in old history,
Hellespont and Messina, Agamemnon, Xerxes, and
Hannibal, all serving to illustrate a bit of garden !
It is a style which easily passes into the tawdry,
and among the innumerable writers of the three
last centuries who have tried to catch the trick of
it from the Romans, very few have quite succeeded.
However, upon these heroic stilts the poet rises
to the height of his subject and in a like rapture
continues :
Where should my song begin, what progress take,
And to what close? The gilded architrave?
The Moorish piers?
that is to say, pillars of the coveted stone " hewn
in the heart of Africa," which Horace condemns
for an insolent luxury ; so rapid was the progress
of wealth between the first of the twelve Caesars
and the last.
The Moorish piers? The polished marbles veined
With lace? Or should I praise the founts that flow
In every room?
134 ^ Villa at Tivoli
To the modern ear this seems a transition fit only
for the " Treatise on the Bathos." Water laid on
to all parts of the premises ! What a noble idea !
But here is just the lesson to the historic imagi-
nation. The comforts of the splendid Roman were
in some ways extremely modest ; the water-supply
of Vopiscus, though by no means remarkable, so far
as we can see, if judged by the present standard,
seems to have passed for a wonder of completeness,
and Statius will conduct us to the pipes more than
once in the course of his survey.
Distracting beauties call
My thoughts, my roving eyes ; the reverend trees ;
The court which overlooks the stream below;
Or that which looks toward the quiet woods.
Where your repose is safe, no tempests vex
The silent night, and so much sound there is
As whispers you to sleep. — What of the bath?
What indeed ! We are prepared for a special effort
on the part of the poet, when he comes to this
all-important adjunct to the Roman establishment.
The bath, properly and permanently warmed, is
the one thing about the Roman residence, which
in the midst of much that served rather for display
than for real satisfaction of life, the dweller in our
English homes may notice with envy. The reader
expects to hear something particular of the bath and
of the rock in which it will be cut ; but assuredly
he does not expect what he will find, a piece of
coarse and grotesque vulgarity, standing in sharp
A Villa at Tivoli 135
contrast with the delicate lines upon the night and
quiet bedchamber.
What of the bath,
That steams in a green basin, where the fire
So heats the cold rock of the river bank.
That Anio, neighbour to the furnaces.
With laughter sees the water-fairies pant !
Here is the Roman mind in another phase, the
native grossness and crudeness breaking suddenly
through the Hellenistic surface, as it does now and
then in the Odes of Horace. Put this amazing
piece by the side of that about Venus and the
nesting birds, and we have a remarkable lesson
in the history of taste. However the house of
Vopiscus was after all a Hellenistic house, full of
laborious culture, and the poet, almost as if con-
scious of his lapse, hastens from the bath to the
galleries.
There too is wondrous work of ancient hands.
Metal of various mould — it were a toil
To tell the list, the gold, the ivories,
The gems fit for the finger, chisel-work
In silver or in bronze, on lesser scale
Practised at first, and thence essayed in size
Transcending human.
Here again we might feel envious, when we
think what glorious figures, now lost for ever,
were doubtless reproduced for the decoration of
these rooms, and how, if one or two of these imi-
tations could now be found, the capitals of Europe
would quarrel for the possession, and copies would
136 A Villa at Tivoli
go out everywhere into palace and cottage. But we
are soon reminded again of our compensations.
While my lifted eyes
Strayed over all, my feet on wealth below
Were treading heedless, till from overhead
Poured through translucent panes the blaze of day
And pointed to the floor, the ground whereof
Was rich and gay with such invented maze
Of pattern on it that I feared to step.
If our busts and our statuettes are inferior, we can
at least see without difficulty such ornaments as we
have ; we need not make our passages nearly dark
in order to keep out the weather, and do not start
with astonishment at the brilliant apparition of a
skylight. And be it remembered once more that
this was a great mansion.
Rooms of unbroken space there are, and rooms
Parted in triple aisle. And midst of all,
Above the roofs, among the pillars, soars
Into the bright air, reverently spared
(Another would have cut it down), a tree,
Which there shall live until with kindly close
The native genius ends its peaceful days.
Here the modern mind echoes readily to the
poet's feeling, to his delicate sympathy with nature,
which is not the less true and direct because,
speaking the language of his age and school, he
figured the indwelling spirit under a multiplicity of
bodily forms. A Wordsworthian would prefer to
present to his imagination the life of the tree with-
out the interposition of a Naiad or a Hamadryad ;
but this is pure matter of form, and we know that
A Villa at Tivoli 137
Wordsworth himself sighed sometimes for the help
of "a creed outworn" and the audible music of
"old Triton."
Two mounds with tables set alternately,
Pools of white water and deep-flowing springs,
These might have mention, —
It would be more convenient for us if they
had had a little more, for as it is, we are much
puzzled to say what is meant. The "white pool"
was probably filled from sulphur-springs ; and the
" mounds " would seem to have been connected
with some arrangement, symmetrical on the two
banks, for taking meals in the open air.
Or the pipe that runs
Boldly athwart the river's self and brings
The Marcian through the Anio. Thus the tale,
How Elis' rivulet to Etna's coast
Came under sea, is not unparalleled !
•'The Marcian," which in this mythology plays
the part of Arethusa, is of course the great aque-
duct of that name, whose arches are still one of
the celebrated sights of the Campagna, and remain
here and there in the neighbourhood of Tivoli
itself. The water of it was held excellent for
purposes of luxury. From the Marcian were sup-
plied, when it was possible, the elaborate and costly
grottoes affected by Roman landscape gardening
and absurdly imitated in some of our own old parks.
It was the Marcian which filled a splendid bath,
^ A pretty view through one of these arches will be found on
p. 1 1 of Burn's Rome and the Campagna.
138 A Villa at Tivoli
described by Martial, with water not less wonderful
than the precious stones,
So clear, that you would boldly swear,
Seeing the slabs below, that there
Nought intervened but empty air.
To be supplied from the Marcian was a coveted
privilege, for which Martial in another place peti-
tions the emperor :
Sweet, sire, and rich it were to me.
Thy gift, as founts of Castaly,
Or raining Jove to Danae-
Not therefore without purpose are we informed
that the privilege had been secured at some trouble
by Vopiscus, who, having got his " Marcian," used
it naturally among other purposes for such garden
grottoes as we have mentioned above. The taste
of the Romans for this kind of luxury is one which
we can with difficulty feel to the full. It is not
merely a question of climate ; to the Roman, under
the influence of Alexandrian arts derived from the
Museum of the Ptolemies, the pleasure of the grotto
was tinged with intellectual associations now hardly
to be comprehended. The persistence of the meta-
phor, by which spiritual influences of all kinds were
likened to fountains and the source of inspiration
set among the rocks, created, after the habit of all
familiar language, a sort of reality corresponding to
itself. Nothing in Roman literature is more curious
than the elegiac poet's^ description of the Muses'
^ Propertius, III (IV) 2 (3), Visus eram, etc.
A Villa at Tivoli 139
cave, gemmed with precious spar and carved with
quaint rococo decoration in the native rock — a fit
dwelling-place for the genius of Alexandria. We
should have it in mind as we read the description
that follows in Statius, which, pretty as it is itself,
conveys also in familiar allegory the compliment of
the poet to the scholar :
Grottoes there are, for which the god himself,
Anio, will quit his streams ; in secret night
Stripped of his vesture blue he leans his breast
Upon the yielding moss, or flings his bulk
Into the pools and beats the liquid glass
Swimming. The god of Tiber in the shade
Lies there, and Albula is pleased to bathe
Her sulphur-laden hair.
The presence of Albula is more, we may suppose,
than a fancy, for this medicinal spring was at no
great distance, and its water, widely distributed for
sanitary purposes, probably went to whiten the
mysterious pools of which we were previously
informed.
Here is a hall
To tempt fair Phoebe from Egeria's grove.
To bring the Dryads hither, one and all.
From cool Taygetus, to summon Pan
From groves Lycaean. Nay, if the oracle
Of the Tirynthian here would but agree.
The very Sisters of Praeneste might
Remove to Tibur !
A flirt of the sceptic pen is this, warning us in
time that we must not be too gravely religious with
these half-symbolic divinities. The temple of the
I40 A Villa at Tivoli
Tirynthian Hercules at Tivoli and the temple of
Fortune, or rather of the Foriunae, at the neigh-
bouring Palestrina or Praeneste were, together
with the shrine of the Sibyl at Cumae, the most
fashionable places of oracular consultation. The
Roman lover complains that the carriage of his
superstitious and volatile mistress is always running
to one or other of these tempting resorts. To
the patron deity of the burg Vopiscus doubtless
paid a prudent respect, but plainly "with some
private scholarly reservations," such as those of
Mr Casaubon ; so that his friend expects the ap-
preciative nod when he gravely notes the difficulty
of accommodating in one town two oracles whose
responses were different.
And now having got a taste of his favourite
mythology, the poet flings himself upon the feast.
Here we need not praise
Alcinous' fruit twice-harvested and boughs
Which never were divested of their pride.
Telegonus is beaten and the fields
Of Turnus by Laurentum, Lucrine halls
And shores of fell Antiphates; o'er-matched
The enchanting hills of Circe falsely fair,
Where howl Dulichian wolves ; o'er-matched the height
Of Anxur, and the home which he of Troy
Bestowed upon the gentle dame his nurse;
O'er-matched is Antium, which will tempt you back
When days are short and skies with winter dim !
Here the Englishman, even if fairly read in his
classics, begins to gasp a little, and to fumble for his
Gradus ad Parnassum. The reader would hardly
A Villa at Tivoli 141
thank me for so long a commentary as would be
wanted to make all clear. If in this catalogue he
has managed to recognize the towns of Tusculum
and Formiae, Circeii and Caieta, and if he knows,
without stopping to think, who the Dulichian wolves
were and where they came from — why then he could
graduate iyi artibus with considerable credit. In the
first century a.d., and in " society " at and about
Rome, these things were in all the primers.
It is only natural that now we should not know
them, but it is perhaps worth asking why it is that
our own language and literature is so poor in all
such mechanism of pleasant remembrances. We
may come back to this again in this paper, or
hereafter. Even Statius for the moment has had
legend enough, and with good effect becomes sud-
denly serious in a Roman strain of admiration and
friendship.
Such is the study, where that righteous soul
Solves duty's problem ; such his garden-plot,
Planted with virtues, frownless gravity
And sober elegance, and neatness not
Luxurious overmuch; a soil for which
Gargettus' moralist^ would fain have left
His own Athenian Garden. 'Tis a port
From every wind and under every star.
Better seek safety here, than run the ship
Around the Cape of Storms or through the Race.
Why do our eyes esteem a pleasure less
Because the hand may reach it?
^ Epicurus.
142 A Villa at Tivoli
Vopiscus appears to have missed or neglected
the road of ambition even in literature, practising
it only, after the fashion of all Roman gentlemen,
for himself and his friends.
Here the Fauns
Enjoy thy music, and Alcides' self,
Catillus too, theme of a greater lyre;
Whether courageously thou dost assay
To strike the string with Pindar, or to rise
High as the feats of Epic, or to put
The smirching tint on Satire, or to smooth
The bright Epistle with an equal care.
The wealth of Midas, Croesus, Persian Kings
Thou dost deserve; the better wealth of soul
Thou hast. The Hermus, gilding where he flows,
Or Tagus' bullion clay were well bestowed
Upon thy peaceful meads. Hereafter still
People, as now, thy haunts with learning; still
As now (I pray to heaven) with cloudless heart
Live on beyond the term of Nestor's years.
Excellent work this is of its kind, though the
fashion of it is gone, not so very long ago, out of
date. Whether it ever will or should come back
is an open question ; but one thing is not open to
question, that modern literature loses greatly in
power, as compared with ancient, from the fact that
readers have now scarcely any common mythology,
any general stock of associations, to which poetry
can appeal, and in particular scarcely any local
associations well enough known to be serviceable.
For Scotland something in this way has been done
and has been made public, mainly by Walter Scott,
whose verses, without any other great merit, and in
A Villa at Tivoli 143
spite of many obvious defects, hold and will hold
the common ear by this one delightful spell of asso-
ciation alone. A Scottish catalogue not unworthy
to compare with the brilliant Latin catalogue of
Statius, might be without much difficulty composed
by an able hand. But where are the local legends
of Southern England ? Who but an antiquary
knows them or cares for them ? Could any one,
however able, adorn an English "epistle" with
a catalogue after the manner of Statius, which
.should not seem to most of us a piece of tiresome
pedantry ? Such it might actually be ; but where
these things cannot be done, there one Muse, and
not the unsweetest sister, is silent. Since the
Reformation religio loci has had a hard time, and
in no way has the anti-catholic movement cost more
to the arts than in this. Catholicism, at least before
the Reformation, was for this purpose thoroughly
pagan ; the spirit of Chaucer's Prologue —
And specially, from every schires ende
Of Engelond, to Canturbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seeke
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke. —
the spirit of these lines is exactly the same for poetic
purposes, with a change of names and symbols, as
that of Statius —
Hie tua Tiburtes Faunos chelys et iuvat ipsum
Alciden dictumque lyra maiore Catillum.
"Catillus too, theme of a greater lyre." Among all
the merits which English poetry has and Latin has
144 -^ Villa at Tivoli
not, one beauty in which Latin is rich we cannot
count, and we shall not, until (which doubtless will
be long first) we can believe or feign belief in such
fancies as those of Catillus and Tiberinus.
The Argive hero Catillus, or Catillus, or Catilus
(for the " great lyres " of Rome who harped upon
him could not quite agree how he should be called)
was, under Hercules, of whose divine blood he came,
the accredited founder and patron of Tibur. That
such an actual person of mysterious lineage did
actually lead a wandering band of Greeks to the
stream-encircled fortress on the Sabine hills, was no
doubt believed by Statius, and is quite credible.
That his spirit did and does veritably haunt his
beloved towers, the servants of Vopiscus' house-
hold and the hinds upon his farms would have
asserted even more positively. Vopiscus himself
would probably have said that it was in no way
disprovable, nay, on some grounds likely enough,
and anyhow a pleasant thing to suppose — and who
is prepared to go further, or to show any very
good reason for not going so far .-* To this name
of Catillus, and that of Coras his brother, faith and
genius had linked such glories that the very sound
of it was delightful. They rode, says Virgil, at the
head of the Argive chivalry
Like unto Centaurs twain, sons of the cloud,
Down shooting from the snowy mountain-top
Of Homole or Othrys : from their path
The great trees break away, and the under woods
Part with a mighty crash.
A Villa at Tivoli 145
At great moments in the Aeneid, as at that
supreme moment of all when the Trojans are
pouring across the hills and the last plan of battle
is concerted between Turnus and Camilla, it is on
the horsemen of Tibur, on Coras and his brother,
that the Italian prince relies\ Catillus was in fact
a sort of St George for the Latins, one of many-
such champions (for each burg had its own patron),
but known as well as Virgil to every one who read.
What figure of like interest, half poetic and half
religious, could one of our own writers have intro-
duced as sharing from local attachment the simple
social pleasures of an English country town ? In-
deed what like presence has been seen in English
affairs at all, since Milton, in his earlier and half-
catholic mood, saw St Peter and the deity of the
river Cam come in procession to the mourning of
Mr Edward King ? Somewhere about that time
a certain element of the poetic spirit evaporated
from our world ; nor is it clear, however modern
poetry may flatter itself upon its depth and height,
that any sufficient balance or equivalent (of course
in a merely poetic point of view) has been found
for that loss, or will be.
It will be noticed, and the point is vital to the
lover of poetry, that though to Statius the spiritual
significance of these religious and legendary figures
has doubtless become very thin and shadowy, it is
not altogether gone, and what is left of it is essential
to his conception. Venus is not a mere abstraction of
' Virg. Aen, xi 464, 519.
V. L. E. 10
146 A Villa at Tivoli
beauty, who as such makes beautiful an architectural
design : she is still truly the life of the world, and the
memory of her presence is linked as cause and effect
with this solid natural fact, that the living birds do
veritably love to breed upon the fabric. The Fauns
and the god Tiberinus are not so utterly banished
into the realm of mere story, that they cannot in
imagination mix with the living society of the music-
loving Vopiscus. If any one indeed were to observe
that Milton could bring Camus into company with
his own self, and with the " Pilot of the Galilean
lake," and that yet the spirit of the Cam was to
Milton a mere fiction, I could only answer that of
this last point I am not at all sure, and on the other
hand am very sure indeed of this : a mind which
cannot for one moment suppose that there is an
angel of an English river just as real as any saint
in the Calendar, had much better let Lycidas alone,
and with it most of the better poetry written before
the eighteenth century.
There is indeed fiction of the ancient world
which may be enjoyed without any faith, mere story-
telling, excellent in its way, but without heart. The
prince of this poetry is Ovid ; an exquisite writer
but a most contemptible and mischievous man, who
has trained the ear of many a great composer,
but in matters of feeling can teach us only to
despise him.
It happens that Ovid himself has given us in
one of his Amoves^ a legend of Tiberinus, one of
1 III 6.
A Villa at Tivoli i^y
the divine company who haunted the nights of
Statius at the villa. The figure of Tiberinus had
to the Roman populace of the Augustan age a
spiritual significance especially profound. To this
deity was espoused in her distress, after the birth
of the founders of Rome, the Vestal Ilia, and it
was believed that the horrible floods of the Tiber
by which Rome in the early days of the empire was
repeatedly devastated, were a penalty for the sin
committed in the murder of Julius, the descendant
of Ilia herself. The vengeance of the "uxorious"
river is commemorated by Horace in a passage
which is not indeed of his happiest. This is the
figure, and this the story, which Ovid chooses as
the adornment of a trivial adventure in which he
supposes himself, the accident of his being delayed
by a stream in flood in the course of a journey. He
tells the story exquisitely, and I am much more
afraid to put my imitation into his mouth than into
that of Statius. Nevertheless I will say that in
any fairly faithful version it may soon be seen that
Statius has the root of high poetry in him, and that
Ovid has not. Here is the legend of Ilia and Tiber-
inus, which I shall give without further remark : —
There as she wandered barefoot in the wild
Mourning her blasted fame, her cruel wrong,
The god himself to woo her she beguiled
And heard the pleading murmur of his song.
" Daughter of Ida, why so woeful ? Why
Beside me strayest thou so all forlorn,
So mean-attired, and no protection nigh,
Of all thy sacred glory shent and shorn?
10 — 2
148 A Villa at Tivoli
"Why mar the beauty of thine eyes with tears
And beat thy bosom bare, a foul disgrace?
Stern is his spirit, steel the heart he bears,
Who softens not for tears on such a face.
" Oh Ilia, fear no more, oh fear no more !
Mine hall shall welcome thee, the queen of waves :
And all the hundred nymphs, that do adore
My river's royalty, shall be thy slaves.
"Daughter of Troy, do thou but deign consent.
My gifts beyond my promise shall appear."
But still her shamefast eyes were downward bent
And still upon her vesture fell the tear.
Thrice she essayed to fly ; thrice rose the flood ;
Her terror-palsied feet refused to run.
At length she plucked her hair in deadly mood,
Compelled her quivering lips, and thus begun :
"Oh, had they buried me, a maiden yet!
How should I wed, or pledge a Vestal's faith?
Full on my face the brand of sin is set;
They point at me and hiss. Oh hide me, Death ! "
With that her straining eyes she covered o'er
And plunged. The god, to save her desperate life,
Upon his loving hands her bosom bore
And, for his mercy, won her to his wife.
Such were the fancies and such the pictures
commonly associated with Tivoli in the Roman
imagination. It was a place of refuge, of calm
retreat and soothing beauty. But as in all shade
there is darkness, so had this place of refuge its
darker memories and more grave associations. More
especially to the strenuous Roman was it natural to
think of retreat, however delightful, with a certain
melancholy and aversion. It is for his last days
A Villa at Tivoli 149
and failing powers that Horace desires ** the city
of the Argive immigrant " ; the same conception
enters deeply into the allusions both of Horace else-
where and of other poets, nor in any notice, however
slight, of Tibur as it appears in literature, can we
properly pass over this characteristic phase.
The beginning of it lay far in prehistoric times,
when Tibur was the independent neighbour of infant
Rome. In the ancient world of little burgs, when
government was but feeble to control the powerful
man, and when on the other hand the most powerful
man and the wealthiest, if compelled to change his
habitation and go out into a land of "the enemy,"
suffered loss and danger scarcely conceivable in our
society, it was a common practice to compromise
with the strong criminal by sparing other penalty
on condition of his departure into exile. The ac-
ceptance of this practice, which has sometimes an
almost absurd appearance to minds familiar with our
"extradition," was really not so unreasonable. As
things then were, the expelling government gained
much more and the expelled offender suffered in-
finitely more than would be the case with a first-
class delinquent who took train for Venice or the
Riviera. The Roman exile of the old Republic,
whatever comforts of climate or situation he might
find in the cities of the Sabine hills, was never-
theless a broken man, much less than nothing,
without status or legal existence, without any certain
protection for his goods or even for his person.
Indeed the tradition of Roman lawyers preserved
150 A Villa at Tivoli
the memory of times when even nearer to Rome
than the Sabine hills lay land that was not Roman,
where the Roman man was already in exile. Under
the Imperial Government, when exile was meant to
be inflicted as a severe penalty, the shores of the
Black Sea did not to the eye of justice seem too
distant. And Ovid, who received and, so far as can
be judged, had well deserved such a sentence, in
one of the lamentations which he wrote from his
Scythian retreat, contrasts with point the old and
the new doctrines as to the proper limit of deporta-
tion :
So mild our fathers were in banishment,
Their furthest cruelty to Tibur sent.
This conception of Tibur as a sort of asylum
lasted on like other such, with lessening reason, till
it was a mere abuse ; so that the name of the
beautiful town is coupled with some of the darkest
tales in Roman history. Thither, when the Republic
was struggling to be full-born, retired the worst
instrument of that Appius Claudius, whose half-
legendary cruelty is now proclaimed to all English-
speaking children in the brilliant ballad of Macaulay ;
thither, when the Republic was agonizing between
desperate disease and desperate remedies, protection
for the moment from the fury of the Caesarean
populace was sought by some of those who had
dipped their daggers in the blood of Julius. There,
in many a miserable abode of luxury, after the final
fall of the senatorial party, the remnant of the
nobility brooded over a world ill lost. It is to one
A Villa at Tivoli 151
of the most splendid and the most dangerous of
their number that Horace addresses himself, when
with his fine touch of grave gaiety he bids inoppor-
tune remembrance to lose itself in such enjoyment
as the time affords.
Whether amid the shining pomps of war
Thy lot is laid,
Or shall be hid from these afar
In Tibur's private shade.
I was the more anxious to touch, before ending,
upon this aspect of Roman Tivoli, because it will
give me a chance of making some restitution to
Ovid, whose merits in his own kind I am not so
foolish as to deny. In general the stories which
relate to it as a place of exile and fallen greatness
are naturally sad. Many a native and many a
foreign victim of Roman pride there found an in-
glorious close. The death of the Numidian king
Syphax, a prisoner awaiting the final degradation
of the Roman triumph, is tragedy itself; and even
the cloister of Zenobia, once empress of the East
and rival of Rome, would not be a theme for light-
ness and laughing. But among the stories of Roman
exile there is one for which no pen could be too
merry ; and Ovid, who is always light in season and
out of season, had never a better subject than the
tale of the pipers which makes an episode in his
poem on the " Calendar," and which now shall serve
us for a conclusion.
The pipers or flute-players, a privileged company
of foreign artists, whose services were of no small
importance to the ceremonies of state and religion,
152 A Villa at Tivoli
came somehow into collision with the jealous authori-
ties of the republic. Whether they were expelled
in anger, or whether they withdrew in anger, is a
historic doubt ; but exiled at any rate they were,
and to Tibur as exiles they went. But the glory
and independence of art were nobly revenged upon
the tasteless minions of office who had procured
their departure ; and when there had been time for
them to be well missed, an involuntary resident in
Tibur, who for some little misfortune in his previous
career had undergone a period of slavery, procured
their restoration (and probably his own at the same
time) by an appropriate feat of diplomacy, which as
Ovid relates it in Latin, either Chaucer or Dryden
chaucerizing would best have related in English.
The banished troupe their way to Tibur went
(For Tibur counted then as banishment).
The stage, the altar missed their usual cheer,
And dirgeless to the burial went the bier.
There was a quondam slave in Tibur, free
By lapse of time, as he deserved to be;
He to a banquet in the country bade
The artists; they the artful call obeyed.
'Twas dark, the guests were flustered, when a post
By pre-arrangement came to warn the host :
"Your master (he that was)" he said "is near;
Break up the feast, or he will catch you here."
They stumbled up, but doubted in dismay
Whether their feet would carry them away.
" Nay, go you must " exclaimed the host " for sure ! "
And popped them in the cart which brought manure.
Night, drink, and motion aiding, soon they dreamed,
And travelled on to Tibur, as it seemed.
So dreaming still they passed, ere morning broke,
The gates of Rome, and in the Forum woke.
-A'
J / / / ' "^f (/ J
"TO FOLLOW THE FISHERMAN":
A HISTORICAL PROBLEM IN
DANTE
It was a natural, perhaps a necessary incident,
in such a personal progress through Purgatory as is
related by Dante in the Second Part of the Divina
Commedia, that once at least we should witness the
actual release of a soul, the discharge of one who
has completed his purgation and ascends to the
place of everlasting bliss. The choice of a person
to be so discharged, involving as it did the exact
appraisement of delinquency and equation of penalty,
was delicate enough to tax the courage even of a
Dante ; nor is it surprising that he has made such
a choice as to extend the supposed period of punish-
ment to the possible maximum. The sinner released
in the year 1 300 is one who, if he was a Christian
at all, and as such capable of purgation, belonged to
the very earliest generation of the Roman Church.
To prove his Christianity was an affair of evidence,
as Dante, a strict historian according to his lights,
well knew and admits. The manner in which the
poet has treated the question vividly illuminates, not
only the quality and limitations of his own passionate
154 ''To Follow the Fisherman^
intelligence, but the general mind of that most
remarkable age.
Statius, the most successful among the imitators
of Virgil, was living at the date of the Neronian
persecution and martyrdom of the Apostles, and
during the alleged persecution of Domitian ; in the
last quarter of the first century a.d. he was the
fashionable poet of Roman society. Down to a
\ recent date, until in fact Latin ceased to be general
\ reading, he might be called fashionable still. Though
I his poems, as we know, were not in stock at
' St Ronan's Well, it could still be supposed, in the
time of the Peninsular War, that a lady at a watering-
place might want them. Vogue of this sort he will
hardly recover ; but references, allusions, and imita-
tions in half the writers of Europe will long preserve
\ to him a certain interest. For Dante and his con-
temporaries he was perhaps, after Virgil, the most
interesting figure in literature. His works, as then
known, consisted of two legendary narratives, the
Thebais, complete in twelve books, upon the famous
expedition of the Seven against Thebes, and the
Achilleis, or story of Achilles, a fragment. The
collection of fugitive pieces, or Silvae, since dis-
covered, was evidently and fortunately not known
to the author of the Purgatorio ; it would have
embarrassed his charity not a little. Each of the
two epics comprises a small portion giving personal
information about Statius : the Thebais an introduc-
tion and an envoi, the Achilleis an introduction.
To these Dante, as we shall see, refers explicitly
" Zb Follow the Fisherman'' 155
and minutely. He also refers us indirectly to the
satirist Juvenal as an authority on the subject of
Statius ; for he makes Virgil, the companion of his
journey through Purgatory, claim to have heard of
Statius from Juvenal himself, when Juvenal came
after death to that Limbo of the lower region
where the pagan poets habitually dwelt. What can
obviously and certainly be learnt from these sources,
what has been here stated, is fully and accurately
stated, even to such a detail as that the Achilleis is
unfinished, in the autobiography which Statius is
made to give\ One particular is added, which we
now know to be false : Statius calls himself a native
of Toulouse, whereas in fact he was born near
Naples. The origin of this error is not positively
known, though it has been plausibly conjectured ;
all that need now be said of it is that Dante, who
makes no use of the allegation, certainly did not
invent it.
But it is otherwise with the large and surprising
revelations which Statius makes about his moral
character and spiritual history. He was converted,
Dante informs us, to Christianity, and at some time
before the completion of the Thebais was actually
baptized, though he had not the courage to acknow-
ledge his new faith, which remained always a secret
— a circumstance which naturally whets the curiosity
of the reader as to the source of the relator's in-
formation. The conversion was begun by suggestive
passages in the works of Virgil himself, notably the
^ Purg. XXI and xxn.
156 " Zl? Follow the Fisherman''
prophecies of Christ in the Fourth Eclogue, and
completed by admiration of the martyrs and con-
fessors who suffered under Domitian. Besides the
cowardice of thus concealing his opinions, Statius
attributes to himself a sin so subtle that he has
some trouble in defining it, a sin of which he justly
says that it is apt to escape notice ; it is a kind of
prodigality, yet by no means that which is ordinarily
so called, but rather a sort of defect in avarice, an
insufficient estimate of wealth, a want of attention
(such appears to be the meaning) to proper economy
as the necessary basis of independence and the
upright conduct of life. Upon these allegations, for
which no warrant whatever appears prima facie in
the documents proffered by Dante, depends never-
theless the whole position of Statius in Dante's
» narrative : the conversion admitted him to Purga-
tory, the cowardice and the neglect of economy
I have confined him there, and determined his place,
j for the greater part of the twelve centuries inter-
vening.
What then is the base of these allegations ?
Did Dante invent them, or did he draw them from
some source to us unknown and other than those
documents which he elaborately specifies, or thirdly,
did he by some process of construction extract them
from those very documents ? It is proposed to
show that this third supposition is, upon Dante's
own statement of the matter, alone entertainable ;
and further that there is no difTficulty in following,
up to a certain point, the process by which he was
'* To Follow the Fisherman'^ 157
convinced. The question has an interest more than
curious, for the light which it throws upon the state
of Hterature and upon the poet's mind, a mind not
less loyal to truth than fertile in legitimate imagina-
tion. He boasts of his accuracy in matters of fact,
and not without reason. Passionately eager to
know, he could make much, too much, of his data,
but could not pretend, like a historical novelist, to
have data where in fact he had none. What he
alleges about Statius he could not have found, unless
he had sought it with singular determination ; but
find it he did. That Statius was a bad economist
and compromised his independence, this Dante got,
or perhaps pressed, out of JuvenaP. So much has
been seen and proved before, and nothing will be
said of it here. The fact that Statius became a
Christian, and the history of his conversion, he
inferred from the introduction to the Ackilleis, to
which, as his authority, he has actually directed his
readers. And right it was that he should.
For the truth is, Dante in this matter has taken
a position which, unless evidence, solid evidence, for
the "concealed Christianity" of Statius had been
in his opinion extant and ascertainable, would be
absurd. The account which Statius gives of his
conversion is elicited by a question, or rather a
critical objection, put into the mouth of Virgil.
Statius has already implied, as indeed his purgation
1 Juv. Sat. VII 82—92. The facts stated really do imply
what Dante asserts, though to notice it was not the purpose of
the satirist.
158 ''To Follow the Fisherman'^
of itself implies, that he was of the true faith.
Whereupon Virgil very pertinently observes that the
introduction to the Thebais (he marks the precise
passage which he has in view) does not exhibit the
writer as a Christian \ It does not; in fact it
shows, as Virgil himself, under the polite form of
his negative, intimates plainly enough, that the
writer was at that time not a Christian of any sort,
professed or concealed. But why this distinction of
the Thebais ? Dante alleges Statins to have been
a Christian. He indicates correctly what were in
his time the sources of trustworthy information about
Statius and his opinions. He then insists on point-
ing out that a part, a comparatively large part, of
that evidence, so far as it goes, disallows and con-
tradicts his allegation. Why does he do this, or
rather, how dares he do it, if no evidence equally
good were producible and produced in favour of his
allegation .-* Such a proceeding would be absurd
and unintelligible.
That the affirmative document is the later poem
of Statius, the Achilleis, we must suppose ; if there
were no other reason, because Dante had no other
relevant document, and shows that he had none.
But this reference is actually given by the form and
wording of Virgil's question : "Now when thou didst
sing the bloody war of Jocasta's twofold sorrow, it
appears not, by that touch of the string in which
Clio there joins with thee, that thou hadst yet been
' Furg. XXII 55 ; Stat. Theb. i i — 40, especially 22 — 31.
" To Follow the Fisherman' 159
made believer by that faith, without which good
works are not enough. If this be so, what sun or
what candles so dispelled thy darkness, that thou
didst thereafter set thy sails to follow the Fisher-
man!'' The "war" is that of Jocasta's sons, the
theme of the Thebais. The invocation of the Muse
" Clio " marks the conclusion of the prelude to the
Thebais and the commencement of the narrative \
The " touch " or tuning of the lyre^ is the prelude
itself, and especially the latter part of it, which is, as
shall presently be shown, essentially anti-Christian.
" The Fisherman " is St Peter, founder, bishop,
martyr, and patron of the Church of Rome, whose
ship (in a certain sense) Statius followed when he
entered that Church. But why this metaphor of a
voyage ! Why should the converted Statius " set
his sails " } Nothing prepares us for this figure,
nor is it commonly appropriated to such religious
experiences. But the readers of Dante were ready
for the figure, and knew what it meant ; for they
were all readers of Statius. The sailings of Statius
are his two poems. At the conclusion of the Thebais^
a pretty verse^ once familiar to all, and still repre-
sented by many imitations (for example, that of
Spenser at the end of the First Book of the Faerie
Queene) compares the vast poem to a laborious
voyage ; his ship is now in port. That ship set sail
^ Stat. Theb. i 41.
2 Theb. 133" tendo chelyn."
* Theb. xn 809 " et mea iam longo meruit ratis aequore
portum."
i6o "71? Follow the Fisherman^'
again when he commenced another story ; and the
question of Virgil, construed as it would be by those
versed in the literature of the subject, means not
" How did you become a Christian ? " but, " How
came you to write as a Christian ? " Seeing that
the prelude to the Thebais is pagan, how came it
to pass that the prelude to the Achilleis is not ?
That there is Christianity there, a "concealed"
Christianity, Dante assumes as notorious. Notorious
however his construction of the passage no longer
is ; but it should be, one would suppose, not beyond
the reach of discovery.
But first, what sort of evidence shall we expect ?
The prelude to the Thebais is not Christian, is anti-
Christian. Why ? The question is answered at a
glance. Because Statius there acknowledges and
proclaims the essentially anti-Christian doctrine, the
test of orthodox paganism, as it perhaps already
was in those days and certainly soon afterwards
became — the deity of the Roman Eviperor. To
Dante, with his cardinal tenet of the distinction
between the temporal and the spiritual powers, this
doctrine was abominable for personal reasons, as
well as on Catholic grounds ; and he has noted it, in
the case of Virgil himself, as decisively damnatory.
I Not he, says Virgil sorrowfully, may conduct Dante
" into Paradise; "the Imperator (Imperador) who
reigns above permits it not, because I was dis-
obedient to his laws\" The sting of the reproach
^ Inf. I 124.
''To Follow the Fisherman' i6i
is pointed by the use of the poHtical term. It was
another Emperor whom Virgil, to the best of his
power, exalted to heaven ; and the plain fact is,
whatever moral or religious reprobation may justly
be attached to it, that no one did more than Virgil
to spread and fortify the strange new worship of the
Augustus. He foresaw (so Dante thought) the
religion of Christ ; but he preached the religion of
Christ's adversary. What Dante could not think
pardonable even in Virgil, he would still less have
forgiven, if unrepented and not retracted, to Statins,
who, in addressing the Thebais to the Emperor
Domitian, declares the divinity of his patron in the
amplest and plainest terms\ For this reason, and
for no other, the preluding of Statius and his Clio is
noted as not the work of a Christian. It is, for a
Christian, blasphemous.
And now let us hear the later utterance of his
Muse. The comparison is easy, for the two preludes
are parallel, and that of the Achilleis, though much
briefer than the other, concludes also with an address
to the Emperor. It is in these terms : " O Thou,
whose high primacy astonishes all excellence alike
of Italy and of Greece, in whose praise contend both
laurels, the Poets' wreath and the Captains' (long
doth the one of them grieve to be surpassed) ; grant
me Thy pardon, and, because of my fear, suffer me
yet awhile to sweat in this labour of dust. To Thee,
preparing long and not trusting yet, my labour
' ' Theb. I 2 2 — 31. Domitian is entreated to remain upon
earth, and leave heaven for the present to Jupiter.
V. L. E. II
1 62 " Z(? Follow the Fisherman''
tends, and the praise of Achilles is the prelude to
Thine\"
Now this is a reverent address, and a flattering
address, but blasphemous it is not. From a theo-
logical point of view it is unexceptionable ; it
attributes to Domitian nothing not proper to man,
nothing which has not often been attributed to
Christian princes by Christian divines. From the
scandal of the Christians, the deity of the Augustus,
it is absolutely free. Let it be put beside the
address in the Thebais, or the many addresses of
Martial and other contemporary writers, and the
broad difference will be instantly perceived.
This difference, change, omission, the modern
critic, applying coolly the laws of scientific inter-
pretation, will attribute to haste, weariness, want of
finish, study of variety, to accident, or to some
cause, at all events, other than scruple and intention.
Let this opinion be right. But it is not demonstrably
right. Very plausible reasons might be advanced
against it, reasons of a kind with which Dante and
the Latinists of his day were familiar. To omit the
Deity from a public and formal address to Domitian,
is a thing which might have been done by chance,
but was not at all likely to be so done. As easily
^ Stat. Achill. 114:
"At tu, quern longe primum stupet Itala virtus
Graiaque, cui geminae florent vatumque ducumque
Certatim laurus (olim dolet altera vinci).
Da veniam, et trepidum patere hoc sudare parumper
Pulvere : te longo necdum fidente paratu
Molimur, magnusque tibi praeludit Achilles."
^^ To Follow the Fisherman'' 163
would the framer of an address to one of the Tudor
princes have omitted or inserted by chance the
description " Head of the Church," or a modern
composer forget the designation " His Majesty."
Domitian was punctiHous in this matter beyond all
his predecessors and many of his successors ; nor
was he a man with whose rules it was safe to trifle.
His very secretaries headed their despatches " From
His Deity our Master^"; nor without some such
form, we are told, was anyone permitted to approach
him. This is from a hostile source", and is probably
an exaggeration, but the usage of the time supports
it as true in the main. It is not therefore extra-
vagant, or unreasonable, or improbable at all to
suppose, especially if we approach the subject, like
Dante, with an affectionate interest in Statius and
his character, that his omission of Deity was not
accidental but scrupulous. Dante, or the expositor
whom he followed, did so suppose, and drew the
necessary inference, that between the Thebais and
the Achilleis Statius had undergone a change of
feeling and opinion for which, in the circumstances
of the time, no explanation would be so likely as a
conversion to Christianity. There were Christians
about the court of Domitian ; his own cousin seems
to have been something like one ; many doubtless
were "concealed Christians," and among these
Dante, upon the evidence of the Achilleis, would
include Statius.
^ " Dominus Deusque noster."
^ Suetonius.
II — 2
164 ''To Follow the Fisherman''
But out of this bare fact, even if established,
Dante would not have made the circumstantial narra-
tive which we read in the Purgatorio. At least such
is not his practice. His history, though not scien-
tific, is honest ; and since he tells us positively that
Statius was convinced by the testimony and courage
of the martyrs, he must have found evidence, or
what he took for such, of this admiration. And so
he did. He got it from this same passage of the
Achilleis, by a process which (given the first step,
that the language of Statius here betrays the mind
of a Christian) would not be illegitimate, or would
not appear so to one passionately anxious to read
the beloved poet in a saving sense. Once initiated,
a comparison between the dedicatory addresses in
the two epics of Statius will soon reveal another
difference, scarcely less remarkable than their dis-
agreement about the deity of the Augustus. The
address in the Thebais, like other such composi-
tions, declares for whom it is meant. No one but
the Roman sovereign, and no other person but
Domitian, the brother of Titus, ** defender of the
Capitol," "conqueror of the North, the Rhine, and
the Danube," would satisfy the terms of the descrip-
tion \ The address in the Achilleis contains no
such terms, nor any terms of personal appropriation
whatsoever. The Man, admired by all that is
excfellent in the world, the summit of all virtue in
mind or in action, warfare or poetry — this may be
the Roman sovereign, and Domitian, to judge by
^ Theb. I 17 — 24.
" Zb Follow the Fisherman' 165
the date, was meant to appropriate it ; but after all,
he must take it himself, and the dedicator is not
committed. This is not usual. Nor is it usual that
an artist, even for the purpose of turning a compli-
ment, should depreciate his work by such expressions
of disgust as Statius here employs, and describe
himself as " sweating^ in this labour of dust." More-
over his language is obscure. " Both laurels, the
Poets' wreath and the Captains' {long hath the one
of them grieved to be surpassed) " — scholars will
explain ; and the reader doubtless knows what, as
addressed to Domitian, this parenthesis means ; but
a phrase more ambiguous it would be hard to make.
Now surely from all this, if we suppose ourselves
already to know that the words we read are those of
a concealed Christian, rendering, or pretending to
render, unwilling homage to a persecutor of the
Church, we might not unreasonably conceive the
suspicion of a latent intention, a meaning other
than at first appears. " Here," we should say to
ourselves, '* is what purports to be a courtier's
compliment to a certain prince. It neither names
nor describes him. It offends by omission against
a stringent rule of etiquette, a rule which the same
writer upon a previous occasion has zealously
observed. It is in one part strangely worded, in
another part obscurely. In short, with the supposed
application, it cannot be satisfactorily explained.
Why then do we not seek another application ? It
is the work of a Christian. Should it not then be
susceptible of a Christian sense ? "
1 66 " Zb Follow the Fisherman^
And it is susceptible of a Christian sense. The
meaning of its terms, as they would, on that hypo-
thesis, be interpreted by Dante, can be ascertained
from Dante himself, and leads directly to the
inference which he states. Statius will be thinking,
not of the earthly Rome, the City of the Seven
Hills, but of "that Rome" (as Dante pregnantly
calls it) "whereof Christ is a Roman" — the Christian
Church. The Imperator addressed will be He
against whose laws Virgil was rebellious when he
gave his worship to the first Augustus, and Statius
had been rebellious, but was now rebellious no
longer. Christ's, not Domitian's, will be the Virtue,
which astonishes all that, in mind or act, is excellent
in the world, the Goodness which surpasses praise.
The conception of Christ as the true spiritual
Sovereign, which we shall thus attribute to Statius,
is no casual fancy : it is the essential conception
upon which the Church Catholic, Apostolic, and
Roman, was actually built, and which was for Dante
the corner-stone of theology and politics. The whole
Contmedia, the Paradiso especially, is based on it.
It is the praise of Christ then, which will be
celebrated in rivalry by the Christian laureates of
both kinds, by poets and by soldiers alike. But let
us observe that of these symbols one will have a
new and a totally different meaning. The Prince,
whose kingdom is not of this world, is praised by
the same poets as other princes are, and " the laurel
of poetry " means in the court of Christ (if we may
use without offence the characteristic language of
" 7"(? Follow the Fisherman'" 167
the ParadisoY just what it meant in the court of
Caesar. Nor was the thing, for Dante, a metaphor
at all, but a familiar reality. It was for "the laurel,"
an actual, visible wreath, that he laboured in his
vocation as a Christian poet upon the Divina Corn-
media. He won the wreath and wore it, and hoped,
but in vain, to receive it some day, with far happier
glory, in and from his beloved Florence, as we shall
presently read in a passage intimately connected
with our subject. For Statius then also, speaking
as a Christian, "the laurel of the Poets" would have
the same meaning as for a pagan ; it is still an
emblem of his own art, however differently he might
conceive his poetic duty, when it was to be paid to
so different a Prince. But it is otherwise with the
laurel of the soldier. Not by such soldiers, as serve
the princes of this world, is served the Imperator,
the Supreme Commander, of the Church Militant.
What is meant by "a soldier of Christ" is known
to all who know anything of Christianity ; though
the correlative conception of Christ Himself, as a
military sovereign, is no longer very familiar to
a large part of the Christian world, and even to
those of the Roman communion is perhaps not quite
so familiar as it was to Dante, or as it was in those
primitive times when it was formed, when the
Church was, in more literal truth than she has been
^ See especially Par. xxv, where the parallel is pursued to the
utmost detail : St James is a " Baron," and speaks of Dante's
introduction to the "secret chamber" of the "Emperor" and to
His "Counts."
1 68 " To Follow the Fisherman''
since, a militant power, warring against the world
to win her place. So deep in her literature, her
liturgy, her most sacred formularies, was this
thought engraved, that it has passed to heirs who
scarcely know their inheritance. Millions are aware
that their baptism was an enlistment, the taking of
a soldier's service, and that they were signed with
the sign of the Cross " in token that thereafter they
should not be ashamed manfully to fight under
Christ's banner," who, if they were asked to explain
why this was so done, would give an answer not
historically adequate. Millions more, who never
heard the formulary, shape their religious thoughts
by that figure, and this not only, as they may
suppose, because it may be used by St Paul, but be-
cause it was adopted by the Vatican. The soldiers
of Christ are the Christians, and His "laurel" is the
emblem of the Christian warfare.
And if it should be said that the metaphorical
soldiership of the Christian is not parallel to the
literal hardship of the poet, and that, though each
separately may have its laurel, we could not properly
speak of them as "the two laurels," nor couple the
substance of one thing to the shadow or simile of
another ; it will be answered that so we may think,
but so did not think Dante. For he not only makes
the conjunction himself, but uses it as if it were in
itself natural and obvious, intelligible and familiar,
founding upon it a peculiarly impressive utterance
of his inner feelings and personal aspirations. In
Paradise he figures himself, as a first step towards
" To Follow the Fisherman' 169
his participation in the highest mysteries, to be
catechised upon his faith by St Peter, who finally
approves his answers by crowning him thrice\
What is the reflexion which this act suggests to
him ? Any modern, not already informed, might
guess in vain for ever. It reminds him of the hopes
which he may entertain from the success of his
poem, the Divi7ia Commedia : admiration of his
work may possibly procure at Florence the repeal of
his exile, and he may be re-admitted, as an approved
poet, to the city of his youth. And what then ?
What conceivable connexion is there between this
patriotic desire and his celestial graduation (the
figure is Dante's own) by the Apostolic Examiner ?
Because then, as a sign of his triumph, he will
receive and put on "the wreath," the poet's laurel ;
and this ceremony will be performed at the church
of his baptism, " because into the Faith, which
maketh souls known of God, 'twas there I entered,
and afterwards Peter, for that faith, did so encircle
my brow." The literary career and the Christian
profession, art and churchmanship, poetry and
baptism, these are ideas which an average man of
the modern type could not easily connect if he
would, nor perhaps would if he could. But to
Dante, nursed in the two great traditions of Rome,
the Catholic tradition and the Classic, those ideas
are, as it were, two aspects of one thing, so that he
' "Tre volte cinse me" Par. xxiv 152, but more precisely
"ji mi girb la fronte" in the subsequent allusion, Par. xxv
12.
170 " 7"(9 Folloiv the Fisherman"
turns from one to the other almost without sense of
transition. And the Hnk is a laurel wreath. His
art and his faith, his poem and his baptism, each
promises and confers "a laurel"; this the laurel of
Christian scholarship and inspiration, and that the
laurel of Christian warfare and triumph. Branches
of one service, duties to one Master, they bring the
like, or rather the same, reward. And he presumes
as of course that Statins, when he had become a
Christian and a Catholic, must have thought in the
same terms.
Since then the military laurel signifies for Statins
the crown of the faithful Christian, what is "the
laurel of the Captains " or " Leaders " (duces) ? For
it is of this specially that he speaks. The soldiery
of Christ being, as Dante says again and again, the
Church Militant and Triumphant, who in that host
are the leaders ? And in particular, who would be
so regarded and described by a Roman Christian,
writing towards the close of the first century a.d. ?
Who else but that " noble army " of martyrs and
confessors, who at that very time were inaugurating
by their triumphant sufferings the Sacred City of
Christendom? Who else but ''that soldiery who
followed Peter," the companions and successors of
the Martyr-Apostles, they of whom "the Vatican
and other the elect parts of Rome are the burial-
place\" the victims of the persecution commenced
by Nero and continued, as Dante believed, by
' Far. IX 139.
" Zb Follow the Fisherman'' 171
Domitian ? These events, for the Roman Church
historically important beyond all others save that
of Calvary, fill such a place in the mind of Dante
himself, that he can actually designate St Peter,
upon this ground simply, as "the high Centurion,"
" the great Leader of the File " (/' alto primipilo) ;
and indeed the Commedia, especially the Pa7'adiso,
everywhere illustrates them and the conceptions of
which they were the base. How should they not
have been all-important to a Christian contem-
porary, such as Statius, or how should he speak
of them otherwise than as Dante himself had been
taught ?
And if Statius, having thus naturally brought
together the laurel of the Poets and the laurel of the
Martyrs, goes on to say that of these two " one hath
long grieved to be surpassed," do we not easily
understand him ? Well might a great poet who
was also a concealed Christian, writing in the last
days of Domitian, thirty years after " Peter and his
beloved brother had put Rome on the right track,"
describe the laurel of Christian poetry as ashamed
of her representative, and grieving to be so long
and so far behind the sister wreath, the laurel of
Christian soldiership. Well might such a Statius as
Dante figured, eager and yet afraid to confess his
faith, and to devote his talents to the service of his
spiritual Prince, grieve while he set himself wearily
to celebrate a mere Achilles, while he postponed to
this poor task the noble theme of Christ and His
triumphant Church, while he cautiously trimmed the
172 ''To Follow the Fishe7"man'^
ambiguous phrases which, under the disguise of a
compHment to the anti-Christian persecutor, should
express and yet hide his ineffectual remorse. Well
might he grieve to compare himself with the victors
of the arena, the Captains of the Host, who sealed
with their lives the testimony by which he had been
convinced. " Grant me Thy pardon, and because
of my fear, suffer me yet awhile to sweat in this
labour of dust. To Thee, preparing long and not
trusting yet, my labour tends, and the praise of
Achilles is the prelude to Thine." It may be and
is a strange effect of chance, but it is none the less
fact, that these words are far more appropriate to
the secondary sense put upon them by Dante, than
to the primary and sole sense for which they were
really written. Domitian, if he read them, must
have read with a sneer. The Thebais opens with
similar excuses : the exploits of Domitian are a
theme for which Statius is not yet fit ; let him
practise first upon Thebes, and then he will venture.
Twelve books of practice, published successively in
about as many years, had followed this declaration ;
and now " he dares not yet," but starts instead, by
way of further preparation, upon an unlimited story
of Achilles. The insincerity is so transparent, the
uneasy emphasis so plainly false, that silence, one
would think, might have better pleased. But the
Christian interpretation makes all simple. Between
the times of the two compositions, suppose the poet
converted to the Christian faith ; and then his second
plea, as addressed to the neglected Majesty of his
" To Follow the Fisker^nan" 173
secret homage, becomes a real thing, new, natural,
and expressive.
In brief then the matter stands thus. If Dante
had been in the situation which in Purgatorio he
attributes to Statius ; if Dante had been livino- in
Rome about the year 90 a.d., a poet baptized but
unprofessed, a proselyte of the martyrs, but a prose-
lyte silent and ashamed ; if he had designed to
relieve his oppressed feelings by uttering them in
the form of symbol and enigma, a form which he
loved for its own sake, as a species of art, and uses
constantly in his own work ; then he would naturally
have written in just such words as Statius actually
employs. Therefore he did not hesitate to infer
the situation from the words. This argument was
indeed fallacious ; because the notion of one Catholic
way of thinking and one Catholic language, the same
in all ages and for all persons, in the first century
and the thirteenth, is not sound ; because there is
such a thing as evolution. The precise coincidence
and conformity upon which Dante founded his con-
clusion, really disproved it. Statius, if he had had
Dante's thought, would doubtless have expressed it
otherwise. But if Dante had been capable of seeing
such an objection as this, he would not have made
the Divina Commedia. According to such laws of
interpretation and proof as he had learnt, the
authority upon which he went was perfect ; and
there is no reason to think that he has broken his
general rule by putting forth as history what he did
not believe to be demonstrable.
1 74 " To Follow the Fisherman "
When he makes Statius say that, even after his
conversion and baptism,
^^ per paura chiuso Cristian fu' mi,
Lungamente mostrando paganesmo:^"
'through fear I concealed my Christianity and
tediously pretended paganism," he is translating the
trepidum ("in my fear") and the olim dolet ('Mong
have I grieved ") of the Achilleis. The trepidmn
indeed he has translated twice ; for the sound of
it, or perhaps an alternative reading tepidum, has
suggested the next words,
" E questa tiepidezza il quarto cerchio
Cerchiar mi fe' pii ch'al quarto centesmo."
This lukewarmness cost the sinner more than four
centuries of purgation.
Two facts Dante alleges, for which if he had
express authority, we have still to find it : that
Statius was disposed to Christianity by the prophetic
hints which he found in the Bucolics of Virgil ; and
that he was baptized. Both facts, the Christianity
itself being once established, might fairly be pre-
sumed. To Dante, himself accustomed to regard
the Fourth Eclogue as a Messianic prediction not
less clear and scarcely less sacred than those of
the Bible, it was impossible that, in the situation
supposed, the true sense could escape Statius ; and
it was inconceivable that the penitent of the Achilleis
I should neglect the rite necessary to salvation. But
^ Purg. XXII 90.
" To Follow the Fisherman'' 175
in each allegation there is a particularity of circum-
stance, an exactness of detail, which points to
something more than presumption. Dante will tell
us what words in the Fourth Eclogue Statins laid to
heart ; he knows when Statins was baptized, that is
to say, how much of the Thebais had been written
when the rite was performed.
" Before I brought the Argives in my poem to
the rivers of Thebes, I myself had received baptism^"
What does this mean .'* " Before I described the
expedition of the Seven," before the composition of
the Thebais as a whole ? Impossible. Dante has
just said and proved that Statins, when he began
the Thebais, was a pagan. " Before the poem was
finished " ? Impossible. The story, which Dante
knew minutely, is so far from ending with the
arrival of the expedition at Theban waters, that
there rather, after too many preliminaries, it may be
said to begin. The point, fixed by a reference quite
explicit and almost reproducing the words of Statins,
is the entrance of the invaders upon the territory of
the hostile city*. And the assertion is, that what
follows from this point, the latter half of the story,
which takes place at Thebes, was written after the
author's admission to the Church, but the preliminary
portion before it. Are we then to suppose that
Dante invented this ? Were he liberal of spurious
history as any Dumas, this statement, from its very
^ Purg, xxn 88.
'^ Boeotaque ventum flumina, Stat. Theb. vii 424 ; a' fiumi di
Tebe, Dante, Purg. xxn 88.
176 " Zb Follow the Fishei^man''
nature, he could not have made, except as a scholar
and upon documentary evidence.
Evidence for this, to him satisfactory, he must
have found, and probably also for the Christian
studies of Statius in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue ;
though it by no means follows that his researches
are now traceable by us.
Yet as to Virgil and his prophecy the evidence
is obvious, in that same preface to the Ackilleis, and
in the first lines of the poem. The poet's address
to his Emperor (that is, to Christ), is preceded by a
brief passage in which he declares his theme, appeals
for inspiration in the conventional form, as Dante
himself and his Christian brethren did, to Apollo,
and claims favour as the author of the Thebais.
"Tell, Muse," he begins, "of the great-hearted
Achilles, and of that Offspring whom the Thunderer
feared and would not suffer to iiiherit his native
heaven''
" Magnanimum Aeaciden, formidatamque Tonanti
Progeniem et patrio vetitam succedere caeloy
Diva, refer."
Now the Virgilian words which Dante makes
Statius quote for Christian are the famous
"ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo,...
lam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto'."
"Now comes the birthday of ages n&^N . . .2.xv6. from
high heaven a new Offspring is sent down'' These
^ Virg. Ed. IV 7 ; Dante, Purg. xxii 72, "e progenie discende
dal ciel nuova."
" To Follow the Fisherman''' 177
words, out of much else similarly interpreted, Dante
might no doubt have chosen for their celebrity, and
by conjecture only. But not so. Statius, he thought,
alludes to them. How should he think otherwise,
when he found Statius presently saying to Christ :
" To Thee my labour and preparation tends, and
the praise of Achilles is the prelude to Thine " ?
How should he not think that Statius saw an
analogy between the prelude and the sequel, saw in
Achilles a type of the Christ to be, and suggested
this connexion in such terms as a student of Virgil
naturally would ? We of the North do not habitually
think of Christ as the enemy, the terror, and the
dethroner of Jupiter, as the Prince whom the devil-
deities of the pagan Empire imprisoned and fain
would have kept in Hell, whom, even after He had
ascended to His Father's heaven, they excluded
long from His lawful prerogative. All this never
had much hold, even as a figure, upon our exotic
Romanism ; and now, when we meet reflexions of
it in our imitators of the Italians, it has a foreign
and not very congenial air. But to a mediaeval
Italian, loyal both to the Holy Empire and the
Holy See, this was reality, the chief reality ; was
history, and the very core of it. Nor is it now
natural to seek Christian parables in pagan legend,
or to celebrate the Saviour of mankind as a greater,
a victorious Achilles. The world has unlearnt that
language, and we Teutons the faster, as we had
some pains in learning it. Jupiter never reigned
here, and Achilles is not our compatriot. But to an
V. L. E. 12
178 " Zb Follow the Fisherman''
Italian Latinist of the thirteenth century this was
the native voice of religious imagination, the Catholic
speech as it had been spoken always, or should have
been spoken, since the new birthday of Time. How
then should Dante not suppose that the Christian
Statius, who joins in one project the themes of
Achilles and Christ, remembered Virgil's prophecy
of " the Offspring from heaven sent down," when
he wrote of " the Offspring whom Jove would not
suffer to inherit His Father's heaven"?
Much more difficult, and probably not now
answerable, is the question why the latter part of
the Thebais, the Theban part, is alleged to be
Christian work. The evidence should lie in the
Thebais itself, in some change of tone, some
allusions to Christian thought, language, rites or
symbols, appearing at or after the point of division.
But the field of search is wide, and the object
vague ; I have found nothing which seems worth
notice\ That Dante was more successful we need
not doubt, and meanwhile we can see what put him
on the track. In the prelude to the Achilleis Statius
says that this beginning of a new poem is not his
beginning in poetry : " this brow has worn the
wreath before, as witness the land of Thebes'' We
have seen how closely in the mind of Dante his
office as a Christian poet is connected with his
baptism, two gifts of the Spirit joined by the
common symbol of the laurel crown. With such
feelings he would find it only proper that a poet
p But see the next essay, written five years later.]
" To Follow the Fisherman " 1 79
speaking as a convert to Christianity, should date
his true beginning in poetry from his birth to
God. Now Statius here associates his previous
work with the land, or more exactly, with the terri-
tory of Thebes [Dircaeus agery. By this limitation
he doubtless means nothing particular ; he is no
precisian in words : " the territory of Thebes " is
"Thebes," and "Thebes" means generally the
Thebais. But Dante, one of the most precise writers
that ever was, if he had used such a limitation,
would probably have meant what he said, and would
have referred only to that part of the poem which
really is connected with Theban soil. Here was
enough, not indeed to prove that Statius was a
Christian " before he brought the Greeks to the
rivers of Thebes," but to prompt the search for
proof; and a search conducted with such good will
as Dante brought, was not likely to be disappointed.
Not that this or any part of the investigation
must have been made for the first time by Dante.
The contrary is to be supposed from the way in
which he uses the results, treating them, and the
process by which they were attained, as known and
accepted. He went over the ground for himself,
we see ; and so always, to the best of his power,
he did. But the lines must have been laid before,
probably by some one of the ardent Latinists who
were his friends or teachers. Like almost all con-
temporary work of this kind, the speculation, if ever
it was put into written form (which is by no means
^ Achil. 112.
12 — 2
i8o " Zb Follow the Fisherman''
presumable), has doubtless long ago irretrievably
disappeared. Dante took the proof for granted.
The earliest commentators on Dante were concerned,
naturally and reasonably, with other things, which
they supposed to be more perishable, and perhaps
more interesting. But this has an interest too.
i/^ t
r
DANTE ON THE BAPTISM
OF STATIUS
All readers of Dante will remember his strange
problem concerning the position in Purgatory as-
signed to the poet Statius, and the historical ex-
planation, elaborate and confident, by which that
position is justified and defended^ Statius, one of
the most successful and celebrated among the
followers of Virgil, lived and wrote in the second
half of the first century a.d., chiefly under the
Emperor Domitian. According to Dante, his soul,
for various oflences, had continued in Purgatory
from his death to the year 1 300, the date of Dante's
journey through the three worlds, and was at that
very time released, — the sole example of such an
event which the poet of the Purgatorio exhibits.
Now, to be qualified for Purgatory, it was of course
necessary that Statius should have been a Christian.
This he might possibly have been ; but of the fact
there is not the least record, nor any trace of a tradi-
tion to that effect. On the other hand, the work of
Statius, or at least his principal work, the Thebaid,
contains unquestionable evidence that the author was
^ Purgatorio xxi and xxn, especially xxn 55 foil.
1 82 Dante on the Baptism of Statius
not a Christian, and (most remarkable of all) this fact,
apparently fatal to Dante's assumption, is clearly and
emphatically indicated by Dante himself. It is an
inevitable and an interesting question, upon what
grounds Dante thought himself justified in over-
ruling this evidence, what answer he made, or
supposed himself able to make, to the initial ob-
jection which he has raised against his own
narrative.
This question has been discussed fully in the
immediately preceding essay \ It was there shown
that, as we might faitily expect, the evidence upon
which Dante relied as favourable to the Christianity
of Statius, was evidence of the same character, and,
if valid, of the same authenticity, as that which he
has himself adduced on the other side. It was
evidence from the work of Statius himself. The
argument, which is sufficiently indicated by Dante
in the Purgatorio, and fortified by references to the
relevant passages, turns upon the difference between
the poetical prefaces prefixed by Statius to his earlier
and complete poem, the Thebaid, and to the later
and incomplete Achilleid. Both these prefaces
comprise, according to the fashion of the day, a
complimentary address to the reigning Emperor,
Domitian. The custom of the time demanded that
the Roman Emperor, who claimed a divine character,
should be recognized in this character by those who
addressed him: he must be addressed as a "god."
In the preface to the Thebaid Statius complies with
^ To follow the Fisherman^ p. 153.
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 183
this requirement fully, and with apparent enthusiasm.
In the preface to the Achilleid there is not the least
reference to this aspect of the monarch, and the ad-
dress, though respectful, contains nothing which might
not be said by a Christian. Dante, or the authorities
whom he followed, assumed that this change of tone
and style was not (as it probably is) accidental, but
deliberate. If it were so, it would indeed go far to
show that the author, before he wrote the second
address, had adopted the Christian view upon this
vital question, the test-question, as will be remem-
bered, by which Christianity, under the pagan Em-
pire, was commonly proved. The assumption of
deliberate change, and the argument from it, though
not justified by sound criticism, is by no means
absurd ; and it is not strange that Dante, for whose
poetical purpose in the Purgatorio a Christian Statius
was extremely and uniquely suitable, should have
found the theory convincing.
For the details of the supposed proof, which are
curiously illustrative of the scholarship and methods
of thinking prevalent in Dante's time, and can be
pursued far by the indications of his text, the reader
is referred to the preceding essay. Our present
purpose is to elucidate a point which was then left
in some doubt, — upon what grounds Dante held
himself warranted in his strangely precise statement
respecting the baptism of the supposed convert.
For this purpose we shall assume from the previous
discussion only the main results, that the Christianity
of Statius, according to Dante, is demonstrable and
184 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
demonstrated by reference, chapter and verse, to the
works of Statius himself, and in particular to the
prefaces of his earlier poem, the Tkebaid, and of
his later, the Achilleid\ the first of which prefaces
is, as Dante admits, the composition of a pagan,
but the second, as he implies, is the composition
of a Christian.
The subject of the Tkebaid — this also it will be
convenient to recall — is the invasion of Thebes by
a body of confederates, chiefly Argives, who support
the claims of Polynices against the alleged usurpation
of his brother Eteocles. The contest is the theme of
the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus, and, chiefly
through Statius, became the subject of frequent
allusions in modern literatures, as in our own from
Chaucer downwards. With these preliminaries, we
may come to our special point.
Having established, to his own satisfaction, that
Statius was a Christian when he wrote the com-
mencement of the Achilleid, Dante might well
assume, without further proof, that, before that time,
the convert had actually joined the Church, and had
privately received the initiatory rite, which could not
without deadly peril be deferred. He might even
perhaps assume, though the evidence did not go
quite so far, that the conversion and the baptism
were accomplished at some time during the twelve
years which, as Statius himself tells us, were occu-
pied by the composition of the Thebaid. And if
Dante were content so to limit his statement about
the performance of the rite, if he merely said that
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 185
Statius received baptism during the composition of
the Tkebaid, there would be, on this head, no par-
ticular observation to make.
But as a matter of fact, Dante goes far beyond
this. He has the audacity — that is the word which
naturally presents itself — to date the event, the bap-
tism, by a particular passage, a definite point in the
Tkebaid, which no one, familiar with the poem, could
fail to recognize. " I had received baptism," so he
makes Statius say, " before, as a poet, I had brought
the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes."
It is not surprising that the expositors of Dante
have tried to relieve their author of responsibility for
this startling precision, and to persuade themselves
and others, that by " the bringing of the Greeks to
the rivers of Thebes " Dante describes the whole
story of the Tkebaid, and means no more than that,
at some time during the relation of this story, the
baptism took place. But this interpretation, how-
ever well meant, could not for a moment impose on
any one familiar with the Tkebaid. The arrival of
the Greeks (that is to say, of the Argive invaders)
at the rivers of Thebes is not a conceivable phrase
with which to mark the close of the Tkebaid or to
sum up the story. To one who knew the poem at
all — and Dante knew it well — such a description
could not possibly occur. The arrival is a con-
spicuous and cardinal point in the middle of the
poem, dividing it into two nearly equal parts, which
differ broadly in contents and theme. The pre-
ceding portion contains the preliminaries to the war
1 86 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
(together with much else of doubtful relevance); the
sequel, more continuous and coherent, relates the war
itself and the fates of the Argive leaders, concluding
of course with the internecine duel of the rival
brothers. With as much, or as little, propriety
might Milton be made to describe the whole story
of Paradise Lost as " the bringing of Satan through
Chaos," or Scott to mark the end of Guy Manner ing
by the phrase "before I had brought my hero to
the landing-place at Ellangowan." " Before Sophia
Western reached London," — " before I had got Mr
Pickwick into prison," — "before Jeanie Deans ar-
rived at Richmond," — "before Queen Guinevere
fled from the court to Almesbury" : these phrases
mark conspicuous points within the respective stories,
and could not possibly be otherwise meant or under-
stood. The last example illustrates the phrase of
Dante in this significant detail, that it marks the
intended point by reference to the very words of
the narrator —
"Queen Guinevere had fled the court..."
So also Dante ; for in his words " to the rivers of
Thebes," '' 2l fiumi di Tebe," the noticeable plural
is a literal, rather too literal, reproduction of Statius,
who writes, at the place indicated^ —
" lam ripas, Asope, tuas Boeotaque ventum
flumina.''^
And further, the necessity of a definite reference,
the impossibility of a loose and vague interpretation,
^ Statius, Thebaid, vii 424.
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 187
is much stronger in the phrase of Dante than in any
of the various parallels above suggested. For the
arrival at the rivers, so far from being the close and
sum of Statins' story, is much rather the beginning
of it, the point at which, after long, too long, post-
ponement, he takes up at last the narrative of the
war, the subject announced in the opening. This
defect of construction, the extension of the prelimi-
naries by episodes more or less irrelevant, until they
actually cover one-half of the entire composition, is
a conspicuous feature of the Tkebaid; and the phrase
of Dante "before I had brought the Greeks to the
rivers of Thebes " recalls, and must be intended to
recall, not only the point fixed, but the tardiness, the
excessive tardiness, of the narrator in reaching that
point. We may illustrate this also by an appropriate
parallel. In R. L. Stevenson's story of Tke Wrecker,
the subject proper, the dealings of the hero with a
wreck, emerges late, and is deferred, like the Theban
portion of the Thebaid, by episodes for which Steven-
son, like Statins, might perhaps have made a defence,
but for which he, like Statins, admits that a defence
might be required : they contributed, he tells us, with
humorous self-criticism, to build up " the story of the
Wrecker — a gentleman whose appearance may be
presently expected." Similarly Statins, after de-
voting two large books and more, in his "Story of
Thebes," to the foundation and performance of the
Nemean Games, informs us at the beginning of
Book VII, that the delay of the Argive army in
commencing operations has provoked the impatience
1 88 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
of Jupiter. It has certainly tried, if not exhausted,
the patience of the reader, a reflexion so obvious that
it cannot have escaped the author. He had probably-
received hints to proceed without further delay —
possibly from the Imperial critic, Domitian himself;
for when a writer of that age speaks of "Jupiter," it
is always legitimate to consider whether it is not the
earthly "Jupiter" whom he has in his eye, — but at
all events from some quarter ; and he excuses him-
self, like Stevenson, by a side-stroke of self-criticism.
When therefore Statius is made to speak of the time
"before I brought the Greeks, in my poem, to the
rivers of Thebes," it is inevitable for us, if we know
the poem, to subjoin the tacit remark, " where, as
you very well know, you would have done better to
bring them sooner." We shall see presently that
this aspect of the matter is material, and indeed
vital, to the meaning of Dante. For the moment
we will merely note that it enforces, with special
stringency, the true and only possible interpretation
of the phrase, as a reference, not to the Thebaid
generally, but to the particular passage, the arrival
at the Asopus, which Dante signifies and actually
cites.
The question then arises, Upon what evidence
does Dante build ? Manifestly it must be evidence
in the Thebaid. Here perhaps most plainly we see
what, for any one familiar with the poems of Statius,
is plain enough throughout the whole account which
Dante gives of him. Whatever hint for it Dante
may have found in tradition — we know nothing of
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 189
any such hint, but it is of course possible, — the sub-
stance of the account is not based on tradition, but
on the supposed evidence of the documents, the
poems of Statins themselves. The repeated and
specific references to the words of Statius prove
this ; and most of all, perhaps, this particular refer-
ence. The statement of Dante here is such as could
not, from its nature, be made otherwise than upon
the evidence, real or supposed, of the Thebaid.
Nor would any evidence be sufficient, which did
not at all events include an inference from the par-
ticular passage to which Dante directs us. It would
not be enough, even if it were true, that in the sub-
sequent half of the poem there were traces of Christian
knowledge or sentiment, such as do not appear in the
preceding half. I have actually tried this track, but
with no success; nor did I enter it with much hope,
because, after all, no such collective inference would
really satisfy the language of Dante. He states
precisely, that the baptism of Statius preceded the
composition of a certain passage, definitely marked
by reference to the wording of its first sentence.
Manifestly, if we consider, nothing could prove this,
except the assurance of Statius given in the passage
itself. Dante supposed, he must have supposed, that
in this place Statius alludes to his baptism ; that he
here uses language which, coming from a person
known to have been a Christian not very long after-
wards (that is to say, at the commencement of the
Achilleid), implies that he had received the initiatory
rite. And he must also have supposed that, to the
readers whom he contemplated, the grounds for this
190 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
supposition were either known or sufficiently indicated
by himself. Nothing short of this, it seems, could
account for his statement at all. It by no means
follows that the indications are sufficient for us. But
the thing must be there; and it is worth our while,
if only as matter of curiosity, to look for it.
And our first step should be, to examine minutely
the context of the statement in Dante, on the chance
that the exact sense of it, or some part of it, may
have escaped us. The agreement, says Statius,
between the Christian preachers and the prophetic
language of Virgil in the Fourth Eclogue, so far
impressed him that he began to visit them. The
rest, his conversion, was the work of their virtues :
"They then became so holy in my sight, that,
when Domitian persecuted them, their wailings were
not without tears of mine. And while by me yon
world was trod, I succoured them, and their righteous
lives made me despise all other sects; and ere in my
poem I had brought the Greeks to Thebes' rivers,
I received baptism ; but through fear I was a secret
Christian, long time pretending paganism."
"Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi,
che, quando Domizian li perseguette
senza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti.
" E mentre che di la per me si stette,
io li sovvenni, e lor dritti costumi
fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette;
" e pria ch' io conducessi i Greci a' fiumi
di Tebe poetando, ebb' io battesmo ;
ma per paura chiuso Cristian fu' mi,
"lungamente mostrando paganesmo."
Furg. XXII 82 — 91.
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 191
So the passage is presented in the faithful prose
of the Temple Classics. And here is a portion of it,
the piece with which we are specially concerned, in
the version, even more close, of Mr A. J, Butler :
"And whilst there was a station for me in that
world, I aided them, and their upright fashions made
me hold all other sects of small price. And before
I brought the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes in my
poem had I baptism, but through fear " etc.
Now both versions assume, and it appears to be
universally assumed, that in the words nientre che di
la per me si stette, that is, literally, while I stood (or
stayed) on the other side, the description di la, on the
other side, means "the other side of the earth," the
world of living men, as regarded from the Mount
of Purgatory, situated, according to Dante, at the
Antipodes ; so that " while I stayed on the other
side" means "while I lived" or "before my death."
The assumption is natural, for di la is not only so
used in the Purgatorio constantly, but occurs twice,
with that sense, in speeches of Statius.
Nevertheless there is more than one reason for
doubting whether that sense is admissible here.
The first reason is a point of language, a doubt
whether, in the Italian of Dante, per me si stette,
or per me with any impersonal verb, could be
applied, as the current interpretation here assumes,
to a fact or circumstance, in which the speaker of
the per me was purely passive, in which he exercised
neither will nor even permission. Such a fact — if
we disregard the irrelevant case of suicide — is the
192 Dante on the Baptism of Statius
standing or staying of a man in this life. He stays
while he is left, and goes when he is taken. How
then can it be said that the staying happens "by"
or rather "along of" him .-* In Latin, at all events,
such a use would seem to be impossible : per me
stabatur, per me statum est, must imply that the
speaker was at least permissive, not passive, in the
matter. In both the versions above cited will be
noticed a desire to modify the language in this
respect : in "while by me yon world was trod'' the
sense of stette is a little forced, and in " whilst there
was a station ybr me in that world" we might demur
to the rendering of per. This scruple can perhaps
be removed by illustrations from Dante or else-
where. Meanwhile it may count with graver and
more conclusive objections, which are founded upon
the whole context.
For let us suppose that mentre che di la per me
si stette may, so far as the words go, mean "while
I lived," "before I died." Statius is then made to
say this : " Before I died, I had conceived, from the
good morals of the Christians, a disesteem for all
opinions except theirs. And before my Thebaid
had reached [a certain place in Book vii], I had
joined the Christian Church." Is it possible that
the story should be told so preposterously and per-
versely, with such disregard of progress and order ?
If Statius actually sought baptism, in spite of his
fears, before he wrote the seventh book of the
Thebaid' s twelve, and at a time which, upon the
evidence of the Thebaid itself, must have been
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 193
years, six years and more, before his death, what
need is there to tell us, as a preliminary to this
information, that, all those years after his baptism,
he had come so far on the road to Christianity as
to conceive a distaste for paganism ? Can any other
passage be produced, in which Dante is guilty of such
an inversion ?
And further, the context not only excludes the
interpretation of "while I stayed on the other side"
by "while I lived," but imposes another interpreta-
tion — namely, "while I abstained from joining the
Church and receiving baptism." Let us illustrate
the matter by an example from familiar English.
The phrase "while he remained at the bar" is in
itself ambiguous. But it is not ambiguous in the
following: "While he remained at the bar, he had
become weary of the excessive labour, and before
1908 he accepted a place on the Bench." Nor again
in the following : " While he remained at the bar,
his head had begun to feel very uncomfortable, and
before ten o'clock he left the hotel and went to bed."
In each case the commencement is interpreted by
the conclusion. Exactly similar is the relation of
the clauses in Dante : "While I stayed on the other
side, I had come to dislike paganism ; and before [a
given date] I was baptised and entered the Christian
Churchy The last words relate to the words before,
and require them to mean " before I entered the
Church."
The question then arises, by what thought or
metaphor Dante is led to describe the delay or
V. L. E. 13
194 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
hesitation of the convert, his abstention from the
decisive step of receiving initiation, as a staying
" on the other side." On the other side of what ?
The context again furnishes the answer, about which
indeed we could hardly doubt, even if we were left
to conjecture. The comparison of baptism to a river
is, for obvious reasons, so well established and
familiar, that in this connexion it would be almost
sufficiently signified by "on the other side" itself.
But Dante explicitly gives us the "river" —
" e pria ch' io conducessi i Greci a' fiumi
di Tebe poetando, ebb' io battesmo : "
" And before, as a poet, I brought the Greeks to the
rivers of Thebes, I had myself received baptism."
The emphasis on of Thebes, given by the position
of the words in the verse, and on myself given by
the inversion " ebb' io," imply an antithesis or com-
parison between Statius and the Greeks of the poem,
between the " rivers " to which they came and that
to which he came, the river, according to the familiar
figure, of baptism. This river he long hesitated to
pass ; he " halted on the other side," as a man who
was no hero might, when to be baptised was to be
in danger of death, — though, as he tells us, the delay
cost him centuries of expiation upon the purgatorial
mountain. But before he brought his Argives to the
Asopus, he himself had made his passage.
Now if this be the true meaning of Dante's words,
plainly then it is, or should be, no hard matter to
discover, in the place to which he refers us, the
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 195
grounds of his inference, or, at all events, the in-
terpretation which he adopted. He has told us
implicitly what we are to look for, precisely as he
implies, in the same canto, where we are to go for
the proof that Statins did in fact hold the opinions
of a Christian. We are to find, he says, in the
immediate context of the words Boeotaque ventuni
flumina, "they arrived at the Boeotian rivers,'' an
illustration of Statins' own position in reference to
Christianity, so exact that we must suppose it in-
tentional, and such as to imply that, before composing
it, he had taken the decisive step and had undergone
the initiatory rite.
Let us then read on from the words marked :
"Now see them come to the banks of Asopus, to
the rivers of Boeotia." There was a halt there.
The unfriendly stream, we are told, then chanced
to be swollen by a formidable flood, and the Argive
horsemen hesitated to pass.
" Then the daring Hippomedon forced down the
bank his shrinking steed, a great piece of earth roll-
ing beneath them, and dashing on to the mid water,
called, as he hung between bridle and shield, to those
behind : ' Gallants, come on ! As here I show you
the way, so will I at the wall, and will break you a
passage through the rampart of Thebes.' Then
plunged they all into the river, ashamed to be not the
first. So, when a herdsman would drive his herd
through a stream they do not know, the beasts
dismayed tvill hesitate. How far the other side,
how broad is the terror between ! So doubt they
13—2
196 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
all. But when a leading bull goes in, when he
has made a ford, then gentler seems the flood, the
leaps not difficult, and the banks less distant than
before!'
" The beasts dismayed will hesitate " : stat triste
pecus. Dante, in his "per me si stette^' is transcrib-
ing the actual word of the Latin poet, and marks,
beyond mistake, the analogy which he read in the
whole incident, and especially in the concluding
simile. Nor would this reading be unreasonable,
if we could believe, as Dante believed and implies
in the same canto, that the Christianity of Statins,
and the fact that he was shamed into Christianity
by admiration of the martyrs, is demonstrable from
the exordium of the Achilleid. On this supposition,
the suspicion of an autobiographical reference in the
passing of the Asopus would be legitimate, from the
aptness of the parallel, even if there were no external
indication that the Argive soldiery here stand, by
allegory, for the soldiery of Christ.
But such an indication there is ; or at least Dante,
with his general views, would be likely to think so.
The arrival at the Asopus is preceded by a hasty and
violent march upon Boeotia — the poet being appa-
rently determined to show that he has done with
digressing, and means to quicken the pace. The
movement excites a desperate protest from the
oracles of the gods, which are against the Argive
enterprise, — although, let us observe, it is promoted
and stimulated by Jove. The oracles then protest,
not articulately, but by desperate disorder; and the
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 197
chief of them all, the oracle of Delphi, protests by
silence, by ceasing to speak —
"tunc et Apollineae tacuere oracula Cirrhae."
But the failure of the oracles, and in particular the
silence of Delphi, was universally held to have been
among the signs by which decadent paganism pro-
tested, and protested in vain, against the victory of
Christ and of Christianity. Milton has made the
thought familiar to Englishmen in his Hymn on the
Nativity — "The oracles are dumb;... Apollo from his
shrine can now no more divine."
With these ideas, it is at least not unnatural to
see a symbol of the Christian army in an army which
is thwarted by the silence of Delphi, and urged to
advance by that "Jove" whose name Dante actually
uses as a synonym for the crucified God.
It should however be observed, that Dante draws
a distinction between his reading of this place in the
Thebaid and his preceding inferences from the Achil-
leid, from the definitely Christian language (as Dante
held it to be) which Statins there uses, and from his
supposed reference to the Messianic prophecy of
Virgil. The passage of Dante now before us, the
passage which cites for authority the fording of the
Asopus, is introduced by these words : " That thou
mayst better see that which I outline," says Statins to
Virgil, '' I will stretch my hand to put i?i the colours'' —
"a colorar distender6 la mano."
It is but fair to suppose that this distinction is signi-
ficant. Dante means that his interpretation of the
198 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
Thebaid is an imaginative interpretation, which might
be ventured without indiscretion, upon the assump-
tion that the "outline" of the history, the main fact
of Statins' Christianity, is, as he held it to be, estab-
lished.
So far then for the general meaning and main
purpose of the connexion which Dante makes, be-
tween the fording of the Asopus and the baptism of
the poet who describes it. But we have by no means
yet exhausted the significance, for Dante, of the words
" mentre che di la per me si stette," while I stayed
on the other side. We have already observed that
the arrival at the Theban river is, merely from a
literary point of view and in its relation to the story,
the end of a long, a too long, halting on the part of
Statius. Whatever may have been the history of his
opinions and his conduct as a man, it is certain and
obvious that, as composer of the Thebaid, he comes
too late to the Theban river, and stays too long on
the wrong side of it. No one, as we said, who is
familiar with the Thebaid, could read the words of
Dante, without perceiving this personal application
to the Latin poet's " conduct" of his story.
And since this is so, since the " staying " of
Statius is represented by Dante as doubly charac-
teristic, both of the composer and of the man, and
since Dante is at the pains to mark this trait by
the very word of Statius himself, one can hardly
escape the suspicion that Dante supposed a special
and personal connexion between Statius and this
particular word — stat.
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 199
It is certain that Dante did suppose such a con-
nexion. He held, and clearly implies, that the name
of the Latin poet, or rather the name by which he
was commonly known, was not a proper name but
a nickname, significant, and derived from stare in
the sense of "standing" or "staying." He implies
this necessarily, when he makes the Latin poet say
of himself: ''Statins I am still called by the folk on
the other side [of the world] " —
" Stazio la gente ancor di Ik mi noma."
It is surely unnatural, not to say impossible, that
a man should so speak of his proper and only
name. With no propriety, with no sense, could the
spirit of Shakespeare be made to say: " Shakespeaj'-e
I am still called." Why should the name have
been changed, and what other name could have
been substituted ? Such a way of speaking implies
that the name in question might, or even should,
have been dropped : that there is another, and this
other more strictly appropriate. Just so the author
of Middlemarch might properly and significantly
say : " By the living world I am still called George
Eliot,'' meaning that her literary reputation persists,
and that, in this connexion, her literary name is still
preferred to designations personally more proper.
And the same thing is implied when Statius
speaks of a "more honourable" and "more durable"
name which, by a certain date, he bore. At the
time of the destruction of Jerusalem, in a.d. 70, he
was, he says, "with the name which more lasts and
200 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
more honours, famous enough." The name, say the
expositors of Dante, is that of "poet"; and this is
so far true, that it must be a note or mark of the
poet as such. But whether the mere word poet could
properly be so indicated, one may well doubt ; and
when we compare the subsequent and more explicit
reference to the name "Statius," we must conclude
that this, and not merely "poet," is the name by
which he was " famous enough." This last expres-
sion, famoso assai, is noticeable, since it suggests at
once, by its colour, that the name in question was
not an unqualified compliment, but was at least
susceptible of an interpretation not laudatory. And
this accords well with the obvious fact that Dante,
though he admired Statius, did not over-rate him :
"Without the Aeneid',' he makes Statius say, " I
should not have weighed a drachm." This is a
strong, perhaps too strong, acknowledgement of the
later poet's imitative dependence ; and we might
presume therefore, and we have seen, that Dante
was not blind to what else may be alleged against
him, and in particular to his longueurs, the marked
tendency of the Tkebaid, especially in the earlier
part, to be "halting" and dilatory. He connected
this quality, we have seen, with the word stare, and
would naturally connect with it the name Statius,
on the assumption that this was a literary nick-
name.
But what in the world, it may be asked, should
lead Dante, or those whom he followed, to suppose
that Statius was in fact such a name, — that it was
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 201
not the poet's proper name ? Let us not however
be impatient. Like every other part of the theory
respecting Statins and his history, which the scholars
of the thirteenth century seem to have extracted
from their data, this conjecture about his name,
though not true, was by no means without plausible
grounds. It is even true, in a certain way, that
" Statins " was not the name of the poet, not in that
sense which might most readily be supposed. If
the present reader were only a little less learned
than he doubtless is, one might easily prove this
point. The name Statins has the form and appear-
ance of a Roman family- name, a name like Vergilizcs,
Horatius, Propertius, Tei^entius, Livius. We our-
selves at this day, if we did not know the contrary,
should certainly assume that Statins was such a name,
the poet's family-name. It is even not unlikely that
some persons who hear it do so suppose. Yet in
fact, we know, this is not the case. The poet's
family-name was Papinitis ; and his full name, P.
Papinitis Statiiis, has the unusual appearance of
containing two family-names, and no personal name,
or cognomen, at all. As a matter of fact, Statius
was, it seems, one of the very few names of this
form (names in -ius), which were used, even from
early times of Roman history, in place of a cognomen.
But of this the scholars of the thirteenth century,
without disgrace, might not be aware. It was not,
then, by any means an absurd conjecture, that the
name Statitis was a fiction, an artist-name or poet-
name of the sort familiar to Italians, which in
202 Dante on the Baptism of Statins
common currency had replaced the proper name
Papinius.
As for the significance of the name, if it were
fictitious and therefore significant, about this there
could be no doubt. The author of the Thebaid
himself, in his brief epilogue, dwells upon the enor-
mous time over which the production had extended
— twelve books in twelve years — the consequence
of his slow and scrupulous habit of work. He
himself there betrays some doubt whether this
laborious and dilatory method had been altogether
favourable to his art. When we take with this
the fact that the story so told is marked, more
deeply perhaps than any composition of equal fame,
with the fault of suspensory interludes and deferred
progression, it is obvious to suppose that the name
Statins, if it were bestowed upon him for his literary
quality, referred to his stationes or halts. It marked
the impatience with which the eager and admiring
audiences of Papinius attended upon the too leisurely
progress of their favourite epic. The eagerness of
the Roman audiences is noticed by Dante, who cites
for it, by a verbal allusion \ the solitary passage
where Statius is mentioned by Juvenal, — the only
sound material for the life of Statius, except the
Thebaid and Achilleid, which the thirteenth century
would appear to have possessed. Even the impati-
ence might not unfairly be inferred from the same
passage, since we are told by Juvenal that Roman
^ Purg. XXI 88, dolce . . .vocale spirto, compared with Juvenal
vii 82 vocem iucundam.
Dante on the Baptism of Statins 203
society "ran" to the delights of the Thebaid, "when
Statins had promised a day." With all this, if it
were once assumed that the name of Statins or
"Stayer" was a literary nickname, bestowed upon
the poet in the quizzical familiarity of fondness, no
one could doubt what it meant ; and this obvious
interpretation is what Dante has in view when he
contrasts the time, during which Statins stood,
stayed, or halted, with the moment when, at last,
he brought his Greeks to the river of Thebes. If
the name of Stayer, and the disposition to be hesi-
tating and dilatory, were also appropriate, as Dante
implies, to the moral character of a man who, after
he had become in opinions a Christian, abstained
long, for want of courage, from the reception of
baptism, and who deferred the actual confession
of his new religion until death made confession
impossible, — then all the more justifiable and the
more interesting was it to insist upon the history
of the name, and to make it, as Dante does in fact
make it, the main pivot of the poet's autobio-
graphy.
/
THE BIRTH OF VIRGIL
(Dante, Inferno i 70)
Nacqui sub Julio, an cor che fosse tardi,
e vissi a Roma sotto '1 buono Augusto,
al tempo degli Dei falsi e bugiardi.
" I WAS born tinder Julitis, though it was late ;
and lived at Rome under the good Augustus, at
the time of the false and lying gods." — With these
words the shade of the great Mantuan poet, the
founder of the Roman Imperial literature, introduces
himself to Dante at the outset of his journey through
Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, as the guide destined
to accompany and direct him through so much of
his journey as was terrestrial, and lay within or upon
this earth. For the first two stages, for the passage
through the Underworld, and for the ascent of the
Mount of Purgatory at the Antipodes, Virgil, as
he announces, will be a sufficient and authorised
director; but for Heaven another and worthier guide
will be provided ; " for that Emperor, who reigns
above, because I was rebellious to His law, wills
not that entrance into His city should be made by
means of me."
The Birth of Virgil 205
The symbolic purpose of this distinction between
the present and the promised guide, is transparent
and universally recognised ; and equally transparent
is the propriety, from Dante's point of view, of the
function assigned to Virgil. Truth is attained partly
by human intelligence, but the highest truth only
by divine grace and revelation. Virgil, the inheritor
and consummator of the intellectual efforts which
preceded the Christian revelation — Virgil, who gave
a final form and a new beginning to that language
and poetry of the Roman Empire which was for
Dante the eternal language and poetry of the
world — Virgil, who forefelt, indeed, and foreshowed
(as Dante believed) the coming of Christ, yet was
himself the first and most powerful preacher not of
Christ but of Anti-Christ, the first to salute effectively
that new deity of the Roman Caesar which, embodied
in the successors of Julius and Augustus, fought
successfully for three centuries against the accession
of the Messiah to His rightful sovereignty upon
earth — Virgil, both by his achievements and his
limits, represented exactly, for Dante, the culmi-
nation and the defects of Man not yet enlightened
by the self-revelation of God.
The brief biographical particulars by which
Virgil is made to disclose his identity, have, in all
respects but one, that close and precise relevance
to the purpose, which is perhaps the most remark-
able feature of Dante's style and way of thinking.
We are told, first, that he was an Italian, a full-
born native of the Imperial state; secondly, that he
2o6 The Birth of Virgil
celebrated the "coming of Aeneas," that is to say,
the foundation of Rome, and more particularly, the
foundation of Rome as a spiritual state, the seat
prepared for the Vicar of Christ. This significance
of Aeneas' enterprise, though not here stated by
Virgil, is expressly and fully set forth by Dante in
the following discourse between the two poets ; and
we are correctly referred for it to the Sixth Aeneid
in particular, the account of Aeneas' journey to the
Underworld, and the revelations there made to him,
" the causes of his victory and of the Papal Mantle\"
We are thus shown precisely in what respect the
Divina Conmiedia depends historically and poetically
upon the Aeneid, and why Virgil, and no other,
should hold in the later poem, in the Aeneid of a
better Rome, that large but limited place which he
actually does. Thirdly, we are told that the life of
Virgil coincided with "the time of the false and
lying gods," that is to say, with the establishment
under Augustus of the Imperial pretensions to deity.
And lastly^ Virgil informs us that he was himself a
rebel against the true and heavenly "Emperor";
that is to say, he recognized, acclaimed, and promoted
those false pretensions of deified men, by which the
spiritual Governor of the World, the veritable God-
Man, and his appointed representatives, the Pontiffs,
were unlawfully debarred from their terrestrial throne.
All this is perfectly true and exactly appropriate ;
the biographical statement could not possibly be
* Inf. II 13 — 27.
The Birth of Virgil 207
improved, with regard to its intention, by any
omission or addition whatsoever.
But with these statements Dante, to the amaze-
ment of his expositors from earHest to latest, combines
one assertion which, taken in the prima facie sense,
is not only false, but would, if it were true, destroy
the very basis of all the rest. " I was born," says
Virgil, '' wnd&r Julitcs, although it was late," "Nacqui
sub Julio, ancor che fosse tardi." This is held, not
unnaturally, if we take the sentence alone, to mean
that Virgil was born when Julius Caesar was monarch
(48-44 B.C.), but very near the end of his life and
reign, that is to say, in or not earlier than the year
45 B.C.
Now in the first place, this date is enormously
wrong, too late by twenty-five years or something
near a generation, the true date being 70 b.c. And
further, if the alleged date were right, the rest of
the biography, though it might be in some sort true,
manifestly could not bear the significance which
Dante here and elsewhere assigns to it. On both
grounds, error and incongruity, the statement would
be surprising if found in Dante anywhere, and is
especially surprising in this place.
On the mere question of error, the probability
or improbability that Dante should be wrong by
twenty-five years respecting one of the chief dates
in the first century before Christ, we need not dwell
at any length. Among his expositors, one of the
most positive in pronouncing the error, merely as
an error, impossible, is one of the nearest to the
2o8 The Birth of Virgil
poet's own time, and the best qualified, so far, to
estimate his general equipment. Nor is it easy to
refute Benvenuto upon this point. The age which
witnessed the establishment of the Roman Empire
was more interesting to Dante than any except (if
we should except) his own. He possessed, and
claims and proves himself to have deeply studied,
books which gave a general outline of that age,
sufficient to exclude utterly a statement so absurd
as that the birth of Virgil nearly coincided with the
death of Julius Caesar. Nor, so far as I am aware,
has any error of his, comparable in matter and
gravity, ever been cited by way of illustration. It
would require us, for instance, to suppose that
Dante had not got the faintest notion, even at
second-hand, of the contents and historical bearing
of Virgil's Fifth Eclogue. The supposition is perhaps
not disprovable by chapter and verse, but few readers
of Dante will venture to call it likely. And even if
we assume the possibility of the error, there would
still remain the incongruity, the irrelevance, and
worse than irrelevance, of the statement in this
particular place. The whole account of Virgil here
given comes briefly to this, that he was the originator,
the founder, of Roman Imperial literature, the leader
in the production of poetry framed and governed by
the conception of the Roman Empire as a sacred
world-state, — the first of the Augustans. This is
fact ; and all that Dante here says of Virgil, and
the whole propriety of the place assigned to Virgil
in the Divina Cofnmedia, depends upon the fact.
The Birth of Virgil 209
" Art thou then that Virgil, and thcit /ountain which
pours abroad so rich a stream of speech ? O glory
and light of other poets ! — " Such is the salutation
with which Dante, blushing with humility and delight,
receives the Great Leader's description of his career.
What is signified by these figures oi fountain and
light is plain enough here in their context, and is
made still plainer in the Fourth Canto. There
we see Virgil (and Dante with him) rejoining his
compeers, the group of Roman and Imperial poets
with whom, in the Limbo of the Underworld, is his
eternal abode. Homer is included in the group, to
represent the preparatory work of Greece ; Dante
himself is adopted into it, to represent heirs and
successors. The rest are the Augustan poets in
the large and political meaning of the word, the
Latin poets of the Empire — arranged, we may note,
correctly in order of date — Horace, Ovid, and Lucan.
Approaching these, Virgil is none the less saluted
as the highest Poet {Taltissimo poetay. He is the
chief, the leader, the prince of human language and
thought, as estimated by the standard of a Christian
Imperialist, by Dante, a true and loyal subject of
the Holy Roman Empire. All this is intelligible
and true, if we assume the true date of Virgil and
his work, its true relation in time to that cardinal
change of Roman ideas and of the Latin language
which bears the name of Augustus. It is not true,
unless we assume, as the fact is, that the decisive
operation of Virgil preceded the whole Imperialist
^ InJ. IV 80.
V. L. E. 14
2IO The Birth of Virgil
movement in literature, and set the pattern of it ;
that all the work of Ovid, and all the vitally
significant work of Horace, is subsequent to the
decisive entrance of Virgil ; that all the body of
Augustan poetry is later than the Bucolics and
Georgics, most of it later than the Aeneid\ that it is
all in various ways not only Augustan but Virgilian,
and could not have been what it is, if Virgil, first
and long before, had not sounded his new and
inaugurating note.
But how is this conceivable, if, as Dante is
understood to say, Virgil was but just born when
Julius Caesar fell, if Virgil was an infant at the time
when Augustus achieved power? If this was so,
then one of two things — either Virgil, as a poet,
instead of being the leader of the Augustan age,
must have been one of its latest products ; or else,
if the Augustan movement in thought and language
really began with Virgil, then all the Augustans
were junior by a generation to Augustus himself,
and some of them, Ovid for instance, would be
junior by two generations.
Such is the palpable absurdity, the plain con-
tradiction, of which Dante is guilty at the very
outset and foundation of his systematic poem, if,
when he made Virgil say —
Nacqui sub Julio, ancor che fosse tardi,
he meant that the birth of Virgil preceded indeed,
but barely preceded, the death of the first Roman
Emperor. The offence would be aggravated, we
The Birth of Virgil 2 1 1
may remark, by the ostentation of exactness. We
are particularly asked to note, as if it were not only
true but specially important, that though the birth
of the poet did precede the death of the sovereign,
it was not by much — and this although what follows
cannot be properly appreciated, unless we know and
realise that Virgil, as an adult and accomplished
poet, was the first who proclaimed effectively to the
world the deity of the deceased Julius, and asserted
the devolution of that sacred character to the in-
heritor of his name and power.
To call this hypothesis impossible would be
perhaps too much. In the way of human error,
nothing perhaps is strictly impossible. But more
improbable no hypothesis could be, and as a basis
of interpretation it is inadmissible. Any supposition
must be preferable, or in default of any, none — the
abandonment of the verse as hopelessly obscure.
And to try first the positive and more comfortable
way, we should consider exhaustively, what are the
conditions to be satisfied by an interpretation really
acceptable.
Three things such an interpretation must do,
none of which the primary interpretation does.
First, it must show some significant and interesting
connexion between the birth of Virgil and the
person of the first Emperor in his character as a
pretended god. For this, and this only, is the
aspect in which Julius is here introduced : he was
one, and the first, of the "false and lying gods."
We have hitherto assumed, without remark, that
14 — 2
212 The Birth of Virgil
this description signifies the Roman Emperors, and
especially the two who are mentioned, the founders
of the cult, Julius and Augustus. But as com-
mentaries on Dante seem to be generally silent
about this, it should perhaps be further explained.
There is nothing, except the Roman Emperors, to
which the description, " false and lying gods," can
be here referred, if we duly regard the context and
the opinions of Dante. He could not so describe,
for instance, the gods of Roman mythology, Jupiter
and the other Olympians. Milton might have so
described Jupiter, and indeed does use very similar
language about him ; because Milton held the view
that the pagan gods were really devils, who deceived
their worshippers into accepting them for deities.
But Dante held the view, totally different and at
least equally defensible, that the figure of Jupiter
was an imperfect adumbration, a human and partly
erroneous conception, of the true Deity, God himself.
He actually speaks of Christ as the crucified Jove
{Giove crocifisso) ; and this way of looking at the
matter is not only well-founded in history, but
absolutely necessary to Roman Catholicism as appre-
hended by Dante. Moreover, even if Jupiter and
the rest had been, for Dante, "lying gods," it would
still be pointless to distinguish the time of Virgil
as the time of those gods — who were worshipped
for centuries after Virgil exactly as they had been
for ages before. The worship of the Augustus, on
the other hand, was the essential and characteristic
novelty of Virgil's time. To this therefore clearly
The Birth of Virgil 213
Dante here refers, borrowing his sarcasm upon
the Imperial pretensions from such authors as his
favourite Lucan, who, in his treatment of the subject,
fluctuates between pompous flattery and scathing con-
tempt. Lucan's "dead gods of Rome" (Romanorum
manes deor^m) signifies the same thing as Dante's
bugiardi Dei^ and puts it much more strongly.
Moral distinctions between different Emperors may
of course be admitted — and Dante does admit
them by making Virgil call his patron "the good
Augustus" — without prejudice to the condemnation
of all the Emperors, in respect of their claim to
deity, as liars. As a deity, then, a pretended deity,
Julius is here brought in ; and the first problem for
our interpretation is to find some real and interesting
connexion between Julius, in this character, and the
date of the birth of Virgil.
Further, a satisfactory explanation of the words
" I was born sub Julio " must show why " under
Julius" should be expressed not in Italian but in
Latin. Latin is little used by Dante in his Italian
poetry, and when it is, there is commonly an obvious
reason or necessity for the licence. A Latin psalm,
hymn, prayer must of course be indicated by its
proper words — Te Deum, Veni Creator, In exitu
Israel; and a poetical quotation, if sufBciently im-
portant, may be similarly distinguished — nianibus
date lilia plenis. But no literary offence is more
displeasing to a delicate taste than gratuitous poly-
glot, an alien idiom inserted arbitrarily or to save
the trouble of speaking correctly. If, then, Dante
214 1^^^ Birth of Virgil
means no more than that Virgil was born in the
reign of Julius, why does he not say it in the
vernacular ?
Lastly, and above all, we should require some
real justification for the strange and enigmatical
words ancor eke fosse tardi, " though it was late.''
" I was born sub Julio, though it was late," is no
proper way to express the sense hitherto assumed,
" I was born late in the time of Julius." So clumsy
and pointless a periphrasis is not fairly attributable
to the composer of the Divina Commedia.
Let us, then, start again without prejudice ; and
since the supposition of Dante's ignorance or care-
lessness has proved so unfruitful, let us start by
supposing on the contrary his complete knowledge
and profound study of the subject. For really this is,
in the present matter, the more natural supposition.
All the material which we have for the life of Virgil,
with insignificant exceptions, was extant in the time
of Dante, and might naturally be open to his inves-
tigation. What historical documents he had, he
studied, and so did his contemporaries, with a
passionate and scrupulous thoroughness which no
age has surpassed. Let us suppose, then, that he
knew and had considered all that there is to know
about the birth of Virgil ; that the learned readers,
whom he desired to satisfy \ knew it all too ; that
^ This should always be carefully borne in mind in considering
a problem in Dante. He assumes learning in his readers, all the
learning of his time, and makes no attempt to meet the popular
intelligence.
The Birth of Virgil 215
he assumes their knowledge, and might naturally
write whatever such readers could interpret. And
let us then ask, what is known or knowable about
the date of the birth of Virgil ?
Tradition places it in the year 684 of Rome
(70 B.C. by our era), in the month of October, and
on the Ides or 15th day of the month. From the
year (as has been only too completely ascertained)
we can deduce nothing which throws any light upon
Dante. The year had no special association what-
ever with the name or the fortunes of the first
Emperor. Let us, then, next try the month. At
first sight this looks equally unpromising : the
Emperor is not, and never was, associated with
the month of October. He has, indeed, a month
of his own — a month which, bearing his name, has
eternalised (so far as it is possible for man) the
memory of his unique and almost superhuman great-
ness. But it is the month oi July. And it is scarcely
too much to say that, if any event is to be associated
through its date with the name of Julius, it is
through the month of Quintilis, converted into
Julius in honour of his deity, that the link of
association must be sought.
In this embarrassment we go back to Dante;
and we may now observe, not without hope, that
he appends to his sub Julio the exception or
qualification, "although it was late." What was
late ? We have assumed hitherto that the subject
of this remark is the birth of Virgil. But Dante
does not say so ; he says that something was late,
2i6 The Birth of Virgil
and so far as the words go, may perfectly well
mean that it was the date, that is to say, the month,
and not the infant that was belated. And this, as a
matter of fact, it certainly was. In 70 B.C. all the
true months — the months of the natural year — were,
and long had been, in consequence of accumulating
error, behind the nominal calendar. The accumu-
lated error amounted to almost exactly three months,
and persisted, as all the world knows, until Julius
Caesar, in 46 B.C., rectified it by inserting ninety
days (three months) in a single year, and took
means to prevent the error in future ; whereby it
came to pass that his name, as that of a deity, was
given to the month in which he was born.
Consequently, a child whose birth was recorded,
in the year 684 of Rome, as occurring in the middle
of October, was really born in the seventh (not the
tenth) month of the true year, in the height of
summer, not in the autumn ; and if the birth had
been properly recorded, according to the true calendar
as afterwards established by the Emperor, would
have been described, and should now properly be
described, as born sub Julio, in the month and under
the auspices of Julius. But the true and proper
name of the month was then "late," "lagging,"
"behindhand," by a whole quarter: Quintilis, or
Julius, which should have been present, lay nominally
three months in arrear ; and Virgil therefore figures
in history, though falsely, as born in the middle of
October.
This, then, I venture to think, is what Dante
The Birth of Vwgil 217
means by his terse but correct observation. Deeply-
interested as he was in astronomical and calendric
studies, and in the history of the age which witnessed
the foundation of Imperial Rome, he might very
naturally have observed the error respecting the
season and true character of the time, which pre-
sumably lies in the statement that Virgil was born
on the Ides of October. Nor would he think it
pedantic or irrelevant, as perhaps we might, to
introduce a notice of this error, and of the fact as
corrected, into his poetical biography of the Augustan
poet. It is irrelevant only upon the assumption that
there cannot be any real significance in the true fact,
the birth of the first Imperial poet in that portion
of the year which was to bear the name of the first
Emperor. But Dante of course would not have
admitted this. As a sound astrologer, he would
have maintained, on the contrary, that the fact was,
or probably might be, a sign of destiny ; and more
than a sign, an actual element in the natural and
spiritual influences which contributed to mould the
nascent soul of the Imperial poet and prophet, and
to fit him for his appointed work of revealing and
worthily celebrating the evolution of the Roman
world-state, from the beginning by Aeneas to the
new beginning by Julius and Augustus, — the build-
ing of Imperial Rome, of a throne for the Vicar of
Christ.
It is true, as Dante sadly acknowledges, that
Virgil did not perceive (and perhaps, when we
consider how much was revealed to him in his
2i8 The Birth of Virgil
Fourth Eclogue, was guilty of rebellion in refusing
to perceive) that the throne of Rome, the spiritual
throne, was not really destined, and could not law-
fully be given, to the head of the political Empire.
In making Julius and Augustus into gods, in an-
nexing the spiritual headship to the political, the
poet did the very same wrong which was done
reversely by those of the Popes who strove to
annex the political supremacy to the spiritual — the
error and crime against which the whole Divina
Commedia is designed to protest. But it was none
the less true that Virgil, by the will and providence
of the Almighty, powerfully aided to build the
throne. For this reason chiefly he holds his place
in the story and symbolism of Dante ; and for this
reason Dante thought fit to introduce him with the
statement that he "was born sub Julio'' — Italian
could not give the point — '' sub Julio {though Julius
was belated), and lived at Rome under the good
Augustus, at the time of the false and lying gods."
/
)
THE ALTAR OF MERCY
When Gibbon, preparing the foundations of his
history \ distributed the views of religion which pre-
vailed in the Roman Empire before it was invaded
by Christianity, under the triple division of the
magistrates, the philosophers, and the people —
defined respectively as those to whom all religions
were equally useful, equally false, and equally true —
how did it not occur to him that his enumeration
was singularly defective ? He repeats his epigram
in various forms again and again, and bases his
whole account of the conditions with which the
invading doctrines had to deal, upon the assump-
tion that the action of the State, the speculations
of theorists, and the practices of the populace,
include between them all those aspects of religion
with which the historian is concerned. It is not
surprising that the outcome of this procedure is to
represent the evolution of the Graeco- Roman world
into its Christian shape as a sort of cataclysmic
puzzle. A rival epigrammatist might say, with at
least equal truth, that the historian's catalogue of
^ Chapter ii.
2 20 The Altar of Mercy
mankind omits just all the ** people " whose feelings
are most important. And similarly, in the neatly-
numbered list of causes by which the enigmatic
phenomenon is to be explained \ we note that the
preparations and approaches upon the pagan side
count apparently for little or nothing. It hardly
seems to be thought worth mentioning that, in
various ways, that vast and influential part of
society which is neither official, nor scientific, nor
superstitious, had been long in training, when the
new preachers came, to receive just such a gift
as they brought.
This exaggerated sharpness of division between
Christians and Pagans is characteristic of historical
study in the times which follow the rupture of the
Catholic world in the seventeenth century; and it
attained its height in the eighteenth. The tendency
is not confined to the sceptical side. Johnson, who
roundly asserts that Horace, when he says —
parcus deorum cultor et infrequens
insanientis dum sapientiae
consultus erro, nunc retrorsutn
vela dare atque iterate cursus
cogor relictos :
is merely playing with the idea of an awakened
conscience, was as little disposed as Gibbon, his
adversary in the Literary Club, to recognize that
between "religion" and "the classics" there could
be any material connexion or affinity. It is strange
to go back five centuries, to an age of comparative
^ Chapter xv.
The Altar of Mercy 221
ignorance, and to see how the students of the
thirteenth century, with their scanty apparatus and
defective method, could nevertheless read the records
of the transition to Christianity in a reasonable way,
simply because it had not occurred to them that the
cause of Catholicism could be either fortified or im-
peached by misrepresenting the manner of its growth,
or by arbitrarily severing it from some of its natural
and necessary antecedents. When Dante says that
the poet Statius, by his studies in Virgil, had been
led so far towards the coming revelation that he
promptly recognized its truth, and was actually
> initiated by baptism into the religion which he had
\ not the courage openly to profess, Dante asserts,
I no doubt, much more than is likely to be true, and
I his proofs (which in their general outline are not
I beyond the reach of a fair guess) would have been
rejected, and rightly, by a better critic of documents.
But he has the root of the matter. He sees what
to any simple and unprejudiced mind is obvious,
' that the Thebaid of Statius is a document of the
first importance to the history of European religion.
It does not, indeed, represent any of Gibbon's cate-
gories : it is neither political thought, nor philosophic,
nor popular. But it stands for something not less
significant, as a prognostic of development, than any
of these — the vague aspirations of classes disposed
to think, but not disposed, or indeed able, to think
with rigour. To represent such aspirations is neces-
sarily the chief business of poetry which asks to be
taken seriously and to achieve a permanent place.
222 The Altar of Mercy
In a picture of the society into which Christianity
came, to leave out the Thebaid, or not to put the
Thebaid well in the foreground, would be like
describing the England of the eighteenth century
without notice of the Essay on Man, or the England
of the nineteenth without In Memoriam.
Every age has its own way of error, and we,
no doubt, ours. But our way is not the Voltairian.
If we do not read our Aeneid exactly as Dante
read it, we are at least aware that, when Dante
described the visions of Virgil as a main contri-
bution to the establishment of Catholicism, when
he wrote that the journey of Aeneas to Hades was
"the occasion of the Papal mantle," he stated a fact,
and a fact of vital significance. How we read the
Thebaid, it were perhaps best not to inquire. One
cannot read everything ; and it would appear that,
in the whole repertory of important European lite-
rature, no part just now lies more in the shade than
the "minor" Latin epics. The Thebaid, indeed, does
not deserve that epithet in any sense worth notice.
But at present it goes with the rest ; and for this
reason a reminiscence, even of its main aspects, may
have freshness enough to hold attention for a few
minutes. If it should even convey the impression,
that to read the poem continuously from beginning
to end is a thing not impossible or unprofitable or
unpleasant, that is no more than may be very fairly
affirmed.
The immediate purpose of the poem — a purpose
which it completely achieved — was to satisfy the
The Altar of Mercy 223
taste of fashionable audiences at Rome during that
precise period, the latter part of our first century,
when the stir of the Christian movement began to
be felt there. It is in form a descriptive romance,
and doubtless depended upon its romantic qualities
for a first hearing. But the author aspired to more
than this, and believed, before his work was com-
plete, that he might modestly expect more. In
the brief epilogue, which records his ambition and
forecasts the future of his enterprise, he desires for
his poem a place upon the same line, at however
humble a distance, as the Aeneid itself. To rival
that "sacred" book the Thebaid will not pretend;
but it does pretend to be of the same kind, and
to have a post in the sacred procession. And in
partial confirmation of this claim, the author adds
that not only has his work obtained the notice of
Caesar, but — what he justly estimates as more
significant for his pretension — it has already made
its way, like the Aeneid itself, into the schools :
already, he says, it is an instrument of education.
No mere romancer, no mere story-teller, could have
ventured to use such language. We cannot con-
ceive the Lay of the Last Minstrel — a poem which
presents, as a romance, some actual resemblance in
type and method to the work of Statius — we cannot
conceive even the Idylls of the King, put forward
by Scott or by Tennyson as following, however
distantly and respectfully, in the wake and track
of Paradise Lost. They have not the " sacred "
character. This character Statius attributes of
224 "^^^ Altar of Mercy
course, as any one of that age would do, to the
Aeneid\ and for the Thebaid he claims that it is
in kind the same or similar ; the Thebaid also (to
translate his phrases into our language) is, he thinks,
or may be, in some sort a gospel.
It would have been strange if he had thought
otherwise. The Thebaid attempts not only to
latinize, but also to expand and deepen into larger
significance, a story which for several centuries had
held a chief place in the religious symbolism of that
Hellenic or Hellenistic world to which Statius by
birth belonged.
This story, which here we need not tell, descends
originally from a source not now open to investi-
gation, the " Theban cycle," — that portion of the
ancient poetry passing under the name of Homer,
which had Thebes for its centre of interest, as
another portion, the " Trojan cycle," revolved about
Troy. Whatever may have been the artistic merits
of the Theban cycle — we have no reason to suppose
them small — its moral interest seems to have been
great from the first, superior probably to that of
the Trojan. In that chapter of the epic narrative
which forms the substructure of the Thebaid, the
subject was the doom of unlawful war, the defeat
and condign punishment of a wicked confederacy,
resolved, in despite of warning, to prosecute an un-
holy quarrel. In the earliest version which we now
possess, the Seven Against Thebes of Aeschylus, the
ethical and humane sentiment is already powerful,
much more so than in the Iliad or even in the
The Altar of Mercy 225
Odyssey ; nor does it seem likely that this element
is entirely assignable to the Athenian dramatist.
But into these early developments we need not
enter, because in the fifth century B.C., and in the
latter part of it, later (that is to say) than Aeschylus,
a totally new colour was given to the story by the
establishment, if not the first invention, of a sequel,
devised in honour of Athens, and representing the
spirit of that new humanism of which Athens
became the accepted centre and guardian.
In the original version, the wicked and defeated
warriors incurred, as part of their natural punish-
ment, the refusal of funeral rites. The poets of the
cycle, like the poet of the Iliad, doubtless accepted
this as an incident horrible indeed, but proper to
war. But according to the new version, Athens, as
the champion of humanity, refused to permit such an
outrage, and enforced the common right of the race
by forcibly rescuing the corpses from the insolent
victors, and committing them solemnly to religious
sepulture. The adoption of this supplement (when-
ever first propounded) as an article of Athenian
religion can be dated with near precision. There
is no trace of it in the Seven Against Thebes,
which indeed would seem rather to exclude it.
But about fifty years later it appears complete in
the Suppliants of Euripides. In this play and
in the Children of Heracles, by the same author,
where Athens plays a somewhat similar part as the
vindicator of the oppressed and a respecter even
of the enemy, we see for the first time clearly the
V. L. E. 15
2 26 The Altar of Mercy
conception of Hellas, and of Athens in particular,
as the guardian and champion of humanity. Then
for the first time it became distinctly visible, at least
to an enthusiastic few, that the human world can
be imagined, and might possibly be realized in fact,
as something other than the sum of many hostile and
internecine clans, more or less efficiently organized
for mutual destruction.
Upon the importance of this idea or sentiment,
and the part which it played in the history of the
Mediterranean peoples up to and including the
formation of a Mediterranean state under the pro-
tection of the Caesars, we need not insist. The
Thebaid is entirely occupied with it. The whole
story, as conceived by the author, is a preparation
for the final interference of Athens, an ideal Athens,
which figures symbolically as the sacred city of
humanism and humanity.
And now let us see precisely in what terms the
essence of this Hellenistic religion is described, for
the edification of " Italian youth," by Statius, a son
;(be it remembered) not of Italy, but of the Hellenic
city of Naples.
To invoke the interference of a defender on
behalf of the dead, in whom humanity is outraged,
the widows of the slain repair to Athens. There,
and there only as yet (we are told), the conception
of Godhead had been partly dissociated from that
of mere superhuman power. There and there only
was to be found, among the temples consecrated to
force, one place reserved for compassion.
The Altar of Mercy 227
" In the midst of the city was an Altar, per-
taining not to Might nor the powers thereof, but
to gentle Mercy. Mercy there had fixed her seat,
and misery made it holy. Thither new suppliants
came ever without fail, and found acceptance all.
" There to ask is to be heard, and dark or light,
all hours give access unto One whose grace costs
nothing but a complaint.
" The ritual takes no tax, accepts no incense-
flame, no drench of blood, but only the dew of
tears upon the stone, and the shorn hair of the
mourner for a wreath above, and for drapery the
cast robe which sorrow puts away.
"With trees of kindness the ground is planted
about, and marked for pardon and peace with the
fillet-bounden bay and the olive's suppliant bough.
" Image there is not any: to no mould of metal
is trusted that Form Divine, who loves to dwell in
minds and in hearts.
" Nor lacketh there perpetual assembly. For
shaking fear and shivering poverty, these know that
Altar well, and only happiness knoweth it not.
"The legend is, that it was the children of
Hercules who founded the sanctuary, in the city
whose warriors protected them when their sire had
passed from the pyre to the sky.
" So the tale sayeth, but sayeth not worthily.
Rather we should believe that it was those Visitants
from Heaven whom Athens had ever made welcome
to her soil, the same who there, in Athens, created
law and the new man and the better way, they who
15—2
2 28 The Altar of Mercy
thither brought the seed which thence descended
upon the waste places of the earth — these (we will
say) did in Athens likewise set apart a place of
common refuge for souls that are sick, a sanctuary
closed against wrath and threatening and tyrant
strength, and which prosperity should not profane.
" Even in those old days that spot was known
to the wide world. Thither the conquered came,
and the exile, fallen power and wandering guilt.
There did they meet, and prayed their peace.
" The time was near, when the grace of that
hospice should vanquish even the fiends of an
Oedipus, should cover the corpse of Olynthus, and
take even from an Orestes the torture of his mother's
ghost\"
Prose does of course no justice to the fine melody
of the Latin ; nor is it possible for English words to
convey exactly the native flavour. But the sense of
this admirable passage (if we have caught it) will
sufficiently show why we should not be too impatient
with the scholars of the thirteenth century, or too
ready to insist on our superiority in historical and
philological science, when we find Dante searching
for proofs that the Roman who was expounding this
religion to the society of Rome, within a few years
after "the prisoner of Christ Jesus" was brought
in by the Appian Way, had actually been in touch
^ Statius, Thebais, xn 481. The legend of Olynthus (?) is
apparently unknown. It probably belonged to the same
Areopagitic circle as those of Oedipus and Orestes, and sym-
bolized the same doctrine of forgiveness.
The Altar of Mercy 229
with " the new preachers," and had welcomed their
message as the very word for which he was waiting.
Such an error is nothing beside that of enumerating
a laboured list of causes why the Christian doctrine
should have rapidly made its way in the Graeco-
Roman world, and omitting to specify, for one cause
and the chief, that this world, so far as it had com- /'
prehended and embraced the Hellenistic culture, was
more than half Christian already.
It was not on this passage in particular that
Dante rested his conviction that Statius was an
actual convert ; for he dates the baptism of the
poet by an earlier part of the Thebaid^, and before
Book XII was presumably written. But doubtless
this description, the cardinal point of the whole
poem, weighed with Dante, or with the authors
of his theory, as general evidence towards their
conclusion. And well it might. A Christian reader
need not be either ignorant or prejudiced, to feel
a shock of surprise or curiosity upon reading", in
a contemporary of St Paul, and in what is mani-
festly intended for a declaration against paganism
(as it was commonly held and understood), the
allusions of Statius to the " new man " and the
"seed descending upon the waste places of the
earth." From the whole tone and method of
Dante's comments upon the Latin poets, especially
upon Virgil and Statius, we must infer that he
would have cited these expressions as consciously
^ See the Essay on Dante and the Baptism of Statius,
above, p. i8i.
230 The Altar of Mercy
Christian, as betraying that secret acquaintance
with the Christian mysteries which he attributes
to the author of the Thebaid — outwardly a courtier
of Domitian, but inwardly an adherent of the
Apostles. It would, of course, be unpardonable,
with our present lights, to repeat this error and
5 exaggeration. The Athenian, or rather perhaps
Eleusinian, symbols to which Statius does really
allude, the legendary restoration of the human race
and the mystic sign of the corn-seed, were far older
than Christianity, and by no means identical with
the Christian signs or doctrines which they super-
ficially resemble ; though, on the other hand, a
historian who should deny all connexion between
the two systems, would be going beyond proof
and indeed beyond likelihood.
But upon dubious resemblances or solitary
phrases there is no need to insist. What is solid
and evident, what leaps to the eye, is the senti-
ment of the whole passage, the spirit, the general
conception of religion, from which it proceeds. For
this there is only one suitable word. It is exactly
I that sentiment to which Christianity appealed. To
console the miserable and the guilty, to heal the
wounds of the world and the sense of sin — these
are the offices of that Altar to which Statius
directs the worship of mankind. " I will have
mercy and not sacrifice " ; " Come unto Me, all
ye that labour and are heavy-laden " ; — for such
inscriptions, and for such only, the shrine of his
imagination is prepared.
The Altar of Mercy 231
Imaginary, visionary, an ideal rather than a fact,
we must evidently consider it, although it had an
historical counterpart and actual existence. There
were in Athens altars to more than one " Deity "
or spiritual abstraction, answering more or less to
the "Clementia" of Statius — an altar of " Eleos,"
an altar of "Aidos." They are catalogued, as
Athenian curiosities, by the antiquarian impar-
tiality of the traveller Pausanias, whose description
of Hellas dates from our second century; and we
hear of them otherwise. But it is not in the spirit
of a Pausanias that Statius commemorates them.
The Athens of his religion is a spiritual Athens,
the imperfect symbol of that Hellenism by which
he lived. The "Altar of Mercy" is not for him
an object in a museum, an item in a collection
of miscellaneous antiquities. He scarcely cares to
place it: it was "in the midst of the city." For
the venerable legend associated with it, the story
of Hercules and his children, he has nothing but
scorn. The Altar of his thought was not founded
by the children of Hercules, nor in fact by any
earthly hand. Like other such emblems of aspi-
ration, it was " never built at all, and therefore
built for ever."
And in the thought of the poet it stands alone.
We cannot miss, nor misunderstand, the sweeping
depreciation by which, in comparison with this
Deity of the soul, and with the uncostly sacrifice
of a broken heart, the whole art and ritual of
polytheistic superstition are waved away. Such
232 The Altar of Mercy
ornaments and offerings are for the patrons of
power ; and to these let those bring them who
will. Nor can it be fairly said that there is any-
thing in the Thebaid that cannot, with reasonable
allowance for the use of conventional literary forms,
be reconciled to the position here finally taken up.
The Apollo, the Juno, and the Minerva of Statius
are no more real than those of Christian poets, of
Dante himself for example. We can no more
reason from the use of such machinery to the
/ opinion of the writer, than we could infer the
theological convictions of Scott from the spirits
which discourse upon the progress of the story
in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. In this respect
the Thebaid differs greatly from the Aeneid, where,
to the advantage doubtless of the story as a picture
for the fancy, but to the detriment or confusion
of the significance, the traditional figures of the
Olympian gods have pretensions to reality which
in Statius they have lost. This difference among
others was noted, we may presume, by Dante, who
had his own practice and feelings, as a poet both
Christian and classical, to guide him in such obser-
vations. He would naturally reckon it in favour of
the opinions and theology of Statius, and attribute
it to the advance, or rather the approach, of the
true religion.
But in fact we may suspect that this difference
between Statius and Virgil is due not so much to
time as to place. It is a difference in origin and
native culture. The Thebaid has nothing Roman
The Altar of Meixy 233
about it, or almost nothing, except the language.
Even the Latin has marked Hellenic features, and
the substance is pure Hellenism. Allusions to Italy
and things Italian, which might have been easily
introduced, had such been the purpose, are almost
entirely absent, and when they occur, are made
as a Greek might have made them. Nothing else
could be expected from a Neapolitan, from a writer
so conscious of the difference between the Hellenic
and the non-Hellenic elements in the civilization
of the Empire, that when he reviews the epics of
Rome in search of a compliment to the memory
of Lucan, he can remark that, "as a poem for
Latins " [Latinis canens), the Pharsalia might
claim a preference even to the Aeneid. The
work of Virgil would have been reckoned by the
Neapolitan, not to its disadvantage, as largely
Greek. Naples, described as a city still fully
Greek in the time of Augustus, retaining the Greek
constitution of society, Greek life, festivals, and cul-
ture, had presumably lost little or nothing of this
character in the brief interval which brings us to
Statius. Rather the marked patronage extended
to its festivals by succeeding emperors, and the
conspicuous imitation of them by Domitian, the
prince under whom Statius passed the time of his
maturity and production, would strengthen the
conscious pride of the Neapolitan in representing
the chief centre of Greek learning and civilization
within the bounds of Italy. It is worth noticing,
that Naples claimed to have received a colony from
234 ^-^^ Altar of Mercy
Athens herself — the more worth noticing, because
the historic fact is perhaps something more than
doubtful. When we see what part is played by
Athens, a somewhat imaginary and idealized Athens,
in the Thebaid, we may suspect that, in the view
of Statius, his pretension to an Athenian affiliation
was at least as valuable as that Roman citizenship
which the Neapolitans, though faithful "alHes" of
Rome, accepted late and with regret. The natural
religion of such a person was the religion of
Euripides, matured and enlarged, — Hellenistic hu-
manism in its latest stage of rational refinement
and cosmopolitan scope.
The part belonging to this type of sentiment
and imagination, among the influences preparatory
to the adoption of Christianity as the religion of
the Empire, might doubtless be overrated, but may
be underrated more easily. It is certainly not from
the actual leaders of the Christian movement, that
we shall learn to depreciate the importance of its
relation to that species of thought whose ideal
centre was the Areopagus of Athens. " Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I
unto you." It does not belong here to consider
the precise position in history which should be
assigned to the Acts of the Apostles. But mani-
festly the author of that book, and those by whom
it was invested with authority, did not desire to
overlook or to minimise any advantage which the
new religion might obtain from its claim to em-
brace, absorb, and satisfy that gentle doctrine of
The Altar of Mercy 235
humanity which had radiated, or was at least sup-
posed by the world to have radiated, from Mars'
Hill. "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all
things ye are exceedingly God-fearing." To an
exhaustive commentary upon these words, and
upon the discourse which follows them, no small
contribution should be furnished by the Thebaid.
As we have had occasion to express the ap-
proval which, when all reserves are made, is due
to the historical appreciation of Statins and his
position by the scholarship of the thirteenth century
as represented in Dante, we ought not perhaps to
leave unnoticed the strano-e and somewhat discon-
certing perversion by which Dante, as commonly
and naturally interpreted, attributes the origin of
Statins, not to Naples, but to Toulouse —
" So sweet was the breath of my voice, that I, a
citizen of Tolosa, was drawn by Rome unto herself \"
It would no doubt be possible, without absurdity,
to suppose that Statius, like Lucan, came from the
far west ; nor did Dante apparently possess the
direct evidence which we now have to the actual
fact. But even upon the documents which were
certainly before him, and in view of what he him-
self infers and propounds, it is somewhat surprising
that he should have accepted the supposed datum,
and still more so that he should have thought it
worthy of mention. However, it is enough here
to note his error, which in any case is of little
importance.
^ Furgatorio, xxi 88: " che, Tolosano, Roma a se mi trasse.'
--^*«&*
ARISTOPHANES ON TENNYSON
The Muse of Comedy and the Muse — if there
be one — of Criticism are not sisters ; they are
"scarce cater-cousins." The business of Comedy
is to plant a jest and get a laugh — with or without
sense, reason, and justice ; it is not for her to inquire.
When Aristophanes, shy perhaps of politics in the
delicacy of the political situation, took for his Frogs
a subject purely literary, and faced the risk of in-
viting a popular audience to spend some hours upon
a comparison between the fashionable tragedy of
the day, as represented by the recently deceased
Euripides, and that which had been admired, by
command of Aeschylus two generations before,
little can he have dreamed of the gravity with which
some of his impudent tricks would be canvassed by
the erudition of future ages. It may be worth while
to illustrate the true value of one trick, — his very
best, if estimated for the purpose of the comic
stage, — by applying it to a poet and poetry not yet
ancient enough to be, like Euripides, half-buried in
misunderstanding.
Among the formal innovations of Euripides, one
of the most conspicuous was that of opening the
Ai'istophanes on Tennyson 237
play with a compendious narrative of the antecedent
facts or suppositions defining the situation, or at all
events that view of the situation from which the
action starts. For this practice there was good
reason in the peculiar attitude of Euripides towards
the subject-matter of Athenian tragedy ; and Aris-
tophanes, to do him justice, says nothing to the
contrary. But of course there is in such openings
a similarity of form and style, a certain dryness or
simplicity of manner, which does not belong to
openings directly dramatic. There are not many
possible manners, or rather there is but one, of
telling a story rapidly and yet completely in verse.
Moreover, from the nature of the case, there is a
tendency (which, as we are going to see, is almost
irresistible) to start with a stateme?tt about some
personage in the story, so that the grammatical subject
or nominative case of the first sentence will be a
proper name. "Samson, the mighty man, Manoah's
son...," or "The shepherd David, summoned from
the flock...," are obvious ways of beginning a
summary account of those heroes.
Now, as a matter of fact, Euripides in his pro-
logues avoided this ready and quite proper form of
commencement with much more care than (as we
shall see) could be expected or reasonably asked.
But he used it sometimes. And Aristophanes
perceived that, by collecting these cases, he could
get the material for a good theatrical joke. He
could pretend to show, in a dramatic manner, that
Euripides knew but one type of sentence for a
238 " Aristophanes on Tennyson
beginning. For, whenever this type occurs, you
can of course surprise the audience by an inter-
ruption and a nonsensical finish. " Samson, the
mighty man, Manoah's son — ...Walked up a hill,
and then walked down again." " The shepherd
David, summoned from the flock — ...Walked up
a hill, and then walked down again." And since
every kind of verse has, by necessity, certain
habitual places of punctuation, it will often happen
that, as in these instances, the same nonsensical
finish will find a possible point of attachment. From
a habit of the tragic metre in Greek, it chanced that
the middle of the verse was the most convenient
point for attaching a tag ; what point you take
matters nothing, provided it is always the same.
Accordingly Aristophanes, having got together, out
of some three-score Euripidean plays, half-a-dozen
legitimate instances (and one not legitimate^) of
opening sentences similar in this respect, that all
have a personal subject and proper name, and all
are punctuated at the same point, compels his pre-
tended Euripides to quote these selected cases as
typical, and assigns to his pretended Aeschylus, in
the character of a critic, the part of interrupting
Euripides each time at the proper point, and com-
pleting the sentence with the same nonsensical end.
As a stage-trick, nothing could be better ; and how
^ Frogs, 1219. "Euripides" (see the context) cites this as
an instance to the contrary ; and so it is, though the tag can be
botched on somehow. The only legitimate example among the
nineteen extant plays {Iphigenia in Taurica) is cited.
Aristophanes on Tennyson 239
effective it is, an Englishman will more promptly
perceive, if we apply it to poetry and themes for
which we have a natural, and not merely a cultivated
affection. But as criticism, were it so meant, it
would be futile, as by the same application we shall
most easily show and understand.
It happens that the greatest master of narrative
verse among modern English poets has really done
what Aristophanes attributes to Euripides — falsely,
as he well knew, and idly, had the charge been true.
Tennyson, in the Idylls of the King, does really,
and quite properly, prefer to open his stories, more
than half of them, in the way which Euripides used
very seldom, though often enough for the purpose
of the comedian. The style of Aristophanes is not
to be had at command ; but any one may exhibit
his impertinence.
For this purpose Tennyson shall be put, as any
son of man may, whatever his dignity and glory, in
the place of Euripides.
In the place of Aeschylus, the "Aeschylus" of
Aristophanes, we will most certainly not put any
English poet or person of credit. "Aeschylus" is
a malicious fool, for whom we will borrow the name
of " Gigadibs, the literary man," — with apologies to
Browning, and indeed to Gigadibs. And thirdly,
to complete a parallel with the scene in the Frogs,
we require in addition to the poet and the critic,
contenders in the literary debate, a by-stander, as
spectator and umpire. In Aristophanes this part
is played by a sort of average Athenian ass, upon
240 Aristophanes on Tennyson
whom, as representing the patrons of the drama, is
conferred the title of the "god" Dionysus, in his
character as proprietor of the pubHc theatre. We
have no " Dionysus " in England, but the " Phili-
stine " of Matthew Arnold will be good enough.
These three, then, shall be the interlocutors of our
comedian, — a " Tennyson," such as he chooses to
manufacture, a " Gigadibs," ditto, and a "Philistine,"
such as he is :
Gigadibs [to the Philistine). I say, sir, and
repeat, — this Tennyson
Was uninventive, dull, a mere machine
For turning verse, and I will prove the same.
Philistine. Oh come, I say !
Gig. Look at his Idylls, then !
Tennyson. Yes, look, and show them faulty, if
you dare!
Gig. I '11 wipe out all your Idylls of the King,
All, with a single pocket-handkerchief.
Tenn. A handkerchief!
Gig. A handkerchief, a towel,
A napkin, rag, or anything that wipes.
All's one. So poor you are in artifice.
So stiff, mechanical, and monotonous,
That one may fit the self-same piece of stuff
To all your patterns.
Tenn. What on earth do you mean }
Gig. Just what I say. You can't begin a tale
In any way but one. Your opening lines
Invariably admit, invite, suggest
Aristophanes on Tennyson 241
The same pathetic end and supplement, —
A cold in the head and pocket-handkerchief.
Proper to those afflicted with catarrh.
Tenn. Nonsense ! How dare you !
Gig. Very well, begin.
Begin, and I will tag you every time
With just the same conclusion, every time
Same ailment and same simple remedy,
A cold in the head, et caetera. Come, begin :
Quote me an Idyll, any one you please,
The opening lines.
Tenn. But really...
Phil. Pray, my lord.
If only to expose his impudence.
Oblige the gentleman.
Tenn. Oh, certainly.
Which Idyll?
Gig. Any.
Phil. "Gareth and Lynette."
Tenn. {reciting pompously). "The last tall son
of Lot and Bellicent,
And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring "
Gig. Had a bad cold, and blew his little nose.
Phil Eh ?
Tenn. What ? What's that ?
Phil. Surprising ! Had a cold ?
How did he get it .-^
Gig. "In a showerful spring";
The poet says so. Gareth, I presume,
Walked in the rain, forgot to change his clothes,
And hence the sequel. Anyhow, the tag
V. L. E. 16
242 Aristophanes on Tennyson
Fits, as I promised.
Tenn. Pooh ! An accident !
You will not do it twice.
Phil. No, that he won't ;
Impossible.
Gig. {to Tennyson^. Then try me. Start again.
Tenn. {beginning " The Last Tournainent ").
" Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his
mood
Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,"
Gig. Had a bad cold, and blew his little nose.
Phil. Goodness ! I never ! There it comes
again.
Gig. And very aptly. Note the time and
place :
"At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,"
The autumn season, damp and treacherous,
The unsheltered situation of the town,
And carelessness of " Dagonet the fool."
Phil. Hm! Rather odd!— I fear. Lord
Tennyson,
This is another accident.
Tenn. Oh, bosh!
Listen to this, and own yourself an ass.
{begins " The Coming of Arthur''^ " Leodogran,
the King of Cameliard,
Had "
Gig. A bad cold, and blew his little nose.
Phil. Why, this is worse and worse ! The
handkerchief
Aristophanes on Tennyson 243
Pops out already in the second line.
Gig. Yes, 'twas a chilly climate, as we hear
Later : " the land of Cameliard was waste,
Thick with wet woods " — a most unhealthy spot.
And pray observe, the poet gives me "had":
Leodogran, according to the bard,
Had something. Well, I say he had a cold.
Tenn. Blasphemer !
Phil. Come, come, Tennyson, be calm.
The case is getting grave. Three accidents !
Three Idylls tainted with this monstrous cold!
There must be one that will not let it in ;
At him again, and make a better choice.
Ten?i. [beginning '' The GraH''). "From noiseful
arms, and acts of prowess done
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale "
Gig. Had a bad cold...
Phil. Poor Percivale !
Gig. It came
From getting hot in tournaments and tilts.
Tenn. Nonsense !
Phil. Why so?
Tenn. Shut up ! I will be heard ;
It all comes right directly.
Gig. Go ahead.
Tenn. {recites). "...In tournament or tilt, Sir
Percivale,
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The
Pure,"
Gig. Had a bad cold...
Tenn. No, no ! (shouting) " Sir Percivale,
16 — 2
244 Aristophanes on Tennyson
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure,
Had"
Gig. A bad cold, and blew his little nose.
I knew it!
Tenn. {roaring). But I say...
Phil. No, Alfred, no,
It will not do ; Sir Percivale is doomed.
Give us " Geraint and Enid." They perhaps
May escape this influenza, though — I fear.
Tenn. {begins ' ' Geraint and Enid "). " The brave
Geraint, a knight of Arthur's court,"
Gig. Had a bad
Phil. Yes, alas ! But let it pass.
We must not be too cruel, too severe.
Even in the fatal air of Camelot
It must, I think, have happened, now and then,
That people ran a risk of... you know what,
But somehow did not have it after all.
Geraint shall get the benefit of the doubt.
Gig. Just as you like.
Phil, {to Tennyson). Go on, and let us hear.
Tenn. "The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur's
court,
A tributary prince of Devon, one
Of that great Order of the Table Round,
Had"
Gig. A bad cold,
Phil. Oh dear!
Gig. Of course he did,
And blew his little nose. I told you so !
Phil. This is too awful. Really, Tennyson,
Aristophanes on Tennyson 245
We had better give it up.
Tenn. Give up ! Not I !
Listen to this, and tag it if you can,
{begins " Elaine "). " Elaine "
Phil. I'm certain she will have a cold.
Tenn. {reciting). " Elaine the fair, Elaine
the "
Phil. Oh, beware !
Now comes the dangerous point. Take care of her.
Tenn. [reciting with hesitation). " Elaine the
fair, . . . Elaine. . .the loveable,"
Gig. Had a bad cold. That's one !
Phil. It is, it is.
Tenn. Silence! I'll gag you if you interrupt.
{beginning again, and reciting faster). "Elaine
the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,"
Gig. Had a bad cold. That's two !
Phil. It is, it is.
Tenn. {reciting at a furious pace). " Elaine the
fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east "
Gig. Had a bad cold, and blew her little nose.
Phil She did, she did, she did ! Three colds
she had.
At every verse a cold. Poor lily maid !
Gig. And well she might have in that windy
flat.
Phil. " High in her chamber up a tower to the
east.
246 Aristophanes on Tennyson
Tenn. (changing desperately to another Idyll).
" Queen Guinevere had "
Phil. No, my lord, no more.
We will not ask the fate of Guinevere ;
She had a cold, and there's an end of it ;
She had a cold, she caught it from Elaine ;
Your Idylls reek with it. And since the thing's
Infectious, and the air is getting thick.
We had best perhaps go home — and take quinine.
.^.-.^>^^
f-^«=4!T'
THE PROSE OF WALTER SCOTT
When Byron and Scott were approaching, one
of them the end of his life, and the other of his
prosperity, they exchanged in a monumental corre-
spondence the princely compliments of literary
diplomacy ; and Byron, who, though he had then
disclaimed the quarrel of "English Bards" with
" Scotch Reviewers," was engaged more deeply
than ever in defending the . Augustan manner of
Pope against the fashions which he himself had
helped Scott and others to introduce, — Byron, than
whom few men have been more independent of
fashion and of flattery, affirmed that he found no
one of whose superiority Sir Walter could reason-
ably be jealous, either among the living or, all
things considered, among the dead. It is certain,
from the principles and practice of Byron as a critic,
that in this judgement he regarded form as well as
substance, technical merit not less, perhaps even
more, than abundance of imagination and invention ;
certain also, that it was upon the prose of the
romances that he built his judgement, rather than
upon the metrical merit, already questionable, of
Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. And after
/
248 The Prose of Walter Scott
the lapse of a century, when there is no more any
question of living and dead, and the measure of
Scott is to be taken solely by the standard of what
I is common to good work universally, the opinion of
Byron may still stand as defensible. It is true that
Scott's works show the mark of his rapidity, and that
in average pieces of narrative he is not fastidious
in expression or always correct. It has been said,
and may perhaps be said with as much truth as is
demanded from an epigram, that in average pieces
of his prose "he has no style at all." But it is also
true that in the great moments to which those rapid
sketches are subsidiary, in the pinnacles for which
the scaffolding is somewhat hazardously piled up, he
displays not only a touch of hand peculiar to himself,
but also perfect command of sound construction, a
sure hold upon those principles of speech — call them
rules, practices, or what you will — which come from
the deepest parts of humanity, and are common to
all that succeed in this kind. A mind not sensible
to the effects of Scott, when he intends effect, would
have to seek satisfaction somewhere else than in
literature as it has been practised by all Europe
(to take the narrowest limit) from Homer to this
day. And it is to be added that even the unpre-
tentious freedom of his ordinary manner has a value
in its place by way of relief and contrast.
A signal instance of both qualities may be found
in the scene which lays the corner-stone of Guy
Mannering-^^xh^ denunciation of the landowner and
magistrate, Bertram of Ellangowan, by the gipsy
The Prose of Walter Scott 249
witch, Meg Merrilies. The little band to which she
belongs7 after having been protected and encouraged
for many generations in a precarious settlement
upon Bertram's estate, have now been expelled, in
a capricious fit of reform, by the summary process
of pulling down their miserable tenements. The
author of this improvement, little content with his
severity, absents himself on the day of execution ;
but as he rides home, he meets the emigrant
families in painful procession upon the confines of
his property. To the sufferers his act naturally
appears tyrannous, a provocation of the higher
powers of providential justice ; nor is it beyond
common reckoning to divine that, in a country and
among a population not very orderly, the defiance
of such enemies may lead to disaster. Of such
feelings and prognostications, raised to the tone of
prophecy by the ambiguous pretensions of a witch-
wife, Meg Merrilies makes herself the voice. The
sequel of the story turns, as will be remembered,
upon the fulfilment of her prophecy, to which, in
the natural course of things, she contributes a great
and, in the end, a dominant influence. The con-
ception of her character is the key to the whole
design"^ and here, in the scene of the prophecy, is
the leading note upon which the whole depends.
The chapter (viii) containing it will throughout
repay sttrdy; but for our present purpose we may
begin with the two paragraphs which immediately
precede the denunciation itself. The first gives
the psychology of the situation, describing, without
250 The Pi'ose of Waltei^ Scott
\ affectation of subtlety, the uncomfortable feelings of
the magistrate, who has just undergone, from the
passing caravan, the novel experience of resentment
and hatred.
/
/
"His sensations were bitter enough. The race, it is true,
which he had thus summarily dismissed from their ancient place
of refuge, was idle and vicious ; but had he endeavoured to render
them otherwise? They were not more irregular characters now
than they had been while they were admitted to consider them-
selves as a sort of subordinate dependents of his family.... Some
means of reformation ought at least to have been tried before
sending seven families at once upon the wide world, and depriving
them of a degree of countenance which withheld them at least
from atrocious guilt. There was also a natural yearning of heart
on parting with so many known and familiar faces; and to this
feeling Godfrey Bertram was peculiarly accessible, from the limited
qualities of his mind, which sought its principal amusements
among the petty objects around him. As he was about to turn
his horse's head to pursue his journey, Meg Merrilies, who had
lagged behind the troop, unexpectedly presented herself."
Manifestly we have here no research of style,.
" no style at all " in the sense which the word
"style" has for the critic or the conscious artist.
In vocabulary, phrasing, the cast and turn of
sentences, there is as little character and stamp as
the individuality of authorship may well admit. If
anything is to be praised, it is a certain plain gravity,
proceeding partly from this very absence of pose.
And there are negligences which are almost faults.
" To render them otherwise... ; depriving them of a
degree of countenance... ; from the limited qualities
of his mind... ; to turn his horses head to pursue
his journey...'' \ these and other phrases might be
The Prose of Walter Scott 251
improved, and would not have satisfied a punctilious
composer. But on the other hand, there is no
hitch, nothing to stumble at, and we are put without
strain in full possession of the meaning.
The next paragraph is much more important
and characteristic, and, as a composition, is both
better and worse. It contains what for Scott, in
such a situation as this, was essentially significant —
the stage-directions, so to speak, for setting the
group and scene in preparation for the coming
effect. Stage-directions we may well call them, for
it is actually to the theatre that the author has gone,
as he often did, for inspiration ; and later, at the
crowning moment of the scene, he refers us to the
source from which he has drawn : " Margaret of
Anjou " (he says), "bestowing on her triumphant
foes her keen-edged malediction, could not have
turned from them with a gesture more proudly
contemptuous." From the mind of Scott Shake-
speare was never far ; and with Henry the Sixth,
especially the final scenes, the figure of Meg
Merrilies is more than once associated \ The
particular passage to which he directs us we will
presently quote, for it is even more pertinent than
his words imply. But for the moment we note
only, as a fact, his theatrical prepossession, and now
present in this light what we are justified in calling
his stage-directions : /> /
•' She was standing upon one of those high precipitous banks
which, as we before noticed, overhung the road ; so that she was
^ See the motto to chapter liv.
252 The Prose of Walter Scott
placed considerably higher than EUangowan, even though he was
on horseback ; and her tall figure, relieved against the clear blue
sky, seemed almost of supernatural stature. We have noticed
that there was in her general attire, or rather in her mode of
adjusting it, somewhat of a foreign costume, artfully adopted
perhaps for the purpose of adding to the effect of her spells and
predictions, or perhaps from some traditional notions respecting
the dress of her ancestors. On this occasion she had a large
piece of red cotton cloth rolled about her head in the form of a
turban, from beneath which her dark eyes flashed with uncommon
lustre. Her long and tangled black hair fell in elf-locks from the
folds of this singular head-gear. Her attitude was that of a sibyl
in frenzy, and she stretched out in her right hand a sapling bough,
which seemed just pulled."
^' Considering this from a practical point of view,
as a catalogue of points which the reader is to focus
as a preparation of the eye for the delivery of the
tirade that follows, we may pronounce it beyond
improvement. Nothing is neglected or slurred ;
posture and colours, properties and accessories,
suggestions, duly vague, of history or literature, all
is prescribed : the least lively imagination must be
ready to work on such terms, and the tableau could
be set, one almost fancies that it could be painted,
by an amateur. But for style — the conscious stylist
might say again that there is none. The whole
method is the very negation of art, in so far as art
is said to lie in the concealment of the mechanical
process. Stevenson, for example, would have can-
celled a chapter, and that not once but twice or
thrice, sooner than leave such a paragraph in such
a state. He actually cited another passage of Guy
Mannering, and might have cited this, for proof of
The Prose of Walter Scott 253
his master's indifference to such scruples as con-
sumed his own days and weeks. Scott wants, at
this moment, certain details of scenery and costume ;
and with perfect simplicity he now recapitulates
them, or now puts them in. They ought, perhaps,
to be ready beforehand ; or at least that is the more
artistic way, the way of Stevenson, and of Dumas
when he is on his mettle. The points might have
been so touched and emphasized before, that to
collect them now would be needless. But Scott
will not be troubled with anything so unpractical.
" Those high precipitous banks," which overhang
the road, " we before noticed^' says the author.
" Banks " we may have noticed. That they should
be high and steep he himself has not before seen ;
but as height now proves to be necessary, he simply
raises them. The "clear blue sky" is similarly
imported, and without the least preparation. The
red turban comes rightly enough, and, as a property,
is of the best ; but it is put in with so much fumbling
— we have noticed... or rather... or per haps... on this
occasion — that we seem to be watching a sketcher
while he changes his brushes for a tint.
From these two paragraphs, taken separately
or singly, no one, we suppose, could receive direct
pleasure ; and if the history of literature has any
lessons, assuredly no such work would, by itself,
have roused the admiration of the world. The
effect of it all is just to excite expectation, which, as
the literary novice is warned by Horace, is a very
dangerous thing to do. But Scott will have it so,
2 54 The Prose of Walter Scott
and he is not even yet content. He has posed and
painted his performer, and now, before she speaks,
he insists on defining the effect :
" ' I'll be d d,' said the groom, ' if she has not been cutting
the young ashes in the Dukit park ! ' The Laird made no answer,
but continued to look at the figure which was thus perched above
his path."
Now this is all very well, but what is to come of
it } " How is this big-mouthed promise to be kept .-*"
"Quid dignum tanto feret hie promissor hiatu .? "
You may protest that you have imagined something
really most impressive, and may invoke in attesta-
tion the most august memories of art and religion —
Delphi and Avernus, tragedy and epic, Cassandra
and Deiphobe ; but, given your sibyl, what will you
make her say .-*
" ' Ride your ways,' said the gipsy, * ride your ways, Laird of
Ellangowan — ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram ! This day have
ye quenched seven smoking hearths — see if the fire in your ain
parlour burn the blither for that. Ye have riven the thack off
seven cottar houses — look if your ain roof-tree stand the faster.
Ye may stable your stirks in the shealings at Derncleugh— see
that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane at Ellangowan.
Ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram — what do ye glower after our
folk for? There's thirty hearts there that wad hae wanted bread
ere ye had wanted sunketsS and spent their life-blood ere ye had
scratched your finger. Yes— there's thirty yonder, from the auld
wife of an hundred to the babe that was born last week, that ye
have turned out o' their bits o' bields, to sleep with the tod and
the blackcock in the muirs ! Ride your ways, Ellangowan ! Our
bairns are hinging at our weary backs — look that your braw
cradle at hame be the fairer spread up ; not that I am wishing ill
^ Delicacies.
The Prose of Walter Scott 255
to little Harry, or to the babe that's yet to be born — God forbid
— and make them kind to the poor, and better folk than their
father ! — And now, ride e'en your ways ; for these are the last
words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last
reise^ that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan.'
*' So saying, she broke the sapling she held in her hand and
flung it into the road."
What wonder if the world sat up to Hsten ! To
praise such a composition would be superfluous
indeed, and I cite it for no such purpose. A man
who could miss or mistake the impression, would be
beyond instruction by words. But there may be
some interest and profit, especially in view of what
is said — and said truly, if rightly applied — about
Scott's neglect of style, in examining this passage
in detail, and exhibiting some part of its almost
incredible fidelity to rule. We know that Guy
Mannering was written at full speed, and not even
the plan of it laid out beforehand. There is no
reason, as far as I am aware, to except from this
record the present passage, or other such points of
high light, which make the whole what it is. But
after all, that only means that the true preparation
had been immeasurable. Years of training, now
among books, now in the walks of men, had wrought
the sensitive ear and brain to such consummate
readiness that, when the call came, the pen ran
headlong without a trip, and, at the utmost speed,
put in strokes which challenge the microscope.
A single instance will prove this, and may tempt
' Sapling branch.
/
:
1
256 The Prose of Walter Scott
us perhaps to look further. The substance, the
kernel of the prophetic menace, is resumed in the
repeated parallel between past and future. " As
you have done, so it shall be done to you," says the
oracle over and over again. Loss for loss, violence
to the violent, your house, your family, for those
that you have torn from their place. *' This day
have ye quenched seven smoking hearths — see if
the fire in your own parlour burn the blither for
that." Thrice the same parallel is repeated, hearth
and fire, thatch and roof, Derncleugh and Ellan-
gowan ; thrice, but each time with a slight variation
in the phrase — ^' see if the fire..." ''look if your
roof..." ''see that the hare...." A trick to avoid
monotony .'^ Is that all ? It does this indeed ; but
it lays the way, it provides the chance, for some-
thing far more important. "See if ...look if, ...see
that...''; the ear is left expectant, as in a rimed
quatrain which should stop at the third line. Was
the composer designing this ? Was he aware of it }
Not in his fingers, nor in the driving-wheels of his
brain. But deep down, somewhere within him, was
an engine or other organ which was awake and fore-
feeling, which knew that, in the natural harmony of
passion, we must come back to this major chord,
and that a place should be kept for the return. And
therefore, when we do return, our composer, so
negligent of style, fails not to finish the quatrain
with the missing form: "Our bairns are hinging
at our weary backs — look that your braw cradle
at hame be the fairer spread up " — , achieves this
The Prose of Walter Scott 257
exquisite precision at full stride, and leaves cor-
rection dumb.
Endless are the observations of this kind with
which we may amuse ourselves if we please. There
is, for one thing, the severe purity of the vocabulary,
so absolutely English (or Scotch if you like, anyhow
German, Teutonic) that the flavour even of French
origin — as in parlour, couch, sunkets — is instantly
noted for foreign, unhomely, and tells with the
intended touch of mislike. It is here, I think,
rather than in the mere gain of an extra key-board,
that Scott gets advantage from his dialect.
Then again, what a feeling has Scott for the
strong parts of English, the grand, long mono-
syllables, which are so carefully collected and placed
by Milton. ''Ride your ways,'' said the gipsy ; and
in what other tongue could she have condensed her
point — luxury, pride, domination, defied and bidden
go to their own end — into three such sounds as
these ?
Equally remarkable, perhaps even more so, if
judged by the prevalent laxity of English rhetoric,
is the faultless structure of the speech, the perfect
attainment of that symmetry without stiffness which
makes a frame organic. In this respect especially
Scott surpasses the Elizabethan poet to whom, as
we saw, he acknowledges his debt for a hint. The
analogy to the situation of the Lancastrian Queen
whose young Edward is killed in her presence by
the princes of York, is but remote ; but the two
maledictions coincide in the fundamental idea that
V. L. E. 17
J-
258 The Prose of Walter Scott
cruelty to victims of tender age will be visited upon
the infants of the offender :
" O traitors, murderers !
"They that stabbed Caesar shed no blood at all,
Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame.
If this foul deed were by to equal it :
He was a man ; this, in respect, a child :
And men ne'er spend their fury on a child.
What's worse than murderer, that I may name it?
No, no, my heart will burst, an if I speak,
And I will speak, that so my heart may burst.
Butchers and villains ! bloody cannibals !
How sweet a plant have you untimely cropped !
You have no children, butchers ! if you had,
The thought of them would have stirred up remorse;
But if you ever chance to have a child,
Look in his youth to have him so cut off
As, deaths jnen, you have rid this sweet young prince^ /*'
For a tragedy-queen this is well enough, and,
regarded merely as rhetoric, it is much upon the
average level of the Elizabethan and Jacobean
theatre. Those poets were seldom careful of
structure, and their precedent has been only too
well followed by our dramatic composers since. But
the tirade so ill bears comparison with that of Meg
Merrilies that, if Scott were capable of a trick, he
might be suspected of wishing us to remark his
triumph over what passes for Shakespeare. And
the weakness of the one speech, as contrasted with
the other, lies chiefly in the want of structure, of
rhetorical frame. Here Scott's craft is supreme,
good enough for Racine, Euripides, or the Homer of
' Henry VI, in, v, 5.
The Prose of Walter Scott 259
the Ninth Iliad. Commentary upon such technique
is apt to be unconvincing unless exhaustive, and if
exhaustive, to be tiresome. But let one point serve
for all. Take the triplet, which sets the text, as
it were, to be developed: '^ Ride your ways,... ride
your ways, Laird of Ellangowan — ride your ways,
Godfrey Bertram f' Here we have three forms of
address, one anonymous, then the territorial title,
and last the personal name. Observe then, first,
that exactly these three, and no more, recur as head-
notes for the divisions that follow. Next observe
that they recur in the reverse order: '' Ride your
ways, Godfrey Bertram Ride your ways, Ellan-
gowan.... And 7tow, ride e'en your ways,..." with the
result, a result vital to the purpose, that we know
by ear and instinct when to expect the close, and
thus the thrill of the dismissal gets a reverberation
from our simple pleasure in not being disappointed
of our count. And observe, lastly and most care-
fully, that the distinction between title and name, the
Laird and the man, " Ellangowan " and " Bertram,"
proves significant. For this we might hope ; count
upon it we could not ; but we get it, and are pleased
in proportion to the rareness of such fidelity to
poetic promise. When the former friend of the
gipsies is to be reminded that he has thrown away
the affection of his dependents, he is " Godfrey
Bertram"; but he is "Ellangowan," when the
misery of their homelessness is to be contrasted
with the pride and comfort of his house: ''Ride
your ways, Ellangowan. Our bairns are hinging at
17—2
26o The Prose of Walter Scott
our weary backs ; look that your draw cradle at
hame be the fairer spread upT
And beyond all this, deeper and more vital yet,
lie the effects of sound and of rhythm. It is a little
matter, perhaps, that the more commonplace uses of
echo and repetition — ''burn the blither''...'' stable
your stir ks'\.." wad hae wanted bread ere ye had
wanted'' — are used, and are forborne, with rare
economy. But it is no little matter, it is rather the
very essence of poetry, when the paired sounds
touch, just touch without crossing, the confine of
sobs : " What do ye glower after our folk for ? "...
"the wife and the babe, that ye have turned out o'
their bits d bields" ..." God... make them kind to the
poor, and better folk than their father." Pathos
with dignity can do no more.
From sound to rhythm is perhaps scarcely a
distinguishable transition ; but it is from the rhythm
of this passage, from the melody proper, that, for
my own part, I get the greatest delight. Here
again there is no end to the possible remarks.
Most obvious is a device which is a favourite with
Burke; though, when I say "device," I do not
mean that Burke always, or perhaps ever, thought
of it. The consciousness of the artist is generally
an open question. Be that as it may, the trick is
this. Everybody who takes lessons in English
prose-composition soon gets a warning "to avoid
blank verse." The precept is sound and important.
That rhythm, from its familiarity, easily catches the
ear ; in prose it is mostly purposeless ; and nothing
The Prose of Walter Scott 261
is more vexatious than rhythm without a purpose.
But regularity is the ground of variation, and the
supreme end of artistic rules is to be broken with
proper effect. Here, in our speech, the blank-verse
rhythm is scrupulously excluded. Not any group
of words suggests it, except one, where it is strongly
marked. " Our bairns are hinging at our weary
backs " is a verse of five accents, and a good one ;
better, I should say, than any of Queen Margaret's
in the play. And as any one may see at a glance,
it is placed as it should be, where, by a slight touch
of pomp, it sustains the complaint of the vagabond
above the suspicion of mendicancy.
Many other like delicacies there are ; indeed
every clause and phrase will bear and repay exami-
nation. But the best of all is kept for the close :
" And now, ride e'en your ways ; for these are the last words
ye'U ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last reise that
I'll ever cut in the bonny woods of EUangowan."
Here are two points principally to remark. It
cannot escape notice that, for some reason, the
introduction of the speaker's name, "Meg Merrilies,"
is here strangely impressive, and that the sentence
seems to hinge and to swing upon it. Every one
perceives this ; and the cause, though less obvious,
may be ascertained. We have already noted that
the vocabulary of the speech, as is usual with Scott
on such occasions, is extremely simple, and almost
exclusively English in the strictest sense of the
name. Now this vocabulary, with many merits,
has, for the composer, some defects, and not least
262 The Prose of Walter Scott
among them this — that, consisting almost wholly of
monosyllables and dissyllables, it supplies hardly
ever a succession of syllables, not even so much as
a pair, absolutely without accent, and therefore falls
naturally into an up-and-down jog, without those
pleasant trisyllabic movements which in prosody
are called dactylic. Introduce the elements which,
in later times, our writers borrowed from Latin,
and dactyls (or rather quasi-dactyls) spring up in
abundance — irregular, accessible, limited, principal,
precipitous, general, singular — these, and more,
may be picked from the paragraphs, written in the
common language of literature, which precede the
speech of the gipsy, and have been cited above.
But in the speech itself, nothing of the sort. With
the vocabulary of the gipsy, the thing is hardly
possible. Such combinations as ''what do ye''
''wife of an,'' ^'babe that was," are the nearest
approach ; and they differ materially in rhythm from
principal or singular. But in " Meg Merrilies " we
do get an English triplet, the sole triplet of syllables
within one word which the speech presents ; and
Scott, with an instinct sharpened by practice, seizes
upon this by-gift of his own invention to swing off
the finale with the desirable roll.
Partly alike is the music of the last words, alike
in this, that in the proper name *' Ellangowan" we
have again a valuable element seldom provided
by pure English — a quadrisyllable with two equal
accents, our nearest equivalent for the double
trochee, such as comprobavit, so beloved by pupils
The Prose of Walter Scott 263
of Cicero. It is the only such form in the speech.
But here we have another thing to note. However
well we may love our native tongue, we must allow
that, as compared with some others, or with almost
any other, its word-groups are seldom musical.
You cannot have everything at once. Our fathers
chose for us that we should talk mostly in mono-
syllables, a good way, but not musical. The collision
of hard sounds must at this rate be incessant, and
very harsh collisions will hardly be kept out. Scott
himself, writing pure English, cannot avoid them,
and wisely does not try, for the constriction of such
a rule would be deadly. But the result is what
it must be, a "music" bad or poor. No one,
I suppose, will say that, taken as mere sound, there
is any pleasure in such combinations as quenched
seven smoking hearths, ...at Derncleugh, . . . hearth-
stane, . . .scratched, . . .and the blackcock, . . .babe that's, . . .
and the like everywhere. There is no help for it.
But what then is the artist to do .'* Why, do like
an artist, turn stones to stepping-stones — offer, at
some chosen place, the good gift which will take
more value from his very poverty. The close of
the speech, the last sentence, runs almost without
a trip, and the final clause, as a bit of prosody,
might challenge Italian or Greek :
"And this is the last reise that I'll ever cut in the bonny ivoods
of Ellangowan."
With Scott, as with all artists in English, the
contrast between the various elements in our hetero-
geneous lexicon, the mixture and opposition of them.
264 The Prose of Walter Scott
is a main principle. Most often, as in the case of
Meg Merrilies, he recurs for solemnity to the pure
Teutonic, fashioning of course his personages ac-
cordingly. The reader will expect here the pleasure
of comparing Meg's malediction with its not less
admirable pendant, the gipsy's farewell to Dern-
cleugh. I will cite it therefore, but spare my
comment, which, after what has been said, will
easily be conceived and supplied :
J^ " She then moved up the brook until she came to the ruined
hamlet, where, pausing with a look of peculiar and softened
interest before one of the gables which was still standing, she
said, in a tone less abrupt, though as solemn as before : ' Do you
see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling ? — There my kettle
boiled for forty years — there I bore twelve buirdly sons and
daughters. Where are they now? — Where are the leaves that
were on that auld ash-tree at Martinmas? — the west wind has
made it bare — and I'm stripped too. — Do you see that saugh-
tree ? — it's but a blackened, rotten stump now — I've sat under it
mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when it hung its gay garlands
ower the poppling water — I've sat there, and ' (elevating her voice)
• I've held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs
of the auld barons and their bloody wars. It will ne'er be green
again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they
blithe or sad. But ye'U no forget her ? — and ye'U gar big up the
auld wa's for her sake ? — and let somebody live there that's ower
guid to fear them of another world. For if ever the dead came
back amang the living, I'll be seen in this glen mony a night after
these crazed banes are in the mould.* "
With the imported parts of our language, im-
ported chiefly from Latin, as well as with the
primitive parts, Scott could make masterly play
when he chose. An example is to be found in that
The Prose of Walter Scott 265
incomparable story which makes a detached episode
in Redgauntlet, under the title of '* Wandering
WilHe's Tale." Stevenson in Catriona has testified ^
his admiration of it by exerting his utmost strength
to produce a parallel, and with as much success as
could be hoped. One cannot mention Scott's story,
even for the purpose of technical illustration, without
turning aside to praise its general excellence. In |
its kind it has perhaps not a rival in English litera- |
ture or anywhere else. To tell, and to refute in the s
telling, a legend of the supernatural, is an ancient
and popular trick, but never perhaps has been
performed with such delicate balance of gravity and
humour. In substance the tale is simple. A certain
landlord, Sir Robert Redgauntlet, a former per-
secutor of the Covenanters (the date is about 1 700),
has a retainer and tenant who waits upon him to
pay certain arrears of rent. In the midst of the
business the Laird is taken with a fit, of which
he almost instantly dies ; and the debtor in the
confusion departs without, as he believes, having
got a receipt. The money too is not to be found,
and the heir demands a second payment. The
honest defaulter, half mad with despair and drink,
wanders at night to the grave of his late landlord ;
and there, after a dream in which he visits the dead
man, he wakes with the receipt in his hand. Pay-
ment being thus proved, the disappearance of the
money is soon traced to the theft of a monkey
which was present at the time of the transaction.
With singular skill and power Scott shows how,
266 The Prose of Walter Scott
from these not wonderful incidents, has grown in
the course of a generation an awful story of retribu-
tion and reward. About the true facts there is no
doubt. To establish the supernatural version, it
would of course be essential to show that the receipt
was got, and not merely found, by the debtor on the
night alleged, that is to say, after the death and
burial of the payee. The receipt itself, the docu-
ment, was so dated ! So at least we are told ; but
the paper was immediately destroyed ! Everything
therefore turns on the question whether the debtor
took such a paper from the room at the time of the
payment, or whether, as he supposed, he did not.
And most unfortunately our informant, the debtor's
grandson, actually gives, though he is not in the
least aware of it, two accounts of the transaction,
which differ totally at the critical point. The thing
is a delightful example of Scott's profound acquaint-
ance with story-telling men, and the masterly use
which he made of it ; and the passages will serve,
as well as any, for specimens of the narrator's
language and style. Here is his first account of
the payment :
" My gudesire, with as gude a countenance as he could put
on, made a leg, and placed the bag of money on the table wi' a
dash, like a man that does something clever. The Laird drew it
to him hastily — 'Is it all here, Steenie, man?'
" ' Your honour will find it right,' said my gudesire.
" ' Here, Dougal,' said the Laird, 'gie Steenie a tass of brandy
downstairs, //// I count the siller and write the receipt.'
" But they werena weel out of the room when Sir Robert gied
a yelloch that garr'd the Castle rock. Back ran Dougal — in flew
The Prose of Walter Scott 267
the livery-men — yell on yell gied the I>aird, ilk ane mair awfu'
than the ither. My gudesire knew not whether to stand or flee,
but he ventured back into the parlour.... \\{\^ head was like to
turn. He forgot baith siller and receipt, and down stairs he
banged," etc.
Now upon this showing it is plain, both that the
receipt could easily be written, and that the debtor
could easily take it away unawares ; and, ^iven
these facts, no reasonable person would doubt that
the whole story should be so understood and
explained. But presently *we have the interview
between the debtor and Sir Robert's heir (.Sir John),
when, of course, the circumstances of payment have
to be related again, as accounting for the absence
of proof. And behold, they are completely trans-
formed ! The narrator thus dramatises the dialogue :
" Stephen : ' Please your honour. Sir John, I paid it to your
father.'
"Sir John: 'Ye took a receipt, then, doubtless, Stephen;
and can produce it ? '
"Stephen: 'Indeed, / hadna time, an it like your honour,
for nae sooner had I set doun the siller, and Just as his honour^
Sir Robert, that's f^aen, drew it till him to count it, and write out
the receipt, he was ta'en wV the pains that removed him.' "
If this were the truth, or near the truth, evidently
the receipt could not be written, and the debtor
knew, by the witness of his own eyes, that it never
was. But here, on every material fact, the latter
version is contradicted by the first, though both are
given, as this very discrepancy proves, in good faith.
That Scott perceived the flaw, and deliberately
planned it, is proved (if proof be wanted) by his
268 The Prose of Walter Scott
providing the narrator with a plausible pretext for
giving, or rather purporting to give, the second
version, the erroneous and misleading, in the form
of a dramatic dialogue, reported ipsissimis verbis :
" I have heard their communings so often tauld ower, that
I almost think I was there mysell."
Accordingly he describes the interview exactly as
if he had been there, and at the very point where
he becomes essentially false, becomes also (as we
see in the quotation) most precise and positive in
form, dropping narration altogether, and acting each
speaker in turn. To this change of form Scott
emphatically directs attention, actually arresting the
story at this point and inserting a comment, by
the supposed auditor, upon the narrator's dramatic
talent. At a first reading, or a second, this may
appear needless or cumbrous, but presently we
perceive the humour of it. The supposed precision
is of course altogether illusory, and merely serves
to disguise from our informant the fact that, as can
be proved out of his own mouth, he is not here
reporting the incident as it was originally told.
Scott's own view of the facts, the rationalistic view,
is implied clearly enough in the final paragraph of
the story, and indeed throughout.
We have not space to compare in detail Steven-
son's rival tale of the Bass Rock (in Catriona),
though the comparison would be full of interest.
In the tone of the two there is this important
difference, that the allegations in Stevenson's tale
The Prose of Walter Scott 269
cannot possibly be resolved into common incidents
plus involuntary error. When we are told that at
one and the same moment several persons saw
A.B. dancing (in spirit) at one place, and a crowd
of other persons saw him lying motionless (in body)
many miles away, we are driven to suppose that
either the facts or the lies are abnormal. Our
choice will depend on our opinion of the witnesses
and our general theory of the universe. To Frederic
Myers the facts in the " Bass Rock " story, so far as
I have yet given them, seemed abnormal indeed, but
quite natural. Never shall I forget the grave and
reproachful tone in which, talking of Catriona soon
after its appearance, he complained of Stevenson for
disfiguring an otherwise legitimate and persuasive
piece of imagination by the "ridiculous" addition,
that when the dancing spirit is shot, the silver coin
with which the gun was loaded, is found in the
man's body, which dies at the same moment but —
several miles away. The precise boundary between
the natural and the ridiculous is sometimes not easy
to fix.
However, to return to Scott, such, in the bare
outline and in general style, is the famous tale of
Wandering Willie. But if there were no more to
say of it, if it rose nowhere above the level which
we have described, it would be good indeed, even
so perhaps best in its kind, but it would not have
the sublimity which Scott has contrived to impart.
This depends on the moral source of the legend,
the assurance of future punishment reserved for a
270 The Pi'ose of Walter Scott
persecutor of the saints. The Sir Robert Red-
gauntlet of the story was, as we have said, an
oppressor, a cruel oppressor, of nonconformists and
recusants ; and his tenant, the originator of the
legend, though no saint, was a religious man, and
had no doubt whatever of his master's destiny post
mortem. Accordingly, in his dream beside the
grave, it is to Hell that he goes for the receipt, a
Hell which is also and at the same time Sir Robert's
own house. There still, there again, as in this
world often, he and his wicked friends are holding
such feast as yet they may. The vision is pro-
foundly moving and solemn, and from it is diffused
over the whole narrative a strong religious enchant-
ment, which raises what otherwise were a trifle to
the level of Dante and Homer.
Indeed, I have such a reverence for this episode,
the Hades of the oppressors, that I have some
scruple in touching it with a philological finger.
But since I do not myself find in such remarks any
bar to emotion, but feel the poetic achievement only
the more when I seem to perceive the means, others,
I suppose, may feel the same ; and the truth is, that
the effect is partly, and even principally, a matter
of vocabulary. The strolling fiddler, Wandering
Willie, who tells the tale, is by birth a peasant, and
his ordinary language is not very far, though it
differs, from that of Meg Merrilies. But he is no
gipsy. He has had the regular Presbyterian train-
ing and, from special circumstances, much irregular
education besides. He has notions of history.
The Prose of Walter Scott 271
theology, literature ; and especially, like all good
Scots, he knows and reverences the language of the
preacher. The influence of it may be traced often,
and grows when he begins to describe his grand-
father's dream. And when for a while he is fully
possessed by the moral and religious purport of the
vision, shade by shade his speech takes the learned
colours of the pulpit, French and Latin, even Greek,
points from the Pentateuch, and rhythms modelled
upon the Psalms. You will hardly find anywhere
a finer example of what can be done by economy
of art than the simple effects of this passage, the
unexpected and therefore thrilling note of such
words as fierce, savage, dissolute, beautiful, contorted,
melancholy. And finally, this far-away spell dies out
as it came in, and we sink back into the plainness
of the vernacular. Here is the passage, with so
much of the context as will suffice to show these
contrasts. Coming in his dream to Redgauntlet
Castle, the debtor is received there, as usual, by
Dougal MacCallum, Sir Robert's old servant, whose
death, be it remarked, has followed close on that of
his master :
" ' Never fash yoursell wi' me,' said Dougal, * but look to
yoursell ; and see ye talc naething frae ony body here, neither
meat, drink, or siller, except just the receipt that is your ain.'
" So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that
were weel kend to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlour ;
and there was as much singing of profane sangs, and birling of
red wine, and speaking blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever
been in Redgauntlet Castle when it was at the blithest.
" But, Lord take us in keeping, what a set of ghastly revellers
272 The Prose of Walter Scott
they were that sat around that table ! — My gudesire kend mony
that had long before gane to their place, for often had he piped
to the most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce
Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale ;
and Dalyell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle ; and
Earlshall, with Cameron's blude on his hand ; and wild Bonshaw,
that tied blessed Mr Cargill's limbs till the blude sprung ; and
Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country and
king. There was the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his
worldly wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god^ And
there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his
long, dark, curled locks, streaming down over his laced buff-coat,
and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the
wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them
all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance ;
while the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed, that the room
rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to
time ; and their laugh passed into such wild sounds as made my
gudesire's very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his
banes \
" They that waited at the table were just the wicked serving-
men and troopers that had done their work and cruel bidding on
earth. There was the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that helped
to take Argyle ; and the Bishop's summoner, that they called the
Deil's Rattle-bag ; and the wicked guardsmen in their laced coats ;
and the savage Highland Amorites, that shed blood like water;
and mony a proud serving-man, haughty of heart and bloody of
hand, cringing to the rich, and making them wickeder than they
would be; grinding the poor to powder, when the rich had
broken them to fragments. And mony, mony mair were coming
and ganging, a' as busy in their vocation as if they had been
alive." •
It will of course be understood that Scott, as
a manipulator of language, is not to be praised
^ Between these points the dialectic forms almost totally
disappear. In the next paragraph they gradually reappear.
The Prose of Walter Scott 273
without discrimination. Not only is he often care-
less, sometimes in place and sometimes very much
out of place, but a certain class of his romances, the
so-called " historic," are all debased, more or less,
by a deplorable amalgam, which he compounded
from cuttings of every kind of English between
Chaucer and Gray, and vended as, in some sort,
the style of chivalry. Ivanhoe and The Talisman,
Quentin Durward, Nigel even, Woodstock, Peveril
and others, are sown more or less liberally with this
pernicious flower. It pleased the day, but it was
a bad thing and, like all weeds, was fertile : it has
helped to make some of the worst literature that we
possess. But let us say no more of it. It has little
or no part in these : Guy Mannering, The Anti-
quary, The Heart of Midlothian, Old Mortality,
Rob Roy, Redgauntlet, The Bride of Lam7nernioor,
St Ronans Well, and within this round one may
comfortably circulate without end.
St Ronans Well} Yes, assuredly, St Ronans
Well. It has defects; it is not such a masterpiece
as The Bride. The elements, comic and tragic, are
not so well accommodated ; and Scott, alas ! was
persuaded, almost compelled, by his publisher to
sacrifice the very base of his tragedy to the concilia-
tion of the vulgar, who were not won nevertheless.
But the story is fine, and the strong scenes — chapter
XXIII for example, or chapter xxxv — very strong.
And they will supply instances of the power and
dignity which Scott, when he chooses, can put
even into the artificial, super-literary English which
V. L. E. 18
274 The Prose of Walter Scott
he inherited from the eighteenth century. So
here :
"'There is a Heaven above us, and there shall be judged
our actions towards each other ! You abuse a power most
treacherously obtained — you break a heart that never did you
wrong — you seek an alliance with a wretch who only wishes to be
wedded to her grave. If my brother brings you hither, I cannot
help it — and if your coming prevents bloody and unnatural
violence, it is so far well. But by my consent you come not;
and were the choice mine, I would rather be struck with life-long
blindness than that my eyes should again open on your person —
rather that my ears were stuffed with the earth of the grave than
that they should again hear your voice.' "
Or here :
" ' Oh ! no — no — no ! ' exclaimed the terrified girl, throwing
herself at his feet ; ' do not kill me, brother ! I have wished
for death — thought of death — prayed for death — but, oh ! it is
frightful to think that he is near ! — Oh ! not a bloody death,
brother, nor by your hand ! '
" She held him close by the knees as she spoke, and expressed
in her looks and accents the utmost terror. It was not, indeed,
without reason ; for the extreme solitude of the place, the violent
and inflamed passions of her brother, and the desperate circum-
stances to which he had reduced himself, seemed all to concur to
render some horrid act of violence not an improbable termination
of this strange interview.
" Mowbray folded his arms, without unclenching his hands,
or raising his head, while his sister continued on the floor,
clasping him round the knees with all her strength, and begging
piteously for her life and for mercy.
" ' Fool ! ' he said at last, ' let me go ! — Who cares for thy
worthless life? — Who cares if thou live or die? Live, if thou
canst — and be the hate and scorn of everyone else, as much as
thou art mine."
The Prose of Walter Scott 275
Extreme solitude, inflamed passions, improbable
termination — the movement of the narrative is
cumbrous and wordy. But it is strong ; and the
stronger notes of the speeches are reheved against
it with discretion and temperature.
In conclusion let it be said, though it is perhaps
needless, that I do not here pretend to estimate, as
a whole, the merits of Scott's work as a romancer.
Of many aspects, and these the most important, we
have said little or nothing. In Guy Mannei-ing the
variety and coherence of the topics, in Old Moi'tality
the subtle distinction of similar idiosyncrasies, in
Rob Roy the picturesque backgrounds, in Red-
gauntlet vigour of caricature, in the Heart of
Midlothian a perspective of society, humour in
The Antiquaiy, horror in St Ronans Well and all
together in the tragedy of Lammermoor — these and
other qualities are doubtless more vital than style.
But without style they would not have achieved the
end. Scott, in his way and at his hours, is a very
great stylist, supreme and hardly to be surpassed.
His manner of working, his profusion, the nature of
his faults, give room for mistake and misrepresenta-
tion about this aspect of his genius. And for this
reason it may not have been amiss to bespeak
attention to the form, as well as the matter, of his
prose.
18—2
^J^
, M ,/
f'
^.-^
"DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS^"
" Do you honestly enjoy this book, and, if so,
what in it pleases you ? Does your enjoyment
increase as you study it, and if so, through what
process of thought ? " Such are perhaps the ques-
tions which the members of a reading union should
ask themselves upon a work of Mr George Meredith.
To presume the affirmative answers — or, worse, to
force them — may in this case be to miss the best
of the profit. Some art is strong in the width of
its appeal, and some not in the width, but in the
depth. It is a great thing to satisfy desires that
are universal or common, and great also, whether
more or less, to gratify intensely even one desire
that is natural. Disclaiming all pretentions to dic-
tate, and confessing, or rather insisting, that others
may very well see where I am blind, I have to say
for myself that my pleasure in Mr Meredith is, if
not solely of one kind, yet in one kind intense
beyond expression, and otherwise slight. All other
things that belong to literature the English reader
may find more easily, if not in better quality, else-
where; but of one thing, in which English writers
^ This essay forms one of a series on George Meredith's
Novels and Poetry contributed by various writers to the Natiotial
Home-reading Union.
''Diana of the Crossways'' 277
as a class are singularly poor, he may find in Mr
Meredith such a store as was hardly ever, I verily
believe, dispensed by a single mind since writing-
began. And the question to ask — once more let
us say that a true answer is not to be given with
haste — is whether we have, or wish to get, an appe-
tite for this particular food. I can warrant it possible
for a man to read The Egoist with enjoyment so
often that he literally cannot read it any more, be-
cause he knows, before turning, the contents of every
page ; but to tell any one, without intimate know-
ledge of his constitution, that he ought to admire
The Egoist is, as likely as not, to say that he ought
to be a humbug. Given a person, time, and place,
we may say of certain works that by that person
they ought to be admired — at least in this sense,
that, not admiring, he shows a dangerous diverg-
ence in taste and faculty from the type of man
with whom he will have to deal. But for England
and for this age that is certainly not to be said of
Mr Meredith. What may safely and rightly be
said is that, if we do not take pains to appreciate
him so far as may be possible for us, we miss the
best chance that Englishmen have, or ever had, to
cultivate a valuable faculty which is of all least
natural to us.
This faculty is wit — wit in the sense which it
bore in our "Augustan" age of Pope and Prior, and
should always bear if it is to be definite enough for
utility : — wit or subtlety, on the part of the artist, in
the manipulation of meanings, and on the part of the
278 ''Diana of the Crossways"
recipient or critic the enjoyment of such subtlety for
its own sake, and as the source of a distinct intellectual
pleasure. The faculty and the pleasure, for obvious
reasons, have been most highly developed in small
concentrated societies. Among large bodies of people
it is difficult to bring about that uniformity of habit
in language and ideas without which a speaker dares
not and cannot be subtly suggestive ; and among
scattered bodies it is more than difficult. Between
two foreigners wit is well-nigh impossible, and for
high wit not all of one nation even can be native
enough to one another. Athens in the fifth and
fourth centuries before Christ, Florence in the four-
teenth and fifteenth after, Paris and, to a far less
degree, London in the seventeenth and eighteenth
— these have been the chief homes of wit. But
it is observable, and important to the student of
Mr Meredith, that though cities have been the breed-
ing-places of the art, it is not always within the local
urban limits that the urban and urbane company
finds the very best ground of exercise. To form
and finish the personal atoms, the quick close life
of a town is, broadly speaking, indispensable ; but
once formed, they may be more free to group and
grapple in a cultured rustication; more especially is
this so when the city has swollen to the size and
complexity of modern times. Fashion your wits in
Paris, and then away to the villa ! An urban society
rusticated — that is the properest situation. Mr Mere-
dith has himself summed up the matter, and with it
a great chapter or volume in the history of human
''Diana of the Crossivays'' 279
education, in the characteristic phrase (darkly splen- '
did as wit should be) which describes the actors of ;
The Egoist : "A simple-seeming word of this import i
is the triumph of the spiritual, and where it passes
for coin of value the society has reached a high
refinement — Arcadian by the aesthetic route." The
preference of the author for companies in this pre-
dicament, folk of intellectual fashion, transplanted to
the parks of the province, is scarcely less than that
of Peacock, with his Nightmare Abbey, Crotchet
Castle, and other synonyms for a scene always
constantly the same. But the various ingenuity of
Mr Meredith in conducting us to the favourable field
is as far above the rude machinery of Peacock as the
wit of Peacock, though copious for an Englishman,
is below the wealth which Nature, laughing as her
wont is at her own rules, has suddenly chosen to
reveal in a denizen of Surrey.
It may not perhaps be said that without a
Patterne Hall or a Beckley Court or a Copsley for
focus of the story Mr Meredith has never achieved
success ; but it is in the dining-rooms and the draw-
ing-rooms of such mansions, and at social gatherings
there, that those scenes are enacted which are most
entirely and distinctively his own. Certainly the
crises of the drama do not always occur when " the
daughters of the Great Mel have to digest him at
dinner" (Bvan Hai'rington, chap, xxii), or in "ani-
mated conversation at a luncheon-table" {The Egoist,
chap, xxxvi), or amid the cross-currents of an inop-
portune call, as in " the scene of Sir Willoughby's
28o ''Diana of the Crossways"'
generalship" {The Egoist, chap, xlvi) ; though, when
such crises do so occur, the reader who cares for
Mr Meredith at all, gets something scarcely to be
priced in the literary exchange. But beyond this,
the principal personages of Mr Meredith, all and
always, owe so much of their characters to the
experience of such meetings, that their behaviour
elsewhere is scarcely to be understood until we have
read long enough and widely enough in the author
to know, without telling, how they would behave
themselves in that sort of arena. This is the engine
that he delights to work. Take a set of people all
trained to use with facility the same medium of
choice and exact speech, and all sufficiently sensitive
in intellect and feeling to shrink from anything like
rudeness or baldness or bluntness in manner and
expression. Place them in such relations to one
another that each has much to conceal, much to
reveal, and much to discover in the thoughts, de-
sires, and generally in the nature of himself and his
companions ; in such relations that from interview
to interview, and indeed from moment to moment,
there must be changes of mutual attitude, sometimes
slow and sometimes sudden, as in the pattern of a
kaleidoscope turned gently. Then have a Mr George
Meredith to provide them with dialogue, and to ex-
plain the inner springs of movement when dialogue,
however delicately constructed, is not explanatory
enough. And then — why, then you will see what
you can see, — Diana of the Crossways, for example,
chaps. XXII, xxviii, xxx, xxxi, xxxv, xxxviii-xliii.
''Diana of the Crossways'' 281
This book in particular, Diana of the Crossways,
though reasons might certainly be given for not
placing it first among the author's achievements,
and though for myself I very much prefer, for in-
stance, the good parts of Evan Harrington, and
should rank The Egoist immeasurably above it —
as, indeed, in its own line, above anything which
modern literature has to show — has nevertheless one
noticeable advantage as a commencement of study.
Here at least, there is no possibility of mistake or
misunderstanding as to the primary importance
which, among the elements of the artistic product,
must be assigned to wit. The principal figure is
notoriously and professedly a woman of wit, moves
and has her being in wit, and simply because of
her wit, attains the position and undergoes the
experience in which we see her. The society in
which she moves is consciously and professedly a
witty society, could not live without wit any more
than without food. Now, since wit always makes
a part, and a very large part, of Mr Meredith's
interest in his subject, whatever that subject may on
the surface appear to be, and since — to repeat once
more the only point on which I care to insist — the
reader who does not appreciate linguistic dexterity,
and does not rate it highly among human capacities,
had much better let Mr Meredith alone, it Is well
that on this point our attention should be challenged
at once. Doubtless there are many aspects in which
Diana of the Crosstvays may be regarded. It is a
study in the development of character ; it exhibits
1 8-5
282 ^' Diana of the Crossways'^
many pleasant pictures ; it has scenes, two at least,
of elaborate and nevertheless effective pathos ; its
plot turns upon the deep problem of marriage. In
these matters among others, and especially in the
last mentioned, it is possible, it may just now be
fashionable, to see the essential and most significant
element. But none of these things are the essential
— no, not the problem of marriage. If you want
pathos, or pictures, or social problems, you can get
them elsewhere, you will find them more easily else-
where ; which is practically to say that you will find
them better. What you have here is a touchstone
which, were it not for other volumes from the same
hand, would be in its kind unique among the pro-
ducts of England, to ascertain whether you have the
faculty of enjoying dexterity in the manipulation of
language ; this you have, and also an instrument
with which to cultivate that faculty, if you happen
to possess it. If we are Englishmen, it is probable,
as Mr Meredith repeatedly hints to us\ that by our
nature we suspect wit with all the malice of honesty,
and not unlikely that we hate it with all the vigour
of sloth. The first is a grave and the second a
grievous error. But a worse state yet would be
the self-deception of supposing ourselves witty or
capable of wit because in a witty author we have
come to enjoy something else.
Manifestly, from the scope of the story, Diana
of the Crossways could not have been attempted
except by one who felt himself able to unfold the
^ E.g. Viana, chaps, ii, xi, xxxix.
^^ Diana of the Crossways'' 283
riches of clever speech. Of the luxuriance actually
displayed no sampling can give a fair representation.
There is scarcely perhaps any type of cleverness
which is not exemplified copiously. There is the
"sentence," "gnom^," or "epigram," scattered in
dozens and hundreds. " The world is ruthless, be-
cause the world is hypocrite." " She was perforce
the actress of her part.... It is a terrible decree that
all must act who would prevail." "Slumber. ..a
paradoxical thing you must battle for, and can only
win at last when utterly beaten." " She was delight-
ful to hear, delightful to see ; and her friends loved
her and had faith in her. So clever a woman might
be too clever for her friends." " Money is, of course,
a rough test of virtue," said Red worth ; "we have I
no other general test." "We are much influenced
in youth by sleepless nights." " Men and women
crossing the high seas of life he had found most
readable under that illuminating inquiry — as to their
means." Among such phrases some are in import
simple, some profoundly penetrative; but their com-
mon quality is that they are rememberable, and this
they are, because they are in turn and wording so
scrupulously right. In the last cited, some of the
merit lies in the felicity of the implied simile, which
may be more fully seen in the context (chap, xxxix) :
the power to find and to work out analogies has
always been noted as a great branch of wit; indeed,
where wit has been studied, the tendency has com-
monly been, as in the days of Queen Anne, to exag-
gerate the importance of this branch. At any rate
284 " Diana of the Crossways "
it is through such power that wit most often attains
to the form of eloquence. And in this kind also the
mastery of our author is astounding : " With her, or
rather with his thought of her soul, he understood
the right union of women and men from the roots to
the flowering heights of that rare graft. She gave
him comprehension of the meaning of love — a word
in many mouths, not often explained. With her,
wound in his idea of her, he perceived it to signify
a new start in our existence, a finer shoot of the tree
stoutly planted in good gross earth ; the senses
running their live sap, and the minds companioned,
and the spirits made one by the whole-natured con-
junction. In sooth, a happy prospect for the sons
and daughters of Earth, divinely indicating more
than happiness : the speeding of us, compact of what
we are, between the ascetic rocks and the sensual
whirlpools, to the creation of certain nobler races,
now very dimly imagined." Could this possibly be
better done ? Less brightness but more blaze is in
the description of the scandal sometimes attending
the publication of diaries and memoirs : "The Diarist
...howks the graves, and transforms the quiet worms,
busy on a single poor peaceable body, into winged
serpents that disorder sky and earth with a deadly
flight of zig-zags, like military rockets, among the
living." And there should be added here, if there
were room, by way of a climax in this sort, the
picture of jealousy from The Egoist (chap, xxiii),
a thing to make one stupid with admiration — so
perhaps one had best not dwell upon it.
^' Diana of the Crossways" 285
Nearer to the popular notion of wit, because
more heavily pointed, are such things as Diana's
rebuke to her too presuming intimate : " You must
come less often, even to not at all, if you are one of
those idols with feet of clay which leave the print
of their steps in a room, or fall and crush the
silly idolizer." Or, again, the reflexions of Lady
Dunstane, the " woman of brains," upon Diana's
unfortunate husband : " Her first and her final
impression likened him to a house locked up and
empty ; a London house conventionally furnished
and decorated by the upholsterer, and empty of
inhabitants. . ..Empty of inhabitants even to the ghost !
Both human and spiritual were wanting. The mind
contemplating him became reflectively stagnant."
Or, again, Diana writing to Lady Dunstane on the
political prospects of women : " The middle age of
men is their time of delusion. It is no paradox.
They may be publicly useful in a small way — I do
not deny it at all. They must be near the gates of
life — the opening or the closing — for their minds to
be accessible to the urgency of the greater ques-
tions..." and so on, the whole passage (chap, xv)
excellent, and enough in itself to establish Diana for
a wit of the first rank.
As for the small change of wit, sallies, repartees,
and so forth, the dialogue, everywhere and by the
nature or necessity of the story, is starred with them.
They cannot be overlooked, and it is not fair to take
them from their setting; so we will not quote any,
but will remark, however, that from The Egoist,
286 ''Diana of the Crossways'"
perhaps from Beauchamf s Career, we might cull
a score or so better than any of these. Over the
whole scale of smartness, from top to bottom, the
author ranges with justified assurance. He is not
afraid to tell us right out what was the particular
quip by which Diana repelled the malicious attack
of Mrs Cramborne Wathin (chap. xiv). Great
* writers, the very greatest, have flinched at such a
trial. Scott does repeatedly ; Thackeray does in
a famous crisis of Vanity Fair — and Thackeray
stands high among English wits. Mr Meredith,
amazing as it is to see, is perfectly ready, and hits
the mark exactly, giving just what is good enough
and not (an error scarcely less easy) too good.
The pursuit of wit has its dangers, and that Mr
Meredith always avoids or overcomes them, I at
least shall not for a moment maintain. It is the
I way of wit, and it must be, to tread constantly on
I the verge of darkness. To demand that wit shall
be always or often easy of understanding, would be
simply to expose our ignorance of its character and
conditions. But what we often use we may well
come to tolerate, or even to love, when there is no
use in it ; and so may wit come to love darkness.
My own experience (each must speak for himself)
is that there is no noticeable work of wit which is
not sometimes sheerly incomprehensible. Ha7iilet
is an example, and to my mind, I confess, a very
black one. There are passages in The Way of the
World which to me are no better than headache.
No doubt in such a case we should be cautious in
''Diana of the Crossivays''' 287
decision ; often it will appear in the end that what
seemed wilful confusion has a purpose, and could
hardly have been made simpler without some injury.
But that it is always so we need not believe ; and
of Mr Meredith I will say frankly, though with the
profoundest respect, that not very seldom (so far as
with patient study I can judge) he is dark beyond or
even without legitimate reason. Readers of Diana
will find occasion to consider the question ; only let
them consider it long, and for each occasion afresh.
Chapters i, ix, xiii (to go no further) should cost them
some time.
And another danger is that the author may put
wit in the wrong place, or too much of it, to the
injury of dramatic truth. That Congreve did so,
often and constantly, I think with Lord Macaulay ;
and notwithstanding well meant apologies. And
here Mr Meredith especially might be put in a
dilemma. Since the English, by temper, are so
backward of wit as he says they are, how shall we
allow, for pictures of English society, these scintil-
lating clusters which he presents to us ? Personally
I do not find this a very serious matter, provided
that the tone of the picture be consistent, be
brightened or heightened throughout in proportion.
Whether the result be historically true or not, we do
not much care. Congreve, I hold, can scarcely be
said to have satisfied the proviso ; the dimensions
of theatrical work constrained him. Whether Mr
Meredith satisfies it is too complicated a matter for
288 " Diana of the Crossways "
present discussion ; I should say that, on the whole
and with some lapses, he does.
I have not touched, and I do not mean to touch,
on the ethical substance of Diana of the Crossways.
There is no fear but that the reader will give to it
all the attention that it deserves. The chief char-
acter is borrowed, in parts, with some of the chief
^ incidents, as the first chapter informs us, from the
career of an historic woman, whose conduct, never-
I theless, differed from that of Diana essentially.
Whether the author has triumphed perfectly over
the immense difficulties of making from his historic
model a true Diana, the reader must judge. Notable
it is, and questionable, that her salvation, so to speak,
/) is achieved, so far as appears, by the purest accident.
After reading chapter xxv, one may be haunted by
a certain weighty sentence (not in Johnsonese) of
Dr Johnson's. Truly chapter xxvi may well drive
that and everything else out of the mind. But —
but — well, the reader must judge. I am not ashamed
to say that I like Miss Asper, and am glad she
married Dacier. So probably for my reasons or
for others, is Mr Meredith. And I am sorry — is
he ? — for Mr Warwick.
INDEX I
Aeschylus 87-89, 225
Altar of Mercy 226-235
Andromache, see Euripides
Aqueduct, the Marcian 137 f.
Aristophanes 85-87, 236-239
on Aeschylus 87
on Euripides 85 f., 236-239
Athens 225-235
Areopagus 234 f.
New Humanism at 225
Britannicus, murder of 73 f.
Caesar, Calendar of Julius 216
Callimachus 44, 50
Catillus and Coras 142-145
Coras, see Catillus
Coliseum 59 ff.
Cynthia 27-57, 1 16-126
Part I. 27-36, 1 16
Part II. 37-46, 116 f., 124
Part III. 38, 44-52, 116 f,
124-126
Part IV. 52-57
Dante 153-218, 221 f., 228, 232,
235
Latin in 213 f., 218
on "the laurel" 161, 165/^
167-171, 178
on name "Statius" 198-203
on Statius, birthplace of 235
on Statius, Christianity of
153-203, 221, 228
on Virgil's birth 204-218
on Virgil's poems 174-176, 190,
205 f., 208, 218, 222
Diana of the Crossways, see
Meredith
Erotion 11-13
Euripides 85-111, 225 f., 236-
240
Andromache of 93-111
Aristophanes on 85 f.
Children of Heracles of 225 f.
Prologues of 236 ff.
Sophocles on 90
Suppliants of 225 f.
Gibbon, on religion of Roman
Empire 219 f.
Gtty Mamiering, see Scott
Lay of Last Minstrel, see Scott
Lucan 213, 233
Marcella of Bilbilis 25 f.
Marriage in the Roman Empire
112 ff.
Martial 6-26, 60-65, 68-72, 78,
126, 137 f.
Martialis, park of Julius 19-21
Mercy, Altar of 226-235
Meredith, George, Diana of the
CrossTvays, 280-288
Evan Harrington 279
The Egoist 277, 279, 284 f.
Milton, Hytnn on Morning of
Nativity y 197
Lycidas 145 f.
Paradise Lost 223
Ovid 146-148, 150-152
Peter, Saint, " the Fisherman "
159
Propertius 27-57, 1 15-126, I38f.
Redgauntlet, see Scott
Roman Emperor, worship of 7-9,
160-163, 205, 212
290
Index I
Roman Empire
Gibbon on religion of 219 f.
Marriage laws of ii2ff.
Western Provinces of 4 f.
St Ronati's Welly see Scott
Saturnalia 58-84
"birds" at 8 if.
description of Feast 66-84
gambling at 67-70
presents at 70 fif.
Scott, Byron on 247
Gtiy Mannering 186, 248-264
Lay of Last Minstrel 223, 232
Redgauntlet 265-272
St Ronati's Well 154, 273 ff.
Vocabulary of 257, 261-264,
270-273
Shakespeare,
257 f.
Sophocles, on Euripides 90
Statins 64 f, 74-84, 129-147,
153-203, 221-235
Achilleis 154, 157 f, 160-164,
170 fif., 174, 177 ft., 182 ff.,
189, 196, 202
Altar of Mercy 226-235
Hellenism of 226-231
name of 201 ff.
Henry VL 251,
Statius, Saturnalia 74-84
Silvae 129, 154
Thebais 64 f., 154, 158-164,
172, 175, 178-182, 184-198,
200, 202 f., 221-235
Villa of Vopiscus 129-146
references to Virgil in 223,
233
Stevenson, Catriona 265, 268 f.
The Wrecker 187
Tennyson, Idylls of the King 186,
223, 239-246
Tiberinus 146 ff.
Tibur, see Tivoli
Tivoli, place of retreat 128,
148-152
Vopiscus' villa at 129-146
Virgil 174-176, 190, 204-218, 222,
232
JL7teid 206, 222, 232
Dante on Birth of 204-218
Eclogues 174 ff., 190, 205, 208,
218, 222
Vopiscus I29ff.
Wandering Willie's Tale, see
Scott, Redgauntlet
INDEX II
{Passages translated, quoted, or discussed)
PAGES
Aristophanes, Frogs, 1 197-1248...
... 236 ff.
Dante, Inferno, i. 70-72
204-218
I. 124
160
n. 13-27
206
IV. 80
209
Paradiso IX.
... 170
XXIV
169
XXV
167 n, 169
Purgaiorio xxi. ...
... 155-203, 235
XXII
... 155-203
Euripides, Androtnache, 102-180
... 99 ff.
184 f, 205 f
... 103
881-1008
104 ff.
1085-1165
109 ff.
Index II
PAGES
Horace, C. i. 7. 14-21
151
C. I. 34. 1-5 ...
> • • • • ■
220
C. II. 6. 5-8 .
149
C. III. 29. 2-4.
130
Juvenal, Sat. vii. 8
2-92
157, 202
Martial I. 49
. •
. 21-23
H. 14 ...
II
III. 47 -
.. 16
III. 58 ...
. 16-18
IV. 44 ...
. . .
II
IV. 55 ...
• 4'v 23
IV. 64 ...
19-21
IV. 88 ...
. •
. 71
V. 30 ...
• 70
V. 34 •■•
11
V. 37 •••
■
. 12 f.
V. 84 ...
• 72
VI. 42. 19-21 .
.. 138
VI. 83 ...
. 8
VII. 13 ...
.. 127
VII. 60 ...
• • • •
• • 7
IX. 18. 7 \.
.. 138
IX. 59 ...
• * ■ •
10
IX. 6 1 ...
141'.
X. 4
.. 65
X. yi ...
. 21, 24 f.
X. 61
• • ■
II
XI. 2
. > ■
.. 69
XI. 6
.. 68
XI. 18 ...
13
XII. 21 ...
.. 25 f.
XII. 31 ...
...
25
Ltd. Spec. I.
60
II.
.. 61
III.
.. 63
Ovid, Amores ill. 6. 49-8
. . .
146-148
Ex Ponto I. 3. 81 f.
150
Fasti VI. 665-684
151 f.
Propertius I. i. 1-6
• 31
I. 2. 7 f.
32
I. 3. 17-46
• il>
I. 6. 13 ff.
34
I. 14. I ff.
• 35
I. 15. 9-22
• 35
I. 20
• 36
II. I
..
• 37 n
II. 7 ...
■ 38
II. 10 ...
37 «, 43
II. II ...
■ 43 f-
II. 13. 19-36 .
• 39, 43
u. 18. 3f. ( = P
aimer
18/'. c
)f.) .
41
291
292
Index II
PAGES
Propertius ll. 20 ...
46
11. 23. I f.
..
...
..
41
II. 26. 1-20
^_,
... «
40
II. 28. 35-46 .
...
42
II. 31 ...
...
45
II. 34 ...
...
..
44
III. 2 ...
...
49
III. 3 ...
...
138 «
III. 6 ...
...
. ..
46
III. 7. 71 f.
• .. •
. . .
50
III. 8 ...
... •
. ..
46
III. 9 ...
...
..
49
in. 10. 1-32
...
• ■
47 f.
III. 10. 31-46
. .
49
III. 16 ...
...
46
III. 18 ...
...
45, 121
111. 20 ...
..
47, 118 f.
III. 21 ...
...
121, 125
III. 22 ...
. . .
..
50, 125
111. 23 I f.
...
..
51
111. 24. 1-20
...
51
III. 25 ...
. .
52
IV. 7 ...
...
..
53-57
IV. 8 ...
. . . .
52 «
Scott, Guy Maftnering,
Ch. VII
■ .
249-263
Ch. Llll.
...
. . . •
264
Redgauntlet, Letter Xl
,
. .
265-272
St Ronatis Well, Ch.
XXIV.
. . . .
274 f.
Ch. XXXV.
• . .
. . . . ■
. 274 f.
Shakespeare, Henry VI.
III. V.
5 * .
. 258
Statius, Achilleis I. 14 ff.
. . .
. . . . .
161-180,
182 f.
Silvae 1. 3
...
. •
130-139
1. 6
. .
75-84
Thebais I. 1-40 ...
..
158-161,
164, 172, 181 ff.
VII. 410
...
..
• 197
VII. 424
...
. ..
. 175, 186-
188, 192-198
VII. 430
...
• 195
XII. 481-511 ...
...
...
. 227 f.
XII. 809
...
• 159
Virgil, Aen. vii. 674
..
144
XI. 464, 519 ...
. .. . .
. 145
Ed. IV. ...
...
...
..
. 176
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